What makes a mod vanilla style?

Unsure of what vanilla+ means anymore? Interested in Mojang's design principles? Or just looking for some hot takes on Minecraft? You will find all of these in this video.

0:00 Introduction
0:22 "Vanilla+" mods
1:23 Mojang's design principles
1:48 Ethics
2:56 One block at a time
4:43 Bad things happen...
6:30 Avoid unbreakable blocks
8:06 Iconic Features
10:00 Mods complementing vanilla
12:18 Conclusion

[MinecraftIdeasAcademy]

Mods shown in the video:

Mobs attempt parkour (fabric only)
Spiders 2.0
Ice and Fire
Savage and Ravage
Nether Extension
Upgrade Aquatic
And my own personal testing mod

[MrSeal-oyfu]

An enderman once spawned into my red stone contraption, stole a granite block with red stone on it and crashed my entire system, leaving me with no clue of what had happened.
The lesson of this should be to always light up your closed off systems or place red stone on unnatural blocks

[champagnelewis]

A friend of mine who composts irl is so salty that the Minecraft poisonous potatoes are non-compostable, citing that bad potatoes irl are perfectly good for composting.

[bluehairedemon]

I think there should be a possibillty to put 9 poisonous potatoes in a crafting table to craft a super poisonous potato
It also has no functionallity

[Darthbuddy]

Minecraft: we should keep things fair to the player

Terraria: *The air is getting colder around you*

[zoeytheegoist]

I look forward to your 3 hour video essay about the mystery of the poisonous potato.

[greysoncrowe]

One system I hope mojang works on I'd the environmental relationship between mobs, like how piglins only hunt hoglins when they feel hungry. They could expand it in many ways, for example, we can see ocelots hunt creepers, but the creeper runs away, rather than exploding, to explain why creepers are afraid of cats (this is also a feature in MCD). Or axolotls occasionally swimming to the surface to hunt fish, rather than being the savages the snapshots currently depict them as

[stirlingclark]

"...As long as the functionality is simple and intuitive"

Everyone: *stares at the redstone comparator*

[jacobnorris]

I think one design philosophy that Mojang likely follows is: No new feature should overshadow preexisting mechanics. They can be direct upgrades to old mechanics (diamond pickaxe -> netherite pickaxe), but they shouldn't be a new mechanic that replaces an old one. Like pipelines usually being objectively better hoppers.

[distendedmist]

In my opinion, a mod is vanilla when it doesn't provide "one block" solutions to everything, fits in with vanilla's art style, and not be unnecessarily over complicated.
However I don't play mods because they are vanilla, I play them to have fun so it doesn't really matter for me.

[Jolmex]

I remember when poisonous potatoes looked just like regular potatoes. I’d always trick my friends into eating them by renaming them “Potato”

[dovahfruit]

"We cant add sharks because we cant make hostile mobs based on real animals!"

Mojang adding polar bears which are miles more deadly and making them neutral:

[valgorie]

I found Jeb's Game Design book online. Here was everything it said. First there is the introduction and talks about the inspirations behind Minecraft, then it talks about what makes Minecraft great. Minecraft is exploration, adventure, creativity, engineering, persistent, limitless, scary, simple, ridiculous and multiverse. Then it gets to the design principles. Here they are:
1. One Block At A Time! - This was in this video. You can only directly interact with one block at a time, so no templates or 3x3 mining.
2. There Is No Steve Or Alex - They recommend players make their own skin and do not want Steve or Alex in spinoff projects or storylines, they they can be in merchandise.
3. Not Quite An RPG - The player should not develop skills overtime like in a role playing game. Experience should instead be used for things like enchanting etc.
4. Bad Things Happen... - This was the other in this video. All bad things should technically be the player's fault.
5. New Features Should Be Respectful Of Existing Ones - New features should balance the game, not simply devalue other parts of the same.
6. Items Should Be Multi-Purpose - Items are better if they have multiple uses.
7. It's Up To The Player To Build The World - Mobs shouldn't really be able to build significant things. So no villagers building structures.
8. You Are Not Wearing A Hud - Rely as little as possible on text messages for explanation of things.
9. Finding Things Is Fun, Searching For Them Is Not - Players shouldn't have an incredibly hard time searching for new features if there is no clear way to find them.
10. Real-Life Animals Should Be Friendly - Real animals should not be hostile.
11. Hostile Mobs Should Be Unique - To give Minecraft more of a mythology of its own, avoid adding cliched fantasy mobs like unicorns and minotaurs.
Mobs Need Personality - Give the mobs interesting personalities.
12. Human Characters Are Human Beings - Do not add mobs that look like players.
13. No Blood, No Gore - Do not add blood or gore to Minecraft.
14. Keep It Vanilla - Minecraft should expand in all directions, rather than just adding a bunch of updates that add the same kind of content.
15. No Item Is Truly Unique - Don't give items names that imply it is the one and only of its kind.
16. Expand The Mysteries - Minecraft makes you wonder a lot.
17. Gender Neutrality Is A Core Principle - Mobs should be genderless.
18. Death Is Real - Have things with a Hardcore mode mind. So do not have an achievement for dying spectacularly.
19. Bugs Are Not Features - Do whatever is takes to remove glitches, even if players like them.
20. Minecraft Is Not An Editor - Do not let game rules take away people's fun.
Last, the book goes through some anecdotes.

[Horystar]

I think Biome O'Plenty, which "only" added a humongous amount of biomes, was actually one of the most vanilla-like mods, since it didn't make the game feel unnatural.

[martinshoosterman]

The first time I saw an underwater temple I thought to my self: Hah! I don't need to waste my time going through the maze like I would in any other game, this is minecraft, I'll just mine right through the top.

Then i brought a cow out into the middle of the ocean on a lead, filled a bunch of buckets of milk, and mined right through.

At the time I felt like I had outsmarted mojang, but now I just realised that mojangs intention has always been that players should be able to play the game however they want. They made an intentional way of interacting with the temple, but didn't make it too strict because if people wanted to find a way around it, they should be allowed to.


I think that is a really awesome design philosophy that some other game developers should consider a bit ***cough cough, bungie***

[sleepersabovus]

Regarding creepers, I'd change them to act more like tnt (drop 100% of blocks destroyed). Tnt is something the player can control, unlike creepers. I absolutely despise the idea of permanently losing items to something you cannot control.

[Crossark]

I do think Minecraft would be much less of a standout title if it had been designed with this ideology from the get-go, but I think it’s a good way to go about adding new features in general. That said, part of the benefit of well-defined rules is knowing how and when to break them skillfully to make for a better experience. Hopefully, when a genuinely amazing idea comes across Mojang’s desk, they don’t dismiss it out-of-hand because it rides the line (or steps a toe across it).

[Hazearil]

The "One Block at a Time" principle is what also made Thaumcraft's Axe of the Stream a good tool; it was made to chop entire trees easily, but instead of breaking all logs at once, if you broke a log, it scanned the connected log, and instead broke the log the furthest away from you. A tree with 10 logs meant you just had to break the same log 10 times.

[kryptgmd]

Everyone talking about how useless the poisonous potato is when I literally just ate one today for the balanced diet advancement.

[notjerrythejerryatall]

Mojang: "Avoid making things that are impossible to avoid."

RLcraft: " *n o* "