With 1.8 coming out in a couple of weeks (despite the trolls) I thought I would check out the features.

Landscaping. The idea of new landscapes is pretty cool: rivers, chasms, new biomes all greatly improve the "realism" of the game. now places will be a lot more distinguishable. I have noticed in the past that, even when looking at a map, if you are far away from your home, its pretty difficult to tell one forest from another, or one desert from another. Rivers, chasms, oasis's all add more landmarks to the game, which is a cool plus.

Creative mode. Classic mode on steroids? This is probably half an attempt to pull traffic off of classic, and it will probably work. With all the crafted objects available, building in creative mode will be almost infinitely improved. All those people who bought beta, but prefer classic's ability to build things: Boom, this one's for you. I also see Notch releasing this as the new "classic" when the game is officially released...maybe. He'd probably wait a few months.

Experience points. When I first heard this, my thoughts were along the lines of "really notch? this is a survival game...", but I think there is a fair way of doing it, and instead of sharing my thoughts with you now, I'll wait for Notch to release it in 1.9, as he's already hinted at him doing.

Hunger
Here's the thing i wanted to get to. So many people are telling me that hunger will ruin the game, and that they'll "delete their account and never play the game again" <--people are dumb. Anyways... Now that I've seen hunger in action (see Notch's 1.8 gameplay in Mapsapper's topic) I rather like it. I've always thought it was dumb that you could fall off a cliff (probably break a leg) and then eat an apple and be perfectly fine again...*?
I think the hunger aspect will add a balancing factor to the game. Now, if you want to take 5 days' in-game time to go mining, you'll have to scavenge for food to bring with you. Similarly, you won't be able to go in and just tank a dungeon by nom'ing apples constantly during the fight. It forces players to do more of the surviving that "survival mode" is all about.
Resting (doing nothing) with a full hunger bar makes sense as the main method of healing yourself, however, I think that removing healing items from the game is...well...destructive to an aspect of the game. It would slow the game considerably if every time you injured yourself, you have to wait a day or two to be healed. I think that adding a bandage (three wools in a row) and a splint (trees down both sides, string at the middle-top and middle-bottom) would fix that issue nicely. Bandages would only heal 1 heart, and would be stackable to 16, and splints would only heal 4 hearts, and wouldn't be stackable, making them quite balanced. And maybe there would be a new dungeon reward item that still heals all 10 hearts. Who knows.


Wow, that got long. Comments, Questions, Criticisms always welcome.
-Humus

_________________

Exactly like the WoM update from 1.6.x to 1.7.x. They changed a lot of things, and most of their userbase didn't like them. It wasn't until 1.8.x that they added features to disable/revert things.

I'm not so keen on the idea of experiance points, or hunger, and hope that they can be disabled both server and clientside.

Also, bad news for all of you who are looking forward to chasms, rivers, dungeon things in Beta. Unless you all want a brand new map, it's highly likely that it won't work with the current map. Unless Notch is clever and actually generates the new features (which he hasn't in the past) with the new chunks generated by the server, it's going to be pretty impossible to get the new terrain features.

I vote for brand new map. The changes to the biomes and landscapes will be drastic enough to warrant a completely new map, and imo would be totally worth it.

_________________

I'm almost with warpuppy, but what I've heard so far, it should be generated by new chunks. Sort of like pumpkins in...1.3? Anyways, they should be generated in all chunks created after the server updates to 1.8.

_________________

a new map would be nice it would clear some area around the spawn and with 1.8 we can have the rivers and such. Hopefully notch doesn't make it so that rivers can flood sometimes.

_________________

I agree; it would be lovely to have a fresh new map to build on. It's up to everyone to decide if it's worth it or not. Maybe a poll will be in order when the update comes out?

_________________

Yesh

_________________

The PAX Version of the game is planned to come out on September 8th, although the full release of the adventure update can be expected in a few weeks, still.

_________________

...

Little Bit on next Thursday...

Then then the rest of the update later...

_________________

Woot =D Im going to Mkae an enderman kill me first thing :3

crafty i would save a backup of the 1.7.3 .minecraft then updating to 1.8 since zion won't update the server until it's actually finished so about 1.8.9.4 that way you can hug an enderman and play on the server.

_________________

Im just gonna wait for TMI to get updated, or just /give xerox218 46 64...

Find an NPC Village...

And you now should know what I'll be doing... >:D

You Evil person you. Mind if i join you?

_________________