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I like Minecraft Earth, but it didnât quite hit its stride before the pandemic, and didnât adapt as well as PokĂ©mon Go has to the pandemic. Iâve mostly stopped playing since hitting the level cap because gameplay is still too awkward, and while it is fun, itâs not enough fun to overcome that when I donât have a goal to work toward.
So while Iâm sad that itâs shutting down in June, itâs more âwhat could have beenâ than wishing I could keep playing it.
Live the Adventure!
Adventuring in augmented reality is the clear highlight of the game. You use your phone as a window into a life-size 3D fragment of a Minecraft world where you can fight zombies, mine resources, activate redstone contraptions, and so on. Initially these would spawn out in public spaces, and you could spot them from a distance like PokĂ©mon Go gyms. During the pandemic, they changed to a system with âAdventure Crystalsâ that you can find or earn through challenges and activate to spawn an adventure at home. Different levels of crystals will spawn different sizes of adventures from simple up through âEpic.â Friends can scan a QR code on your phone to join you and you can play together in the same AR environment.
The main problems are:
Build plates let you take a fragment (8Ă8, 16Ă16 or 32Ă32) of a Minecraft world, view it at tabletop scale in AR, and build what you want with it. You can use resources youâve collected or crafted in other parts of the game. You can populate it with animals or monsters, or a âMob of Meâ that represents you. And you can play a life-size instance of it like an adventure, though again you need enough space for that.
Space is a problem here, too, and the process of actually building something complex in AR is awkward. Sometimes I think it wouldâve been nice to be able to build in standard Minecraft UI, then play them in AR. And the real promise of this was being able to share your build plates with other players, which again was ruined by the pandemic.
I ended up mainly using build plates to farm. Itâs cool that you can, though! Crops and trees grow, you can milk cows, shear sheep, etc. All on your dining table!
That leaves the location part of the game: going out and collecting resources. That part is only really fun if you can get out and walk somewhere, which may or may not be possible depending on how locked-down your area is at any given time. But itâs less like catching PokĂ©mon and more like spinning mobile PokĂ©stops. Youâre just tapping on them as you get close to them, not jumping into a mini-game with actual strategy and skill to it. Once Iâd collected enough resources to do all the building and crafting I wanted to, I stopped firing this mode up on walks because catching PokĂ©mon was more interesting.
Challenges
They have at least tried to keep giving players new things to do by running biweekly challenge seasons. You collect or craft items, or solve adventure puzzles, or kill five zombies with a golden shovel (yeah, they get oddly specific after a while) in order to get a reward and unlock the next challenge. Even those get frustrating after a while, though. I keep getting stuck on defeating five skeletons (or whatever specific monster), and then for ten adventures in a row Iâll only find zombies, or spiders, or no mobs at all. Or chickens.
At least Microsoft is handling it well. They announced it today, along with an update that includes all the remaining finished-but-unreleased content, discounts to in-game purchases, and nearly six months for us to play through the new features before shutting it down. (Iâve already found one of the new cow variants.) And aside from character items, which are already shared with Minecraft Bedrock Edition, theyâre transferring currency over to Minecraft proper. So theyâre giving the game a decent send-off and making an effort to keep players happy.
âKelson Vibber, 2021-01-05
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Originally posted at K-Squared Ramblings
Minecraft.net: Minecraft Earth Coming to an End