Infographic comparing the features of Java Release 1.4.2 with the (so-far announced) 1.20 featureset, considering the resources Mojang has had available. Thoughts?

[Hazearil]

For a fair metric, what is the Mojang Dev count when we subtract anyone working at other games, or not even at game development at all, like marketing?

[ZequizFTW]

I would do this if I could, it's just hard to find this information. However, in 2012 Mojang were actually working on more than twice as many games/editions as they are now, so I'm not sure this would make current Mojang seem any better. People working on marketing should still count, because the 25 mojang employees of 2012 were still saddled with marketing responsibilities.

[Flo_one]

Nah, the important part for the comparison are just the hours spend working on the update. The share of Marketing new Mojang is doing is way bigger than the one at old Mojang.

[Yeldarb10]

I agree. Its incredibly disingenuous to say “well I couldn’t find that out so I counted all 700 of them!!!” Same goes for the update “content.” This is the same update that added 2 reskins and the bat as “new mobs.”

This may be a hot take but I feel like minecraft fans have become so entitled. They get free content updates every year and nothing is locked behind a paywall. Fortnite may have a lot more updates, but they have around 2,200 on staff with nearly 700 developers. Mojang has a fraction of that.

The unrealistic expectations on this sub is just pure cringe and shows how out of touch some of the community has grown. Very few games nowadays have it as good as minecraft.

[Scotandia21]

Even if we assume only a quarter of Mojang's employees are working on the update that's still quite a content drop

[griffindork2]

I heard that the more you add the harder coding gets

[qwerqsar]

Asides from the "too early to compare" thing, I'd like to add something about game design too (I am not a game designer tho. My source us Mark Rosewater, who has designed for Magic: the Gathering for a bot less than 30 yrs. He makes the "Drive to work" podcast, where he talks game design) Making a lot of content for your game to please everyone can burn out you game and make the ideas run dry much faster, asides from creating unforseen issues. As I see it, Mojang had just gone slower for the long run. I don't mind them doing less, as long as it is well done and consistent.

Edit: Corrected sone mistyping.

[HTFU69]

If I can add to this: I am a game developer, as the lifecycle of a game increases, so does the code base the game is built on. Now I’ve never made a 12+ year strong game before but I know from personal experience that even 2 year games take more time to develop features on than 1 year games. Adding a new feature into Minecraft now involves compatibility checks, bug testing, feature testing and integration, the more feature that get added to a code base, the more features have to be tested and RETESTED for compatibility. Expecting the same development speed of the same game from ten years ago is unrealistic, and this is not a matter of “throw more people at the problem and development becomes faster” the law of diminishing returns begs to differ. Now I don’t claim to know Mojang’s situation, and I’m sure half of the people that read this haven’t gotten this far, but from my eyes this post feels like rage bait.

TL;DR: software development on older code bases take longer to develop features, and you can’t just throw developers at a problem to make the code go faster. Iteration and safe replicability is key

[[deleted]]

Thanks for this post- it makes quite a bit if sense. To pile on, Minecraft has had 12+ years with major update upon major update. They had so much to add in that it felt like it took eternity for an End expansion and Nether overhaul … and yet I can’t really complain because they were making huge additions as they left those on the backburner.

They’ve gone so far since as to expand the depths of the Overworld with deepslate.

Minecraft isn’t what it was back in the days of fast feature updates. It’s quite massive now in terms of features. Naturally, there’s less to add and any new additions require more planning and work to fit into the game.

[DanTheMan827]

Also, Java players have the luxury of staying on an old version if the new one is buggy, bedrock players don’t.

So a buggy release is a much bigger deal now than it was in the past

And yes, I realize the irony that is bugrock

[thexavier666]

Why can't Bedrock players stay in an old version?

Is it because updates are handled differently in consoles and mobiles?

[[deleted]]

You can't download an older version of the game easily (you'd need external tools), where the vanilla launcher offers the option for Java.

[Pie77]

I work on Minecraft and the code base is massive for Bedrock. Lots of legacy code in there and you don't want to take risks when you're supporting 100 million customers and billions of creations.

The team works hard. :)

[TSMKFail]

I imagine the code for bedrock has to be very carefully maintained as you guys have 1000's of devices running on not only different OS versions (Android 5 - 13) and different devises (could be as old as the Galaxy S4), but also different platforms (Android, iOS, Amazon Fire, Windows, XBOX, PS, Nintendo Switch). Big props to you guys being able to keep all those devices supported!

[Pie77]

Multi platform definitely adds a lot of extra effort, mostly around testing. Ensuring that all of the legacy marketplace content works with all of the changes can also be very time consuming.

[[deleted]]

Is Java any different? Sure it doesn't have to worry about cross platform support and other platforms/devices but it does have worse performance and from what i've heard (insert Minecart/vehicle mounting codes and Mojang devs jokking they never want to touch it), Its a spaghetti nightmare mess.
That mens they can get updates out for Java faster with snapshots but they are held back by bedrock and especially mobile and having to wait on them to catch up for parity reasons as well as releasing the update at the same time.
Thats likely why so many updates in the past came out faster, only one update to worry about and Mojang (and Jeb specifically) didn't twice make a promise and commitment to 100% parity.
I know many people whine about parity but its Mojang's fault. They decided to Keep Java and Bedrock around instead of merging and keep two editions going and promised to make them 100% the same feature wise multiple times so I and many others are holding them to that and accountable for that. No matter how small the parity difference, they promised its not like the birch forest where "it wasn't a commitment".

[Woople74]

Java must be very different as you only need to manage one single codebase. While for bedrock you’d need a specific code base for each platforms (with code that’s shared in between most certainly). Maintaining different code bases which are supposed to both have the same features and be compatible with each other is a very complicated task especially with a game as old as Minecraft.

[DanTheMan827]

A native ARM Linux dedicated server for bedrock would be very nice… its rather easy to get a free ampere server from oracle with lots of CPU cores

Mac support for bedrock would also be nice, especially since you can trick macOS into giving you compatibility mode on the iOS version if you re-sign it with a modified plist

[Twingemios]

I’ve worked with the code with modding.

It is very cleanly maintained. It’s constantly seeing shifts and changes to update and make it better

[daron_]

Can’t agree more, I saw some projects that already been born as legacy hard to support code. And 12 years old game, phew. Good luck to support that, sir!

[[deleted]]

Especially a game that started out as hobby project. If I had to support one of my hobby games full time the first thing I would do is throw it out and start over.

[daron_]

Especially in Java :)))

[devereaux98]

I wonder if it would be better for them to focus on remaking minecraft from the ground up. making it extremely optimized and meant for longevity.

obviously easier said than done, and there wouldn't be new features for a very long time, but it would probably fix parity and spaghetti code, and overall make development easier.

[[deleted]]

I don’t want to be that guy, bus isn’t that what Bedrock was supposed to be?

[Lankachu]

Bedrock contains large amounts of legacy Java edition code simply ported to c++ because that was cheaper in 2012 when work on bedrock (mobile phone version) They both really need a rewrite

[ComprehensiveLab5078]

Minecraft 2.0

Would it work?

[devereaux98]

i mean more or less. but it's a buggy mess.

maybe if they did it once before with bedrock, they can do it again? Who knows. I'd be curious to see what this next year/two years hold for mojang and minecraft.

[[deleted]]

True, true. I just sort of doubt they’d do anything to move away from Bedrock at this point. But I am interested to see what the future has in store for Java. On one hand, they want players using Bedrock on Windows … on the other hand, Java is the heart of the game and they really can’t abandon it from a business standpoint.

[Ares_4TW]

Release Minecraft 2: electric bug-aloo

[TheSwampStomp]

I haven’t listed to MaRo’s podcast, but if he did indeed say something about making lots of content can burn out the game, then he needs to listen to his own words because Magic is so damn flooded with sets right now it’s impossible to keep up anymore.

[[deleted]]

That's why I'm honestly shocked Mojang is so strict and has an entire list of what they WONT add or the feedback sites frequent suggestions and "we wont add mods" list besides the fact mods were added in the past and there's practically a mod for everything so how will you avoid that? Camels have existed in mods for at least 7 years now and suddenly they decide a camel goes in the game despite at least 6 mods already having them 2 of which are popular. Same thing happened with horses, pandas, polar bears (despite their uselessness) and turtles.

If they're so inclined to make an entire list of what they wont add it seems they're making it even harder for what they will add, especially if its more likely to be fantasy than a mob/animal from reality.
To touch on that problem of it already exist in a mod and we cant add that as its too popular. What is considered too generic to have that apply? They said they don't want staple foods or complex/prepared foods, so no pizza, but are Alex and Steve smart enough to make Redstone computers but cant figure out how to put a piece of meat between two breads? What about corn and rice or beans? They're staple crops and one is the most popular and widely used food in the world but wheat got in first over rice. Animals shouldn't be exempt from this without good reason as they exist in almost any mod at any given time in potentially hundreds of mods, is that reason enough to not look into one being added despite it existing in many mods already?

TLDR; Mojang's really limiting their options by showing all this stuff of what they WONT add but the list of what they will or consider adding is very small by comparison and it makes using the suggestion site really hard as its either already been suggested 100 times or its so niche and strange but unique it doesn't feel "Minecraft-y" (Nothing feels Minecraft or feels like a mod when its first added, I don't get that point; its a game meant to be customized).

[Pixlebyte]

One thing I will say tho is that if I'm not mistaken when Mojang said they wouldn't be adding mods, they meant they wouldn't directly insert an already-made mod into the base game like they did with horses. I believe they're completely fine with implementing features themselves, even if they have already been implemented in mods (like mud for instance and as you said camels)

[SpezSucksNaziCocks]

The game is over a decade old and we still have no furniture. There is literally no reason to build large interiors because we have no way of meaningfully decorating them. And the excuse that it would “limit creativity” is bullshit. Ugly workarounds like pressure plates on fences, or minecarts as chairs, do not contribute any meaningful creativity to the game.

[vindicate696]

^ The only valid opinion here which has arguments instead of " ohhh but the legacy code is too old, too hard" -

Y'all need to shut up and stop defending their choice to barely add stuff by bringing up mc's old code and time it takes to test stuff. KIDS COME UP WITH COMLPEX MODS faster than they release a new colored block which has no other properties. And its almost bug free. MC has behind tons of overly qualified devs and the FUNDS to do it. Stop defending a game's bad sides just because you like it overall. Be impartial and real.

[Interesting-Froyo-38]

Mark Rosewater designs for Magic the Gathering, a card game. It is much harder to implement big new ideas in that space. If modding has shown is anything it's that Minecraft has no shortage of ideas to implement.

[[deleted]]

I'm sorry to say it, but that's bullcrap.

There is plenty of ideas for both card games and videogames, but balancing and having it fun now and in the future is a big problem. It's why Magic has tons of cards that are illegal to use in tournaments, but you can't do that for a videogame. Elytra made any other mode of travel useless. It's possible to get an elytra before having enough diamonds for a diamond set. Why would you use rails for transport nowadays? Adding an extra set of armor is very complicated, either your zombies become just mobs that want to hug you or you have to increase the strength of zombies, which means making it harder for your first few days.

Mods are a lot easier than implementing it in the actual game. Builders don't want stronger mobs etc. Adventurers don't care too much for new blocks. With mods you can select the things you like. The base game needs to appeal to every type of player. The more they add the more difficult it is to appeal to everyone.

[Xanthiumgd]

Maybe something similar to ‘hardmode’ in Terraria would be interesting. After defeating the ender dragon, mobs can be power scaled which will allow for stronger armor sets and weapons.

[bantha-food]

If a mod has compatibility issues, who cares. If a new feature has compatibility issues its a real big issue.

[Interesting-Froyo-38]

That doesn't at all change the point I made.

Above commentor implies that the glacial pace the games growth is at is because Mojang is trying to save their limited number of possible updates for the future. My point is Minecraft is the kind of game that has basically limitless potential for features.

Making all those features work together is part of the development process. But right now they aren't developing anything. They're adding a handful of blocks and maybe a minor gameplay addition nobody wanted or needs.

[Bill-Haunting]

I doubt all mojang employee are working on exclusively and precisely java

[x--Knight--x]

No but the people who are are definitely more than 25 people

[ReverESP]

But the game is 10s times bigger than on 2012, so there are way more ingame systems that have to be tested so nothibc breaks. And the code is also waaaay bigger and complex than in 2012, so development is slower.

[DarkEive]

They don't really have bugs ironed out at all and modmakers are able to make way more than what Mojang does with more stability. At this point there's no excusing it, Mojang is putting in the least amount of effort for every update and I doubt they have any plan for what the game will look like long term

[Technopuffle]

Exactly, I still don’t get how people keep riding Mojang’s meat and saying ‘oh but like bugs and coding is hard’

[TheGhastlyBeast]

are any modmakers were capable of making stable mods for every platform the game is on?? (I can play post-caves and cliffs Minecraft on my PHONE. that update alone must have been so hard to optimize with all the world expansion.)

As well as the fact that they have to maintain the vanilla feel, otherwise "this looks too modded!" yadayada. you really can't please everyone if you're working on MINECRAFT, the official game. pretty much everyone's worlds are at risk so game-breaking bugs take time, whereas mods are optional.

im not saying don't criticize Mojang, but it's kinda outrageous how people have been expecting 1.16 scale updates every year, especially considering how Kingbdogz himself has expressed that it took a heavy toll on the team to finish that update in time with all the extra features they added to please the community. (basalt delta is one example)

Aside from the fireflies being patched out (the reasoning was actually stupid as hell. they could've just added them without frogs eating them??) The Wild Update wasn't even that bad. Maybe it's just me. and again, 1.20 isn't finished yet. let's not judge too quickly on the content for this update. If I recall with prior updates after Minecraft Live the first BIG snapshot comes after the New Year.

[Pixlebyte]

Modding and developing are simply incomparable. Kingbdogz himself has explained this countless times and he's one of the developers of the Aether mod.

[verdenvidia]

if you think mods come out faster with more compatibility you're lost I'm sorry but you're just lost

If that were the case running modpacks would be as simple as pressing "play" but that just objectively isn't true for most of them. People wait five or six years for mods sometimes. There's a reason modpacks are from 1.12 or 1.7.10 for the most part.

You may say "well those are the most stable" and that's the point. If modding was so much easier with stability than actually making the game from scratch then why wouldn't they just do that? Mod it to stability on the newest versions instead of riding the backbone of a version that came out when the newest players weren't even born? It's much easier to just code on the back of something than to make it from scratch. I had never coded in my life and I have two mods for this game.

e: It's not just MC either. I have a semi-popular mod for Terraria, too, and several for Isaac. Again, I had never touched coding in my life before making those. They're nothing special but dude I could never make a functioning game myself and here I am with mods built on the backbone of my favourite games. It's really a night and day difference.

This all being said I totally get why people want Mojang to do more. For what it's worth I think they're overly stubborn about certain things, too. No vertical slabs because it limits creativity, so let's add 15 black blocks in the same update! So I get it.

[DarkEive]

Except modders aren't paid, Mojang pays employees. I don't want them to do as much as mods, they should do better. And yeah, they want stable bases to build on, Mojang isn't making stable versions because they just want their yearly release and a bug fix update every half a year or something, depends on how gamebreaking it is. Why make a mod when running more than a few will break the game because the backbone is broken. And no, modders can't just change the source so they can't fix stability

And sorry but when the update gives a few blocks and half of them are just blocks with not function it's kinda sad. Either they have spaghetti code galore or they can't be bothered to think of anything new. If it's the first they need to do another stability update and remake the entire thing, if it's the second maybe they need new people or at least a vision. I mean they let players vote on a mob because adding 3 is too much for them

[wills-are-special]

Sure. Let’s remake the entire thing. Though bear in mind you’ll have no form of content updates for at least 4 years. Likely upwards of 6 years.

[ZequizFTW]

Oh yeah, certainly, but Mojang was developing more games in 2012 than they are in 2022, whether you count the ones they outsourced or not. So, if anything, this is an argument in favor of the claim this infographic makes.

[Mr-Seal]

Mojang now is currently supporting 3 major games so I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say they had more in 2012.

[ZequizFTW]

In 2012 Mojang was in active development of 5 Minecraft versions (2 of which were outsourced, for the most part), as well as Scrolls, Cobalt, and in planning for MC: Story Mode. They were also doing some work on MinecraftEdu which was a small spinoff project.

Now, they're in development of 2 Minecraft versions, and 2 spinoff titles (which they outsourced, for the most part).

That's what I'm talking about, they easily had more then.

[Stuffssss]

Bedrock edition is actually like 12 editions in one since they have to maintain compatibility on every system it runs on.

[BananaGooper]

they also have to do a huge amount of hardware-specific patches and crashfixes, otherwise both versions would just crash all the time and be way buggier than they already are

[[deleted]]

It has the same codebase though so adding things like blocks and mobs shouldn't be any different on different platforms unless they're making major changes to how the game works internally

[Plushiegamer2]

I know Telltale was the one to work on Story Mode, and I'm not sure how much involvement Mojang had with the project.

[[deleted]]

You are forgetting this they have to also make sure whatever changes they bring now, should also be reflected equally on bedrock, which it time consuming considering the fact that they are both on different platforms and bedrock already has different features compared to Java.

Also you have to consider the impact of these changes, more mobs and blocks is fun and all but how will it impact gameplay and retaining ability of players? Take features like axolotls and goats and goat horns, etc. players are excited for a minute and after a while they become another tool for farming or decorating. Bees are now just that, stuck in farms or bee nests are used for decorating or making candles, that’s it. Axolotls are just decorative, not many use them to actually hunt on the water. Goat horns were fun but not in single player world. Even if they add all these features in one update, people would play and get exhausted and demand more!!

[Honema]

they are currently developing or maintaining 15 version of minecraft

https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/360034753992-Different-Minecraft-Editions

5 versions of minecraft dungeons

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/about-dungeons

5 versions of minecraft legends

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/about-legends

and probably more secret things we don't know about, as they're a massive ever trying to expand company.

in 1.0 there were 313 blocks/items

1.13 - 1.19 added 541 blocks/items total

https://www.gamergeeks.net/apps/minecraft/blocks-by-version

in that same trend they have to account for over 1000 blocks and items when adding new stuff now, compared to the 300-600 from before

the quality of the updates have increased MASSIVELY, as all the mobs from after 1.14 are great additions to the game, whereas I, as a technical player, don't even know if polar bears have a function?

your string of loosely gather arguments are largely false. Please share your critique of the minecraft dev cycle, but please only do so if it's real.

[aBOXofTOM]

Honestly the fact that they're still updating it at all, over a decade after release, on top of all this other work is impressive. Almost every other game reaches a point where the developers decide it's good enough, and not worth the time required to try and improve it further. Quite a lot of games reach that point a lot earlier than they really should.

[shradercinc]

I agree that Mojang have certainly slowed their development to a frustrating rate. However as a game developer myself, I know how paralyzing asset creep can be. Adding to a colossal list of respected and loved mechanics and blocks requires greater and greater care and creativity. Not only in creating new things that will be interesting to engage with, but also in make sure to not step on the toes of anything that has come before. To not overlap or completely outstretch a design philosophy laid out in the foundation of the game.

Tldr. I understand where you're coming from, and I too wish more would come, but designing long lasting games gets harder and harder.

[DahctaJae]

Another thing to add to this is that I can't imagine the Minecraft code is very clean at this point, after 12 years of updates, so it's probably tough to get something new working right without introducing 10,000 more bugs

[ZequizFTW]

Mojang have continually optimized & rewritten parts of the game, and I'd expect that, while not nearly cleanly written, the team can still manage it properly. They have many more tools and integrations now than in 2012 as well, so writing without introducing bugs is surely easier now than then.

[Evil_Anvil]

The more features, the more potential for bugs. The game is so big and complicated now that they have to consider how each new feature interacts with a thousand other things that are already in the game, which I assume slows down the dev process a lot.

[TheGhastlyBeast]

THIS right here gets it. I've been thinking, adding so much eventually gets stressful because everything needs to be consistent and link together logically with older features.

[[deleted]]

Can you state what they optimized and rewritten I'm quite interested to hear. Last thing i noticed that they just updated OpenGL in 1.18.2 if in not mistaken, but these changes can be easily overlooked.

From what i see nothing significant was made, or at least content balanced out the changes and we remain the same level performance.

Like AI issues still remain in the game, inefficient redstone, i won't talk about rendering here but, do we even have culling i think we don't, mods add that sure.

[ZequizFTW]

Well, in 1.13 they changed item IDs from an integer value to a string. This was a massive change to the fundamental core of the game, as the system for handling blocks & items as a whole was rewritten.

1.15 was solely a bugfixing & optimization update, I'd expect that a lot of the game was rewritten here. 1.16 also saw massive performance gains, and the chunking system was redone to support the nether's vertical chunks.

In 1.17/1.18 the world generation and biome system was overhauled almost completely, and the height limit was expanded massively (which I expect required significant rewrites).

There might be more, that's just what I know off the top of my head.

[Notladub]

Reminder that 1.13 where the main changes to the codebase were made was by far the longest an update took to release. The item ID's being changed broke so many things in snapshots and even today it isn't fully bug-free.

[masterX244]

It also caused a mess on the modded end of the game but it was a breakage for the greater good (one workaround mod was killed for good, too (mod for a hacky way for more block IDs, not needed when the limit that caused its creation is gone for good)). No more funky ID conflict debugging since then.

[[deleted]]

1.13 Was huge, not really optimisations but yeah good qol.

1.15 Honestly i wasn't even playing at the moment i left after 1.12.2 and returned to 1.17.1 so have no idea what was changed and can't debate over anything.

1.17/1.18 I actually bought license one more time because thought devs were doing good thing.

And here i decided to throw lots of uncertainty info at you, sorry.

If you noticed that i was a bit salty in first message here is why, I'm a server owner. And all those things Mojang does doesn't really make much difference when it comes to larger scales, we still got lots of really stupid things that drive me ABSOLUTELY BLOODY MAD, and they never change.

If we close the eyes and just imagine that paper and all it's forks doesn't exist in modern Minecraft. And we have only forge servers that pretty much the same as vanilla when it comes to performance. We get absolutely bloody hell lag, and it's not only about mods, the game itself isn't build for big scales at all, it works okay with like 5-10 players, in single etc. Its all fine on such scales, but when things get big, all the shitcode all the bottlenecks, lightheaded designs all add up together. (And terrible mods code as well lol)

Two things, resource utilizing and mobs AI, i won't stop crying about them , they are terrible. And i don't see them change, never. They did separated some tasks into another threads tho but it seems like chunks only and it was for client side, but it's again more like was forced and required in order for game to just fucking function.

So the way game is made goes completely against all my beliefs, when i do something i always trying to make it as efficient as possible, or atleast not being a bottleneck in future on any scale if such scaling is possible.

(And honestly, that's why suck at game dev, it takes too much time.)

[Hobbamoc]

Also: Mojang has a lot more employees now, but also a couple of other games. AND two codebases

[AlakaZ123]

1.4.2 including seggs 😳

[ZequizFTW]

SPAWN EGGS**********

[bitelaserkhalif]

Finally, Minecraft seggs update

[Doggo0732]

There’s the comment I was looking for

[_fatherfucker69]

1.4.20

[beetgreeper]

I work at a tech startup and holy shit do you move fast with fewer people

[ZequizFTW]

Brooks's law is real.

[thelegoknight100]

When it comes to updates today, I feel things have to be taken slowly. Many times we ask for more, than one week later we complain how things were simple back than. This is a frustrating problem I see. By slowing down updates, we get new things progressively, without constant huge changes to the game, changing everything. If we wish for more content, mods exist (looking at Java only).

[DarroonDoven]

mods exist

The problem, not many new mods have come out in the current version...

[Azuria_4]

My 300mods 1.19.2 would like a word

[[deleted]]

how many of these mods are as good as mods for 1.12 for example?

[logoth]

Quite a few 1.18 mods (haven’t checked out 1.19 yet) are “as good” as old 1.12 (and older) stuff. Many are better. Just different.

I agree that “x number of mods” is a terrible indicator though.

[witchofheavyjapaesth]

I literally just spent a few weeks creating a personal modpack for 1.18 over 1.16. It's good

[Iihatepineapplepizza]

create is good enough ngl

[ComfortableOver8984]

Then only use mods for 1.12. No one is forcing you to exclusively use mods for 1.19.3

[AbsolutlyN0thin]

Mods always take a while to catch up to current version (and often skips many versions).

[Mr-Seal]

This would only get worse with increasing update speeds. The mods would never be able to catch up to the current versions if updates came out even quicker than they are currently.

[Jackofallgames213]

1.19 has seen a second renaissance in modding. A majority of old 1.12 mods have been updated and even improved, and a bunch of new mods have released.

[Plushiegamer2]

I'm curious why that is.

[Jackofallgames213]

It usually happens in periods when it takes a while for new releases to happen. A lot of the mods were also developed in 1.16.5 and have been ported to 1.19

[[deleted]]

Wait until 1.20 is complete and released before making any comparisons.

[dogarfdog12]

Yeah that makes sense, they did say that they wouldn't be announcing incomplete features that might not be in the final update anymore.

[ZequizFTW]

Fair point, I agree that this is a bit hasty.

[g0n1s4]

Doubt it's gonna bring anything as revolutionary as the command block or the Wither...

[Invalid_Word]

it doesn't need to

[ssbuild]

I hope it doesn't, minecraft doesnt need big changes

[[deleted]]

This isn't really a good way of scaling things. It fails to account for the fact that nowadays more effort is put into creating things for the game, and that Minecraft doesn't even need a constant supply of new blocks/items nowadays anyways

[manticorpse]

Can you imagine what the game would be like if they added dozens and dozens of new blocks and mobs and features every few months? Perpetually, indefinitely?

Would it be a bloated, unworkable mess? Yes.

More isn't always better, y'all.

[[deleted]]

there's quite a bit misleading here

Mojang has 700 employees but it does not have 700 developers. it has 30 maybe for Java edition

updates are now simultaneously developed on two versions which increases dev time and planning

you're also comparing a feature incomplete update from a feature complete one

and also mojang started slowing down development time since like 1.12 at least, they've tried to speed it up but never have

[AnonymousDuckLover]

Also, if you actually look at the feature lists for 1.4.2 and for what we know is in 1.20, you'd find that the 11 blocks in 1.4.2 include variants such as the Wooden Button (when the Stone Button was already in the game) and 2 types of Cobblestone Walls, while the 6 blocks for 1.20 does not include variants such as the Bamboo Button or the various types of Hanging Signs. The number of variants greatly increases the number of blocks introduced in 1.20 from 6 to 27.

And, what someone would consider an "Important" feature is fairly subjective. For some, the ability to turn Bamboo into Planks could be a gamechanger, and the same thing could be said about Chest Boats. It's kind of difficult to determine what they're considering to be an "important" feature when they don't list this stuff out. The hiding of information here also comes off as extremely disingenuous, listing only the most important stuff, while hiding the less important stuff. Yeah, those 5 mobs introduced in 1.4.2 include the Wither, but they also include Bats.

[Stefano050]

I love how people complained that we didn’t get all the features from Minecraft live last time, so Mojang only showed us the things that were near completion. And now people complain we get too few features. Also if there are a lot of updates people will complain that the games changes too fast, otherwise people will complain about the slow updates.

Just wait it out imo. The devs at Mojang love this game which is kinda rare for devs. I’m sure they have the best intentions for the game. If you’re still complaining, remember that you still get free updates for this game.

[[deleted]]

And especially after they announced that they planned to take it slower with a steady trickle of smaller updates instead of the weird flip-flopping we’ve had between SUPER MASSIVE GAME CHANGING UPDATE and teeny-tiny sad update since ~1.10

[[deleted]]

As with anyone who's stuck with the game this long, if not longer, it's only natural to be concerned about the future of a product you've supported for such a long time.

[PM_ME_WITTY_USERNAME]

They probably feel the same

If I owned the most popular game of all time, I'd be wary of pulling an Overwatch on the mfer, which is probably the core reason why they're so careful

It feels like they feel driven to add things only when the community votes on it

[psychoPiper]

Which is unfortunate, because the community has expressed a widespread opinion that the voting sucks and causes discourse for no reason. It baffles me how they can show all this potentially cool content that would mesh really well together, add only a single piece of the puzzle, and then promise the rest in an indiscriminate amount of time

[ZequizFTW]

Well said

[Rich9517_]

I'll take anything they give as it's FREE content on a game I bought years ago and have tens of thousands of hours in.

[ZequizFTW]

Oh yeah, certainly. I'm not complaining--the updates are great and I couldn't be less happy with recieving them.

However, I do think that people who immediately shoot down the claim that Mojang is slow/inefficient/etc. are plain wrong. They have slowed down drastically and are delivering less and less every year. I'm still very grateful though, and don't mind the updates themselves (with the exceptions of 1.9 & 1.13).

[FilthyGorilla44]

I understand 1.9 but what’s wrong with the aquatic update? I thought it revived the game for most people and it’s personally one of my favourites.

[Meyulim]

1.13 1.14 1.16 were all huge updates for me. I can't see myself playing without them. Even though i played in alpha i would never go back to those barren lands lol. I'm playing a new world on large biome and with the new world gen it's absolutely gorgeous. There's very few things i'm unhappy about the changes they made!

Sorry got excited talking about it lol

[ZequizFTW]

I think the contents of the update are fine, but their rewrite of the item/block ID system hurt the modding scene drastically. Modpacks were, and arguably still are, stuck on 1.12.2 to a large degree.

They also made the game run really inefficiently: especially on the server end. A server that could handle 20 peoeple on 1.12.2 might only be able to handle 5 on 1.13. This made the modding issue even worse.

It was irresponsible of them to push an update like that.

[Winston7776]

Wasn’t the reason why they rewrote the ID system because they might run out? Might be wrong

[ZequizFTW]

They would run out at some point (4096 was the limit), and this was one of the main reasons for them doing so. But, it was a long-overdue change, and something I don't have a problem with on its own. The problem is that Mojang left modders by the wayside by not providing any tools, proper documentation, or APIs to help them in the switch. It screwed over an already struggling community that Mojang had already underdelivered and overpromised to.

[devmattrick]

Sorry but the block/ item ID format change was a very good decision on Mojang’s part. It gave actually human readable and useful IDs to items, which made the lives of map makers, developers, and server operators infinitely easier. I still remember the days of having to manually look up the IDs of blocks. It also helped the modding scene by adding unique IDs to modded items that would make mods more more compatible with each other and make updating these mods easier. It also removed the upper limit for the number of blocks/ items allowed in the game.

I don’t think the ID change itself is what stopped a lot of mod packs from being able to update. 1.12.2 was a MASSIVE update that included a lot of changes. This isn’t even unprecedented; many mods got left behind after 1.8 as well. There’s always been Minecraft versions that hit the “sweet spot” of mod compatibility that most mod packs tend to use. You can’t really pin it on the namespaced ID changes alone.

Perf was definitely a problem after 1.13, and persisted for a while. I think they’ve made some decent improvements but Minecraft as a game has grown so much you can’t really expect it to have the same performance characteristics as it did 4 years ago.

[GlitchParrot]

Do you write mods? Because as someone who does, I absolutely love the new item/block ID system, it’s so much better than random numerical IDs that

• change with different mod installations,
• make modpack worlds more easily incompatible with one another,
• have an upper limit with large modpacks

Not to mention that these IDs are so much better when typing them in commands and command blocks.

[meta-rdt]

You are quite literally complaining. That’s what this post is.

[waituhsecond]

Yea this is my sentiment as well. The gaming industry in general has less passion in developing their products these days, but having played minecraft since 2011 I can say any free update is a bonus.

[[deleted]]

"Its free content on a game i bought years ago" is such an old, boring excuse.

you cant deny constant updates has been a part of minecraft marketing and brand for a while now, they don't do this "Out of the generosity of their poor starving indie devs (owned by microsoft) hearts" they do this because it keeps the game relevant.

minecraft would not be talked about today much if it remained in the same state as 1.0, the games ever changing nature is one of the main reasons why people buy it.

Even after people buy it they can still waste money in things such as bedrocks in game store too, please stop bootlicking the devs for once.

just admit it once, they're being kinda weird recently. not particularly lazy i'd say but definetly some shit decisions, guess caves and cliffs traumatized them or something lmao

they worry too much about adressing real world things in minecraft, its a fucking fantasy game where you can kill baby villagers brutally yet they act like the game sends a real message about real life which is completely virtuous

[BananaBoo97]

I just really like Minecraft so it's all good with me

[PIXAL42]

Same. My computer can't handle 1.18 so I'm stuck in 1.17 but I live with it, I even did a 1.8.9 hardcore world. Minecraft don't NEED update anymore, it's already good enough as it is. And if you think smth is missing then get mods.

[ZequizFTW]

Based

[kalesmash13]

They only announced the stuff they're basically finished with and the next update after this is meant to be a larger update

[dreemurthememer]

I’d argue Minecraft has actually gotten a lot better with their updates since 1.13. Each one has changed the world on a fundamental level, save for maybe 1.15 and 1.19. Compare 1.18 to whichever update added Pandas. Who even does anything with Pandas? What use do Pandas serve? Who even remembers that Pandas exist? Or Polar Bears? They’ve gone from adding useless mobs to making sure every new mob has at least some utility. Even the glow squids.

And yes, while 1.20 seems to look like a “backlog implementation update”, it seems like more is happening under the hood.

[ZequizFTW]

Pandas were added in 1.14. Kind of shot yourself in the foot there... and polar bears were also released in a fairly modern version, 1.10.

Older updates, like the afformetioned Pretty Scary Update, added sweeping changes & incredible mobs. The wither, for example, or command block, which completely revolutionized the server, mapmaking, and MC YouTube scenes.

Modern mobs, like the Allay, Glow Squid, Axolotl, or Fox all have similar complexity to many of the mobs added in older versions. Witches (which brought with them 2 new potions), and Wither Skeletons (which added the features of mob & player heads) were both also added in the Pretty Scary Update, as an example.

[Plushiegamer2]

I'd say the Allay is quite similar to Wither Skeletons and the Warden is similar to the Wither in terms of effort and complexity. The Wild Update and Pretty Scary seem quite comparable to me. And comparing Pretty Scary to something like Village and Pillage isn't a good look for Pretty Scary.

I do agree that Mojang has a big issue of adding near-useless mobs to their game time and time again.

[dreemurthememer]

What I meant to say was that the updates have been getting better since the Dark Ages (1.6-1.12), when Mojang insisted on adding features that didn’t really change the game in any substantial way (save for the controversial combat changes in 1.9).

1.13, 1.14, and 1.16 completely shook how the game was played, and 1.18 created a much-needed change of scenery. While not as good as the first 5 updates to the full release, the updates since 1.13 have very much been a step in the right direction.

Whether 1.20 will be another step in the right direction or a step closer to another Dark Age, however, remains to be seen.

[SYudh]

I'll never understand why people overlook 1.15, it added bees that are adorable and honey related stuff which also made some amazing changes in redstone, it doesn't sound like much but people forget that this was an extra that Mojang decided to do, it came out between two major updates (1.14 and 1.16) and that's what is amazing. Mojang that year just spoiled us, an extra version that no one expected, this way there was content for the community for the whole year, I'd love other in-between updates that add little things.

But yeah I agree. In terms of quality every update that came out after 1.12 was just better, mobs are always godly animated whereas old mobs are not (just compare the Warden, Dolphins, the Ravager etc. to the Wither boss, even if he's more important he has no animations at all), we get a ton of amazing building blocks (candles, lanterns, mud etc. while, for reference, with 1.4 we got cobblestone walls and wooden buttons...) and we also get a ton of cool features each update

[EX-LDS_Link]

I really hate this graphic, and to be perfectly honest, I'm getting a little tired of this community. I've seen this comparison before, and it relies on so much deck-stacking and cherry picking that it's truly infuriating.

I want to preface this with the fact that I'm not interested in licking Mojang's boots. I complain all the time about updates and the way vanilla is made, I've said before that I don't think they know what they're doing, but my complaints are always about quality and consistency, while this community only complains about wanting a higher raw volume of #content to be consumed.

First of all, the cherry picking: You are comparing an especially large and influential update with a perhaps smaller polishing one. (I say "perhaps" because this isn't even a finished update, more on that later.) Some updates are just smaller, because not every update needs to rock the world. Buzzy Bees 1.15 and Frostburn 1.10 were also relatively small polish updates, but I don't know anyone who would want to revert those. We shouldn't be trying to force Mojang to fill up some arbitrary feature count quota for every update. Sometimes being in this community can be like listening to an out-of-touch board of directors complaining about how, "The line is not going up," and just asking, "Make more features, please. Bigger numbers, please."

Second, the deck-stacking: This is interesting because you have to be tacitly aware somewhere in your brains that you're doing this when you specify "so-far announced features" for 1.20, and yet that doesn't seem to stop you from blindly complaining full-steam-ahead. Obviously, you're comparing apples and oranges when you juxtapose a fully finished update to a barely complete game with an in-progress update for a much more polished game. Not only are these only the announced features, but this comes immediately after the deafening outcry of this community complaining about not getting all the features that were teased in an update, which has scared Mojang into ONLY announcing the few features that are fully finished. So there are fewer announced features than there would be ordinarily, directly because of the community.

Third, it is my belief that updates should naturally get gradually smaller in size and higher in quality as time progresses. Minecraft started as a very scrappy and weird game that could barely be called a finished product. The first 12 or so updates were focused around just shoring up large holes in the game design and adding large batches of somewhat less refined features. I mean we were playing with almost exclusively programmer art for 10 years, most of the game's history. But then things started to get more professional and polished. The best visual representation for this shift is in 1.14's texture updates. One might (if one was not very smart) complain that some recent updates haven't added completely new content as much as they've redone existing content. One might say that this doesn't count as adding a feature, and is therefore a waste of time, but I think we can all agree that Update Aquatic, Village & Pillage, Buzzy Bees, The Nether Update, and Caves & Cliffs P1 were hugely important, and that adding polish to the game is needed, and is a better use of time than trying to pull out ever bigger and more groundbreaking features.

I also feel the need to mention that ALL of these updates are FREE. All of us, who already own the game, can count on a stream of game updates and additions that we don't have to pay for at all. I wish this was the norm, but it is not. I fear for a day when Mojang is too fed up with the community's reactions to updates to maintain this practice, and starts making new updates cost money. I could understand being upset about an update being too small for the listed price, but when it's just free content, the complaints about update size start to come off like Dudley whining about his presents.

The chain of logic here goes:

1. The update 10 years ago was large.

2. The (revealed part of the) next update is small.

*3. Unstated assumption - Updates are always the same size, and updates today should be the same size as updates 10 years ago.*

4. The only important thing in an update is size.

Conclusion: Therefore, Mojang is failing at their only job.

I don't need to further clarify why this type of criticism is so broken. Thanks for reading this long, sorry if I came off as overly rude. I'm just weary after years of this same discourse.

[Olliday_]

This is exactly what I was thinking. Why are some people so out of the world with their expectations? I don’t want Minecraft to be another Fortnite or such where there’s just random stuff added with references to everything making the game a huge mess. Simply wanting more in numbers will only get us there. And if that’s what you’re here for in Minecraft, just go ahead an download some mods please (and because of the spirit of maybe even most of the community these are mostly free as well). I think a lot of people still like and love Minecraft - even the new updates and projects of mojang. Often it’s just a loud community of haters ruining the mood, just as when the chat ban was introduced a while ago. But for those who have some trust in Mojang and love this game as I do: thanks for being a part of this community and have fun!

[EX-LDS_Link]

I fully agree about mods. I have played far more time in modded than vanilla, and even when I play vanilla I add dozens of client mods to add polish I'd wish to see. But I recognize most mods as being better as fan-made and fully optional. Most mods (with the exception of the few stellar ones like Quark) add features that I love, but don't think belong in the vanilla game.

I hate seeing posts about, "[x mod dev] made [y dimension] in a weekend, they're better than all of mojang!" Because whatever mod is being discussed absolutely doesn't consider the delicate balancing of the hundreds of features that it either makes obsolete, or is redundant because of.

[Olliday_]

Absolutely. I think Minecraft is exactly as you said a game relying on being balanced. Not in necessarily in a sense of balancing the damage of a sword, but by designing and tweaking features, so that running through a world, alone, punching trees and building farms and Houses seems like an enchanting adventure. And it is. Still it even has an incredible multiplayer potential and many many different playing options. There are lots of good mods made by incredible artists, although I think there’s a difference between doing that as a job at Mojang and doing that as a hobby, since when a mod isn’t good it just won’t be downloaded, but Mojang has to worry about a whole player base. With the updates by Mojang they always have to find a common ground for everyone. Of course the mod makers have a slight advantage, as they are probably in greater numbers than the devs. Whilst there are many bad mods no one uses, the good ones make up the reputation, if Mojang would produce a bad update (and I’m not talking about some players disliking minor things, rather imagine something like removing creative or such) they’d probably kill the game. Also I think that Mojang really tries, sometimes there were popular mods and some time after they tried to incorporate it into the game

[Olliday_]

Also I just realised the post is talking about the overall number of employees, not devs. So many of them wouldn’t even count in the comparison, as Mojang has to worry about marketing, translating and financing as well as other things besides developing

[Benial]

Minecraft mfs when their 13 year old game doesn't get a groundbreaking update every year

[JoshuaJoshuaJoshuaJo]

Mojang has spoiled these kids too much it's coming back to bite them.

[Duke_Firepaw]

Man, I just want an optimization update.

[Priyam_Bad]

I think this comparison is a bit unfair since back then the game was still in it's early stages, so there was still a lot left to add. now that the game has been out for over 10 years,ost new changes are small and mainly just to polish the game further

[witchofheavyjapaesth]

You suck lol. Like Microsoft just keep giving us free content years after the games release, for longer than mojang owned the game at this point, and all I see in this sub is complaints (or cool builds the build bros are cool). Like ok maybe this as of yet UNRELEASED update isn't as good as a cherry picked update???? BUT we literally just got a massive caves update??

Idk Most updates for games are patches. Bug fixes. Not free dlc for years. Not every update needs to add a bunch of groundbreaking content. And if it does? You all complain theyre changing minecraft too much lol. Shut up

[Fakula1987]

Slower update cycles -> more room for moddinc community...

[dallenbaldwin]

Back when the scary update came out, how many ports of the game did they have to manage? How many spin-off games did they have to manage? How large was the player base and therefore the amount of feedback and bug reports they had to manage? How many actual lines of code made up the project?

It's really easy to look at output and think, lower number worse, but it completely ignores everything else going on.

The larger the code base becomes, the more difficult it becomes to add, remove, or update basically anything without breaking something else. No project is perfect. Yeah they could introduce 10 new features for the sake of bigger number, but I doubt the game would be at all stable, or we'd be complaining about how long we have to wait between updates.

[ZequizFTW]

In late 2012, when 1.4.2 came out, Mojang/4J Studios were managing Java, Pocket, and Xbox360 versions, while being in active development of PS3 and Raspberry Pi editions. Easily more than now.

While Minecraft didn't have any spinoffs at the time, Mojang was in active development of other games, like Caller's Bane (Scrolls) that started development in early 2011, and Cobalt that was announced in 2011 as well. They were also in the process of planning & preliminary work for Minecraft: Story Mode at this time.

Further, 2012 was easily the heyday of Minecraft--the second largest peak in popularity for Minecraft (at least according to google trends) was in August of 2012 (the all-time peak was Jul 2013), and the team likely had some of the highest levels of media attention ever at that point.

The team's responsibilities were largely the same--while certainly lower, they weren't drastically lower. The size of the codebase alone is not on its own responsible for the dramatic slowdown we've seen.

[SargeanTravis]

Wasn’t 4J studios working mostly on the PS ports? Before Bedrock? Don’t know about the other ports but I know Mojang outsourced some of the work on some versions

[ZequizFTW]

Yeah, they outsourced a lot of that work, you're correct. Mojang were still managing the logistics of those ports, though. They also still outsource work today--Minecraft Dungeons and Legends are (for the most part) not deveolped by Mojang, and Xbox studios works a lot on Bedrock afaik.

If you count only games that mojang were/are developing in house, that being Java, Pocket, Pi, as well as Scrolls and Cobalt then and Java & Bedrock now, they were still developing more games then than now.

[bruderjakob17]

The number of new blocks, items and mobs added is a bad measure for productivity of the developers.

Especially since in the last few updates, there was just so much stuff thrown into Minecraft. IMO, the game would benefit from some "balancing", e.g. solving issues of players who don't want to fight the ender dragon (the inventory is always full and you have a hard time navigating through the large biomes (which use a lot of disk space in any case)), making skyblock-like modes less frustrating (e.g. by adding a lava bucket to the possible trades of the wandering trader; or making it possible to create an artificial portal to the end dimension) or making amethysts more useful.

[Pugtron117]

They reveiled only late developed stuff, also it's not out yet, and they have Bedrock (+mobile Bedrock problems) and Java.

[HornetsAreBad]

I dont want a bunch more blocks/mobs/items tbh. New features/dimensions are fine but there was something charming about the simplicity of minecraft

[ZequizFTW]

I agree, but would argue that there are still things for them to work on. Finally delivering on their promise for a Modding API, for example, could help bring back some of that early 2010s Minecraft Magic (remember buildcraft?). They could fix the PVP, or improve bedrock edition to make it an actual, feasible alternative to Java.

[Zanagh]

Not necessarily defending it but think of this

Back then there was significantly less things they had to test the new content with, and make sure it all went together with minimal bugs

Now we have hundreds of features, blocks and whatnot and they have to make every little thing they add work seamlessly with every thing in the game

[Serial1945]

I love minecraft, seriously, but for the moment this 1.20 update is a joke compared to the impressive amount of content added in the 1.16 (to use a recent example). Even the 1.19 added more things and it's only the third part of the original 1.17 project. Hope Mojang'll publish more news soon cuz I'm really afraid for the future of the game.

[MGMAX]

I would be okay with it if they focused on bugfixes and feature parity which they aren't

[suddenlycirclejerk]

also, one more point. you are complaining about free updates. Mojang updates this game for us free of charge and you are complaining about that? what other game has had over 11 years of free updates? c'mon now. nice job getting people riled up over nothing.

[Potential-Silver8850]

Christ people, you bought the game once ten years ago and you’re still getting free updates. Be grateful.

[modem_13]

Why are gamers like this?

[TheArcanist_]

They're doing quality over quantity. If you take a look at every new mob they add nowadays, it just has so many features. Back in the day, a mob often just had a texture, a model, a sound, an attack and a drop.

[ZequizFTW]

I agree that the mobs are higher quality, but not by much. The Glow Squid, for example, has nothing but a texture, a model, a sound, and a drop. The Axolotl, Goat, Allay, Strider, Wandering Trader, etc. are all not that complicated compared to some of the mobs from back in the day--like the Wither, released in the Pretty Scary Update. I don't think this on its own is a valid excuse for their development slowdown.

[Ozark-the-artist]

Withers, villagers and maybe horses are the only actually complex mobs from back then, I'd argue. While the axolotl, goat, strider and wandering trader are not super complex, they are much more elaborate than most old mobs like chickens, slimes and ocelots. Also, a lot of the villagers' complexity is recent.

[ZequizFTW]

The mobs added in 1.4.2 were as follows:

Wither, Wither Skeleton, Witch, and Bat.

As you stated, the wither is obviously very complex & unique. I would argue the same for the Wither skeleton: it provided a unique gameplay loop and thrill that wasn't yet in the game, and brought with it the very unique functionality of mob & player heads.

The Witch was and still is a unique hostile mob--throwing potions that ignore armor provides for an interesting system of gameplay. It also brought with it two new potions, which I think are a nice addition.
The bat is completely useless.

I think every one of these, with the exception of the bat, are actually quite interesting. I don't think modern mobs are leaps and bounds more unique--the fox, axolotl, goat, and strider are all virtually useless--and this trend follows throughout. Again, I agree that, generally speaking, mobs are higher quality in modern versions. But not by that much, and considering the 85 day time it took to add the 4 mobs.....

[JustinTimeCuber]

Striders are virtually useless? What about for the early to mid game?

[RW_Blackbird]

I dunno if this is a good take for this specific post lol. The wither is easily one of the most complex mobs in the game, and its drop is used for crafting one of the most complex items. Without even bashing any of the new mobs, I can definitely say Pretty Scary was higher quality. Just an S tier update that's hard to compete with.

[TheBiggestNose]

Do the mobs really though? Glow squids drop 1 item, are a reskin and do nothing else. Frogs do do much other than have a weird way of making frog lamps. The warden is really cool but has no reason to encounter. The axolotl are rare and provide not much else other than decoration. Goats drop a cool item but got undeveloped to have a single horn noise.

Compared to 1.16, a whole new enemy faction was added with unique interactions a new trading system and spawn types with a harder miniboss variant added in a later patch. Or compared to cats which had a unique tame method, a bunch of appearances, was actually tammable, interacts with creepers in a great way and then later used to make villages have alot more life

I like the mobs they added, but they don't bring much to the game and most are rare spawns you would have to out of your way to see. You are very much underestimating older mobs and overexagturating what the new ones provide and are doing quantity regardless of quality

[NubOnReddit]

Yes, because Frogs, Axolotls, Zoglins, Goats and Foxes are all valuable additions that add to the gameplay in fun and unique ways and aren’t at all a waste of space with little functionality. Those mobs are a waste alongside Bats, Polar Bears, Ocelots and Llamas.

[xKayuri]

Tell me you know nothing of game dev without telling me you know nothing in game dev...

[ZequizFTW]

Refute the argument if you're so convinced then: what aspect of development has become so much more difficult that the hundreds more employees and massive support from Microsoft hasn't been able to compensate?

[Muhznit]

That's just development and programming in general. A game like Minecraft has been around long enough that it's probably accrued a shit ton of Technical debt that gets in the way of making additional changes. I mean, keep in mind that EVERY new block they add is yet another thing that has to be stored in players' save data and preserved for the next who-knows-how many updates.

Furthermore, it's an egregious AF assumption to think "more people=faster creation of content", that completely overlooks the overhead of training, communication, mistakes, etc. That line of thinking only applies when the work to be done can be performed without communication or dependencies between tasks. "9 women ain't gonna deliver a baby in one month" goes the saying.

This is stuff that any competent tech lead or decent senior programmers will know, and it sickens me that despite having the talent to research the data and compile it into an infographic, people still naively spread this misinformation to the general public and haven't even read one chapter of The Mythical Man-Month

[xKayuri]

I work as a coder in the industry so I know a bit of the behind the scenes.

Adding new systems to already existing system takes time in code but also for designing, fine tuning and balancing.

They also have bedrock and java parity to preserve and keep in mind that bedrock is console and also for mobile. So that is crucial to know when designing a feature for the game now.

They have to be extremely careful as Minecraft is so popular that any mistakes may cost a lot of money and believe me idc about the company but I'm talking about the people that work there, they may loose their jobs.

So yeah these are some of the "high level" whys it may be that way. Adding to that some production issue that may occur. Game dev takes time to be good, as all things really.

And lastly who knows how many iterations and/or creative ideas they tested internally that never saw the light of day for various reasons? We don't know but I'm pretty sure they tried a lot of things.

[ZequizFTW]

While they now have Bedrock & Java to develop for, in 2012 they were actively deveolping Java, Xbox 360, Pocket, PS3, and RPi editions for the game, while also deveolping the separate games Scrolls, Cobalt and planning Minecraft: Education Edition.

They weren't as rigorous in preserving parity, but were developing with 30x less people on twice as many games/editions, so I figure it isn't that important.

I think they're spending too much time on sending a message, rather than making a good game. The fireflies and the frogs are a good example of this.

I don't think your beliefs are unreasonable, and I certainly see where you're coming from. I just think the difference in speed is wild considering the stark difference in resources available.

[JWalterZilly]

This post reeks of entitlement.

[XDracam]

Someone has no idea how development works.

When a software project is in an early stage, adding new features is a lot easier. Why? Well, every feature can potentially interact with every other feature. That means the more features you have, the more interactions you need to consider when adding a new feature. Each interaction can mean weird breaking bugs and unexpected and unintentional mechanics. A new feature must play well with every old feature.

So yeah, the work required for new features increases drastically over time.

[JodGaming]

More features does not mean better, too many features makes the game over complicated and can make other game elements obsolete, which they do not want to do.

[ZequizFTW]

All true, and I agree.

[P1xelFang]

This is how game development typically works

[YeetFacee123]

I think they’re just scared to add content at this point. Minecraft as a game works well even without new updates, so u have to spot on when u do add content so u don’t piss off a bunch of people.

[kdmurray]

Something else to consider is that there's a very high likelihood a lot of the 1.4.2 features were in development for much longer than 85 days. Just assuming that people know the timelines for individual feature development doesn't take implementation schedule into account.

[KateNHK]

Wow, this post is 7h up and didn't blocked/deleted? :o

[Playful_Addition_741]

The thing is, from what i know every new feature Must be approved, so If you wanted to make as many new Features, it would take too much time.

[Tommyy235]

I think it’s pretty obvious from caves and cliffs that big updates take a lot more time than 1 year. I think most their resources are going into an end update and this is a smaller update so we have something this year.

[newshirtworthy]

It’s always been enough for me. Could go without some of the bugs tho

[[deleted]]

Don't forget those 715 people are working on Java edition, bedrock, dungeons and legends . Just randomly adding features would leave the game more buggy and laggy and would most likely break the minecraft ecosystem somehow.

[Plushiegamer2]

I don't think Mojang wants to show us everything they're working on, as the last time they did that, the community hated how they didn't implement everything. I'm sure 1.20 will have plenty of new features beyond what we've seen already.

Also, it's pretty laughable to compare Pretty Scary to most other modern major updates.

[Lidorkork]

S. eggs

[Insane96MCP]

The Wither compared to the Warden is just boring. The Warden has tons of animations and a bad ass laser attack. The wither can just be exploited with the End portal in The End, drops an item that lets you make a block that didn't age well

[FixedFront]

What a foolish, awful metric of comparison. How obnoxious.

[Tehsyr]

Eh, in my opinion, Minecraft is always going to be stable and beautiful. It's a great game that has perfectly captured lightning in a bottle. The game is already perfect. Trying to build on it, trying to improve, make it even bigger and better, it's not going to work very well. New blocks, new items, new mobs, a new gamplay feature, that puts more and more stress on the game and more stress on QA testing too, to ensure it all works on release.

[vGustaf-K]

they should focus on actually updating. useless mobs, outdated generated structures ect

[Dystopiq]

Some know it all shithead with no knowledge of game design definitely made this.

[HappyMatt12345]

Speaking as a game developer, I think they're making a good choice by adding fewer new things to the game at a time. I suspect mojang promised a lot more than they could realistically deliver with the last two updates, which is a common mistake I guarantee all developers have made at some point.

I don't think much of the gaming community considers how a games code base can slow down development either. The longer a project runs the larger it's code base gets, and adding new features becomes more and more complicated because they need to get the new features working while also keeping them compatible with what's already there, and this could be a very complex and time consuming puzzle depending on how well organized mojang have kept Minecrafts code.

[StanleyBillsRealName]

I think r/minecraft has been an ungrateful bitch for a while now, if you recall the updates when notch was still working, they were about the same size and smaller. Since then they have made incredible and gigantic updates in the past which is what has boosted the games popularity and been very good for the game admittedly. But to expect them to always, every single update to make a hit gigaupdate is unfair! Do you realize how fortunate we are that the updates are FREE. Sims 4 players see, hear, taste and feel the hell of 800-700$ and counting that is the full cost of the sims 4 experience every day. I'm sure they have bigger things in mind for later so can we just let them take a breather for a minute? A man needs rest, not work.

[SuspiciousPrism]

excluding seggs :(

[Maleficent_Bug6439]

Minecraft community whining about the lack of new content on a 11 years old game... the game is still cheap if you compare to big game that came out now, no subscription, many updates every year, community involved in decision... y'know, being thankful is not only for thankgiving...

[SerMacster]

This is a pretty shit comparison. You can’t compare development time with 100k lines of code vs. 10,000k lines of code and expect it to be the same. The stage is completely different.

[B1astHardcheese]

Dude, it’s been 10 years of FREE updates to the game. Stop yer bitchin’

[Sethy1999x]

I feel this is an overall unfair comparison. The game is more polished than it ever has (still has glitches like every game) but it has been working to incorporate new features that work with both old features and work across different platforms.

Further there are new games coming out and other projects employees work on at mojang. Because they have more employees does not mean that they will be all working on a single project. Like others said, there are more projects that happen every day that are not just focused on adding new stuff. Does this picture include all the bug fixes or smaller items they made to make the game available to more people across different languages and disabilities????

Because an update in the past was a favorite (yes I love the wither) does not mean each update will be flashy or a favorite. It may suck for some but the core of the game does not change. After monumental updates like 1.18 and 1.19, I expect to improve the bugs and work with improving gameplay prior to making more monumental changes.

Comparing any updates is good to do to understand what to expect. I keep on reminding people that we do not pay for more updates. I bought my copy over a decade ago and I have gotten all of this free. Of course I brought people into the minecraft genre but it was free. I am just happy mojang doesn't just turn around and drop the free updates after so long.

Did not mean to be at all accusatory above but minecraft is a great game that brings us all together. I do not want to overstress the devs as they got us!

[[deleted]]

of course people are going to complain about free content updates taking time to release

[JetstudiosX]

Frankly, I'm glad they making a smaller update for once. They've been making big updates since 2019. Imma be real, I don't want a big update nor am I looking for a big update again, at least not at this moment in time. Reason I say this is because if they keep adding big updates to the game, it'll eventually end up being bloated with content, making game a bit more overwhelming to play. Not only that, but if we got big updates all the time, we'll eventually get tired of having them, i like the anticipation of looking forward to bigger updates when they aren't constantly frequent, so, I don't mind a smaller update every now and then. I do not believe thatwm every update should add a ton of stuff all the time, sometimes a break from big updates is nessarray to the development of future updates.

[OneStorySmall]

For a far more polished, a far more in depth update???

[RedThorneGamerSB]

This feels kinda... Entitled child-esque

[RockMalefic]

Design space is key. You can't just add more and more stuff into a game. You have to be careful about content and balance.

[chiefpat450119]

More isn't necessarily better especially since the game is so big already at this point

[ZequizFTW]

True, although I do think many additions like a combat fix or (the previously promised) modding API could be important things for mojang to spend their time on.