@coolboymew @rasterman @Rudolf_von_Goldenbaum yeah minecraft is more or less a live service game now, with bugs that have been there for like 5+ years sticking around. it doesn't help that they have to maintain two versions of the game. they really should just axe java development and let people mod bedrock easier. pure manpower and money won't make something better.
personally though i just think minecraft is pretty bloated. you can even see that change in the soundtrack. the game used to be a lot more simple than it is now, a decade after i first played it. i actually kind of feel this way about no man's sky too, i liked that initial version the most xD it's clear that the overwhelmingly popular opinion though is that more stuff is needed, because people go absolutely nuts with mods that add all sorts of crazy shit and they can't play the game without it... to the point that it has kept an older, less optimized version of the game alive lol.
people actually had the same issue with the elytra in tears of the kingdom, where it was like... why ride my horse anywhere at all if i can just build this little fan doo-dad and fly anywhere instead? and of course you're going to do that because it's faster and easier, but all the mood is completely sapped away from it.
i think something that would actually push me to do more in minecraft than the basic shit would be if there were more dedicated dungeons that required some of the new stuff to complete, with unique bosses at the end of them that would drop unique items. stuff you couldn't just spawn in with creative mode. have some crazier world generation. and then maybe some little quests/scripted events that happen if conditions line up, some rarer than others. something like a fusion of minecraft dungeons and infdev/beta i guess lol.
otherwise, all the crap they're adding is just bloat tbh. it's not really a game as much as it is a platform at a certain point, but games like fortnite and roblox have that market down much more and it leaves current minecraft in a weird spot.