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I got the itch to play some CTMs and decided to give this a try after watching Rockenroll4eva play a bit and seeing that it was selected for realms.

I had to use wiki a few times since I haven't played Minecraft in 2 years

• What do shulker boxes do?
• What does the totem do?
• Has the method of collecting reeds change? (I had originally entered Aurora Valley from the monument side and didn't see the sign about reeds being cosmetic)
• What changed with brewing? (They didn't need blaze powder to power them before)

General notes

• There are more general notes scattered in the area specific notes below but here are some that I can think of right now.
• I basically used Tune of Vitality from the moment I got it until the end of the map. It performed better than a Sharpness 4 Diamond Sword (2-3 swings to kill zombies) but the record had the benefit of faster attacks and unlimited durability. Additionally, swords lost their ability to block (not your fault) but it definitely made swords less appealing compared to the unlimited durability weapon in older CTMs
• Dealing with ghasts were a lot more difficult than I remember. It might just have to do with the fact that their spawners no longer showed a giant ghast inside of it, meaning I had less warning before they spawn and sometimes it was harder to find their spawners.
• I enjoyed how the bookshelves for enchants were slowly rolled out, but I did have a lot of enchanted books and no anvil for probably way too long. I'd recommend placing a few damaged anvils near chests with enchanted books early on.
• It was definitely more fun to explore and find loot near the beginning than at the end. I wasn’t really wanting anything at the end and none of the special items, armor, or weapons were particularly compelling
• You often use coloured glass to guide the player towards the wool (such as making the stair into the giant spider in Chillblast Pit out of blue glass) and sometimes use emerald ore and blocks to guide the player towards the hidden emeralds. However, your use of this isn't consistent and sometimes it throws me off.

Winterbound

• Great introduction to the general difficulty level of the map
• Also liked how the restricted cobble indicated the the player that resources will be relatively scarce
• I think it would be unlikely for users to have no armor by the time they hit the curse of the binding trap. I would say sticking this near the entrance of the Pink wool dungeon would be better (maybe only hit them with one piece?) In either case, I liked the idea of this trap

Intersection 1

• I like the hidden chest here. Definitely a good hint to the player that there will be more goodies hidden behind walls throughout the map
• I followed the signs and tackled the areas based on the emerald numbers, which I'm sure is what you intended
• Love the teleportation hallways, but I definitely abused them whenever I could to despawn enemies after a torch run. Not sure how you could dissuade players from doing this too often

Morrow Cavern

• I had to check the biome and the area a few times to make sure that the place was secure. Perhaps a sign from the map creator would've put me at ease
• One of the things that I love about this map is how waterfalls almost always led to something or some place
• Tune of Virtue was my main melee weapon until I got the Tune of Vitality.
• As mentioned above, the shortcut to Aurora Valley is unmissable and would normally be how the player first enters the area, so keep that in mind

Aurora Valley

• I must be blind but I just couldn't see the emerald behind the waterfall here. I felt so silly for missing it when I finally saw it after beating the map and flying around in creative
• To that note, I spent way too long exploring the destroyed cabins near the main entrance, expecting some loot or an emerald. This is probably because the way the emeralds were numbered led me to believe that the one I was missing as closer to the entrance
• Got my first death here trying to get an ender pearl and a creeper snuck into my shelter and blew it up, letting the enderman in to wreck my face (I only died three times throughout the map)
• I fell for the sand trap hook, line, and sinker but I somehow managed to hop my way out without having a single creeper explode. I was very tempted to convert this trap into a creeper grinder but I was too lazy.
• Wool was well indicated, didn't miss it
• I climbed to the top of the tree and noticed that I was at the same height as the aurora and bridged my way there. Was disappointed that there was nothing of note there.

The Deep Dark Dungeon

• I totally didn't get the fact that this was a new area separate from the previous area and when I figured that out, I thought that this was the path to the next intersection and not a standalone dungeon that was only accessible from one place. I don't think there is any need to make this easier to understand, just thought it was funny.
• That said, I've always been a fan of using the Title command to put the name of the area front and center to the player when they enter an area. It just has this nice Zelda-esque feel to it whenever I see it
• I like the "special" spawner design. Seeing this over and over definitely helped identify them again in the final dungeon when they were buried in the ground.
• Not sure how you could've made the wall more obvious, but I definitely didn't think about digging it the first couple of times I passed by the wall
• I ended up building my first and only grinder here for the skeleton spawner near the Tune of Affray as I was low on arrows for the first few dungeons.

Chillblast Mines

• The only thing that I used swords for during this map was webslashing...and that was when water wasn't feasible. That said, I would've liked a complete anti-spider item (Efficiency for web slashing and Bane for spider killing)
• I appreciated the journals here, as they hinted me to iron. I would've liked to see just a bit more world building in the map in general to tie all the areas together, but I can understand if that's not your thing
• The creepers near the wool gave me my second (of three!) deaths in this map. Took the fall damage and then more explosion dropping from above. Surprisingly, despite creepers blowing up after my death my items didn't get destroyed. Was I lucky or was this command block wizardry?
• Flying through the map after beating it, I'm surprised I actually missed the whole area with the golden set of tools/weapons
• I love how you strategically put coal and wood all over your maps. I've never needed to leave an area to restock on torches. Also, mining coal blocks instead of individual coal is a godsend
• The orehead special mobs were memorable just because of their look and placement near desirable resources. However, I never felt threatened by any of the special mobs, nor did they introduce any interesting combat scenarios to me. Though some were used as mini-bosses in some areas, I think they could've packed more oomph both in terms of challenge and novelty.
• I was really expecting primed TNT all over the place and, after not finding any for a long time, you finally surprised me with the planet stuffed with TNT later on So good job lulling me into complacency there
• It's a good thing that I read the journal and wanted to find the iron in this area, otherwise I might've left after collecting the first wool and not bother to explore further...meaning I would have missed Chillblast Pit

Chillblast Pit

• I abused the teleporting hallway so much here. I would do a torch run and then teleport back and forth to despawn mobs. It was just too easy and tempting
• I tackled the web pit by dropping 10+ streams of water to use as safety nets and quick escape routes. The water also pushed all the mobs at the bottom to the edge so that I was safe even if I got knocked down to the bottom
• I'd suggest hovering some, if not all, of the webs at the bottom 1 block above ground so that water wouldn't just get rid of it all...unless you want to keep the level of difficulty as is
• I was surprised that the emerald wasn't at the bottom. I think the main reason I kept looking at the bottom for the emerald was because I didn't find anything at all. I suppose a small reward chest at the bottom would've been nice.
• The spawners at the bottom were a bit of a challenge to deal with, but I used the TNT supplied in Chillblast Mines to deal with it, which I felt was probably the intended solution

Intersection 2

• I knew from finding reward chests in Intersection 1 and 3 that there was probably a bonus chest here but I just couldn't find it. Going straight up was probably too much of an ask for the player without any hint or indicator. Perhaps bring the chest down a bit so that the player can just barely see it through the glass?

Laminar Labs

• Love the look of this place. I also liked the idea that it's built around a mob sorting system. I would've liked to see gameplay derived from the theme of the area. Maybe a pipe burst somewhere and it just rains mobs down on the player?
• The emerald behind the glass hinting towards a hidden emerald was perfect and made me feel smart for seeing it. Wasn't too obvious or too subtle.
• I saved a witch spawner for potential grinding, but never had the need
• Something I craved here was a shortcut back to the start. I eventually just built myself a ladder
• About 2/3 of the way down I also got bored of following the intended route and started to bridge around. The main thing that encouraged me to do so was the skeleton spawners that didn't have a clear passageway to them. My thinking was, if I wasn't going to get to them eventually, I should deal with them now and so I started bridging and from there I just kept doing it and started getting into areas out of order
• I definitely kept a few brewing stands for myself, I didn't really start brewing until I needed Fire Res potions for the volcano, but it was nice to have them here and a grindable blaze spawner.
• The hidden creeper spawner wasn't particularly threatening when I went through, probably because I tended to seal rooms with a block until I'm ready to look inside afterwards.
• I'm always disappointed when I look in closets and find no loot. Maybe a chest in the ground at least once?
• The creeper maze with glass/water walls was really awesome and a cool experience. The water was a mixed blessing, knocking off my torches but also pushing the creepers away from me. All in all, they were more help than detriment, especially in the vertical drop to the wool.
• I didn't even notice the arrows firing when I ran across the pipe at the bottom the first time It was funny because I ran by again later and heard them and only got hit when I stopped to see where the noise was coming from.

Rotten Gorge

• The aesthetics in this area was super cool! I love the idea of the two other areas getting mashed together. Too bad there was no central mechanic to the other two area to marry together for this area. I'd love to see this concept explored more in your future maps. Maybe something like...every mob in the Lab are "Frankenstein" stacked mobs while every mob in Gemlight Bog would drop potions of blindness upon death. Then in this combined area, you'll get stacked mobs that dropped stacked debuff potions. Something like that would be super cool.
• I appreciate you putting a reward chest in the mushroom platforms near the top. I always like being rewarded for exploring anything that could be deemed a "point of interest"
• Shortcut here to the monument was appreciated. I used it a lot, especially since I had a heck of a time finding the emerald here. I ended up making a ladder from the lake just below the shortcut to make travel even easier.
• Once again, I love how you mix in the ore blocks with the individual ores. It makes mining less tedious. I only collected a few Lapis blocks and that was all I needed for the whole map.
• The trees hide the emerald pretty dang well. I would've liked to have been able to spot a clue towards the emerald from a viewing vista point if possible
• The vertical climb from here to Gemlight Bog was the worst, thanks to the slimes jumping on my head

Gemlight Bog

• You totally got me with the "creative area entrance". I saw the T-intersection at the base of the stairs and thought that it was weird, since most of your hallways only had one turn. I saw the tripwire too late and the pistons pushing up the stairs definitely blocked my escape route. Since I already saw the area from the alternate entrance, I knew I probably would have water to break my fall. I just resigned myself to fate and hoped that the explosion itself wouldn't kill me.
• The yellow glass stuff throughout this area made me think that it could've been the "star" referred to by the sign in Primeval Woods
• I saw the secret passage while flying around in creative after beating the map. This was a bit weird as it didn't really serve any purpose and I don't think you did it anywhere else in the map.
• It was also odd that the wool was on the ground level when there was no direct path to the ground from the main entrance. I felt like the ground was a sort of "punishment zone" for falling off the main path that crisscrossed in the sky. Having a ladder downwards or even a pad of slime blocks and a sign that says "jump!" would've guided the player better I feel.

Primeval Woods

• Holy! This area is huge. The entire plateau/ledge with the destroyed building and lake that eventually leads to the explorer's torch and emerald #15 was completed missed. Again, that's because there was no obvious path to this area (a stairwell along the wall would've been nice) and also nothing that stood out as a "hey! come here!" to me from the ground below. From below, it looked like just another bunch of trees at the outskirt used to hide the vast bedrock and nothingness beyond, so I didn't even think about going to check it out. Even if you lined up more pumpkins on the ridge or something near the alternate entrance from Gemlight Bog would've made this more of a "point of interest" to me
• The Diorite puzzle was really cool, if not random. This would've been another one of those things that could've been done as part of world building and storytelling I feel. Tie it together with the final black wool area story wise. It would make it more interesting to me as a player
• I'll admit that I first thought that I was supposed to place the blocks in order (put dirt first, etc.). Some sort of "Nope, you're wrong" buzzer sound or feedback would be nice. Also, I didn't like needing to run back to base camp to get some diorite when I did figure out the puzzle. Have some handy in the cave leading into this area would've been enough I think. It wouldn't be too obvious. I did appreciate the sign on the back telling me that the runes were just flavor...but again this could've been tied together with some story. Maybe I'll find a journal in a nearby house that gives a hint to this puzzle and the journal will tell me that the runes mean nothing instead of a fourth-wall breaking sign.
• I really appreciate the stone pillars throughout this area. I quickly recognize them as indication of a point of interest and made a habit of going to every one I saw from a distance.
• I'm pretty sure rule #1 in Minecraft is "never dig straight down". The sign was really confusing and I eventually got to the thing in the sky via another path so I never made the connection between the sign and that area
• "Return to the star in the sky" I'm pretty sure most people didn't get this and I wasted a lot of time backtracking to the starting area and travelling along the aurora trying to figure out what this sign was talking about (so important that there were two signs!)
• The X was really hard to see. I would've liked to have some of the noise removed from the cobble (less grass patches overall). Also, some sort of encouragement to get a higher vantage point and look down would be good too.
• Climbing the creeper tree to the wool was hell The intended path was just full of hazards and I eventually ladder and enderpearled my way up because it was too frustrating to deal with.

Deeper Darker Dungeon

• Fun little excursion, but it wasn't particularly challenging. I would've liked to see something done with the fact that some of the rooms were open to the sky. I did abuse the teleporting hallway here as well for despawning mobs after torching or breaking spawners through a peephole in the wall

Tacos and Corn Dogs

• Maybe I'm a slow walker, but for some reason I didn't get caught by the first trap. Maybe that was intentional to lull the player into a false sense of security (no one would ever expect two traps!)
• I immediately noticed the red latch on the chest and broke the chest instead
• Looking through the map in creative I saw the area underneath...I guess a diamond pick and some gold apples are a nice prize for surviving that chaos, but I kind of would've expected more

Corona Chamber

• Call me reckless but I opened the gravel chest (the sign dared me to!). I was totally confused that nothing happened
• Handled the initial area with a water bucket and would've missed the emerald here if a friend, who was playing the map at the same time, didn't tell me where it was. I also took the time to make a bridge across the lava lake for easier travel in and out of the area
• I ended up brewing a bunch of Fire Res potions for this area and it essentially removed any challenge that the blazes might've had. Perhaps pair them with skeletons in areas that you wanted to be more challenging?
• Magma cubes are super annoying T_T It might be because my melee weapon wasn't very good, but they take forever to kill with any slow swing speed weapon and due to their jump, it can be hard to deal with their spawners.
• Water bucket continued to be very useful here. I half expected the area to be a nether biome but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't
• I totally missed the Aurora sword here, but looking at it, Tune of Vitality is still better
• I ended up pearling to the wool and back and missed the Miracle gear, but it didn't look worth the risk in my post-game fly around
• I guess this is the point in the game where my own custom made gear was better than most loot, but the Super Sniper also wasn't impressive to me. I was using just a Power 5 Unbreaking 3 bow and that's all I ever needed in a bow (eventually I would add Infinity to avoid inventory clutter but with a skeleton grinder made, I was never worried about ammo)
• I definitely went back to base to fetch my Fortune 3 pick. It would've been nice to get one near the start of the area probably, since most players will have at least one handy anyways and you can save them the trip back
• The diamond trap made me shed a tear a little. I managed to get 4 diamonds from the single ore I mined but the TNT was laid in a way that no diamonds were salvageable and all the drops were destroyed. RIP. I was a clever way to lead to the next area for sure though. Could not be missed by anyone
• The boss rush section was pretty cool and memorable. I had little knowledge of the new enemy mobs in 1.12 so it was fun to explore their combat patterns in a relatively safe environment (easy to recover my gear if I died here, but thankfully it didn't come to that)
• The imps from the Illager were annoyingly hard to hit. The custom skeleton mob was interesting but not very challenging. I think at this point I was in 3/4 iron with Gold Mending pants

Crying Crystal Redux

• This area was beautiful to behold and made me feel very silly for chasing down all the single diamond ores in the previous area. It definitely felt weird that the map suddenly went from scarce on resources to crazy abundant. Considering all the loot that I continued to get throughout the map, I never even needed the raw materials except for anvils.
• Ghasts in this area were pretty manageable up until the diamond star in the sky. I don't find it fun to deal with lots of ghasts so I appreciate how the spawners were placed in this area
• I was quite surprised that the wool was in the lower area here. I definitely expected to find it in the diamond star in the sky. Felt too easy
• The coal was nice to have since I was torching a lot, but I really wished there was a ready source of wood to go with it
• I mined any easy to reach gold blocks and had enough to make 20 Notch apples. You even gave me the apples I needed so that I didn't have to farm them. I never ended up needing to use Notch apples, but it seemed like overkill that I had access to so many of them.
• I attacked the diamond star in the sky from the nearest coal spike and used to a Fire Res potion so that I could ignore the Blazes. Skeleton spawners here were a nice challenge, but it wasn't fun trying to figure out where I needed to go as I mindlessly dug around for free diamonds and looking for ghast spawners. I eventually stumbled upon the chain holding a "special" spawner and I was still confused where to go from there until I peeked out my safety box on top of the spawner and saw that I was right next to the reward chest with the pick. This was a nice pick, but I already had an Efficiency 5 diamond pick myself so I ended up leaving it at base. I didn't even use it to mine the diamonds around me because I had Fortuned so many before reaching this point.
• Not sure if you were hoping to catch anyone with the curse of binding trap here...but I think most people would have armor on? If there was an area that people might be tempted to run naked and invisible or maybe a void area where people are inclined to suicide torch or suicide bridge build, that might be a better place for such a trap. As it is where it is in the map's progression, it seemed silly on the mapmaker's part and enemy mobs were more likely to trigger it than the player.

Intersection 3

• I was not a fan of creepers potentially dropping on my head near the entrances here, but I was too lazy to climb up and light the ledges so I guess it would've been my fault if it happened?
• Hurray for another shulker box! The armor was again underwhelming, but it's still nice loot, especially for those that missed or failed to solve the Diorite puzzle.

The Kraken Storm

• As soon as I saw the "I won't judge you for rage quitting" sign, I knew this would be a silly Brown wool area No one ever says that seriously
• Ghasts here really sucks, especially since players are very likely to get the wool early. The ghasts discouraged me from sticking around in the area any more than I needed to. If it weren't for the ghasts then I might have explored the sky area in this map and found all the cool stuff you put there, but alas the ghast came and I just left without giving it another thought
• Hiding the emerald underwater here was really mean, especially without any lighting underwater or an item like a diver's helm to give good vision underwater. Having ghasts constantly spawning and ready to shoot me also didn't help and it was unnecessarily frustrating I felt. Hiding the emerald in the sunken boat would've been what I expected.

Deathshade Ruins

• Pretty fun area until the ghast comes. I enjoyed attacking the skeleton towers, they presented an interesting challenge at times.
• Emerald 23 was nicely placed, but emerald 24 was difficult to spot from anywhere. I think putting it within view of side towers would've been more fair
• Man, I'm just not really used to not seeing a giant spinning ghast model in the spawner. I had an embarrassingly difficult time finding the spawners behind the redstone and lapis heads. Of course, constantly fighting ghasts didn't help.
• When I entered the main building for the wool, I was totally prepared to tackle a whole other section and dive into another dungeon. Getting the wool so quickly felt like I only got half the experience

The Solar Citadel

• It wasn't really a citadel...
• I appreciated the window into the first planet. It hinted that most planets had an inside and I also got some building blocks for the area and didn't have to run back to home base. Thanks!
• Of course, the cobble planet is my first destination. I was sad that it was empty
• TNT planet surprised me and blew up a good chunk of the glass ring, which later on led me to fall through a gap that I didn't see
• I fell a total of three times from various heights and I was shocked that I survived the fall every time. The mobs were pretty sparse at the bottom and I often had time to run and eat without taking any additional damage at all
• Lava and water buckets were my friends here for dealing with the internal spawners and mobs. Made it easy to light up the area and deal with crowds
• The 2 higher planets were a pain to pillar up to. I would've appreciated a clear path from the sun in the middle to every planet so that I didn't feel obligated to make a giant pillar and super long bridge. Was not challenging and just annoying
• The inside of the sun was pretty fun. I thought the wool was in the core and spent longer than I'd like to admit trying to empty the lava from inside. I only found the wool when I finally decided to deal with the spawners above me. Obviously I brought some Fire Res potions for this area
• Always the sucker for dares, I broke the sand in the path leading to the Nebula Citadel and laughed at the pair of super creepers that dropped waaay behind me. Plugging the holes of the trap did help me spot the shulker box here though.

The Nebula Citadel

• Man I hate ghasts. Probably the thing I hate the most is their idle and attacking sounds, maybe I should change their default sounds or something.
• Anyways, I didn't enjoy this area as much due to the ghasts, but I did appreciate how you handled the spawners with the ender crystals. Saved me from needing to search. I took potshots at the crystals from outside and would've liked more towers/vantage points where I could pick at some ender crystals with a bow if I wanted to.
• The Legendary Set here was pretty underwhelming compared to my full Proc 4 Mending Diamond set at this point
• Emerald 27 was hidden a bit unfairly. I would've prefer a place where I would've spotted it more easily from another tower. Maybe if you made it jut out just a bit more?
• I think mobs triggered the first gravel trap in this area. I arrived and the gravel wall was already there. Almost assumed it was a dead end
• The buried special spawners were interesting. I think only the Illager one inside a tower eluded me as I thought it was just part of the floor design.
• Was dealt my third and final death here when a super creeper dropped on my head. I was certain that a fire caused by a ghast explosion would've eaten some of my gear but I managed to miraculously recovered everything again.
• The fall trap here happened way too quickly I was no where near the hole it made
• The final push up the aurora was cool and a great memorable way to end the map. The final wool area was ok. I just pearled in and out quickly and ignored most of the challenge there.

All in all, I had fun. I enjoyed the beginning a lot more than the end as the challenge plateau'd and there didn't seem to be cool loot to grab or difficult/novel challenges to face. Consider my itch scratch though. I'll probably take another extended break from Minecraft now. Great work nonetheless, I look forward to the next one.

I think my enjoyment of CTMs is more of a nostalgia thing, both for CTMs and for "basic" Minecraft.

While command blocks opens a wide world of possibilities for map makers, a lot of adventure maps aren't really "Minecraft-y". This isn't a problem, though, it's just an expectation that needs to be managed. It's the reason why CTMs and fancy dancy adventure maps can co-exist without treading on any toes.

I personally still enjoy the rigidly structured CTMs as CTMs. I definitely consider Terra Restore to be a huuuge adventure map more than a CTM.

I think that CTMs may not be your thing...and that's not a bad thing. You enjoy different mechanics (that may not be CTM appropriate), story, cutscenes, boss battles, and casual-friendly experiences. I do believe that trying to shove these things into a CTM will restrict your creativity eventually.

CTMs came around in a time when Minecraft map making was very young. The player and map maker agree to certain rules written out in books or signs. CTMs were basically as good as we could get back then.

Now, with command blocks, map makers can start looking beyond these "agreements" and actually enforce their rules upon the player. As such, there does not need to be ANY text from the map maker to the player and the map maker can start conveying ideas and mechanics purely through design.

With the power of command blocks, we don't need linear maps anymore (though I still love to play "pure" CTMs from time to time) and we can replicate things like Bioshock, Zelda, you name it.

Apologies for the audio, but the other people didn't say much anyways

Preferred Download Link

Mirror

Since most of the surprises of the seed world has been revealed in the Youtube series, I've decided to release the map to the public. Hope you all enjoy! Post your own videos and experiences below!

What is Chainworld?

Chainworld is a concept by Jason Rohrer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_World) where the player does regular Minecraft survival on a server but there is absolutely no health regen allowed (no natural regen, no potions, golden apples, beacons, etc.). When the player eventually dies, they pass on the world to another player.

There is limited text and communication between players, thus builds and other things become relics of ages gone by and often newer players are left to figure out the purposes of everything.

In Chainworld 2, two people play at the same time and, when one dies, the remaining player will "raise" the new player unto the ways of the chainworld, including any rules or rituals that have come into being.

Not screenshots, but video previews!

If you can't wait until tomorrow, here's a video of me playing the new Christmas-y themed map!

Oh, and another thing is checkpoints I think my least favourite thing about the boss fight in Emberforge is needing to start over from the beginning again after I die...especially after I dedicate 5-10 minutes of spam clicking to the cause. Games usually use boss transformation or pattern changes as a "checkpoint" and typically restart the player at that point.

This is not required, of course, but do think about the player's journey when creating your boss battles. Think: How likely is the player to die? At what point in the battle are they likely to die? Usually the chance of a player dying increases over time, but if the boss's attack pattern has a particularly nasty surprise early on, then maybe a player would die quickly. Similarly, if a player doesn't "solve" the pattern correctly, they're probably going to die quickly as well (this is common in Devil May Cry). It's not bad for a player to fail...but it's best to make sure that they understand why they fail and also to let them fail early so that they don't mind restarting.

If it's a 5 minute fight and I'm expected to die 3 times before coming up with a strategy to beat the boss, then that's nearly 20 minutes of boss fighting in total. If the content of the boss battle itself is repetitive, you can bet that I'll feel the grindy nature of the fight on my third restart. Each consequent restart is harder to "sell" to the player because they may feel discouraged and tired.

I think consistent hitting and non-critting should be the general basis to balance things around. Ultimately, however, what makes a boss fight "fun" versus "grindy" isn't the length of the battle, but the content of the battle. That is to say, what is the player doing during the boss battle?

If you're doing the same thing over and over again, then 3-5 cycles of a the pattern is roughly what you should aim for a la Mario bosses. Of course, this is only if there is a pattern to "solve", since the initial solving can take a bit.

The best boss fights, in my opinion, are dynamic and engaging. You really feel like it's an epic and memorable clash. Metal Gear, Devil May Cry, Asura's Wrath, and even House of the Dead have great dynamic boss battles. Even though they can last 10-20 minutes, the battles are engaging and stimulate the player's interest enough that they don't mind. I suppose House of the Dead is the most interesting one to look at since the player's interaction is limited to just shooting.

Most of Terra Restore 2's boss battles have actually been pretty dynamic. There is an initial pattern and then more things are piled up on it. The player is challenged to keep track and to perform a wide variety of things: gather around Exiel for an AoE attack, play Simon Says, avoid pitfalls, etc. Essentially you want to keep the player on their toes with different things, but still avoid a situation where a pattern repeats more than 5 times. Old school games did this with changing environment, different boss transformations, sudden new weapons, etc.

tl;dr: Don't worry about finding the right "length" of boss battles, worry about making the actual boss battle itself constantly dynamic and interesting.

Quote from TT2000»

Looking forward to the new map! It's... today, right?

To be honest, I never found your maps "hard"...especially coming from more traditional CTMs that follow the "Super Hostile" mentality. Some of the bosses might've been a grind fest, but with infinite retries and no real punishment for dying to bosses, it was fine.

I think the best course of action would be to follow Nintendo's example: Balance the maps around a difficulty that you personally would enjoy. Then, add some helping features so that players can still progress through the map's difficult sections. There are many ways you can do this: a straight forward "skip" function, a "let me play this for you" NPC walkthrough, a super-easy mode, or just some items that would make the game easier.

Some quick examples I can think of in Terra Restore: Exiel or another NPC joins the player (riding on their head?) and helps them keep enemies away while they explore. Or, maybe the player would receive a special item, such as the "Yellow Wool Helmet" that would have attributes and enchants that would help them...like fire resist in a lava-filled dungeon. Once the player teleports back carrying the Yellow Wool, the special item is removed from their inventory.

These can be available right from the start of the game and you just remind the player about the option every time they die for the first 5 times and then maybe every 5th death afterwards. Alternatively you can have them unlock after X number of deaths and give them the option to use it.

I'd recommend finishing VF3 in 1.8 since it was originally intended for that version in the first place. After that, maybe do some mini-CTMs for 1.9 to see how far you can push the new features.

I, for one, would love to see a multiplayer focused CTM (or mini-CTM) where each player takes on a role, for example: Melee, Ranged, Alchemist. The slower swing rate really drives up the need for support and I really liked the Area of Effect potions from Ragecraft 3...I think they would add up to a neat style of play, but it would still be one that requires the support of the others.

I remember Uncharted Territory 3, which had Proxy's Riot shield. It one-shotted most mobs, gave a huge health boost but had slowness with it and discouraged switching between items (because you'd have to wait for your extra hearts to heal up again and it would take up saturation). My friends and I played around the person using the riot shield by helping him place torches, break spawners, and pick off ranged enemies, while he kept the fast melee mobs off of us. It took co-ordination and communication but it was extremely fun and satisfying.

Bones, Rotten Flesh, Gunpowder, etc. are hard coded into the mob's drop rate and you cannot prevent them except by running entity detecting command blocks, but typically that's way too much effort.

I played through the map without making a grinder and still got all the normal drops. The fact that there is a junk trader for rotten flesh proves that this functionality is intended.

Three Muffin Moon tackled the map during our usual stream time. I've started editing and putting up archived footage. Here's the first video:

Note: We turn on Keep Inventory in order to keep the stream interesting. It ended up not really mattering except during the first dungeon.

Overall, we really enjoyed the map. I was itching to get back to it after our first session. I love the UHC mode and thought it was a great twist on the formula.

If it was a choice between updating a "finished" map to the current Minecraft version and straight up making a new map...I'm more of a fan of seeing you make more new content. People can always play older maps on older client versions (now built into the Minecraft launcher!), but actual good content coming out frequently is rare.

Personally, I would keep TR2 in 1.8 and "classic" in terms of gameplay. I understand that 1.9 is pretty cool and exciting...I would recommend trying out a mini-CTM or just a mini-adventure map (like 1-3 dungeons) for 1.9 styled gameplay as a proof of concept.