In this community (and in the entire MC fandom), about everyone seems to think that Mojang is being deliberately lazy with the mob vote for the sake of engagement. It's just constant complaining about Mojang supposedly being incompetent, and most of it makes no sense.
Now, to be clear, I don't like the mob vote. It turns the community against itself, sets people up for disappointment, and puts unrealistic expectations on Mojang for the sake of extra engagement, and I'd like to see it gone. However, I think it's unreasonable to ask Mojang to just add all three and deliver an update of the same size.
Also, I'm not a modder. I have some skill with programming, but as far as Minecraft goes, I'm just some guy who likes playing and talking about the game.
Now, to those of you who think that modders are doing in less than a week what Mojang does in several months, let's take a look at the differences between Mojang and modders when it comes to implementing mobs.
Firstly, Mojang has to implement prototypes of the mob, test them, and tweak accordingly to make sure the feature is well designed. To be clear, I'm not saying that modders don't care about game design, but the community expectations for many mods (particularly proof-of-concept ones like these mob vote mods) are much lower. As long as a modder implements the penguin half decently, tons of people will be happy with it and go "mojang bad, this modder added the mob in 2 days." Meanwhile, there's a lot more pressure on Mojang to get a feature right before release.
Additionally, mob vote mods don't really get updated with, well, all the other stuff that's added to Minecraft afterwards. Mojang isn't just adding penguins and calling it a day; they're adding penguins, then an entire update on top of that, and then future updates as well. Thus, they need to make sure that any code they add won't cause problems down the line.
Another thing that nobody seems to consider is that modders are typically developing for just Java Edition. On the other hand, Mojang needs to develop a feature on two different editions of the game, each of which is in a different programming language and has different underlying code. And because of Bedrock Edition, Mojang needs to add the mob on several different platforms, including mobile devices.
Mojang also has the concern of bugs & performance. I'm not saying that modders don't care about performance and bug-fixing, but expectations are often lower, especially for these mob vote mods. Again, they can get away with just implementing the feature in game, regardless of if they do it to the standards placed on Mojang. And if you're just showcasing the mod in a video, you barely have to care about performance and bugs at all! It just needs to look nice on camera.
Oh, and remember when I mentioned that Mojang is developing for many different platforms? Well, Mojang needs to make sure the mob performs well and is free of bugs on all those different platforms. In two different editions of the game. Fun.
And lastly, since Mojang is a full development studio under a corporation, any feature that they add likely has to go through several layers of approval. They aren't an individual modder who can just add whatever they want, do some minimal testing, and release it to the public.
When people say that Mojang should be able to just add all three mobs because a modder can do it, they completely ignore the completely different situation Mojang is in. A modder can make a buggy, inefficient, half-way decent implementation of the three mobs on just Java Edition, and vast swathes of the community will act like they're doing hurdles of Mojang.
And also, this whole idea of Mojang being lazy and not wanting to work on the game just… doesn't make sense? People act as if Minecraft is being developed by a whole studio of people who don't like or care about the game, but that's obviously not the case. Do you really think everyone at Mojang wants to limit what they add in an update and deal with the constant whining that they aren't doing enough? If they could add more features, they would be doing that—it would only help them. If they aren't, it's because the realities of game development prevent them from adding 20 mobs in an update.
So please, if you want to complain about the mob vote, fine, but don't place unrealistic expectations on Mojang to add all three mobs when that just isn't feasible.
Yes, of course Minecraft is held to a higher standard than modders. They have Microsoft money and professional programmers, and they've been coding this game for the past one and a half decades which is an amazing length of time.
Look, I've been playing long enough to remember when dogs showed up. When jungles were added just a year after Beta concluded, we were all in awe. New huge trees with different wood! Vines all over everything! Melons! Sunsets! Three new mobs! There was tons of new content, mechanics, and features to explore. And they kept releasing new biomes, mechanics, and features, creating what we all recognize as Minecraft today.
However, at some point during their acquisition, this really slowed down. Instead of getting whole new biomes and mechanics, they started teasing us with a handful of features modders had been doing for years. We already had Ender Chests, and they could be shared across the server with a three-digit code, and they could store liquids or be made into backpacks. We already had rabbits, and squirrels, and songbirds in the Twilight Forest. We already had integrated redstone and kids were learning how to make complex circuits with it. Teasing us with three mobs we might see one of in a year or two is a real letdown.
My point is, Mojang has more resources than they've ever had, more subscribers than any other game ever, and yet they act like they're God's gift to gamers when they actually perform more poorly than they did 12 years ago. As a player from the very beginning, I know better, and I find this behavior pedantic and insulting. The only reason I still play at all is because college students are still making featureful content over spring break that makes it a whole new adventure again.
Yes, the game did slow down after the acquisition. And it does seem like recently they've been focusing on adding new building blocks instead of game mechanics. I'd say from my perspective that some mods are a little too feature rich? IDK I just kind of like Minecrafts minimalist style. There's no quest, there's no unlocking regions after fighting a boss. You make your own quest and go wherever you want. Maybe its because I'm a relatively new player (3 years). The game still feels kind of new to me.
I understand that many of the features added seem unoriginal when they've been in the modding scene for years but I think thats just a product of how long Minecraft has been around. Not to mention a product of its popularity. People see the infinite possibilities and it gets their gears turning. Would you rather those features not be in the base game?
I do sympathize with the notion that Minecraft has gone in a different direction from what many of its oldest and most dedicated fans would have liked. And thats fine, there's modded for that.
I guess what I'm saying is as someone who didn't grow up with the game I can't really get behind the "Minecraft was better before Microsoft". But I don't think that makes their point wrong, I just don't think it matters as much to me. Call me a sheep, call me a Mojang Apologist, I'm fine with that. I'm sure in 10 years I'll be in the same boat as you, if the game lasts that long.
I appreciate your perspective as a newer player. I'm glad to see folks like you getting into it.
I don't think I implied that Minecraft was better before Microsoft. Having that big money and wide audience has kept the game relevant and it's great that they're continuing to develop it. I was primarily pointing out that they used to do more with less, and they didn't tease us with unattainable content.
Even if we're comparing Mojang now to Mojang then (instead of to modders), all my points still apply. The situation Mojang is in now is completely different to the situation it was around when jungles were in.
Now, Mojang has to
And even with all of these restrictions, what they've been able to achieve is impressive. Look at Caves & Cliffs. In one and a half years, Mojang managed to
And that's all in two different programming languages for two different engines, one of which is on tons of different devices. But no, people compare this to what we were promised at MC Live in one year and complain that Mojang is deliberately working slowly and not doing enough.
Let's even take a look at 1.20. In just a year, Mojang added
And I'm lying by saying that's what they did in a year, as that's discounting all the 1.19.x updates (which were significantly larger than usual 1.x.x updates). In those we got a completely reorganized creative inventory and several new commands and gamerules (e.g., /fillbiome).
Yes, it would be great if Mojang could add more and still adhere to their quality and performance standards, and I have many gripes with how some of these features are implemented, but I don't see how it's reasonable to expect Mojang to just work even faster than they are or pretend that they're just lazy and doing the bare minimum to keep the game alive. What exactly are you expecting Mojang to deliver in a major update?
I have to agree with almost everything you've said. I felt like I was the only one who thought that the extent of the community backlash was unjust.
Compared to old Mojang or modders?
Bedrock was more of a mess of different versions years ago and is arguably easier to maintain today.
Feature parity between versions makes it easier not harder.
Modders have to decompile the jar, reverse engineer what the obfuscated code does then rewrite it. Mojang has the source code and knows exactly what everything is. And they're backed by a company with a multitrillion dollar market cap not some randoms living in their parents' basement.
Design by committee isn't a good thing.
The reality is that Microsoft is a profit driven company that did the math to figure out how to get the most bang for the buck in terms of dev time and they've determined that spending more dev time than they currently do will not increase profits. Modders dont have that limitation. Most of them spend time modding the game either because that's what they want to do or they have some sort of financial support system that depends on them catering to the users of their mods. i.e patreon, curseforge and modrinth.