The game is at most 25% about combat. The game's focus is on (who would have guessed) mining and crafting. Meaning exploring and building.
I'm not saying your complaints are completely invalid but they are misguided. You don't buy Pokemon for a fast paced action game and rate it poorly because you didn't get what you are looking for.
I feel like you didn't read my entire post, but I'll give you the benefit of doubt. I address the fact that the thing I liked the most was adventuring and finding new things, but there aren't many things to mine, nor craft. You get the same basics. Also you say that I rate it poorly because I didn't get what I was looking for, but as I said I didn't get what I was PROMISED. Pokemon never promised me that it was going to be fast paced and action-y, but Minecraft did say there would be so much more to it, and when I pay money to help the game get completed I didn't get what I was promised.
It's like when you pay someone to build you a deck for your house and what you get is a couple of palettes tied together. Combat was the least of my worries. When you have a vast world and only so much to do in it gets pretty stale fast. At least I hope Starbound will have the hype back it up.
I think you'll find a dirt house is very bad, protection wise. I assume you never played the game.
This game isn't based off of combat. I'm going to complain about the storyline in TF2, because it sucks. Well it was made just to explain some questions and stuff, not as a centerpoint of the game.
There are tons of craftable items, what?
Yes, exploring is fun, but did you ever make a goal for yourself and try to achieve it?
As for mods, are you saying DayZ is a cop-out to make Arma II more fun? Wait, MC isn't advertised as that? I think you'll find that by asking people around, most will say that a big part of MC is the mods. As for the patching, if a patch to any game comes out, it breaks mods and texture packs and stuff.
If you're in MC, out in the middle of night, and you don't feel like you NEED to survive, then somethings wrong.
You are supposed to go inhabit it. That's like saying Sim City is bad because the world starts empty.
Yeah we get it Java is bad. Whatever, it works.
I actually like the storyline and world built for TF2, so I don't get why that was brought up. As for ARMAII, no I'm not saying the mod is bad, but also that ARMAII can stand alone as it's own game as it is more complete, even if it can be really silly. Yes, I agree that mods can be a great thing for a game and I really love the fact that the community does such things, but the game feels more like you have to get mods in order for there to be more depth to the mediocre quality of vanilla minecraft. I wanted it to be a solid game and mods would have just been icing on the cake. Instead it's like minecraft is flower and everything else is the eggs, sugar, baking soda, icing, etc.
All I pretty much did was adventure and I set out goals. I tried to find out how to navigate the prerendered caves of the world and look for all the dungeons I could. Sure I'd find the stuff but the treasure that would be yielded was less than stellar. I had found what I was looking for, and the reward of my labor was a couple of items that really didn't do much for me. In the end all I did was adventure as there wasn't much else to do when I've already had whole cities built.
Taking all the craft-able items and listing them off you get around 200 items that can be made. This includes the various steps and blocks you ca make. I feel like there should be around 200-300 craft-able items alone, plus building materials on top of the 200-300 whatever. Even if the use is fairly useless or purely cosmetic, how can you furnish a house without many things?
Now the topic of feeling like I need to survive is really a subjective issue. I can understand that people really want to feel like they are immersed in the world and that survival is most definitely imperative, but in reality if night falls you can just dig a hole and sit in it all night and be perfectly fine, but yes you don't have to play the game that way. Sure it would be one of the most effective things you can do on short notice, but it doesn't mean you have to, yet you still can. At the same time in the middle of the night I really am not scared of the enemies as they are easily kite-able and can be killed or led into obstacles fairly easily. I could out play the enemies easily, not that the game should be any more difficult, but I would like more varied attack patterns and mob variety.
As for Simcity, I find that to be a fine game as well as the point is to build the city, and watch as things play out which was really interesting. When you've built up a world in minecraft as wait to see what plays out... well, nothing really happens. There aren't others living in your towns, there aren't problems that you have to address that are nothing more than acts of god. No budget to balance, nothing but a ghost town and the enemies that show up when the sun goes down. Like a blocky I Am Legend.
In the end though, I'm not saying people can't like the game, and I guess I can see why people would like to play multiplayer legos, but because of the way the game is it lacks to the imagination. Minecraft is incredibly shallow, which doesn't mean that it's awful, but when I was promised more depth and saw little to no results over the years of development I was done. I reget my use of money, and didn't get what was promised. Not only was the depth lacking, I was also promised when I bought in alpha I would get all versions released after for free, but when I'd have to pay for phone/xbox/whatever versions despite buying into empty promises the morale is low.
I'm not telling anyone to stop enjoying the game, but I have many grievances that I'm probably pretty sure am not the only one that feels this way, but my response was to just give up and be filled with regret, so if anyone can still get enjoyment out of this sub-par product I salute them. You are a stronger individual than I, but I will also not let myself be fooled again and hastily purchase any games with large promises with cash that I'm not ready to lose.
That being said, Happy Merchant Notch is a douche bag and I wish misfortune upon him.