ZenithJJ – Minecraft’s Difficulty Doesn’t Make Sense.

Welcome to Minecraft the most wholesome and easy game of all time dear God somebody help me please all right maybe it’s the most challenging game of all time oh God there’s 36 Withers chasing me what am I ever going to do okay fine it’s easy then what do you mean

Okay get that cringe intro out of here we ain’t wasting no time you probably have a lot of questions of what the hell did the intro just show or what the word paradox even means you know big words are hard it’s okay well something that I’ve noticed recently is Minecraft has

Been changing a ton in terms of difficulty and it’s been an everlasting battle to reach some type of balance between easy and hard and it still feels so far Out Of Reach but in order to talk about the difficulty and the problems that we face in the present we need to

Take a step back and set some groundwork about the Past so let me welcome you to the world of Minecraft please run while you have the chance at the very beginning of everything Minecraft actually wasn’t Minecraft it was called cave game and things were extremely easy just based off the fact that you simply could not

Die the only thing you had to worry about was just not completely submerging your whole world in infinite lava or water seriously what the hell is that unfortunately this wouldn’t last forever because the game would become infinitely harder just based off the fact that now you could die once immortality was taken

Out of the picture things were actually pretty difficult in comparison to present day because hunger simply just wasn’t real and mobs were pretty goddamn ruthless which created a cycle of pretty much walking dying killing and making pixel art every once in a while yeah it was kind of a boring time so if

Something is so Bland and boring you got to spice it up a little bit so after some production with some highs and some very inexplainable lows we eventually reach the official 1.0 launch of Minecraft let’s go baby Minecraft 1.0 was the beginning of modern-day Minecraft that we’re all familiar with

Today and created some of the most important mechanics that exist in the game to this day but this will have negative consequences in the future enchantments and Brewing were both introduced at the same time making the game feel way better and much easier once you achieved these powerful

Upgrades that with the addition of a whole new dimension made a perfect blend of adding natural progression into the game with also creating a new difficult task to overcome However unfortunately this couldn’t last forever and it’s something that started what I’m going to call the convenience pyramid as insanely

Epic and awesome Minecraft is eventually things will get boring and content needs to be added in order for things to keep feeling fresh and new and also at this point the game was still pretty simple so there was definitely some Innovation that needed to happen so instead of me

Describing every single goddamn thing that would turn me into a 4,000-year-old caver let’s just highlight some of the main ease points for the game that happened golden apples were something that already existed in the game and they were pretty damn good but eventually they got nerfed and it would

Be overshadowed by the cooler older brother that was much shinier otherwise known as an enchanted gold Apple which simply put would make you invincible and at the time you could craft these things I mean the recipe definitely wasn’t cheap especially for the time frame that it was in but this would very obviously

Get removed very quickly Transportation would become much easier as well instead of having to Trek the entire Sahara desert on foot you could just tame a horse to make the process so much easier or just use jet power wings that make literally everything else redundant and you remember enchanting right that thing

From like a minute earlier that would become even better with things like anvils and only needed to spend three levels instead of 30 with the absolute insane cost of three blue rocks and shoot I mean even something as mundane as fishing became awesome and based look

At all this I can get this from fishing screw everything else Shields mending an entire new way to fight Minecraft was evolving in a big way and the way that players could progress and become more powerful was getting more expansive than ever but all these new changes and

Additions yeah that’s not even close to the most brain melting things that they could have added it gets even crazier you see if you thought the previous implementations were pretty crazy Mojang decided to take every single steroid that exists on the planet and make these updates even more insane let me bring

Your attention to update 1.10 or the exploration update this brought in something that can make you literally defy death itself otherwise known as a totem of undying which can quite literally take away the fear of death from you just simply if you hold it like what that completely removes the

Pressure of something like hardcore for example but you know there still comes at a cost they’re extremely rare and they sure as hell aren’t renewable all right never fing mind this conveniently brings us to update 1.14 which yes you just saw it made it possible to farm

Totems of undying using the new raid mechanic but that’s not even the most insane part it also completely revamped villager trading to make it absolutely busted just get some completely compliant and consenting villagers and bribe them with some emeralds and you can get insane loot most notably you can

Get any enchantment you could ever want which just makes the prior methods of enchanting way more redundant if not completely useless and you know while you’re at it just out of gun that’s capable of shooting literal explosives wait no no that’s a mod that is a mod

No well that’s a little bit inconvenient I guess um jenith you’re breaking the UL oh my God shut up another reverse that guy is really annoying and he’s trying to beat me to 10,000 Subs so please just don’t let him anyway moving on you may be thinking man this is so

Many items though so there’s no way you’ll be able to hold everything yeah they just added a portable chest that you can hold in your inventory which keeps the items that you had in it when you break it okay there goes that issue okay we’re pretty damn op now I don’t

Think we need to introduce anything else oh you have got to be kidding me just to absolutely dump nuclear waste into the fire that was our power levels Mojang dropped the bombshell of all Bombshells and made a new material that’s stronger than diamonds you remember that pyramid of convenience

That I mentioned right at this point we’re at the very top and everything is completely in disarray and this was probably the Tipping Point of difficulty or maybe lack of so let’s take a tour of the new Minecraft step one start a world step two punch a tree step three acquire

Every single item in the entire game okay it’s not this insane but you get the point the ecosystem basically consists of getting everything you could want or possibly need within maybe a day of play time for the average person and you could become an Unstoppable force

That could take down any God you could probably think of low on health just e some gapples armor about to break well just break some bottles at your feet full of weird orbs literally about to die don’t worry about that you have 36 totems D how did that even get there I

Mean just as a reference we got so powerful in Minecraft that there is a genre of PVP that’s gained popularity where you have to use end crystals and respawn anchors in order to kill each other and even then it’s not easy Mojang took it too far and we reached past the

Peak of the pyramid so in order to achieve any sense of difficulty again we have started to go back down the Pyramid of convenience otherwise known as what I’m going to call the Nerf apocalypse let me take your attention to this bastard the warden was introduced in update 1.19 or the Wild

Update and a very key thing about it is that it is strong really really strong like more Health than the Ender Dragon and the Wither combined strong seriously the supposed final boss of the game is weaker than this blue biage we are now so strong in

The game that Mojang had to add a boss that can shoot through walls smell your fear and is advertised as something that you should avoid and not fight this is what I like to call the hello my name is Notch and I made Minecraft too easy wait I don’t even own the game

Anymore but you know what I can let it slide the warden it adds a cool experience and with something like the ancient city you know what it’s pretty damn cool and an unkillable mob it’s fine just please don’t Nerf what we already have I really need to learn to

Shut my mouth don’t I for a little bit of context update 1.20 added something called a smithing template which is pretty cool for armor customization and adds insane customizability is that even a word but with this they also added a smithing template called a netherite upgrade meaning that you could only get

Netherite if you have one of these PS and the only way to find one of these templates is in a Bastion Remnant and the Huns are not very high even if you do find a Bastion Remnant thankfully you can at least duplicate these things once you get one even though it does take

Quite a few diamonds and you know what just to kick us while we’re down in a recent snapshot mojing announced that they’re nerfing villager trades not only by making specific trades biome exclusive but reducing the max level enchant you can even buy from the villagers I’m sure this is going to have

No type of consequences at all these Nerfs and changes that are being introduced into the game are the beginning of a downward spiral of trying to achieve balance that I feel is going to be impossible to achieve and is the definition of what this whole difficulty Paradox thing is in the first place

Let’s go through a little bit of a refresher shall we ever since Minecraft 1.0 we’ve seen Minecraft slowly get easier and easier over time and being blindsided by all the cool stuff and helpful editions Minecraft reached a Tipping Point which is starting to be realized and some of the stuff past

Minecraft 1.16 just feels like Mojang trying to correct things again in order to make it feel less one-sided and I don’t think it’ll be uncommon to see this trend go on for the foreseeable future with things like the end update or the ancient city portal possibly coming sooner rather than later I hope

The fear of keeping things balanced doesn’t take away from it reaching its full potential cuz we’ve been waiting so goddamn long cuz we’re going to continue to see this wave of reaching the top of the convenience pyramid then reaching the bottom then back up and down and up

And down nerfing and buffing nerfing and buffing trying to reach a balance that probably doesn’t exist and especially with a massive game like Minecraft every single decision that gets made to try to balance these things is going to receive hate and negative press even if in the bigger picture it’s actually going to

Benefit things we’ve seen examples like this happen for other games in the past one of these games being a surprising favorite of mine Destiny 2 yeah I know a lot of you didn’t see that coming and I put way too much time into this game Jesus the more things that keep getting

Added into the sandbox over time is just going to make things even more difficult to balance so is there any solution to this well not directly but we can still do our part you see a big reason for this difficulty problem is because of how quickly people like to obtain the

Best gear and become the strongest immediately with a system that helps it and now that the system is being changed to counteract this people are starting to get Rowdy it’s understandable to try to do this I mean it’s natural for you to try to achieve the end goal as quick

As possible but it can kill your experience and cause things to feel way worse and especially more aggravating if you lose everything Minecraft is a game that deserves to be taken slow slly enjoying every facet of this funny block game as an avid gamer myself I’ve fallen

Victim to always tend to try to do everything as quickly as possible and get everything instantly but realistically I should try to take my time and just take everything in some of the most entertaining and memorable experiences with Minecraft for me isn’t related to getting the best loot or

Becoming super strong it’s just playing with my friends not giving a shite about who gets netherite first who can make the most epic villager trading Hall who can rage at the new update the hardest but actual events that you remember that have substance all the difficulty stuff can just be

Used as a blueprint for your own journey and of course it’s important to play the game how you want to play it and everybody’s path is going to be different that’s one of the beauties of Minecraft but make sure to actually enjoy the process it’ll let you focus

Less on the issues that might be present and this is a handbox game after all it really is what you make of it the difficulty Paradox is very real and I don’t think they’ll ever be a balance amongst easy and hard and it’s going to

Be out of your control but what is in your control is you can always step back and take a deep breath the balance can be achieved by what you decide to prioritize and the Everlasting battle for balance Falls onto your perception of how you want to experience this world

So don’t take things too seriously or try try hard until your eyes are bloodshot just relax and enjoy the Ride well if you made it this far then please do remember to subscribe it’s literally right there and it helps out massively if you do so please help a brother out also my Twitter is severely neglected so please just help me pleas anyway that’s all for me so take it easy later N