[tadhunt]

I run a company that provides Minecraft server hosting for businesses (i.e. after school programs, summer camps, Code Ninjas, E-Sports leagues etc) and produces fun and educational events using Minecraft (i.e. 10-15 elementary school kids in an event space at a library learning physics by building roller coasters in the game).

We've switched entirely over to Paper for everything because it works so much better than vanilla, and it also enables us to put it behind a Velocity proxy (Minecraft Java Application layer proxy also developed by the same group that develops Paper) for better scalability, more secure infrastructure, and some cool features like enabling any version of Java edition to join the same server (mad props to the ViaVersion & ViaBackwards plugin teams that make this possible!). This is impossible to do with Vanilla. We do all of our own content development creating the activities the kids do during the events, and the plugin ecosystem that someone else mentioned is hugely helpful for this. I especially want to call out how awesome the Geyser and Floodgate plugins are — they make it possible for Java and Bedrock clients to play together in the same world, which makes our customers lives so much easier.

We're hiring part time / contract developers, event hosts, and technical support personnel. If this sounds interesting, please reach out. My contact info is in my profile.

[jbm]

Another point for Geyser and Floodgate.

I have Minecraft on iOS, as well as two Java licenses. You can have both mixed on the same server if you are using Paper with Floodgate and Geyser. It's great; my younger child can use iOS, while my elder kids can use the java licenses on their computers.

[__jonas]

Interesting, does that mean the different editions have feature parity now? I remember it used to be that the Java Edition was ahead of Bedrock with some game features and the phone version had way less content – is that no longer the case or are these server plugins disabling some game features?

[atomicnumber3]

I think they have some drift in between versions (java lands first), but aside from that, they're extremely similar and only differ in what essentially amounts to quirks rather than actual gameplay differences. So no, you're not typically going to really notice the differences.

[tehbeard]

Bedrock still lacks in capability for the offhand slot due to having to support tablet UI, only a select few items can be used in it.

Bedrock also has a different combat model that lacks the indicators java has.

A comprehensive list is here: https://minecraft.wiki/w/Minecraft_Wiki:Parity_issue_list

[siegecraft]

Constantly updating geyser to keep it up to date with the most recent bedrock versions is quite a pain. Maybe paper has tools to automate these updates (I use fabric) but it seems unlikely.

[Badbird5907]

Geyser/any third-party plugin isn't by the paper team, so they wouldn't have tools to auto update. (they also generally discourage auto-updating any software/plugins). There are plugins available to update geyser automatically though, here's one: https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/geyserupdater.88555/

[MagicMoonlight]

Why would you need different versions of Java to work together?