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Comment by imtringued | Hacker News Reader

The End is akin to an inside joke or maybe a pun. You cannot finish a sandbox game, so Notch deliberately added a dimension that you have to go out of your way for, that is difficult to find, unless someone tells you or you read about it. The End dimension isn't meant to fit in the game. It's meant to subvert the idea of a sandbox game.

You can say "I've reached the end of Minecraft" and it is true by the letter of the words, but untrue by the spirit of the words. Beating the Ender Dragon does not mean you finished all the content in Minecraft, since there is content even beyond the Ender Dragon.

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I'm not convinced this was the intention.

I remember there used to be some writing by Notch on Minecraft's website that went something like (paraphrasing from memory):

"When thinking about whether to make the game easier or harder, I generally lean towards harder. This might make the game frustrating if there isn't some sort of goal, so I think I will have to build in a goal for players."

I'm sure this passage is long gone, I unfortunately don't have time to go digging through the Internet Archive right now. But I assume this "goal" become The End.

> The End dimension isn't meant to fit in the game. It's meant to subvert the idea of a sandbox game.

Do you have a source for this? It's the first time I've heard it.

> Beating the Ender Dragon does not mean you finished all the content in Minecraft, since there is content even beyond the Ender Dragon.

In theory, maybe. But in practice? The mere existence of a tangible end goal fundamentally changes the way people approach the game, even if there's more to do beyond it.

Here's a very good video about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShDBJg886EA

I agree with this in general but I don't think minecraft falls into this trap because beating the ender dragon is so anticlimactic and trivial that it doesn't feel like you accomplished much. In terraria, an ostensibly similar sandbox game with a much more linear progression, if I beat the final boss, I really do feel like there's nothing else to do and stop playing that world. In modded minecraft packs with quest books, it's the same thing. But in vanilla minecraft, beating the ender dragon is just something you do because you want elytra wings.

Beating the dragon is very anticlimactic, but it's still the "end" of the progression path as designed by the developers. Or at least it was before the Elytra was added, now that's the actual end.

But either way, reaching that end goal usually prompts people to ask themselves: "what now?" Once you have an Elytra, you've basically unlocked creative flight in survival, and that's pretty much where survival itself ends, now you're just playing creative except you still have to grind for building materials. There's no better item to go for, so what's the point? Most people stop playing shortly after, and this is where the whole "2 week Minecraft phase" thing originates from.

Elytra is anything but creative flight (as it glides, you can't hover) - but it does destroy any real sense of scale or travel.

Some people can't play Minecraft until they rush the elytra, some end up abandoning a world shortly after they get it.

You can basically hover by combining elytra with a Slow Falling potion.

I've actually never beaten the Ender Dragon in Vanilla. But, I've killed lots of Ender Dragons in modpacks, and occasionally either: There is no Ender Dragon, the pack doesn't need this so it's elided entirely or, that's where you start so the Ender Dragon is an early fight.

For example Star Factory clearly doesn't need an Ender Dragon fight, there are no bad guys at all, you're making a factory. For stars.

"The End" is clearly as much as anything a joke, the original game didn't have an end and so people asked for one, OK, here's "The End" for whatever that's worth.

It's like launching the rocket in vanilla Factorio.

I would say it's less of a defined end than that: it basically only exists because Notch was coming up to the official non-beta release and felt like there should be something resembling an ending to the game if he was going to call it 'done'. (and then later on more stuff was added 'after the end': the end dimenson was initially only the island and the dragon)

You have to put the credits somewhere, and that's a good place to put them.

Vanilla factorio is a myth. Factorio without mods, like KSP without mods, is only played by people without internet connections. The DPRK probably has a thriving vanilla factorio community!

Some people don't mod games. I, for example, want to play (and enjoy and judge) exactly what the dev team intended, and if I don't like it, I drop the game. I played vanilla Skyrim, vanilla Minecraft, vanilla Stalker and many more games that are famous for their mod community.

But I'm also an Apple user and I mostly game on PlayStation, so it's probably just part of my personality somehow.

Nah, I'm a die-hard Linux user that's been running heavily customized Arch for as long as it's been around, and I have the same attitude towards games. Spent countless hours in Minecraft¹, zero desire to mod it.

¹: with a good internet connection that's been used to download podcasts to go along with it

This is the personality equivalent of wonderbread.

Hard agree, modding is what makes games fun. What is the point of playing a game that I can't change the rules, the "board" and everything else? What the devs made I see it more as a canvas, a framework, a suggestion.

Exactly. I do this with boardgames too, beyond just "house rules".

For me, Stratego, my favorite chess-esque battle simulator, is a wonderful canvas.

The game becomes infinitely better when players roll for the number of turns each player gets. This simulates the moving "tempo" of war, speeds up the game dramatically depending on the turn multiplier used, and dramatically opens up the types of play available. I've experimented with far more, including custom maps, allowing joint attacks with multiple turns (pooling attack scores), and other mods.

I don't care if this is autism or it turns off normies. The thinkpad user ricing out modded dwarf fortress has a more rewarding time with their videogames compared to macbook pro user playing vanilla skyrim in 2025.

> personality equivalent of wonderbread

> thinkpad user ricing out modded dwarf fortress has a more rewarding time with their videogames compared to macbook pro user

Ok, now I feel a little bit offended by the bread thing, and also: how can you just assume how rewarding my experience is playing vanilla games? We’ve already established, that you can’t relate to me.

I think this is an interesting take to have beneath a comment about Factorio, considering the new DLC of Factorio (Space Age) is basically a more polished version of a popular mod (Space Exploration) to the extent that Wube hired the mod creator to help them build their first DLC.

That feels compatible with my approach. The mod obviously fits the devs' vision, which makes it canon to me. Especially when it fits so much that they hired the modder.

...interestingly, I have basically the same attitude as you, except with game guides instead of mods. Using a guide means playing a game contrary to what the developer intended. Outside of exceptional circumstances, if a game isn't fun without a guide, I drop the game†.

—except, Minecraft totally breaks that! You can't really play Minecraft without a guide, how would you even make a crafting table? Maybe you could figure it out after hours of hitting your head against the wall, but it wouldn't be a good experience.

But what is the intended way to play Minecraft? Should the Minecraft Wiki be considered part of the game?

(Note: I haven't played Minecraft in years, so I'm referring to Minecraft 1.0 more-or-less.)

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† However, asking friends in real life is allowed, because sharing knowledge and discoveries within a group is a fun social experience. Except, what if someone else previously referenced a guide? Have they poisoned the well? I think about these things far too often and still don't have good answers.

The big difference IMO between modding Factorio and KSP is that Factorio has achievements (and modding the game disables them).

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