I am thinking about block games and building tendencies. And how my tendencies in the three I play vary quite a bit. There are some commonalities between how I build in them, but the games are distinct enough that I do end up with different tendencies. Namely I play Minecraft, Vintage Story.
So for the commonalities...My first base in all three games is inevitably a hole I dig into the side of a hill. These are easy to make and to expand. And they provide decent protection from the mobs. I also tend towards function first building. I am driven to build new rooms and structures not because I simply like building pretty things, but because I need something to do a particular thing. Next I only ever use blocks for their physical properties. don't do things like use different colored blocks of wool just because they can be used in a palette to look like something else. Stone is stone and wood is wood. And finally I build in scale with the player characters. Windows should be at a height where I can use them. My bases should be things I can see myself walking through to use. They are physical spaces first, paintings last.
Let's start with Minecraft since it's the most popular of these things and the most well known. In Minecraft I tend towards building towers. I especially really like building 'evil wizard towers' using deepslate based blocks. I simply like how these look and they are very easy to expand due to you just needing to add another floor. I do like to make smaller little houses that aren't towers but they aren't as easy to expand. And I do need to expand because you end up with so many fucking items. I also like to build into sides of mountains a lot. It's easy to do in Minecraft and I just like the look. Tree houses in jungles I like a lot too. Again for easy expansion opportunities. Notably all of my base types are high off the ground. This is because I fucking hate creepers with a passion and if any part of my build is blowing up it'll be the bottom that is designed to be boring an unlovable. I just feel safer high up off the ground. As a final note, I find the block palette possibilities in the modern game very overwhelming.
In Hytale I've largely ended up not building. There is simply so much exploring to do. I explore a lot in the other two games too, but Hytale demands it for progress in a way Minecraft does not and Hytale does not ask as much of you for base expansion in the way Vintage Story does. Due to the need to travel to other biomes for different resources and due to the many kinds of structures, I end up building a singular hill base and then use small hill bases or reclaimed structures for my exploration outposts. The ability to have three respawn points helps with this tendency too. I could spend time building, but there is simply so much exploring to do and I simply like moving in the game too much to really want to settle down for one build.
Vintage Story is the game where I have the most fun building. Unlike the previous two games a lot of my build potential is hard gated by lengthy progress. You can get access to planks in a reasonable fashion without copper and getting enough copper to make a saw takes a long while. This is on top of needing to manage things like your hunger and so on. So my build progresses as I progress. Due to things like the food spoilage and how long it takes to do anything in the game I also tend to stay rooted to a single base that expands. And it expands based on the progress. I have a kitchen because I simply had too many cooking related workstations and such that I needed one. I have an attic because reed chests have so little storage. I have a shed because I always need more firewood and I need a lot of it.
And oh right the kind of building. So in Minecraft I like towers. In Vintage Story I do not have a tower because I simply did not have a way of getting enough coblestone to make one. I did not build into the side of a hill for too long because I ran into the issue of not being able to mine through stone blocks until getting a copper pick. Which as stated takes a bit. What I did have access to for expandable buildings though is logs. Lots and lots of logs. So I have a wood cabin. My kitchen is made of cobblestone and planks because I finally have the luxury of being able to build out of them. It's also more of a pain to build ladders early on in the game so I couldn't justify the expense of building so high as I would in early Minecraft.
More of this post ended up being spent on Vintage Story but I think that is because I simply have more to say about it and because it's the game that makes me most excited to build. The progression and function focus of the game makes me really long for being able to expand my home and really pushes me to make expansions at all. Hytale has the best building tools built in but leaves me not wanting to bother because I'd rather be scrabbling up trees and shit. Minecraft lets me expand but doesn't ask too much of me space wise beyond storage unless I mess with redstone which I do not understand, while also letting me build massive towers from the word go. So my tendency towards function leads to my settling on a simple to expand modular build from the word go. Vintage Story simply has the most interesting modular base progression for me.
I do like building in all three games. (Even Hytale though I've stated that I don't build in it. But I do like plotting out my hill bases due to how the chests pull from storage.) And what I like most and find most interesting is that my building tendencies vary between the three games quite a bit. Which they do because the three games are very different. I've seen Vintage Story and even Hytale be dismissed as just 'looking like heavily modded Minecraft' and while I do get that, I don't think this is the entire picture. The games have very different focuses and feels from Minecraft despite being in the same genre. And I can see that difference just based off what I build with my lego bricks and how I do it. All three games have a point to existing alongside one another and I think that even if you like one you may like the other ones for different reasons.
