My Opinions

[0kk0]

Firstly, and without doubt, I believe that Minetest 0.4.15 is the BEST ever online game that has been created. It exceeded my expectations (Minecraft but free) a bazillion times and is great. As an added bonus, Minetest isn't run by a multinational corporation (like Microsoft) who just makes the game for profit and isn't clouded by malicious corporate fog.

Secondly, at least for my purposes, Minetest has proven to be amazing for building structures. There's no obstacles in the way, no hassles, and no complexities: it's a sandbox where one's ideas can flow directly in the game!

Thirdly, Minetest works perfectly on my operating system, Elementary OS, which is based off of Ubuntu and the Linux kernel. Though my Linux operating system is quite obscure, Minetest works without any problems, and though the download was outdated (0.4.13), it updated smoothly and without problems!

Fourthly, Minetest acts like an Alpha. There is the occassional glitch, but otherwise, it works, and any glitches that do happen tend to not interfere with anything. The only noticeable glitch I had was that when (a lot of) lava fell from tall heights and had to fall directly downwards since it fell from a cliff, the lava would fall a couple blocks, and then freeze in its place. The topmost (blocks of) lava blocks would then act like lava sources. However, this glitch was only encountered in 0.4.13, and I hope it's fixed by now!

Lastly, Minetest is a very matured game. The only suggestion I would have is create some options for generating a world apart from inputting a world seed. This would help for players to pick certain options that would allow them to create the world with attributes they want. Also, when starting out, I was moderately discouraged by the lack of a "guide," so to speak, of Minetest. I couldn't exactly find one. It would be very helpful if someone could create such a guide that would guide a newcomer to Minetest through all of the controls, features, and settings. The controls, features, and settings of the game were the parts I had the most trouble with.

[firefox]

The only suggestion I would have is create some options for generating a world apart from inputting a world seed. This would help for players to pick certain options that would allow them to create the world with attributes they want.

well, the naming of the different map generators just started to get a little creative with this release... (or not :P )

v6 is the old mapgen that doesn't support customized biomes.
it has really simple terrain shapes and only generates grass, desert and snow.

the other mapgens only define the terrain shape, the biomes are defined by the game mods.
to get a specific world theme (like apocalypse or ice age) you can use a mod that replaces the default biomes with custom ones.

the Valleys mapgen creates smooth terrain shapes with hills and valleys.
spiky mountains appear rarely and are more plateau-ish.
also there are rivers with river water.

v5 tends to make very surrealistic terrain.
mountains are high and strangely deformed as if the landscape was build from the soap foam in a bath tub :P

v7 is the middle way between the crazy v5 and the "boring" Valleys.
terrain is mostly realistic but you can also find some nice and interesting shapes like arches and towers.

the "v" mapgens were developed with the default game, so they never had names, but maybe they will get some in the future. Valleys was originally an external mod, so it had a proper and appealing name.

[fishyWET]

the "v" mapgens were developed with the default game, so they never had names, but maybe they will get some in the future.

"v" actually stands for "version", so v5 is version 5 and so on.
With that, v5 is the actually the oldest mapgen minetest has, which as firefox stated, is just pure "surrealistic"

Which was why it was replaced by v6, which generated a much more realistic terrain.

Valleys mapgen is certainly not "boring", one of its main features that other mapgens don't have is the rivers, which can generate above/below sea level, it is really fun to explore them sometimes :3

I was moderately discouraged by the lack of a "guide," so to speak, of Minetest. I couldn't exactly find one.

Do a quick search around :)
There are various guides for beginners, such as the tutorial subgame by Wuzzy.
Or even consider watching some minetest let's plays, which might hopefully help to give a clue of how things works :)

The topmost (blocks of) lava blocks would then act like lava sources

Those are intended, there are lava source blocks, which contrary to lava flowing blocks have a more static animation. Remove them/ place some block on them and the whole lava mess should disappear :)

The only suggestion I would have is create some options for generating a world apart from inputting a world seed.

There are various options you can use, apart form v5,v6,v7
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/blob/master/minetest.conf.example#L1055
flat gives a flat world, fractal gives a symmetrical world while singlenode provides a totally empty world.
Alternatively, you could seek out mapgen mods such as ethereal, caverealms, or any of paramat's mods which provides really interesting and amazing mapgens.
It also isn't too hard to create some mapgens of your own, minetest does provide a simple lua API for making your own biomes, of which is used in mods like ethereal.
http://dev.minetest.net/minetest.register_biome / https://github.com/minetest/minetest/blob/master/doc/lua_api.txt#L3947-L4077

EDIT: also welcome to the minetest forums :)

[Gael de Sailly]

Hi 0kk0, welcome.

The only suggestion I would have is create some options for generating a world apart from inputting a world seed. This would help for players to pick certain options that would allow them to create the world with attributes they want.

The mapgen has many parameters, nearly all is changeable, but these parameters are very obscure. They need to be changed to more understandable ones.

Also, when starting out, I was moderately discouraged by the lack of a "guide," so to speak, of Minetest. I couldn't exactly find one. It would be very helpful if someone could create such a guide that would guide a newcomer to Minetest through all of the controls, features, and settings. The controls, features, and settings of the game were the parts I had the most trouble with.

When I started playing Minetest in 2013, I felt the same. Now there is some tutorials, many people proposed to include Wuzzy's Tutorial into Minetest, but the discussion wasn't constructive. Some people, especially experienced players, won't hear anything about what would help new players.
You can also try sofar's Tutor. I've not tried it but I trust a lot his work.