So what was everyone's thoughts?
In case anyone didn't see the features announced:
!Combat Trials, New hostile mob (mini wither boss looking thing), More Copper and Tuff varients, New Mob Spawner Type, An automatic crafter !<
Personally I didn't watch it, though I've looked through all that was announced. Honestly not sure how I feel about it. Part of me was really hoping for some work on inventory (like desperately) and they said nothing.
The trials thing seems interesting, though not really my play style so I don't have much to comment on. The copper and Tuff variants are cool but it feels like a feature we should have got a few updates ago. The crafter, I'm not sure how I feel about and am curious what the community thinks. Part of me thinks it's not super "vanilla" as you can automate so much now, and Mojang had expressed how they didn't want that to be an aspect of the game so I'm a bit confused. The way they implemented it and the ways players will have to engineer it to do what they want fit the vanilla feel though imo. That being said some of these features have already existed through modding for years.
I used to be much more of a "vanilla" survival player (some qol mods, similar to something like Hermitcraft) though I have recently started playing a Create focused pack I made. After playing the modded version I have a hard time seeing myself going back to "vanilla". With this latest live, I noticed I already had some features that they announced in my pack. Sort of kills the hype imo, when you have to wait so long for the update.
Well, in fairness, I believe it was only ever Jens who said that he never wanted to automate mining or crafting. While he's obviously a big voice on the team, I don't think it was ever the official Mojang position.
Even if it was only jeb making passing comments, or other developers, it still put the community in a place where they didn't think something like an autocrafter would be added. (Especially since jeb was/is the lead developer of the game). In my opinion if the lead dev comments on something, it represents the game too, that's why they have the platform to begin with. There are plenty of posts throughout the community saying they never expect an autocrafter to be added. Whether intentional or not the community was led to these expectations by the developers of the game. I think that either way it's beneficial for them to communicate the thinking behind such a game changing feature.