Minecraft, awesome one man game project

[monroeski]

Tool management really has nothing to do with survival. You can make a ton of tools very easily. The issue is the time it takes away from actually doing fun things.

I'd like to see them implement a server command to change tool life. Until then I guess I'm stuck with iron tools because I'll burn through diamond ones far too quickly to warrant spending the few I have on one.

I meant survival as in the general game type, not as in simply not running out of hit points. It's about building, yes, but it's also about needing to provide for yourself.

You can find iron in the first hour of gametime; you could literally find it in the first 5 or 10 minutes if you're lucky, and iron is all you actually need to do pretty much anything. Even if a wood pick never wore down, for example, you still couldn't mine diamond with it. It would take something away from the game IMO if tools were endlessly renewable and you could make all the tools you need for the entire infinitely long rest of the game in the first hour or two of playtime.

Tools wearing down is pretty much just like running out of torches. You need more light at some point and so you go and find coal, just like you will need new tools at some point so you go and find iron/diamond. Having to find coal takes away from fun things, too. For that matter, having to go dig out huge mines to get cobblestone isn't amazing fun, either, and more time spent doing that is less time spent building as well.

In the end, just remember that all along this game has been in alpha, and only just now barely reached beta. There has been a lot of leeway on a lot of things that is going to go away as the game gets more polished (like health originally not working in MP allowing us to jump off huge buildings with no penalty, for instance). Be ready for a lot more changes as time goes on. I'm sure more options will eventually be put in to allow the game to become more of a sandbox like you want, but for now it is what it is.