The Ultimate Goal/Challenge in Minetest

[GreenDimond]

So I have been thinking recently about how the more you play Minetest, the less there is to do, because you have built everything you can (or are too lazy to build more), or maybe played survival but saw no point, etc... The only (almost) new and fresh things are servers, which many people play, are changing constantly, and have fun things to do (most of the time). I noticed recently while playing Minecraft, that Minetest has no Ultimate goal or Challenge. While mods that give you mobs and the "Nether" help with this, they are only slightly contributing to the Ultimate goal, and let's be honest, they're not all that great since there are only a few people to make each mod.
Minecraft on the other hand, has many goals to accomplish and many things to get in your way:

1) The Nether. This Ultimate goal is probably the first users must get to while avoiding the LOADS of monsters awaiting them. It is also difficult to a) Make the portal and b) Prepare to go. Users go to the Nether to collect the necessary materials to be able to get to and activate the End Portal.

2) The End. This is one of the biggest goals users have. Getting to, and slaying the Ender Dragon (which likes to stay well above you) while avoiding the nasty stares of the tall freaks that teleport all around, is a bit difficult, as is getting there in the first place. After doing this, you get boatloads of XP and an egg. Then you can collect soulsand to spawn the oh so evil, Wither Boss.

3) Defeating the Wither Boss. This thing is a 3-headed skeleton monster that spits exploding balls at your glorious face and armor. When killed, it gives you a nether star(s). I have no idea what the shiny little star does, but I am fairly sure it is useful.

4) The Aether. No idea what's there. Probably horrifying.
[Note: I finished this topic, previewed it, but when I tried to go back, well, it cut it off here :| so the rest is shortened :P There was originally stuff about the overworld, but we all know what's there.]

Minecraft is played and played more and more because it's fresh and new and exciting.

So, what is the Ultimate goal of Minetest? Is there any? Sure, mods help, but they aren't that...great. The most "challenging" it gets is lava burns you, water drowns you, and cliffs make you drop a great distance. The most interesting it gets is on servers with bunches of people with occasional new things. But roleplay gets old and survival isn't really, survival. What is the Ultimate goal?

The 2 BIG Questions:
What is the Ultimate goal and/or Challenge in Minetest?
If there aren't any, why not?

Opinions???

Note: Please correct me if my Minecraft terminology is incorrect.

[burli]

Simple answer: Minetest is not Minecraft.

I agree that Minetest needs some more challenge, but I don't think that we need an ultimate goal

[solars]

...because you have built everything you can...

No way!!!!!!!
There can't be enough time to build that!

When I think, what I want to build, if i had more time to do it!

And I think, the ultimate Goal of Minetest is to build fantastic things with it. :)

[TumeniNodes]

Well, Minecraft has to remain interesting..., because people pay for it, and would not be too happy if it were not interesting, and ever changing.
Minetest is free of cost, open source, community driven / supported, and as interesting and fun as you want it to be. If you run out of fun..., just create a mod to add some new fun ; )
Even with their similarities..., they are two very different entities

[TumeniNodes]

...because you have built everything you can...

No way!!!!!!!
There can't be enough time to build that!

When I think, what I want to build, if i had more time to do it!

And I think, the ultimate Goal of Minetest is to build fantastic things with it. :)

I don't know solars..., I think you may be just about there... haha :D

[duane]

The ultimate goal... to select every single mod at the same time... and not have your computer crash.

[yyt16384]

Even with a ultimate goal people can still feel boring after finishing it.

Any game with finite content will eventually get boring. You will either need to make goals for yourself, or add procedural generation to the game.

[asanetargoss]

An ultimate goal need not be a boss fight, but any sort of concrete goal that doesn't degenerate into building giant walls of inert material or repetitively grinding for hours is welcome by me. Upgrading your gear to explore a cave filled with poisonous gas, building a machine to produce fuel for an unstable dimensional portal... the possibilities are vast.

Mods which are opinionated are more likely to be perceived as having an ultimate goal. By "opinionated," I mean that the developer(s) have a preconceived notion of how the mod should be played. However, such mods need good documentation to maximize enjoyment. Poor documention can lead to player frustration and (in the case of more adventure/story-driven mods) unnecessary spoilers.

[rubenwardy]

An ultimate goal need not be a boss fight, but any sort of concrete goal that doesn't degenerate into building giant walls of inert material or repetitively grinding for hours is welcome by me. Upgrading your gear to explore a cave filled with poisonous gas, building a machine to produce fuel for an unstable dimensional portal... the possibilities are vast.

+1

A challenge and some progression is much more important than an end goal. In vanilla form, there isn't much progression other than scaling the tool/material hierarchy.

Mods which are opinionated are more likely to be perceived as having an ultimate goal. By "opinionated," I mean that the developer(s) have a preconceived notion of how the mod should be played. However, such mods need good documentation to maximize enjoyment. Poor documention can lead to player frustration and (in the case of more adventure/story-driven mods) unnecessary spoilers.

Finding cool things - exploration - is a big part of many games.

[GreenDimond]

Finding cool things - exploration - is a big part of many games.

Yes, this is defiantly a goal or challenge that is interesting, but does Minetest really have that? Nyan Cats (which I believe would be closest to that) are insanely difficult to find and serve no purpose other that decoration.

[cheapie]

I tend to play on mostly creative servers, so for me, the "end goal" is to have a city that's as "cool" and realistic as possible. There's always something that can be done to make it better, so there's always something to do.

Similarly, there's always some kind of mod that hasn't been made yet, but would be cool and/or useful, so that's what keeps me busy modding.

[ptvirgo]

Cool questions! I bet this is the same kind of thinking you see behind those rare, low-budget indie films that turn out to be better than anything the big-budget producers can come up with.

Some ideas that might be fun to play with:

- Variations on scarcity / abundance
- Save the beast / myth-sized creatures
- Find the Significant Thing
- Character and story inspired games

Scarcity / Abundance:

A largely desert planet, with maybe a few mild mods so that it is possible for dirt and water to appear if people cultivate (but not simply craft) things just right. Could do the same with an ice-planet too. Or maybe there is too much of something - like jungle trees are growing out of control and reclaiming the space is difficult.

Beasts:

It'd be fun to see something like that with further inspiration from a book, like Dune. Suppose there were a very small number of giant Sandworms - big enough to excavate massive tunnels and be un-killable for game purposes, but also rare enough that just finding one or two in the game-world would be hard. Maybe it's also rewarding because they leave behind drops from all the non-stone nodes they eat.

Maybe you don't like Dune. Maybe it's an old school Chinese dragon the size of a mountain, and he'll give you a dragon scale if you fill a pool of lava for him to drink.

Significant Thing:

Deliver The One Ring to Mount Doom. Or the last dragon egg has gone missing, and the dragons will go extinct if someone can't find and return it. Or maybe all the water is disappearing because the Sandworms are burying it with sand, but they can't be killed, so ... ?

Character and storyline based:

Probably really complicated to do this in a Minetest game, but in principle it should be possible to set up any kind of character or resource based conflict, constrain players from just killing each other and either get or create a storyline around it. If I were pursuing this I'd be tempted to find people who are doing interesting things with story-driven text adventures for good.

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For goals outside the game: I found Minetest because I was messing around with the Raspberry PI's programmable version of Minecraft. Development on that has stopped, so I went looking for an Open-source variant. I know Minetest is developed primarily for modders, it would be really cool to see it developed with the eye toward teaching people how to be better programmers, artists, storytellers, etc.