So what was everyone's thoughts?
In case anyone didn't see the features announced:
!Combat Trials, New hostile mob (mini wither boss looking thing), More Copper and Tuff varients, New Mob Spawner Type, An automatic crafter !<
Personally I didn't watch it, though I've looked through all that was announced. Honestly not sure how I feel about it. Part of me was really hoping for some work on inventory (like desperately) and they said nothing.
The trials thing seems interesting, though not really my play style so I don't have much to comment on. The copper and Tuff variants are cool but it feels like a feature we should have got a few updates ago. The crafter, I'm not sure how I feel about and am curious what the community thinks. Part of me thinks it's not super "vanilla" as you can automate so much now, and Mojang had expressed how they didn't want that to be an aspect of the game so I'm a bit confused. The way they implemented it and the ways players will have to engineer it to do what they want fit the vanilla feel though imo. That being said some of these features have already existed through modding for years.
I used to be much more of a "vanilla" survival player (some qol mods, similar to something like Hermitcraft) though I have recently started playing a Create focused pack I made. After playing the modded version I have a hard time seeing myself going back to "vanilla". With this latest live, I noticed I already had some features that they announced in my pack. Sort of kills the hype imo, when you have to wait so long for the update.
I like the features overall but I'm disappointed by the mob vote.
Armadillo is cool but I'm not so sure if the dog armor will be...
1st dogs don't have natural regeneration so you need to feed / heal them after they've taken damage.
2nd I think dogs could become incredibly annoying.
Imagine punching an entity / player by mistake having a horde of dogs. Without a way to call them back this feature could not go very well.
And then there will be those that'll make an army of dogs with armor and fuck up everyone else on a server.
And in case that dog armor is too weak, nobody will use it and it'll become a useless item.
Imo dogs as a whole would need an overhaul before giving them armor. Maybe a whistle to make them back off or something and different dog races. That would be the best opportunity to add dog armor / cosmetics.
The crab claw would have been a very useful item that is meant to help you with building but could theoretically even be used in pvp (further range of lava / water placement for example)
Soo the community has voted (or at least those that didn't boycott the vote) and once again there'll probably be players that'll regret what they voted for just like every year. And Mojang will continue to throw 2 out of 3 mobs into the bin for "democracy" and "community interaction" instead of adding them all (with the community voting for their release priority)
I think any of the voted mobs winning would have upset some portion of the community, sorta seems inevitable. Kinda hope they change the way things are done in the future, only if the reason is to make the community less hostile. It also doesn't help they attached features players really want to a vote and that just feels bad.
As for the wolves, I think you're putting too much stock into the features these mobs add, as in the past most mob vote winners have smaller feature additions. For that reason I think the wolf armor is more of an aesthetic addition than a game changing combat focused feature. I think the biggest critique to the wolf armor is that, while not necessarily a huge combat addition it is still a combat centered feature, and Mojang have given the impression they are working to change aspects of combat (combat snapshots). Adding more combat features, will likely make revaluating combat in the future more complicated as there is more to rebalance.
The point I was trying to make was that dog armor can make dogs much more annoying for other players. I know that Mojang doesn't add anything they were not announcing about the dog armor. That's why a bigger building range would have been the better choice imo and could potentially even be used for combat by having a greater placement range for buckets (which could theoretically even improve bucket, cobweb, scaffolding MLGs (if they are still called that way) even tho they are not particularly hard if you know what to do.
And that leaves me wondering if we will ever see the crab again as until now, the Swamp / frogs were the only feature to make it regardless of losing out on the vote.
That being said half a million people signed a partition to make changes to the mob vote or to abolish it completely.
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-mob-vote-put-an-end-to-the-scrapping-of-great-ideas