With the release of 1.17 on the horizon, it feels like an appropriate time to ask this question.
For those who don't know, as a result of working from home recently, Mojang has not been able to complete all the changes and additions promised as part of the Caves and Cliffs update, and for some unknown reason, their solution to that was to split the update in half, and release two half-updates spread over 1.17 and 1.18. Why they didn't just delay the entire update until it was all finished I will never know.
If you want to read more about that, you can see what they wrote in the announcement.So, you may be asking, what is actually in 1.17? Well, this is a brief list which I compressed from the wiki.
For a full list, I refer you to the wiki page.
- An assortment of blocks, in varying stages of completion. Some are inaccessible in normal gameplay until 1.18.
- An assortment of items, of varying usefulness. Some are inaccessible in normal gameplay until 1.18.
- Axolotl, Goats, and Glow Squids. Mainly decorative mobs, with little gameplay purpose.
- Minor world generation additions and changes, although world generation will be changed significantly in 1.18 so these changes will be of limited effect.
- Backend changes which aren't really noticeable to most people but are nice to have in the game
- Some texture changes
- Assorted minor changes (eg: lava in cauldrons, beacons visible from further away)
- Switch from Java 8 to Java 16
The vast majority of the features promised as part of the Caves and Cliffs update have been postponed to 1.18, due for release in "winter". The features which have been added in 1.17 may be changed between now and then, especially with regards to world generation and some blocks/items.
So, the question is, would you like the server to update to 1.17 now, even though the full Caves and Cliffs experience is not ready and will change for the next update, or should we stick on 1.16 and wait for the release of 1.18 to get the whole update together in its complete state? For background, VC skipped 1.13 and 1.15 recently, due to a number of reasons, so skipping an update isn't an unusual thing.
Feel free to discuss. There's no rush, I'm mainly posting this to get an idea of what people think, my opinion might swing heavily one way or another when it comes to me actually testing stuff.