Minecraft has incredible replayability in part due to the mini games created and hosted by the community minigames have been a central pillar of Minecraft success since its multiplayer release and to this day create a massive draw for a large number of players despite this Minecraft minigames have Wasted much of their potential by under utilizing what makes Minecraft unique in the first place a majority of Minecraft mini games can be divided into a couple of categories the first consists of games that could exist in any other engine or have even been ported from other games such as Gmod This second contains all games that utilize Minecraft’s unique building mechanics and the third the category that this video will be focusing on are those that let the player dynamically change the play area by breaking blocks mid game the games in the first two categories either prohibit the player from Destroying blocks or only allow them to destroy blocks placed by other players utilizing Minecraft’s voxel engine to create destructible environments can emphasize player choice and create more Dynamic experiences unfortunately games in this third category have seen very little Innovation I would like to start by saying that I am not claiming that Games that do not utilize destruction are bad nor that I believe including destruction makes the game inherently good I would simply like to prompt more Mini-Game designers to consider the use of destructible environments in their games as I want to see Minecraft’s potential as a voxel game engine realized There are a couple of issues that need to be addressed in the implementation of Destruction mechanics firstly is map design many mini games with destructible environments utilize the survival Minecraft world for their Maps such as Ultra Hardcore and the walls this works for those game types where the player Must collect the resources needed to play but it isn’t very easy to apply this map design to other games on the other hand there are games such as Spleef and its variants Spleef is a wonderful game but its maps are undeniably boring and repetitive the many variants on sleeve attempt to fix This repetitive nature with new gimmicks but the boring aspect of the map design is rarely altered rather than gimmicks designers could create radical changes to the maps things such as 3D cube sleeve different layouts and other changes with more serious impact could shape up the game enough to bring some Of the fun back when it comes to balance voxel games are very difficult if players could mine any Block in the survival games they can just dig down three blocks and hide for the entire game on the other hand and SkyWars were destruction is allowed it’s really useless occasionally someone might be Able to make a trap of some kind to trick another player but this is rare and non-optimal this is due to the very open map design which promotes faster gameplay there’s no reason to mine into the central building when it’s faster just take two steps to the left and walk Through the massive door and all this SkyWars footage that I recorded for this video I broke one block being a torch that I accidentally clicked while trying to attack another player once again this isn’t criticism of SkyWars more so a wish for different minigames with an emphasis on a design surrounding Destruction this issue isn’t unique to Minecraft it is simply difficult to design a voxel-based game there are only three well-known voxel games that aren’t direct clones of Minecraft those three are infiniminer Minecraft and teardown designing a fun and unique voxel game is challenging but the end product is Rewarding these three games are all amazing and can provide hours of fun due to how much their gameplay revolves around player choice along with the removal of Destruction another issue that many minigames seem to want to embrace is the removal of other systems that make Minecraft unique Minecraft has become a very bloated game due to years upon years of updates but this bloat helps give players the opportunity to come up with unique and Creative Solutions to various problems thrown at them this is very apparent in things such as Manhunt a game that doesn’t remove any of Minecraft’s core Systems instead it introduced a fun new rule set that changes how Minecraft is played because Manhunt still has access to all Minecraft’s Unique Systems creative strategies can be used such as using boats to jump across lava fishing rods to seal items and frostwalker to remove water among many other possibly Infinite solutions this is a core part of player choice the player needs many options to choose from and no two players should be forced to use the same solution if there was a minigame that utilized well-balanced destructible environments with clever map design the facilitated player choice in Dynamic gameplay what Would it look like one easy method that has been used time and time again when designing Minecraft mini games is to Port already existing games into Minecraft mine strike and cops and crims are copies of Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike itself doesn’t have destructible environments so neither do these games What If Instead we took Minecraft’s unique destruction mechanics into account and designed accordingly what if the terrorists combine directly from lower tunnels into CD spawn what if the counter-terrorists had a preparation phase where they could construct defenses every round to help prevent the teas from planting the bomb of course These mechanics would need to be balanced but it could be as simple as lowering the durability of tools to the point where durability is treated more like ammunition to be conserved the CT defense phase could have a restrictive time limit that encourages quick thinking and effective teamwork to prevent players from burrowing Underground minigames could take a page out of teardown’s book and put Bedrock one to two blocks below the floor additionally a compass that points towards other players could be used like it is in Manhunt to prevent abusing the destructive environments to hide this is a very simple low-hanging idea but I’m Sure people more creative than me could come up with very interesting and unique mini games Minecraft has the potential to support fully destructible environments but it seems that Mini-Game designers are reluctant to utilize this potential out of fear of balance issues I’d like to see Innovations made that Embrace Minecraft systems in distractible Environments there’s untouched potential in the various games that designers could make if they were simply able to accept Minecraft minigames for what they are thank you for watching all the way to the end the day after this video is posted I’m planning to stream a Manhunt s competition where another player and I Race to find a need random food items so if that sounds interesting to you or you would like to see any of the other content that I’m planning to produce make sure to 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This video, titled ‘Minecraft Minigames Have Wasted Potential’, was uploaded by Tekqgs on 2023-06-28 20:23:48. It has garnered 14332 views and 998 likes. The duration of the video is 00:05:48 or 348 seconds.
Minecraft mini-games are so prolific because they are so easy to create when compared to coding an entire standalone game from scratch. Despite this, servers such as Hypixel and (rip) Mineplex have done very little to innovate upon mini-games that embrace minecraft’s voxel mechanics. I would like to see more minigames with an emphasis on and design surrounding destruction.
00:00 intro 00:19 categorization 01:19 map design 02:04 balance 02:47 player choice & systems 03:57 example idea 05:07 conclusion & outro