I recently started watching Grian’s hermit craft season playlists and watching them back to back, it feels like Grian is burning himself out as he repeats the same mistake.
TLDR; he keeps getting stuck planning huge mega builds that require so much grinding he gets stuck in procrastination cycles. He needs to break things down into small pieces (a building, tunnel, etc…) and learn to iterate towards a vision.
In each season he will quickly jump to mega scale for any project (the Tower, The Mansion, The Ally & The Entity). The issue with each project is any significant progress requires a huge amount of grinding and you see his avoidance of the main base gets worse with each season.
We do see large scale projects and the Entity and Barge actually shows the problem.
The barge started small and iteratively enlarged as the number of items increased, he then created ‘big plans’ schemed to get extra space and never fulfilled them. The next iteration became too much of a grind and he was clearly working hard to keep the current shop stocked.
Simialy the Entity went through quick iterations a rock, a Rock with a tree, a wheel, then it walked and he talks of his big plans at the end of the episode but he clearly started avoiding the entity because the plans became too much of a grind.
I thought he had gotten it at the end of Season 9, as he moved towards so many ‘small’ projects which results in a huge affect in the area.
In Season 10 he talks about taking it slow, but I really don’t think he understands.
The dock was a perfect example, he was doing a lot of fishing and building a hut around the spot was a great idea and I found really interesting to watching. Building a secret vault would have been a great episode, similarly the Salmon tunnel was fantastic. Building each aspect for an episode would have been taking it slow.
You can see he is already avoiding his ‘mega’ build and yet again the opportunity to break stuff down was there. The bone meal farm being built and boxed in would have been a great episode, but you already know he has built a stucture and its going to hang around for months as he gets twisted up trying to design/plan a huge series of fronts and increasingly wants to avoid
Feels like all the hermits have taken it a bit slower, a bit smaller this season. Fair play to them it doesnt have to be a mega base every time theres joy in detail.
As for Grian like the other hermits he is doing what he wants and what he finds joy in.
My advice is to sit back relax and go with the flow, its not your mine or anyo es place to critisize the flow of anyones work.
I have listened and as the seasons go on I get increasingly worried about him. He is increasingly showing signs of burn out so clearly his flow isn’t working for him.
Listen to season 7 as he talks about the back of the mansion. He is feeling self pressure to complete the back and he is getting fustrated at himself.
Its the same with the Ally, you can hear how excited he is at the start and as the season progresses anything to do with the ally he talks about like an unpleasant chore.
With the stones other hermits try to intervene to help him, his reaction there really doesn’t seem a bit. It sounded a lot like the panic caused by burn out.
He clearly loves being on the SMP and his shenanigans and ideas are fantastic and clearly a lot of fun for him. I want him to stick around and think unless he learns how to break up work so he can find joy in all his builds he will loose that joy
I feel like they should try a few different themes/formats per season to try and breakup the burnout that seems rather evident.
Unique worlds via data packs (technically still vanilla) challenges that inspire creative builds. Or just other unique aesthetics.
Maybe limiting things like the nether roof access to have more nether themed builds
Creativity either through restrictions or getting a new lense via shaders/resource packs (bare bones).
Idk but at this point I feel like the formula has ran its course with a lot of the hermits. Minecraft content in general has kind of bottomed out with long term series too on an algorithmic level.
One idea I kinda had was limiting the world size to something rather small and encouraging people to live in a “communal” way and less of their solo ways. That way real estate is less and the bases are forced to be close together which would encourage some potentially cool collaborations with each other.
I think they used to do things like that, especially back when customized worlds were a thing, but yeah maybe a special world would help. It’s also worth mentioning that they have been running the series for 12 years, so burnout is seemingly inevitable.
Honestly, I think some of his greatest content comes about when he is procrastinating. I mean, if he didn’t procrastinate in S9, we wouldn’t have gotten him and Scar blowing up Doc’s tunnel bore, leading to the perimiter war.
Grian seems like the kind of person who is always coming up with new, grand ideas. I think thats one of the reasons he has done so well in the MCYT space.
And personally, I think it’s fine he doesn’t finish some of his projects. To me, Hermitcraft isn’t just about the projects; the main draw for me is the interactions and collaborations that come from the server.
I am really glad that the Hermits are catching on to the fact that many people are here to see them, not the giant bases they build.
I know that feeling of being super inspired to make something big, something grand and ambitious, and then to lose interest once the exciting parts have been done.
Also, would not be surprised if Grian has ADHD or something.
Basically, I think his episodes are great regardless of how much “progress” he makes, and while I think he is working on improving his scoping, he is still learning like everyone else, and I think S10 has been a great step in the right direction.
I agree Grian shenanigans are fantastic.
I am currently working my way through Mumbo’s S6 and the best episodes so far have Iskall and Grian in them.
The thing I have noticed it Mumbo isn’t really pressuring himself on a build. He has just kept focus on the storage system because he is finding it fun.
I thought Grian was at his best with the barge, his episodes had a flow where he would resource, stock the bardge, do a “small” build/project and then shenanigans.
I am not sure that flow is sustainable but he was clearly having fun.
At the moment it just seems he is increasingly beating himself up on being a builder and needing to build the most epic base ever.
I think the worst example of this was his water highway in season 9.
