Minecraft: Xbox One Edition Ryview - Bigger Maps without Bigger Maps

Minecraft: Xbox One Edition, by Mojang.

[1]

Before the Xbox One Edition came out, there was quite a bit of speculation about how the new game would different from the previous generation's console version. Would there be a big update? Would it be exactly the same? Would the chickens still look like ducks?

All meaningful questions, and in the end of the day, we were given a nearly identical game with some small scale visual and background improvements that made the game smoother and more enjoyable. A much wider view gave a better feeling to the scope of the world, and the now constant autosaving definitely improved the specter of lost games due to freezing (a pain I know all too well).

But the biggest change is that the map size was drastically increased. If I'm not mistake, it's some stupid number like 25 times bigger, or something (or so the internet would have me believe). I haven't gone to the edge of my seed yet. But unfortunately, this new feature brought with it a horrible downside. See, on the PC you're able to zoom out your player map so you can see a bigger area. You can't do that on the Xbox. So, even though your land is now several times bigger, you can't see the whole thing on your map. And you can't zoom the map out. So you're force to create multiple maps.

Seriously.

Yeah, this is much better than zoom... [2]

I understand that it might not be built in yet, but that should have been caught in early development. "Hey, let's increase the size of the area the players can be in, but let's not increase their reference map size, because screw 'em." That's basically the only way that meeting could have gone (I'm assuming they had a meeting about it).

And honestly, given that this new feature is pretty much the defining feature of the new version, I'm a little perturbed.

And I'm also a little frustrated with my starting world, because I apparently picked one where only God himself knows where the friggin' stronghold is (or strongholds, depending on if they increased the number due to the increased map size, and I can't find that information anywhere online).

"Let's hide it in one corner of the now huge map that almost impossible to fully explore in under a month" [3]

I'm not ryviewing this new version because it's basically the same as the old one, and you read my ryview of the Xbox 360 edition here. It's still the same awesome game, and it has some good improvements, but some of the inconsistencies need to get patched fast or I'm going to lose all interest and just spend all my time playing Destiny.

So all in all, the Xbox One edition has been a whole lot of frustration so far. But hey, at least now I have a reason to fill an entire chest full of cobblestone. That was really missing from my life before...


Until next time,

Ryan




Images as sourced

[1] http://cdn.gamerfuzion.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/minecraft-xbox-one-game-box.jpg
[2] http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/minecraft.gamepedia.com/thumb/3/3f/9mapsetx4.png/320px-9mapsetx4.png?version=7bb6c730d53860db81a90faa303967f7
[3] http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/minecraft.gamepedia.com/thumb/5/50/StrongholdRoomUnkown.png/800px-StrongholdRoomUnkown.png?version=12df154171bee2e91ba3175c00ca6df5