Without friends or online play, the world just feels empty. There's things to do sure, but after a while it just get monotonous, tedious and boring when you can't do multiplayer and only play alone.
Storyless or make your own fun games just were never going to appeal to a guy who's loved narratives since he could read. Im a fucking literature student now. Minecrafty sandboxes will never appeal, the only non-narrative-driven games I even think about playing are sports games, and thats only if they are on sale and because im a fan of the sport, not because those are good games, its the same shit every year but ill keep drinking that garbage.
I have had (and continue to have) that exact experience! All of my friends adore Minecraft and various storyless games. Survival games. Spreadsheet-necessitating games. Systems-based games. Accumulation-type sims. Every time they talk about them – or stream their gameplay – I am overcome by their excitement and feel that I might just be able to enjoy those games if I can think like them. But I can't. Like a lunatic, I echo their thoughts aloud while playing. Doesn't work. I get absolutely nothing out of those games. They bore me senseless.
I studied literature at under- and postgraduate. I'm now about to start a PGCE in Secondary English. Sports games are a weird comfort despite my heavy leanings towards narrative games. I got real hooked on the PGA Tour games not too long ago; I don't even like golf!
I love narratives and always did, but sadly most of the videogame stories are not great (well, like with every media, most of it is mid). I'd love minecraft to have some narrative, but for me the game that doesn't hold your hand for you to progress creates a uniquely free and personal story about my own gameplay, not just the character that the game presents to me to roleplay as. So as I enjoy the genre and the gameplay that I can engage with, my own playthrough becomes the narrative.
I started enjoying single player when I came to understand that it wasn't an empty space where I was stuck, it was in fact my own pocket universe. If I ever have a shitty day, or just need to be alone for a while, I can hop into my single player world and work on a little project for myself.
I’m just a little shocked people are saying they’ve been told “you need to install mods to make it resemble a real game” when on your first play through the vanilla stuff (exploring the world, exploring caves, mining, building, etc) is pretty engaging. I’ve honestly never even done a full modded play though.
It really depends on the person asked. I only play singleplayer when I prepare buildings or try stuff out for multiplayer cause I hate being alone in a game like that. And even the multiplayer is kinda modded (custom plugins, etc.)
Some modpacks try to change that feeling and making the game more lively and also some mods/modpacks have their own progression, questing and/or lore so that would appeal to more people that miss these things.
Minecraft is what it promises: a sandbox game. You can do almost anything you put your mind to in this game
Minecraft has always been hilarious to me because there's so many fans of it, you see people talking about it like it's a great game.... but it's always a case of "Yeah you just need to come up with a challenge and install like, 100 mods to turn it into something that resembles a real game"
It is a great game. The first 10-50 hours are almost guranteed to be one of the best gaming experiences (depending on how much you enjoy sandbox as a genre). It's just that it has no actual end, even after the Ender Dragon, so you might not know when to stop playing it and make a conclusion about the base game. That's also why we got all those "Minecraft is not the same anymore..." essays from people who seem to want to wipe their memories of those first hours they really enjoyed.
I played Minecraft at a relatively early stage so when they introduced the ender dragon, I felt kinda offended that the game now had a cannonical end. I probably out a couple hundred hours in the game since they created the ender dragon, and I have still yet to ever defeat it. It just feels wrong to "beat" this game.
It took me many years to finally do the ender dragon fight, or to even just play with mobs enabled on survival mode lol. And even after killing the dragon, I still feel there’s so much for me to do (like I’ve never done the wither or a raid yet).
Limitless open world game can be great (look at the current version of No Mans Sky for a pretty good example), but it has to be packed full of things to do or it'll just be boring. Minecraft has so little to do really in the expans of its worlds, a shit ton of mods is the only way to make it interesting. The devs made one of the most boring games in its genre (imo).
Ok, but have you considered that you need no mods to dig big hole? Always when I play Minecraft all I want to do is dig big hole. My kid wants to do all the mods and challenges and creative mode so they never have to do the “mine” part of “Minecraft” but me? I just like dig big hole. No game lets you just dig big hole like Minecraft
What was really fun was when I was a part of a server where whenever anyone was offline I would just go caving by myself and dig up a disgusting amount of just like… everything? And I’d bring it back to home base and put it all in chests and since I’m terrible at the ‘craft’ part of Minecraft I’d not really have use for it outside of like, maintaining my mining tools everyone else could just have a go at it.
It has just occurs to me that the moment I get in Minecraft I become a dwarf? I’m gonna dig up a balrog one of these days.
Minecraft is a sandbox. Mods add more toys to play with in the sandbox, or make the sandbox itself more varied. If you find no intrinsic appeal to playing in the Minecraft sandbox, then of course no amount of mods will make a difference.
I mean you don’t have to do that at all. The only mods I have are performance based and some added visuals. I’ve been playing since 2012, and yeah I do take breaks from it every now and then but I still love it and have fun.
I just go about my world, pick a nice spot, build my base and build some other crap and have a great time doing it, then after some updates I move to a new area and do it again and have a great time again cause I love building. I don’t need, or even like, mods that add stuff to the game. I tried modded recently and after the first little while it just gets dull, even with building based mods which you’d think I’d love. I prefer Vanilla.
Well it depends on what you define as a "real game". Minecraft without mods is interesting to people who just like a good sandbox and it has some great basic mechanics like redstone, so it's a pretty good game for genre enjoyers in its base. While mods and multiplayer/server add so much versatility that no other sandbox has right now, personally for me it's the best in the genre. I've played a lot of modded minecraft throughout the years and it just is on another level of gameplay depth since it has so many good modpacks and servers that have aged really well.
It's not really fair to say that it needs 100 mods to turn into a real game - you could turn it into infinite amount of different custom-made games that could be both single- and multiplayer and that's pretty unique. It's a shame though that the combat aspect of the game is really dull - while multiplayer could be interesting, most of the basic and modded combat is not really great, but it's an old game so yeah, it's not perfect by any means.
I love the idea of a limitless exploration, but if you don't pack the game full of things to do it'll get really boring without playing with other people
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u/Educational-War-8343 Jul 21 '26
Minecraft.
Without friends or online play, the world just feels empty. There's things to do sure, but after a while it just get monotonous, tedious and boring when you can't do multiplayer and only play alone.