What’s next for Minecraft?

There has never been an update more anticipated by  the community than the Cave Update. In response,   Mojang revealed the upcoming Caves and Cliffs  Update, set to be fully released near the end of   this year. And for the most part, that update  as a whole has superseded our expectations.  

So what revisions and innovations will Minecraft’s  playerbase eagerly set its eyes upon next?   We have yet to see a campaign anywhere as big  or as long as the one for the cave update. But   according to ShadowPriestok, a Russian YouTuber  who attended this year’s Mojang Creator Summit,  

A developer said it is one that people have been  waiting for for a long time. So what could it   be? My name is Cameron, this is Minecraft  Ideas Academy, and let’s get speculating! To many, the most obvious answer would be an End  Update. The oceans, villages, caves and terrain of  

The Overworld have been revised, and the Nether  has received a fresh coat of paint – that just   leaves one dimension, right? After all, the last  time the End received content was back in 1.9.   But I’m not so sure if an “End Update” is a  high priority for Mojang, or if it would even  

Be given a dedicated update. According to Xbox  Live achievement statistics for the Windows 10,   Switch, and Android versions of Minecraft, only  around 3% of players have ever visited the End. That roughly covers console, desktop and mobile  players. But we can’t take this at face value.  

Achievements are only enabled when cheats  are disabled, and turning keep inventory on,   or playing in creative mode, counts as cheating  for Xbox Live. Therefore, it isn’t representative   of the entire player base. If we’re comparing  dimensions, over 4 times as many players have  

Entered the Nether rather than the End.  This is after the Nether Update, of course,   which likely brought many more players into the  dimension for the first time. An End Update would   fare similarly for the End, but there’s no denying  that it is far less accessible than the Nether,  

Merely because it is later in progression. This  viewpoint seems to be backed up by kingbdogz,   who stated on twitter: “The End may need more  love, but it’s late-game piece of content.   Early game content is more important  to flesh out first, in my opinion.”

Does this mean that the end will  never be updated? Of course not!   But for it to have a greater impact, obstacles  along the way need to be removed and improved   first. To have a good chance of beating the  ender dragon, a casual player will need some  

Decently enchanted gear and some potions.  Potions are fine – if a little unintuitive,   but enchanting as a mechanic leaves much to be  desired. XP is such a grindy resource to obtain,   and the fact that only around 7 levels can be  recovered after dying is a large demotivator.  

Although I spend a lot of time thinking and  talking about Minecraft’s design, I would consider   myself a casual player – I have only defeated  the Ender Dragon once in legitimate survival,   and I made backups of my world before doing so in  case I died, or worse still, lost all my items to  

The void. Which I did, multiple times, before  I finally beat it, made my way to an End City,   and obtained my first Elytra. The path to the  End doesn’t need to be easier, but it could be   more interesting. So perhaps the next update  will be about Minecraft’s magical systems.

Consider what an odd resource XP is. Left  over from Minecraft’s primitive score system,   experience scales quadratically with  levels, meaning the higher your level,   the more experience needed to get to the next one.  There is also no way to transfer it once gained,  

Yet it is the primary resource in two very  fundamental midgame mechanics – enchanting   and repairing. Enchanting has almost no way  to choose or predict the enchantment applied,   so players have to amass large quantities  of XP in order to get what they want.  

They then must combine the enchantments  on an anvil in a very particular way   so as to not inflate the XP cost,  especially beyond the Too Expensive limit,   if they want to get optimal tools. To top it off,  with the Mending enchantment being so easy to get  

From Villagers, anvils are seldom used for their  original purpose – repairing. This entire system   results in ethically-dubious villager breeders,  grindy experience farms, and convoluted gameplay. Some people may tolerate these systems, may  even enjoy how strategies emerge from them.  

But the journey to mastering these techniques is  a frustrating one. Not everyone wants to place and   destroy workstations until they get a villager  with the right enchantment, or spend all their   time dragging items around in GUIs. There’s no  proper progression for XP – if you want more  

Powerful enchantments, just accumulate more so you  can gamble it all away. To mitigate this, we could   kill two phantoms with one arrow, and introduce  a new system of items – called reagents – that   would sway the enchantment table towards granting  certain enchantments. Reagents could be anything  

From under-utilised items, to new items most  easily obtainable as loot in structures. While I feel this system addresses the bulk of  the issue, it certainly isn’t the be all and end   all – much more experimentation is needed.  If you want to try it, I have good news!  

My friend LogicTechCorp has actually turned  this idea into a mod, which was recently   released for 1.16. It’s fully data driven too,  so you can add, remove and configure different   reagents. It also allows you to change  how much XP you retain and drop on death,  

And reduces XP cost of repairing, which is offset  by requiring a similar amount of iron ingots. This way, XP’s significance is reduced. It  still has importance, but it doesn’t steal the   spotlight. In general, if passively accumulated XP  was enough to fulfil the average player’s needs,  

Then many more diverse and varied treasures could  fill in the gap its diminished role would leave.   This could be executed in many ways –  the design space is ripe for exploration. A system overhaul does not an update make,  however. So how could we expand this magical  

Update concept? We can stay on the topic of  experience points, and turn to how it behaves   within, say, Minecraft’s death system.  When you die, all of your XP disappears,   save for 7 levels at most. All of your  items are then thrown on the ground,  

Potentially being destroyed by lava – and  if not, they’re en route to despawn within   5 minutes of their chunk being loaded. Mojang has  mentioned that they want to keep the gameplay loop   of returning to your items after dying, but that  doesn’t mean they can’t remix other aspects of it.

In a livestream a while back, Game Director Agnes  Larsson mentioned the Lightning Rod as an example   of solving design issues with new gameplay – the  lightning rod doesn’t just redirect lightning, it   also provides copper with a use and has a unique  shape to build with. Perhaps we could apply this  

Idea to Minecraft’s death system, for example in  the form of a mob that stores your items and XP.   A game called Hollow Knight has a similar system.  Upon death, a creature is spawned at the place you   died, which you fight to retrieve your currency  and restore your maximum spell capacity. Because  

Of this more forgiving system, Hollow Knight  can afford to be a lot harder than Minecraft. However, Hollow Knight is a game focused on  combat and platforming, whereas Minecraft is   about survival and creativity. Therefore, while we  can take inspiration from it, we’d need to adapt  

It to better fit into Minecraft’s gameplay. And by  we, I mean me and a few of my friends – Musicano,   Snake Block, and Rye. To cater to more playstyles,  we decided it would be more suitable for this mob  

To be neutral. Perhaps when you initially return  to the place you died, it would look happy and   allow you to right click on it and take your items  back, after which it would peacefully disappear.   But if you’d wanted your XP back, which would be  more likely if you were a combat focused player,  

Then you could attack it, which  would make it angry and drop some XP   orbs with every hit it takes, until it dies.  This would also suit Minecraft’s feel more,   as a creature that is less objectively evil and  more part of the natural life cycle, allows for  

A broader range of possible interpretations,  facilitating creativity and storytelling. At this point, we could take the update in any  amount of directions. If we settle on a theme   of Magic and Death, suddenly we have a lot  of possible features and ideas to consider.  

What’s more, we actually have a hint  towards such an update from Mojang! Some of you may remember that in my video  about Quasilore, I mentioned that Mojang   had told the translations community why they  changed Zombie Pigman to Zombified Piglin.  

The gendered term was removed to explain the  existence of baby piglins, as well as to not   limit players’ interpretation of their world.  The rest remains a mystery, but the fact that it   was renamed ahead of time suggests it was made  to be consistent with a system being planned.

According to Agnes, her job involves planning the  direction of Minecraft 5 years into the future.   We don’t know how solid these plans are, but  we can theorise based on their flexibility.   For example, if Caves and Cliffs was  planned 5 years before being announced,  

It was likely initially just a Cave Update, with  Cliffs being added sometime after it was voted in.   Therefore, these plans likely consist  of just a theme, potential ideas,   problems they want to solve, experiences they  want to create, and topics for discussion.

So, let’s say they have some sort of  update planned, that requires, in advance,   nomenclature that differentiates between  the process of making Zombie Villagers   and the process of making Zombified Piglins. They  are already different mechanically – the former   is caused by Zombie homicide, and the latter  by leaving the Nether. Besides a rethink of  

Experience and all the systems it interacts  with, what else could such an update add? I’d say anything relating to Magic and Monsters  is fair game. The long-awaited Illusioner could be   completed. New Tombs and Catacombs could house new  monsters, and be built from new blocks. Woodland  

Mansions, Desert and Jungle Pyramids, and Nether  Fortresses could get a makeover. Archaeology,   which was delayed past 1.18, could make its  triumphant return. New weapons and abilities,   such as my Totem of Withering idea, could round  out the update’s featureset – resulting in a   similar scope to 1.14: medium sized,  with plenty of miscellaneous content.

Mojang could also take this opportunity  to tweak the existing undead.   Rotten flesh could be given a use, wither  skulls could be made less grindy to obtain,   and the ever-controversial phantom could  be changed to spawn higher up like Jeb   initially intended. And of course, we would  find out the reason for that name change,  

Perhaps with a fleshed out system of necromancy.  This could turn Minecraft’s undead from a cliched   set of enemies into a force of nature with an  implementation that feels uniquely Minecraft. Is something like this going to be announced at  Minecraft Live? Probably not. Instead of looking  

To the future, I’d much prefer Mojang to look  to the past, and make an update from features on   their backlog, such as Archaeology and the losing  candidates of the biome votes. 4 animals, 3 new   tree types, 2 entities, 1 plant, whatever termites  end up being, and any associated features would be  

Comparable to the amount of content a typical  update would bring. Perhaps the deep dark loot   could also be added then, if it isn’t ready in  time for 1.18. Internal changes and optimisation   were a large part of why Caves and Cliffs was  delayed six months, but this hypothetical update  

Would require far less of that, and it would  also be less stressful for the developers. After that, it would be nice if Mojang’s public  backlog was kept short. The mob votes don’t add to   it, but that approach has its own problems because  it raises the stakes of voting – the mobs may be  

Lost forever or put back in the ideas pile. As a  result, a lot of misinformation and opinions are   spread around leading up to them, and it can be  hard to decide which mob would end up being the  

Best for the game. That’s why I plan to release  a video before Minecraft Live where I give my   thoughts on each of them in turn, in an effort  to help people make more informed decisions. Anyway, those are my predictions for this year’s  Minecraft Live. Updates addressing large parts of  

The game, like the oceans, nether or caves have  made Minecraft far more fleshed out, so I think   it’s time to take a step back and target the areas  that are less flashy but still very important.   These areas could be consolidated into a  single update, named Magic and Monsters,  

Which could pave the way for a potential  End Update. Or the update could consist   of features from their rather large backlog,  which would also reduce the chances of delays   and give the developers a much-deserved  breather. Regardless of what is announced,  

Though, I’m sure its features will be  exciting and welcome additions to the game. What update would you like to see announced,  and what would it have in it? Feel free to   comment below. Are you watching this after  Minecraft Live? Let me know if I got anything  

Right like last year! And if you enjoyed  this video, make sure to give it a like,   and if you really like what I do, please consider  supporting me via a YouTube membership. This’ll   be the new way to get a shout-out in my videos,  and it’s very cheap. One tier even lets you hide  

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