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I have sooo many opinions about this! Firstly let me say thank you for your work and for continuing this great game!


Survival

I typically don't want to play a survival game, but rather an adventure game. I tolerate survival if the adventure is good. So mix the two. If I'm sitting at home, I should be safe, and be able to build with stone, wood, and perhaps stucco. However, if I want gold, marble, or other exotic materials I'm going to have to brave the outdoors, which get more dangerous the further I adventure. When I get 5 tiles away from the base and have the exhilaration of adventure, I'm equally gripped with the fear of losing everything.

Inventory

I've never heard anyone say they love spending time sorting and managing their inventory. However there is still a dynamic it can have in a game. Instead of making inventory management compulsory, make it a risk. Everything I have on my person is left on my corpse when I die, and I'll have to adventure back out there to get it back. Therefore if I have lots of loot on my back, I'm going to be motivated to drop off at base and adventure out again.

Farming

Superfluous Sand hits farming versus automation really well. I don't want a Factorio. However, when I play Minecraft, I tend to try to automate everything. Why? Because after beating down 500 trees, it gets a little tiring. Also since I never liked the food mechanic, automating a farm has high value. However, I play for adventure (which Minecraft does poorly) and base building, which Minecraft knocks out of the park. I don't play Minecraft because I enjoy sorting inventory, eating food, or living in fear of creepers in a well-lit town full of life.

Adventure

This part IMO is the hardest. Adventure isn't about exploring N+1 procedurally-generated caves. It's about CONTENT. It's about going one tile further into the danger, hoping to see some new enemy, material, or story that I've never seen before. Recoloring a sprite doesn't make it new, either. It should have its own AI, and its own backstory. And above all, when I finally kill them I really hope to see new loot. As you see, adventure is all about content. 

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is the only reason that some games were ever successful, because the content was very limited. It seems like multiplayer can boost your game's publicity, but also drastically raises the difficulty curve of maintenance. I would recommend the Farmville approach. Make one of the tiles public. Anyone can visit my home tile, and interact with it. Their interactions are private (they can't see me and I can't see them). Their interactions cannot negatively affect my town (they can't take my things). However, they can drop off letters or goods if they want to help me out. Now my aspiration is to have a base that other people will see and drool over. 

Base Defense

Base defense is like industrialization. It's not fun in its own right, but when it overcomes a massive nuisance, it can be very satisfying. If my base gets attacked and destroyed by mobs every night, and I finally make an automated-turret perimeter that ends the annoyance once and for all, it's like finally getting rid of an itch or pain after hours of trying. The itch or pain wasn't the positive interaction. My recommendation would be to keep the home tile safe, but allow the player to own an additional home tile outside of the base. Perhaps to extend adventures a little further by not running out of gas. However, the forward-deployed base runs major risk of attack, and setting up a perimeter, while not compulsory, can have a major advantage. 

I agree with all of these things! Adventure is the hardest part because it takes time to do well.