this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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I did not keep up with Minecraft over the years, only just looked into this now, but yeah, this seems so arbitrary. There's a mob (armadillos), then an intermediate item (armadillo scutes) and the only usage for that is crafting wolf armor.
Whatever happened to not having a million different items? Like, that's pretty much game design 101, to combine mechanics where possible. They could have allowed equipping a leather body armor on a wolf for the same gameplay mechanic.
But it really does look like they wanted to add some animal for the publicity and then needed to shoehorn any purpose at all for it.
Yup, they could have just made wolf armor follow the same system as horse armor. But they had to add an all new system to further complicate the game.
They did add a bunch of wolf variants, like cats have, so that's cool.
Right, I even forgot about horse armor. That's been in there for a while, but I'd remove that item, too. I have been doing Minetest, so that's probably where all the opinions come from. 😅
Seems like you're some kind of purest...go back to the Alpha versions? Which, they actually make really easy.
Personally I like features that provide a new purpose and build off of existing systems. Horse armor is a a natural progression for protecting your horse. Its mirrors the player armor system with materials (leather to diamond). Wolf armor breaks the mold, it could mimic player/horse armor in mechanics and material progression, but instead it comes from armodillo scales with seemingly no way to upgrade. They even copied the ability to dye the armor - they probably copy pasted the code for leather and made a new redundant item.
They've been doing this for a while now. Panda and Polar Bear did basically nothing, but i'd argue it add to the environment.
Pandas can be used to build a slime farm in peacefull mode.
The same thing happened to Lego.
Originally it was small pieces you combine in creative ways to build something.
Now all the sets have these huge specialty pieces that are barely usable outside of that 1 set design. Like the giant cockpit things that are 1 big hinged piece.
One option: They could have used leather for basic armor and then turtle shells for a better set and then gold for the best. Just use existing things and combine them in new ways. It is so much better that way.
There are SO many things in MC that have exactly 0 or 1 purpose and nothing more and that is such a shame.
It is unfortunate, but there is also reason to be optimistic. It's clear that they want to make use of existing items, especially under-utilized ones from previous releases. It's something that they've repeatedly talked about over the past year. It's even one of the design principles from Jeb's internal handbook. Take copper: added in 1.17, used for brushes in 1.20, and used for copper bulbs, doors, grates, and trapdoors in 1.21. They even briefly played with copper horns in Bedrock. Or tuff: also added in 1.17 as a totally useless block, with variants fleshed out in 1.21 that makes it surprisingly useful for building. Not to mention the crafter and potions of infestation/oozing/weaving are entirely made from existing items, or the new paintings that don't require any new items at all. Even completely new items are tried to have as many uses as possible from the start: wind charges have tons of different applications. I think Mojang has been paying attention to this trend for longer than most of us have, and we're finally starting to see it shift how they approach update design.
Those are good points. I've played MC since early alpha, but haven't played much of the 1.20+ content yet. I still haven't fought the Warden! Ahhhh!!!
I do really appreciate hearing that Jeb has that mindset and goal. And you are right that they have eventually added more uses for things that started useless.
From a design standpoint it is often surprisingly difficult to remember to use older content and mechanics on new content. You see it in RPGs and story type games often. In level 1 you unlock a skill or item, have to use it over and over for a dungeon or level, and then by level 3 you never ever use it again. Sometimes games will manage to remember the "old" things and keep them relevant and when I notice that I always really appreciate it. Several of the Zelda series games manage this. E.G. the Deku Nuts/Sticks still being used in the last dungeons.