The uniqueness of Minecraft (and player behaviour)

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Well recently in Minecraft I have seen NONE of the things you mentioned. Now I go on a server and find that after people hit diamond all they do is build. No point in adventuring or exploring really, not like you'll find anything new. So after getting basic tools and spelunking for a bit all you really have left is to build which I hate. Tell me, and I'm not trying to sound angry or mean here, why did people group up? For safety maybe, or because they just felt like it. What did they hope to gain? Just wondering so I can maybe find myself immersed in Minecraft again. I remember thinking about the wonders that could happen online. I thought wars might occur between groups of players living together but then I remembered, why would they need to? There is no limit to resources and it's not like any resource is limited to a specified area after all. So tell me why people did this, I really want to know.

I understand the angle you're coming from, and you are of course going to find players that just want to hit diamond then build a giant tasteless obsidian fortress.

As I said, it really depends on the kind of people you play with, and how they themselves play Minecraft. If they play to become immersed in this world they are the right kind of person to play with if you want great experiences. If they only play to show off their building skills they aren't going to be much fun.

On these servers PvP was allowed, so the addition of that danger made people feel the need to form groups for comfort and security. Clans start popping up all over the world as these people gather others to them. War, as a demonstration of strength or just for fun, is often a side effect of clan mentality...

Anyway, I believe that Minecraft is actually a very subtly emotional, and above all, a beautiful game. To find yourself in this infinite, untouched world with an endless horizon, a place where you can build or do anything you like, with no ties to storyline or duty. It's sandbox gaming in it's purest form.

Often I would go off wandering alone in the wilderness for miles from any civilisation, thinking I was the first to tread these lands, and finding a workbench or small shelter deep in a forest. It's about personal discovery, finding that secret place no one has ever seen. Making part of this vast world yours.

It represents the march of time, as you wander old destitute cities and towns as the sun sets into night.


I remember the days when I first started playing Minecraft multi, on the Escapist's official server. I was absolutely blown away by the scale of the place, the gigantic cities and all the secrets and things to see. It was like being thrown into an MMO with no map, tools or guidance, and your only resource for information was the people around you.

By nature Minecraft is of course infinite, and so yes, resources are infinite if you are willing to put the work in, but people by nature want to stay fairly close to the hub of activity. After all, what is the point of building something if no one is going to see it? An attachment to location arises, and people are often unwilling to move on. This creates a struggle for resources. Around and underneath abandoned towns are often stripped bare of trees and resources, forcing others

You make your own reasons to exist in Minecraft, and that's what makes it special.

You're very good at wording things aren't you? The way you put it it sounds amazing, I don't suppose there is any way I can play on the same server as you?

Well I'm a bit of a poet, the pretentiousness just comes naturally

I can PM you the servers I play on, yeah

 

[octafish]

I play on a private server with about 6 others. It is very friendly with some resource "borrowing" but always with an IOU sign. We had one griefer but he got perma-banned. It is a rather tight group we have but new projects have been pushing us out further and further. Our world is still quite a small footprint though.

I'm trying to get a railway circuit of our various bases built above ground but I'm having to negotiate where the tracks will go, and it is difficult. Infrastructure like that needs co-operation and I wouldn't want a rail built near my base without some input into it. I have been gathering resources through an open cut mine, it wasn't worth the effort and tedium, but hey I've got 7 large chests of cobblestone now. I am going to need to ask for a gold trade to get enough powered rails.

In the meantime to relieve boredom I'll build quick little throw up sculptures, usually a darwinian or space invader. Always out in the wilderness where someone might stumble upon it. Four days travel to the south from our hub I built a massive stone village (just basic buildings, no glass or doors) and a large pyramid, then I planted trees all over it. As far as I can tell no-one has found it yet. I can't wait for someone to find that one.

I would have done none of these things in single player. In SSP my structures have no flair because I have nothing driving me. In SMP I have the recognition of awesome from my peers and that drives me to create new buildings. In SMP my main base is a 25 block diameter glass sphere, in SSP it would have been a 5 block square box.

In short Minecraft SMP is the only game I want to play when I boot up my computer, even if my play is grinding resources out of my mine.

 

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Discussion time!

Post your own observations of the Minecraft phenomenon, your own experiences and ideas, tell me if you think I'm bullshit or if I've called to attention something you have never quite realised before. Go for it!

Saw this part at the end, and I've never had occasion to use this picture.

Anyway, my own experiences pretty much equate to spending hours making something only to have it blown the fuck up.

Regardless that was an excellent read, well done OP.

Still made me lul :3

What anime is he from??

And yeah, like I said it's only rarely you'll find the people who are interesting in playing the game this way...

 

[Elsarild]

After reading I was nodding in agreement all the time, all these observations was just as my own experiances on my normal server, As with yours it got reset, but I got a hold of the world file from the owner, but loading it up, only to see all the things I build, and the city I helped build, together with my third house, and the tall sky scraper that took 3 days to build.

Now it is all just binary code, only for me to play with, an not even one of the other guys I did this with, can ever see it again, because of my lack of funds to start a server.

Anyway, really great post ^^

 

[The Epicosity]

The only time I felt compelled to grief was when some ass-hat built a cobblestone skyway directly over my friend and I's little town. Had to ask the admin before we TNTed it though...

I hate it when someone does something like that. For example, I was once building a city, trying to make it organized and have the borders clear. The people watching its construction immediately built on areas in the sand where I had not even built lots, when I had said I would like to have the buildings put in them. Being an admin that wanted my position badly, I just fumed and went along with building, acting like nothing had happened in-game. I guess I was making too big a deal out of it, but I was pissed anyways.

 

[The Epicosity]

Anyways, I do play SSP a pretty large amount of time, exploring mods, building huge bases (In hopes of sharing with people on the interwebs, no progress on that right now.), but I play SMP far more, I am kind of a builder, but I explore a large amount, usually alone, as I find the benefits can be large. Whenever I originally get on a server, I most of the time go to a hill or somewhere no one will go to or are unlikely to go to and plant a bunch of trees to make a forest around my new home, then drill into the ground to start out my gaining of resources.

 

[Blackadder51]

Hello, dear sir.

Which SMP did you play on?

 

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I watched a server go from birth to death.

My first time playing SMP, I searched for a server that hadn't been too built up, and luckily found one that had literally just been turned on moments before I joined. I was one of the first few people.

It started out with everyone scrambling to build shelter before nightfall. For the first few in-game days, I dug a secret room into the side of a mountain near spawn (so I could easily find it) and used it to store my goodies. My plan was to stock up before building.

A few real-life days later, I came back to the server and during my exploration, saw a group of 4 people walking together. In chat, the leader was telling them to stay close and to keep an eye out for people who didn't belong.

I skulked along in the shadows, just out of sight, and followed them to a small town built in a ravine. I carefully watched as one of the people tagging along began trying to kill the other players, claiming the town was his. I ran down and lit him on fire with my flint and steel, which coincidentally also set the nearest building on fire, and burnt the whole town down. During the confusion I looted a few chests and left.

I wandered far, far away and started construction on a small cabin. Weeks later, there was a giant wall spanning thousands of blocks around this cabin, along with many, many other buildings. I personally built a 6 story tall hotel with 6 rooms on each floor, private suites, even an underground sewer system among other things. I even built a church with a portal to the Nether in the basement. Other players built restaurants, a marina, a beach house, apartment buildings, etc.

The city was beautiful.

As time went on, it became more and more cluttered and trashed. Eventually player numbers dwindled.

I joined the server the other day... it's completely abandoned. No new projects, no player... it's all a ghost town.

It's very sad.

It sounds like a beautiful experience unique to Minecraft

What other game can give you this?

 

[The Epicosity]

I watched a server go from birth to death.

My first time playing SMP, I searched for a server that hadn't been too built up, and luckily found one that had literally just been turned on moments before I joined. I was one of the first few people.

It started out with everyone scrambling to build shelter before nightfall. For the first few in-game days, I dug a secret room into the side of a mountain near spawn (so I could easily find it) and used it to store my goodies. My plan was to stock up before building.

A few real-life days later, I came back to the server and during my exploration, saw a group of 4 people walking together. In chat, the leader was telling them to stay close and to keep an eye out for people who didn't belong.

I skulked along in the shadows, just out of sight, and followed them to a small town built in a ravine. I carefully watched as one of the people tagging along began trying to kill the other players, claiming the town was his. I ran down and lit him on fire with my flint and steel, which coincidentally also set the nearest building on fire, and burnt the whole town down. During the confusion I looted a few chests and left.

I wandered far, far away and started construction on a small cabin. Weeks later, there was a giant wall spanning thousands of blocks around this cabin, along with many, many other buildings. I personally built a 6 story tall hotel with 6 rooms on each floor, private suites, even an underground sewer system among other things. I even built a church with a portal to the Nether in the basement. Other players built restaurants, a marina, a beach house, apartment buildings, etc.

The city was beautiful.

As time went on, it became more and more cluttered and trashed. Eventually player numbers dwindled.

I joined the server the other day... it's completely abandoned. No new projects, no player... it's all a ghost town.

It's very sad.

Me, too, the server I was talking about earlier was barely built up when I joined it, I slowly made friends with the admins, and made a small cobble cabin on a sand island near another island with a couple of small towns there. I slowly made a mine, cleared off the area around the island, making the thing into a flat sand thing with the only grass being near the cabin, and started a Cactus farm.

That Cactus farm became the focus of the island.

I eventually had stacks and stacks of cacti, so made a wall of cacti around my house, using the high ground it was on as a advantage.

I had my mind on making a town on the island, after expanding it, because it currently couldn't hold more than a few houses, let alone the sprawling metropolis with a huge wall around it I imagined. Going with this thought, I named the island "Cactus Island", and linked it to a huge bridge that had recently been built to the other island I built near, and constructed a welcome sign. I also imagined making a fortress on a the nearby island, and flattened the land, adding a moat filled with water. My building was interrupted by an awesome week of amazing fun, aka "Zombie Week", in which everyone on the server went wild, griefing, stealing, killing, it was all out chaos! Luckily, the old map was saved, so, during this week I tried different wall designs for the new fortress, finally finding one I liked. The project began, and so began the legacy of the unoriginally named "Araluen Province", the first colony of the Cactus Republic. It was really just the fortress at the time, and I felt it empty, so built a gleaming dock and made a bay with the help of my minimap. The dock design would be another thing I was proud of, using open doors to keep out water and bringing a boat into a secure area where it couldn't float off in. Later I would also add on a farm.

By then some admins were starting a castle, and, being a friend, helped out by making a huge dock which made me an Admin. While they were deciding a name, they thought up Admin Castle, a pretty bland but fitting name. Then they talked about booting my out of the project, which made the server owner give me the rank of admin, I was ecstatic, I got my own room in a secret admin lair which I had only visited once before, and filled it with the now-homely sand, and put a cactus farm beside it.

I started learning the ways of the mod, most notably Worldedit. I saw potential in using it to expand Cactus island, and for making the walls. I continued to make the dock, which wasn't finished yet, armed with the ability to spawn, it was quite an achievement for me, and another bay was made for the newly established Admin Castle.

When I did expand Cactus Island, it became a blip on the map. It's walls were slowly erected around an iron block capital building, which had a plaque reading "In Cactus, we rely." in Latin. I gave the town roads, a workshop, a town hall, and a dock, which I felt was my lesser dock so far.

This town, though, only had about five lots, and needed to be expanded badly, but first, I needed people to inhabit it. The first to join the Republic was one of my IRL friends, who started making a province of his own on a island even smaller than Cactus Island's original. He was quickly joined by the first regular citizen of the Cactus Republic, who would also make his own province, and we pretty much had a mainland for the nation. I eventually got more followers, and expanded the island again, reaching out and touching a much larger island, making the new, much larger main part of Cactus Town. This is where the people who had been watching the construction that hadn't made houses pounced, literally right when I was building the lots they made houses in unorganized positions, ruining my dream of having it perfectly symmetrical and organized, but I went on, and eventually my friends got mad at the server owner for not being on and for being in a bad mood due to finals when he got did, and one griefed Cactus Town, this was a major blow to me, and I just didn't feel like fixing it, it just wasn't worth it to me, because it just wouldn't be the same. The owner has also lost much of his interest in MC, so only keeps the server up and running, taking long times to update and such. I eventually just stopped playing with the majority, it just wasn't fun on that server anymore, and it had ruined my dreams of the sprawling metropolis I would never quite get.

There, my nostalgic rant.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Nice - really good thread.

I mainly play solo - or occasionally play co-op with a friend.

Now that I think about one of the few times I've been on a server: It is a bit like animals interacting - in a weird way.

A similiar thing happened to me.

Me and some other guy'd built a huge city near the spawn - it had beaches, centers, hotels, anything. We even installed some mods so we could have a vehicle-shop. The server raged on for about a month. Then, I came on: No-one was there. It was a ghost-town. I wandered around the lonely streets - almost crying that nobody was there. I eventually found someone - the guy who helped built it. He said something like "It was fun. But, no-one's here". I recently checked the server, and the population's slowly rising - although the other guy's left the sever, because he didn't know it was slowly repopulating. He never did come back, he always said no. So, we built a memorial for him in the city hall. It's beautiful. It reads "The founder of our city, [his name]. We await his arrival." It's also made of Diamond and Gold. It's a pretty-sight.

To this day, when I go on that server: I occasionally see a hunting-pact wandering through the nearby forest looking for food. Always watching out of each-other. And when someone died, they'd put all their stuff in a chest, and label the chest with their name. It's brilliant.

 

[mcnally86]

It is good fun to see how people react when they are thrown together in Minecraft Survival. On the server that me and a couple of my mates run, we recently took off the training wheels for our players, stuck on monsters and stop auto day so people could work and the difference was considerable. Instead of the players CONSTANTLY begging the admins for things, they had to fend for themselves. I remember seeing a raiding party trekking through the night, as they quested to find their town and people squabbling over the last porkchop, but with no damage done to any in the party.

The fights that were going on beforehand, with people burning down other players' houses in revenge just didn't happen, as they knew that they may need their help in a future endevour to find some gold or iron. It is interesting to see how different people play when they know that they could lose all their stuff if they don't work together.

That is definitely how Minecraft is meant to be played

It's just so badly wasted when people only use it as a building simulator, it is so much more than that.

I like playing it as a building sim. And some people don't have the time to mine. I used to mine everything myself but I would ask admins for tools. It seems a bit unfair to me you work to get a diamond pick and it just breaks. I wish you could turn off tool degradation.

 

[The Epicosity]

It is good fun to see how people react when they are thrown together in Minecraft Survival. On the server that me and a couple of my mates run, we recently took off the training wheels for our players, stuck on monsters and stop auto day so people could work and the difference was considerable. Instead of the players CONSTANTLY begging the admins for things, they had to fend for themselves. I remember seeing a raiding party trekking through the night, as they quested to find their town and people squabbling over the last porkchop, but with no damage done to any in the party.

The fights that were going on beforehand, with people burning down other players' houses in revenge just didn't happen, as they knew that they may need their help in a future endevour to find some gold or iron. It is interesting to see how different people play when they know that they could lose all their stuff if they don't work together.

That is definitely how Minecraft is meant to be played

It's just so badly wasted when people only use it as a building simulator, it is so much more than that.

I like playing it as a building sim. And some people don't have the time to mine. I used to mine everything myself but I would ask admins for tools. It seems a bit unfair to me you work to get a diamond pick and it just breaks. I wish you could turn off tool degradation.

I think using it as a building sim is a fun thing to do, and does not waste MC, even though when I build, I hack, it gives me more of a sense of achievement than on other things where I could build something just as large in seconds,but I only play like that on SSP, and only sometimes.