What’s this? You’re telling me that crypto based on Reddit blockchain points—points from a company that’s constantly making rash decisions and removing large features—didn’t end well? And people with inside info were able to get out before this concept failed?

Man, if only someone could’ve seen this coming….

Even if we’re comparing Mojang now to Mojang then (instead of to modders), all my points still apply. The situation Mojang is in now is completely different to the situation it was around when jungles were in.

Now, Mojang has to

• adhere to greater quality standards for each feature
• develop for more platforms
• ensure that features come out on all platforms in parallel, lest everyone be complaining about parity issues
• make code with longevity in concern—much of recent updates has been fixing buggy, inflexible, unoptimized code from way back
• go through more levels of approval

And even with all of these restrictions, what they’ve been able to achieve is impressive. Look at Caves & Cliffs. In one and a half years, Mojang managed to

• redo the biome system to allow for cave biomes
• add two new cave biomes
• overhaul mountains with several new biomes
• overhaul the rest of surface generation
• overhaul cave generation
• redo ore distribution
• add ore veins
• add three new mobs (glow squid, goat, & axolotl)
• create seed parity between JE & BE
• increase the build limit
• add a ton of new blocks, some of which have completely new mechanics (e.g., big dripleaf, pointed dripstone, powder snow)
• compose several new music tracks
• do their usual round of technical changes & bug fixing

And that’s all in two different programming languages for two different engines, one of which is on tons of different devices. But no, people compare this to what we were promised at MC Live in one year and complain that Mojang is deliberately working slowly and not doing enough.

Let’s even take a look at 1.20. In just a year, Mojang added

• an entirely new system: archaeology
• all the different items that come from archaeology
• trims, an overhauled smithing table to go with it, and a new technical system to implement them
• tons of new building blocks, including two wood types, hanging signs (+ the ability to edit them), and chiseled bookshelves
• a new biome
• two new mobs with completely new mechanics
• their usual round of technical changes & bug fixing

And I’m lying by saying that’s what they did in a year, as that’s discounting all the 1.19.x updates (which were significantly larger than usual 1.x.x updates). In those we got a completely reorganized creative inventory and several new commands and gamerules (e.g., /fillbiome).

Yes, it would be great if Mojang could add more and still adhere to their quality and performance standards, and I have many gripes with how some of these features are implemented, but I don’t see how it’s reasonable to expect Mojang to just work even faster than they are or pretend that they’re just lazy and doing the bare minimum to keep the game alive. What exactly are you expecting Mojang to deliver in a major update?

Calling it “grabby grab” makes the feature seem worse than it is. Extra building range is extremely helpful and makes building easy more fun. I’ve played with the Create mod, and its extendo grip (which increases range by 4 blocks when in the offhand) is a game changer. But you wouldn’t even need 4 blocks for it to be useful. Just 2 would be totally worth it, especially since there isn’t really need to put other stuff in the offhand.

Meanwhile, dog armor sounds nice, but it won’t make wolves viable. They aren’t that strong in combat (often struggling to land a hit), can’t be controlled beyond right-clicking to toggle sitting, & will die from lava, and armadillo armor (armordillo?) won’t solve those issues. At the end of the day, wolves will still be a liability more than they are a help.

I’m torn between crab and armadillo, but I think I’ll vote armadillo.

I don’t think dog armor is really going to be that useful outside of just looking cool on your wolf. It probably won’t save them from lava or make them actually that helpful in combat. Granted, dog drip is cool, but it’s not like wolves are suddenly gonna become viable because of it.

In contrast, the crab claw is much more useful. From my experience playing modded MC, extra range is so so so nice for building. Even 2 blocks of extra range would probably be great.

But with all that being said, I’m thinking I’ll still voting armadillo for a couple of reasons:

• This isn’t how I want to see a range extender implemented. This is the kind of thing that could be midgame or even endgame structure loot just because of its utility, but instead it’s… a drop from a random mangrove swamp mob? It seems like a massive waste of an opportunity.
• Armadillos are the best mob from an ambience perspective. Savannas desperately need some more life, and even if ostriches and termites will be coming eventually, armadillos are a great addition for that. If they roll/unroll, especially if in response to the player getting close, it’ll add a lot of movement to the savanna. Meanwhile, mangrove swamps are already much more visually interesting than normal swamps, so I don’t get making the quality gap even further.

OP set the tone by making an extremely smug, ignorant post.

Neither smugness nor ignorance warrants this kind of response.

Starting with the latter, someone not knowing something, especially something benign like “Oh, expensive satellites being lost is expected,” is in no world a reason for insulting them or telling them to leave. It’s not like OP is maliciously trying to spread misinformation. They shared news that they thought was a bad look for Elon Musk but actually wasn’t. The appropriate response is a simple correction, not a stern “fuck off”, and definitely not a barrage of personal insults.

As for smugness, let’s assume that this post was about something that actually showed Elon Musk screwing up. In that case, it being smug would be fine—nay, expected—here. Smug comments against Elon Musk for doing dumb stuff happen all the time, and nobody’s telling the people making those comments to get bent. Here, OP really thought that this was another Elon fail, in which case nobody would be complaining about the tone of the post. So it’s just a matter of OP being wrong and thus the tone not really being appropriate (since Elon isn’t messing up here), not a bad attitude that needs to be shooed away from the community.

Also, “extremely warped perception of reality”? Come on. It’s just not knowing what losses are expected with satellites.

But here’s the thing: OP didn’t know that it was accounted for and expected. And if it wasn’t expected (or we, like OP, weren’t aware), many of us would probably also mock Elon sort something of the sort. It’s not malice. It’s simply not knowing something.

Why couldn’t this commenter have maturely and informatively told OP why they were wrong? That would’ve made OP aware of their mistake and cautious of making similar errors in the future without discouraging them from contributing entirely. It’s clearly not difficult to do, as other comments did it.

The only reason for someone to personally insult someone over this is because it makes them feel better, they find it funny, etc. It doesn’t help OP or the community. It’s just for someone to get a quick laugh from bringing down other people for not knowing something, and that’s not something people should support or condone on the fediverse.

Okay, being harsh and insulting just isn’t necessary. Yes, OP got something wrong — they posted something that they thought was significant but actually isn’t — but why not correct them like a reasonable person? In general, we should be trying to encourage discussion and foster a positive community, and that means treating other people like human beings when they don’t know much about space stuff.

But noooooo, we need dopamine from cussing out people who’ve been on Kbin for a day because they dared post about satellites being lost without knowing that it doesn’t mean that much. You might as well have told them to fuck off and never come back. And of course, this is the comment that gets all the upvotes.

How are people supposed to feel comfortable posting when any error they make is going to be met with insults and blocks? You’re talking to another person, ffs, and personally attacking them over something as small as this. Communities aren’t enjoyable when people are supporting this stuff.

I’ve never been a huge fan of how Minecraft’s paintings looked. In contrast to the great pixel art of most of the game’s textures, the paintings seem like cropped and downscaled JPEGs of their original counterparts, sometimes with an edit mixed in. Thus, I started a project a while back to redo the game’s paintings. I’ve done 20 so far and have 6 left to go, and I figured I’d share what I’ve currently done here! I plan to release these as a resource pack when I’m done.

Here are the old ones for comparison.

I’m not really seeing the problems with these rules. Yes, Minecraft is a game for all ages, and by extension, it’s perfectly reasonable for Mojang to ask that you don’t make money off a server on their game if it has porn and gambling there. A lot of it basically boils down to, “Don’t make your unofficial things look official, and you can’t make money off our family-friendly game via adult content or anything that would hurt Minecraft’s brand.” If you’re making money off a Minecraft server or another Minecraft-related product, that can reflect on the Minecraft brand, so it’s perfectly reasonable that they have restrictions on that.

What exactly in these guidelines do you have an issue with? I’m not seeing the problem.

To repeat, they haven’t really given themselves new ability to do much of anything. These guidelines have existed for a while, only that now they’ve been reworded and clarified a bit. They’ve had in their guidelines for at least 3 years that servers you’re making money off of should be child-friendly. The same goes for the rules about constructed promotions. All of this freaking out is based on the worry that Mojang will suddenly start taking down maps and servers they haven’t in the past under the exact same rules they’ve had for years when they have no reason to.

Something that people don’t seem to be aware of is that about all of this stuff has been in place for several years. If you go look at the old usage guidelines, the rules that everyone is yelling about are nothing new and have existed for a while.

For example, AntVenom says that server ranks are dead based on this:

You may make money by…:

• Asking for donations, so long as you don’t offer the donor something that only they can use[.] However, you may offer all players server wide rewards if donation goals are met.

However, ignoring AntVenom’s claim is refuted two bullet points later—

• Selling cosmetics, except for capes or anything that attempts to visually act like the feature of a Minecraft player cape

—the old commercial usage guidelines, which were in place since at least 2020, say the exact same thing about donations as the new ones:

…YOU MAY:

• ask for donations (as opposed to direct charges) IF you do not offer the individual donor something in exchange that only he or she can use. You may offer server wide rewards if donation goals are achieved though.

Yet, lo and behold, server ranks are still around.

Mojang isn’t killing servers and maps. They’re not going full 1984. These are pretty much the same guidelines that have been in place for at least 3 years—just with some clarification. Server ranks didn’t die, maps with McDonalds in them weren’t taken down, and unless you think the devs are suddenly going to go full evil mode when it would just actively hurt them, there’s no reason for all of the fearmongering.

EDIT: Fixing formatting with the quotes

Daily reminder that /kbin apparently doesn’t exist and that the kbin.social in my username is just a hallucination.

This seems like the dumbest decision imaginable. Users are flocking to alternatives, many of those who haven’t don’t trust you, and you’re trying to become profitable … so you delete the stuff people paid for without any sort of replacement. What a genius ideaǃ Making the platform less unique and giving the middle finger to the people who give you money in one go!

There’s no way a human adult is running this company. It has to be a council of toddlers run by a keyboard-smashing orangutan. At this point, they might as well start encouraging bots and karma farming. Maybe even pay people to do it!

Wait, what did you just say? They might actually do that?

The circus never ends.

Of course, this is a very fair point. Ideally, people would be willing to leave Twitter to join the artists, authors, etc. they follow. But unfortunately, many just won’t care enough about Elon’s buffoonery to ditch the convenience that Twitter provides.

However, I think there’s a middleground between staying on Twitter and moving all operations to Mastodon. People could establish a profile on Mastodon for the people that do care so that those people can move knowing that they’ll still be able to see their favorite artists. Unfortunately, I imagine this is more difficult to do with Elon’s ban on links to alternatives (unless that’s been reversed at some point).

It amazes me that people are still insisting on using this platform like everything’s fine.

From what I’ve heard, a bunch of Twitter users have been flocking (pun not intended) to Mastodon. Glad to see that more people are finally ditching Elon Musk’s circus show.

I agree: migrating a community is really challenging. I’m a subreddit moderator myself, and when we were initially discussing this stuff, there was a lot of doubt because of how daunting the task is. Mods from other subs see the challenges as reason to not even try. However, I think it’s important that people at least make the attempt given the current state of Reddit.

Something that I think people should keep in mind is that this stuff is gradual and doesn’t have to happen all at once, especially since the alternatives aren’t fully polished yet. Even just establishing a small, active community outside of Reddit (like people have been doing with all these fediverse communities) is a big win.

Some of the best things we can do right now are

• providing feedback and suggestions for alternatives
• making sure alternatives are approachable (/m/quickstart is great)
• simply being active and providing stuff to do here

I think there is something to lose though. Aside from being a waste of time, it’s a waste of user goodwill. We’ve already seen how momentum for this stuff wanes over time. If you wait too long before starting the migration process, people just won’t be interested. Obviously, it’s a gradual thing, but many moderators don’t seem to have even started trying.

Which do you think is going to be more effective:

• Spamming your sub with John Oliver shitposts, going private occasionally whenever /r/ModCoord says so, and then making plans to migrate when interest has gone down and people have returned to the status quo
• Starting the migration process ASAP

I really don’t get why they’re doing this.

Reddit has already showed how much it cares about its users. We’ve tried going private, we’ve tried going restricted, we’ve tried going NSFW, we’ve tried spamming John Oliver posts, we’ve tried asking nicely in open letters, and Reddit has consistently given its community the middle finger in every single situation. And now that we’ve seen the admins change rules, remove mods, ban users, and break privacy laws, the plan is to just do the exact same thing they did before in the hopes that it’ll work this time?

If a blackout on the platform was going to get Reddit to change its mind, that would’ve happened already. The time to induce change was two weeks ago, when the protests had lots of momentum. But it didn’t work, and trying to make another stand now is going to be even less effective.

I still think that the best move is to leave Reddit for alternatives like /kbin, Lemmy, and Squabbles. Thankfully, some of the comments on the /r/ModCoord announcement are also saying this. Instead of desperately trying to cling to a platform that doesn’t care about you, go somewhere else.