I think the current dev cycle is harming hype for the game. The way snapshots work, there’s no surprises in the updates anymore, and like big creators do whole series in the snapshots before they even come out. There is a community issue of going into an update with it feeling “solved” unless you just blanket avoid update videos. Like when we get it on our server, I’m gonna speedrun get 2 pale logs, 1 sapling, and a creaking heart, get them into an ender chest, and the farm I think will work best is essentially already designed. There’s small hype as snapshots roll out but on the big day…few people play the new release (because like Doc said in his video today… everyone waits for mods) and most people have already experienced most of it via snapshot streamers. It feels like this dev cadence is destroying any hype for releases, and by making more releases, it’s putting strain on volunteers.

I don’t know a fix; the snapshot system is a great feedback mechanism but by putting the game out there nearly in full it removes hype. Also, the snapshots should give mod developers time to build, but it isn’t panning out that way. Like Bundles and armadillos weren’t gonna get more players to play/come back to the game, and the people already playing that use mods didn’t upgrade to it. There’s a very narrow subset of people who that update benefitted, but for a lot of volunteer devs it put a ton of work on their plates.

I think one major thing they could do is limit datapack and resourcepack revisions to 1.x releases, and not 1.x.y releases. As they put more functionality in datapacks to replace mods (for example, we’re done with LambDynamicLights over a datapack) the fact that there are 4 major pack versions in the 1.20.x cycle and 3 in the 1.21.x cycle is nuts. I think all pack format changes (that are not bug fix) should be held behind experimental. I also think the actual feature release that impacts tags and resource packs (like new mobs and items) really should be in 1.x releases.

I would prefer

1. Major changes to be locked to major 1.x version updates and limited to 2x/year
2. Datapack and resource pack changes to be locked to the 1.x cycle
3. Things in drops should be locked to experimental even if feature complete until the next 1.x
4. 1.x.y should be non DP/RP changing updates (mechanic refinement for example like the minecart change or changing loot tables) and anything outside of that should be experimental toggle
5. Minecraft should at a minimum refine the datapack format to enable storing variables in a format other than the scoreboard, and to support custom block and entity models, as it allows the replacement of a lot of mod functions with datapacks, and datapacks have a lower bar to entry to maintain and develop (they require no compilation).