Thread by @gaspoweredpick

Is this the best experimental version? Why locating biomes using villager maps is just the icing on the cake for Minecraft's expanding gear progression system: (1/17)

But how would it even be possible for this to be the best experimental version? It's noticeably smaller than the terrain overhaul or even the combat test snapshots. Doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous to say that? Only out of context. Minecraft players have been asking for... (2/17)

a cave update for years, but these requests did not come out of the blue, nor did the idea become popular solely because the old caves were incredibly boring. In fact, as of Update Aquatic and almost every update that followed, it was clear that each new major update... (3/17)

would renovate an old area of the game. With huge updates dedicated to the ocean, villages, and the Nether respectively, it was only logical that the caves would be focused on next. When Minecraft gets more fleshed out both in how it looks and what there is to explore, (4/17)

that is when focus shifts more to Minecraft's base gameplay, which the last few updates have directed a large part of their attention to, but have not made it their full focus. It becomes a bit more noticeable that when deducting cheesy or frowned upon ways of obtaining... (5/17)

necessary resources such as trade cycling, AFK experience farming, and automatic fishing, there barely seem to be any "intended" ways to upgrade gear reasonably. For clarification, this is not a criticism of Minecraft's non-linear progression system at all, but rather... (6/17)

the opposite, which is the fact that the investment required to basically cheese the game for the best gear is incredibly disproportional to most other methods. However, I'd argue that the unbalance is not because borderline exploitative tactics like AFK fishing farms... (7/17)

are extremely overpowered, but because more gameplay intensive ways of obtaining gear are ludicrously underpowered. Enchantment tables are unreliable unlike villagers, mending books in structures are exceedingly rare for those who want to enchant tridents/elytra, and etc. (8/17)

Onto the villager rebalances, I must mention that all of the criticism above pertaining to Minecraft's gear progression mostly applies outside of this experimental version. The abundance of mending in ancient cities is a very welcome change because it makes exploring... (9/17)

actually viable for obtaining mending books, when before players could only obtain mending in a reasonable way through pre-enchanted gear, which only comes in so many forms. In opposite regions of the world, swamp villagers are now a consistent method of obtaining... (10/17)

an infinite supply of mending, providing an incentive to traverse that was seldom implemented to this extent before. Minecraft has always been about player choice, but only in the current experimental snapshots do the choices presented in survival have real balance... (11/17)

and equality. No longer do so many fun methods of obtaining treasure become (unintentionally) sidelined for effortless and boring ones. Despite how small the balances to villager trading and the counterbalances to obtaining enchantments in other ways are, they have one... (12/17)

of the most positive impacts in the game of any feature, especially in the long run. In my view, exploits or extremely overpowered features will always have a damaging impact on games no matter how much they are held dear. That is obvious, but it isn't the whole picture. (13/17)

Ever since Village & Pillage, I think players have become too accustomed to trade cycling as the only reasonable ways to obtain enchantments. While this was understandable at the time, recent feedback to the villager snapshots almost sounds like an aversion to... (14/17)

literally anything outside of an AFK spot or a barricaded villager house. Mining, spelunking, building, exploring, battling, looting, and everything else are just a "grind". I hate to break it to people who both think this and don't even enjoy creative mode either, (15/17)

but maybe you just don't like the game. Maybe there are other playstyles than leaving the game running overnight, and Mojang considers other ways of playing the game too when developing and balancing Minecraft? While I'm not 100% sure if I'd consider the villager tests... (16/17)

to be the best experimental snapshots because they're not complete yet, they have the most impactful additions for their size and the best response to player feedback so far, even the smaller features. (17/17)