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by inigyou 4 days ago
Factorio or Minecraft change things every update.
3 comments

I don't play those, but I know at least with games like those, where players like to play on specific versions, there's usually ways to stay on a specific version without too much hassle.
I stopped with Microsoft buying minecraft. But before that they didn't change but add things.

I can't remember a single time I was disappointed because something changed.

Microsoft purchase was during 1.8. large-scale terrain structure completely changed in 1.7. 1.5 completely changed the redstone meta. 1.4 completely changed the villager meta as you could now zombify and cure villagers and more changed meta because beacons existed. 1.3 added villager trading, making mining obsolete for some people. 1.3 also overhauled the internal structure of singleplayer so that you can have network latency in singleplayer. 1.2 increased the world height, making your max height builds no longer impressive. Beta 1.8 added hunger so you can't just exist indefinitely, and endermen who aggressively stole blocks in that version. Beta 1.6 fixed several fun glitches.
At least Minecraft is generally additive as opposed to mucking up the previously working mechanics.

(This of course is excluding things like the big “Flattening” of data structures that happened around 1.13 or so)

The post-Microsoft meta is that glitches are valid game mechanics. TNT duping has been in the game longer than Notch controlled the game. But some other glitches get fixed.
This goes for most games where glitches end up becoming protected features. Being fun is more important than being correct.
How do you measure fun? People will always rush to that excuse if it's not properly defined. And not everyone finds the same things fun. Especially if you are looking to try and 10x your audience.
Most won’t fix bugs in non-competitive games are things that don’t prevent players from engaging the intended gameplay loop and are unlikely to be encountered randomly. Who cares if you can endlessly pickpocket that one npc in oblivion. No one but the people who want to exploit will ever be affected and why stop them if that’s what they want.

In competitive games unintended mechanics are much more frequently patched but there are plenty of examples that are straight up iconic. Wave dashing in melee, magnum damage in Halo CE, sword cancelling in halo 2, b-hopping and surfing in CS.

And when you get to games like mmos where saving time is of major value glitches are like gifts. I am still mad they patched out logout skips in classic wow.

TNT duping is a good example. It’s basically impossible to accidentally run in to this glitch, but the community has built tons of mechanisms around using it and generally like it.

Patching it out would be more “correct” but serve to only limit user creativity and inventions.

TNT duping is a classic example of how players will optimize the fun out of the game if you give them a chance. Your claim that people won't accidentally run into is not true as it only takes one YouTube tutorial to discover it. Many popular farm designs rely on it so it is not hard to stumble upon it. Remember this is a game where people had to use third party sites to figure out how to discover how to craft anything. I don't think it's fair to discount discovering things on 3rd party sites.
If you’re trying to quantify fun, you’ve already well and truly missed the point.