Comment Doom and gloom (Score 2) 67
On the contrary - I'd argue that Minecraft has needed a central repository of content for a long time.
I started on the Minecraft bandwagon as a freshman in college, back when Alpha was just getting started, and have played consistently every year since then (thousands of hours over the last ~8 years). So many people here are arguing that micro-transactions etc. are going to ruin the game by making it expensive / unpleasant / pay to win / etc, but I doubt these people have ever even really played the game. Then just as much as now, the thing that makes Minecraft an amazing game is what creative people have built on top of it - not the base game itself.
There are mapmakers that spend literally years building an immersive dungeon crawler map with 30-40 hours of gameplay, and then just give it away on the forums hoping for donations. A unified way for users people to post up their map on some official Microsoft-owned store and have users find it? A central location where people with no technical skills could click one button, pay $5, and get many hours of extra gameplay content? That would be awesome - and I bet they keep giving it away for free on the forums too.
Have you ever tried to actually install Minecraft mods? They're great - but even with the simplest of mods, eventually you get two together that conflict. Sites like ATLauncher have been adding wrappers around Minecraft for years to provide "modpacks" to users (often with 100+ mods), but there's still no way the average user is going to get it to work. Maybe Microsoft could figure out a way to package (and monetize!) these packs - that would be good for both the players AND the people who created the packs.
Not to mention the number of outright scam websites that use search engine optimization to list their scummy mirror with 100 ads for every legit creative work (map/mod/etc) that people have developed.
Sure, I also worry that Microsoft could turn this into a walled garden and block out people from doing anything *except* through the store. But that would be the real cause for alarm, and I'm not willing to say they've jumped the shark just yet.
I started on the Minecraft bandwagon as a freshman in college, back when Alpha was just getting started, and have played consistently every year since then (thousands of hours over the last ~8 years). So many people here are arguing that micro-transactions etc. are going to ruin the game by making it expensive / unpleasant / pay to win / etc, but I doubt these people have ever even really played the game. Then just as much as now, the thing that makes Minecraft an amazing game is what creative people have built on top of it - not the base game itself.
There are mapmakers that spend literally years building an immersive dungeon crawler map with 30-40 hours of gameplay, and then just give it away on the forums hoping for donations. A unified way for users people to post up their map on some official Microsoft-owned store and have users find it? A central location where people with no technical skills could click one button, pay $5, and get many hours of extra gameplay content? That would be awesome - and I bet they keep giving it away for free on the forums too.
Have you ever tried to actually install Minecraft mods? They're great - but even with the simplest of mods, eventually you get two together that conflict. Sites like ATLauncher have been adding wrappers around Minecraft for years to provide "modpacks" to users (often with 100+ mods), but there's still no way the average user is going to get it to work. Maybe Microsoft could figure out a way to package (and monetize!) these packs - that would be good for both the players AND the people who created the packs.
Not to mention the number of outright scam websites that use search engine optimization to list their scummy mirror with 100 ads for every legit creative work (map/mod/etc) that people have developed.
Sure, I also worry that Microsoft could turn this into a walled garden and block out people from doing anything *except* through the store. But that would be the real cause for alarm, and I'm not willing to say they've jumped the shark just yet.
