# What is Minecraft about, anyway?



## Janx (Jul 9, 2012)

I've seen Minecraft on the radar lately.  Some friends were playing it on xbox, so I tried it.

I'm hooked, though I still have no clue what I'm doing or why.

the graphics are deliberately bad.  Bad as in made to look lo-res retro.

the game play seems to be what the Lego games SHOULD have been.  Tear up the current environment to get blocks to make it look like how you want it.

On top of that, at night, the monsters come out.  So you have to hurry up and fortify and secure your position.

That's actually kind of fun.  There aren't any other games like that (well maybe tower defense).

Thus far, I have built a tower with a deep moat as my shelter.  It has a glass observation deck on the 4th floor so I can look out and watch the incoming horders.  Only the spiders can get onto my tower (not in), as they seem to jump or climb down the moat and up the wall.

What do other people think about this game?

Any basic advice for a newb?


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## Stumblewyk (Jul 9, 2012)

I've played it a little bit.  Don't have much in the way of advice though.  Just wanted to chip in with my two cents on the game.

I honestly think it's the closest thing we've ever had to a true open-world exploration game.  I've frequently toyed with setting up my own server, and hosting all my Internet and RL friends and in a shared world, where we can build our little forts, maybe share defenses or raid each other.  I just don't actually have the time or inclination to finally do it. =/

But I'm pretty sure the game would be more fun playing in a world with actual people in it, competing for resources (maybe sharing...) and interacting with them.  As such, I got bored really quickly playing by myself in a wide-open world where the only other "things" were food, or trying to explode next to me. And I'm that guy who refuses to play multiplayer with strangers. =/


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## Zaukrie (Jul 9, 2012)

Only that every teenage boy I know (I have sons in that age group) plays it....so if you have an addictive personality, don't start. 

Sent using Tapatalk 2


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## Blastin (Jul 9, 2012)

It is 8 bit, pixilated crack.

Got hooked about 3 months ago. 

I have a server for my daughter and myself, that can hold 20 players. If any one is interested in a shared, cooperative world, send me a PM. Right now it's just my daughter's sandbox mostly, but if there is some interest I would reset.


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## frankthedm (Jul 10, 2012)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0nSuffTYiw]Mining All Day Long - MINECRAFT SONG by Miracle Of Sound - YouTube[/ame]

Following review is slightly NSFW.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wgQvij3rVE[/ame]


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Jul 10, 2012)

My 5 year old adores it. Ironically, it's been the gateway into him getting interested in Lego. Originally, he just liked it because of the (easy to kill) zombie fighting, but he now is into building ever-cooler structures (thanks to watching all the lively Minecrafting YouTube scene).


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## Blastin (Jul 10, 2012)

Wow...that Zero punctuation video is......spot on true.


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## Janx (Jul 11, 2012)

zombies are easy to kill?

I guess I'm having flashbacks to my first night after I skipped the tutorial.

The horror.  The horror.


My restart fixed all that  I watched the tutorial, but I realized during the first time that time does not pass DURING the tutorial.  So you can run around, prep, build and explore to get ready before you finish the tutorial and have you fort built before night begins.  Much smarter.

I built me a wood hut with a door, dug a dry moat about 6 blocks away, then took the dirt and made a wall on the inside edge of the moat (leaving me with a courtyard around my hut.

Later, that hut became a 4 story tower with the top floor being an all glass observation deck.  I roofed over the courtyard to the wall giving me a new indoor courtyard and an outdoor courtyard.  I'm growing trees on the upper deck, and trying to grow wheat in the inner courtyard.

I have a door and a double-trap door drawbridge to enter my little fort.

It's pretty safe, though I still haven't found a way to prevent spiders from getting onto my fort.

I had a pig randomly appear on my upper courtyard, but he disappeared after a few days.  I have yet to figure out how to corral them so I can breed them and finally heal up.  Pigs seem to teleport in and out of my game area (it's in a large  naturally walled area, they can fall in from beyond, but shouldn't be able to get back out of my area.


I'm also surprised there aren't more people who play.  It seems like a reasonable segment of gamers are Builders, and that's what Minecraft is for.


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## IronWolf (Jul 16, 2012)

My 8 year old son has been playing the heck out of the game! He loves it.


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## Janx (Jul 16, 2012)

I now have a shared MC360 world where we've built towers up to the cloud deck (one all the way up 63 blocks from sea level is the max height).

We have sky bridges linking the towers.  Each tower is over a higher landmass that we can then mine down into.  We don't touch the unsecured ground surface except to build the bridges and the towers.

This game does open up an interesting side note about game style preferences.

My wife likes story.  So she loves DragonAge.  My friend Paul also doesn't like MC because there's no story.  He opted to play Lego Batman instead of MC with us.

I like story in my RPG games.  But I also like building.  Even in RPGs, I'm always building an organization, civilization, nation, business or empire. It's never just about my PC's evil twin trying to conquer the world and how I feel about that.

PS.  Does anybody have any tips on the following:

How to capture AND contain animals so they don't spawn out?

How to stop monsters from spawning inside my lighted house with multiple closed doors despite being lit every 12 blocks?

How to dispose of a creeper that is trapped on the top floor of my fort without blowing him up?  There's a sanded off stairwell above and below him so he can't escape, but it makes getting to him more complicated.

What is Normal or Hard difficulty like (We're playing on Easy because that's what the tutorial started at).  Our method of building keeps us indoors at night, so we seldom deal with monsters.

Besides the terrors of the NetherWorld (never been), do the dangers in the OverWorld ever increase?  Creepers are currently the most dangerous enemy.  They are out 24/7 and the explode, destroying structures and thus letting in more enemies.

It would be interesting if things escalated, to further justify all the fortifications we built.  Otherwise, it's all rather siller over-engineering.


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## Mathew_Freeman (Jul 20, 2012)

I'm enjoying it on XBOX.

Having a few different people playing together but building separate "homes" is a really fun trick, by the way. You end up emerging from your house only to find that someone else has built something astonishing, or brought you some ore or tools that you didn't have.

I reallly want to get together, build a portal, and go exploring in the other dimension.


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## Janx (Jul 24, 2012)

I found that folks building seperate but compatible projects tended to work well.  You do your own thing, but it fits i. The theme of the world, without having to coordinate and explain building preferences


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## Dornam (Aug 10, 2012)

To answer some of your questions:

Minecraft is really what you make it.

The almost total freedom in reshaping the world as you see fit is what drives this game. The mobs are really just to spice things up a bit now and then and give you a sense of accomplishment early on.

After you secured your position mobs are a non-factor 99% of all times (unless a creeper happens to explode somewhere important).

Only when you start to mine to aquire important resources like iron, gold and most of all diamonds mobs can get rather pesky if you are too greedy (one more block, one more block, one more block before despositing at my save house *boom*.... crap, I am like half an hour away from my bed and that was a almost full stack of diamonds).


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## Janx (Aug 10, 2012)

We been playing now for about a month or so.  I've got a few other friends hooked on it, and we play together when we can on late night build-a-thons.

We built an inn last night in about 3 hours on Normal difficulty.

On this arctic world, we're creating our version of our city in a D&D campaign, Port Remington (named after a PC of course).  So the whole thing is built with monsters turned on.

But, as you say, once you've secured the perimiter, the threat level goes down.  We've managed to wall off our portion of the map such that we can build our city unaccosted all through the night.

I have noticed a difference in how adults play versus kids, due to playing with some of my friends' kids.

Kids are crazy nut jobs.  They run all over, have less concept of the paths you've made and the constructs you've built (I'll mine here, on this rectangular thing made of cobblestone). and thus die a zillion times against monsters or attract creepers in and get themselve's killed while blowing up part of your walls.

Adults tend to take a more military mind.  Secure the perimiter, then advance, etc.  Some burn up scarce resources quick, making iron everything before finding out there's only 10 blocks of Iron in their world.  But most tend to go exploring with torches, and some preparedness for trouble.

My wife says "they're just kids", but how one approaches the game shows intelligence and impulsiveness.  Bear in mind, I was a builder kid with above average intelligence.  So my tactics now aren't too different from how I'd do it as a kid, because I was freakin smart back then and not too impulsive.

I suspect impulsiveness looks like stupidity from my perspective.  However, the ten year old kid appears to be more tactically aware (and a griefer) than the 12 year old kid.  There;s running around and being stupid (aka, a kid), and then there's being clever about it.

Either way, MC360 seems to be fun, even if some people play it oddly(they're having fun).  though, like RPGs, there is a sense that not all play styles mesh.  If you're a builder, crazy nut jobs can be annoying.


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## frankthedm (Dec 14, 2012)

Played a little on 360. Hooked.

Now playing on PC. Might skip going to the Hobbit today.


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## Relique du Madde (Dec 15, 2012)

I picked it up again on my Android...  I had a house I dug out of the side of a hill.  It was destriyed by a creeper, so I build a small home within a dungeon complex I built into my stripmine.  Occasionally I have to fight the skelitons who wander through my open door, but at least it is safe from the creepers.


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## Nytmare (Dec 16, 2012)

I ran into Minecraft about three years ago, and have honestly not been interested in playing another video game since.

I play multi-player on a PC and my personal goal set is exploration, contraption engineering, and making giant structures/playsets/puzzles for my son, and our friends  to play in.

I think that what makes the game so spectacular is the fact that it almost perfectly encapsulates, or at least offers the building blocks you need for almost every play style, and makes it so that you can pick and choose exactly what game it is that you want to play.  It can be an exploration game, or a fighting game, it can be competitive, it's a collection game, it's a creative building game where you show off your collection and achievements by creating things that people can wander in and around.  There's resource management, it has aspects of being a first person shooter, there's hack and slash.  It can be a platformer, or a maze game.  It can be a survival game, or PvP, or a sim...

To answer a couple of Janx's questions: 

I'm assuming that you're playing the X-box version.  I'm guessing that it will eventually give you the ability to download other people's maps, like you can on the PC version.  A lot of those maps are "adventure" maps, basically self contained RPGs built using Minecraft as the framework.  You can occasionally find multiplayer servers that will run those downloadable maps as one shot games.



> How to capture AND contain animals so they don't spawn out?



 Eventually, your version will let you use things like wheat and seeds to get different animals to follow you.  In addition they'll eventually catch up to the PC version and stop animals from accidentally spawning through walls and fences.



> How to stop monsters from spawning inside my lighted house with multiple closed doors despite being lit every 12 blocks?



  That just means that there's some corner or hallway that's too dark.   



> How to dispose of a creeper that is trapped on the top floor of my fort  without blowing him up?  There's a sanded off stairwell above and below  him so he can't escape, but it makes getting to him more complicated.



  I would assume that the X-box version mobs work basically the same way as they did in the same build of the PC version.  You should be able to just walk a good bit away from the tower and come back and have him be gone.  Does anyone know if they're persistent on the X-box?



> What is Normal or Hard difficulty like (We're playing on Easy because  that's what the tutorial started at).  Our method of building keeps us  indoors at night, so we seldom deal with monsters.



  At least in the PC version, the difficulties change monster damage, hit points, and behavior, and affect player hunger and starvation.



> Besides the terrors of the NetherWorld (never been), do the dangers in  the OverWorld ever increase?  Creepers are currently the most dangerous  enemy.  They are out 24/7 and the explode, destroying structures and  thus letting in more enemies.



  Eventually you guys will have Endermen, Spiderjockeys, Withers, and whatever other future monsters are in the pipeline.



> It would be interesting if things escalated, to further justify all the  fortifications we built.  Otherwise, it's all rather siller  over-engineering.



 This is why some people prefer PvP.


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## frankthedm (Dec 16, 2012)

Relique du Madde said:


> I picked it up again on my Android...  I had a house I dug out of the side of a hill.  It was destroyed by a creeper,



I've still got a bad habit of having my beds and storage boxes way too near the outer walls and ceilings of my dirt hovels.







> so I build a small home within a dungeon complex I built into my stripmine.  Occasionally I have to fight the skeletons who wander through my open door, but at least it is safe from the creepers.



Leave a marker of some type, like an arch of torches, and just dirt wall it closed and mine it open. On the full version, I've seen creepers below ground.


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## Janx (Dec 17, 2012)

ah yes, this old thread.  Now it's been 6 months or so since I started playing MC on the 360.

I still stick to the xbox.  I don't play games on PC.  It's a religious thing.


By now, I've mastered defensive building such that I rarely see monsters on my land.  There's still a few intermittent spawnings, where it appears the game ignores the light level rules.  It's more likely it applies a reduced chance of spawning.


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## Kris (Dec 17, 2012)

I have to admit that I've put some serious hours into minecraft (PC version), and despite its rather basic graphics it can still be quite beautiful at times.


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## frankthedm (Jun 21, 2013)

Kris said:


> I have to admit that I've put some serious hours into minecraft (PC version), and despite its rather basic graphics it can still be quite beautiful at times.



Yeah, only part I loathe are the nut nosed villagers. 

Really like the A'therys Ascended texture pack. My only quibble is that it does go a bit into Real Is Brown territory.


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## Nytmare (Jun 21, 2013)

frankthedm said:


> Really like the A'therys Ascended texture pack. My only quibble is that it does go a bit into Real Is Brown territory.




Ooo, I like that!  

Though I use the standard texture pack, I'm a real big fan of Sphax BDcraft.  http://bdcraft.net/


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## Janx (Jun 21, 2013)

ah, ye olde minecraft thread.  I still play on 360.  Tried the PC demo with minecontrol so I could use a game controller.  Had problems digging, the UI kept jumping into the menu system instead. even with mouse.

I prefer 360-style crafting to the drag-n-drop pattern making on the PC.  Way too clunky for my taste.


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## Nytmare (Jun 21, 2013)

Yeah, I'm the flip side of that.  I've tried playing it on my X box a couple of times but just couldn't wrap my head around the controls.


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## Janx (Jun 21, 2013)

Nytmare said:


> Yeah, I'm the flip side of that.  I've tried playing it on my X box a couple of times but just couldn't wrap my head around the controls.




I suspect it's the FPS aspect on the controller.  there's some learning curve to it, but the mechanism is intuitive.  left stick moves you forward/back side to side and right stick looks up/down and left/right.  Anybody used to Halo or another FPS can jump right in because it's always the same.  the menu system is much easier, and crafting is much simpler.

A new comer has to get used to coordination for the movemement, but it's really the same problem a newcomer has to an FPS on a PC.

I like the Xbox version, but obviously, the PC version has more advantages.


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