5 Ways Minecraft Legends Twists PvP into a Brand New Action-Strategy Experience

Minecraft Legends, the upcoming game from Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive is “not your normal strategy game,” according to Principal Design Director, Craig Leigh. Leigh, who appeared on last week’s Xbox Podcast, discussed multiple aspects of the new title. It will launch on April 18, for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (Steam & Windows), Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4|5) offers a very new twist on the genre. “We get that all time,” he explained, “People are like, ‘This is not the game I thought it was, this is an action game!’, and that’s what I love about it.” 

When you’re blending genres, you need to come up with fresh ideas for how it will work, not least in Minecraft Legends’ 4v4 PvP mode, which was introduced during the Developer_Direct last month. Leigh explained how PvP can be improved in the new formula. 

Quick Travel 

Not something you’d necessarily associate with strategy games, Minecraft Legends introduces a fast travel system to help players balance the various activities they’ll need to do to conquer their enemies. While base building is a key part of the picture, players will also need to venture out, explore, gather resources, and attack enemies to win a round – and that means offering them an easy way home to keep their base safe. 

“So if you’re out in the world and you’re far away from your base and you hear that you’re under attack, you can fast travel,” Leigh explained. “So you can open the map, click on your base and go ‘whoosh’, be back home really quickly, because we didn’t want players running, panicked, ‘oh I can’t get back home in time’.” 

Fast travel doesn’t just apply to player-characters, either. “If you’re at home as well, and you get attacked, you can go to a spawn and recall units, units that are out in thew world that maybe aren’t doing anything, you can call them back quickly to your base,” Leigh added. “You’re not running around looking for them, ‘Where are those Cobblestone Golems?’, you can just pull them back to help you with defence.” 

PvPvE 

It’s clear that Minecraft Legends will have players doing a lot during rounds, but its NPCs are pretty busy too – and may even offer players new ways to take down their opponents’ base: 

“The thing I think people will be most surprised about is the game’s PvP, but there’s a little PvE in there as well,” Leigh revealed. “The Piglins [the enemies in the game’s story-led campaign]They also participate in PvP and allow the Piglins to do as they please. So the Piglins are attacking both teams, and there’s a day-night cycle going on during the battles, but the Piglins attack more ferociously at night – so do you time your strategy when the Piglins attack at night and wait for them to break the walls down and sneak in? So you’re not only dealing with the other team, you’re dealing with the Piglins are well.” 

The Ping System 

Communicating is crucial in a collaborative environment that includes multiple activities and a common pool of resources. Minecraft Legends’ PvP. It’s not as difficult as it seems. Fortunately, there is a solution. 

“We also have ping system,” Leigh said. “It’s really important to work together, because you’re sharing resources and so with the ping system you can say, ‘I want to build a Redstone Launcher’, and the team go, ‘OK, let’s save up our Redstone. Or you could be like, ‘I want coal!’, and so people go ‘OK let’s save up our coal’. You can use voice chat, and it’s great, but also we wanted to make sure there was a system that people could give out the basic commands because you are sharing resources.” 

Time to Play 

Experienced strategist players will need to be able to handle multiplayer matches which can be very slow to complete. They’ll have to battle through stalemates in order to win a hard-earned victory. Minecraft LegendsWants to give the same experience in a smaller time frame. This allows players to continue new games with procedurally generated map that offer different experiences every time. 

“We’ve worked really hard, so games last between 20 and 30 minutes,” Leigh explained. “It does depend on the strategy; if teams have a crazy strategy they might win earlier if they take the team by surprise, or if both teams decide, ‘We’re going to build bastions with stone walls and massive towers,’ then the games might go on a little bit longer.  

“But we’ve been working really hard to balance the games this way, because we don’t want it to be a 14-day siege of the Blue Team, and so our longer games have lasted around 30 minutes. It’s an old-fashioned thing to think about, but we wanted players to get two games in in a lunchtime, be able to play a couple of games in they were playing in their lunch. “ 

Cross-Platform Ease 

Traditional strategy games have been the exclusive domain of PCs, but Minecraft LegendsThe game will soon be released on all major gaming platforms simultaneously. In doing that, the team’s worked to make sure that not only can you play with anyone, on any platform, but that no one will be disadvantaged by playing on a specific machine. 

“We thought it was really important, regardless of what platform you’re on that you could play together, we want as many players as possible playing together,” Leigh made clear. 

“It doesn’t matter where you play, on launch day you’ll be able to play on any of those platforms in PvP and it plays perfectly on any platform. The way we’ve designed it there’s no advantage to be on a keyboard and mouse versus a controller, it’s not a first-person shooter or anything, so it’s been designed that way, so it’s perfect for cross-platform play. We thought that was really important, so we’ve designed it that way.” 

And with a huge pool of players across platforms and continents playing together, that just means there will be more twists to PvP that even the developers can’t see coming. 

“I’m particularly excited to see the crazy strategies that people come up with in PvP,” finished Leigh. “Because we think we’ve done everything and then someone will come in and just do something crazy that we haven’t thought of. We all joke on the team that we’re going to be good at the PvP for about and hour and then all the community will just crush us because they’ll come up with new strategies.” 

Minecraft LegendsS, Xbox One (day one with Xbox Game Pass), Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.|S, Xbox One (day one with Xbox Game Pass), Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation, Steam, and Nintendo Switch. 

Minecraft Legends – Windows

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The piglins’ Nether corruption is spreading across the Overworld, scorching everything it touches. Do you have the potential to be the hero that saves this peaceful land? Plan your strategy and face the piglins in epic battles – but be warned: they always fight back. You can take on the piglins by day, and then defend your friends at night. You will find treasures and perils in lush biomes, as well as new and old friends. With the allays by your side, all that’s left to do is save the world.

Experience an epic legend from the Minecraft universe and the Overworld as you’ve never seen it before

Make alliances with friends and old mobs. Next, lead the charge in great battles against fierce piglins for the Overworld.

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