Minecraft needs a badge system

I've been digging and digging, hoping to find some redstone. I'd like to make gates for my town and pistons are the key. Also I want a compass so I don't get quite as lost when I am searching for the redstone that I need for my compass. ... Damn. And a map. I recently learned that I can make maps, but maps require compasses, so I need a map to not get lost while finding redstone for the compass so I can make a map to not get lost while listening to the song that never ends. It keeps going on and on, my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was and they'll continue singing it forever just because it is the song that never ends...

My point is that this is a perfect example of the central tendency of means theorem or something like that, which says that as we take more and more sample means we'll tend toward the population mean, and will create a normal distribution, such that I don't have my stats exam until next week so why am I worrying so soon? Anyway, spend an hour mining and your odds aren't so great, but spend ten hours mining and it gets better. Larger sample sizes decrease variance, which we could loosely think of as fairness.

It takes a lot of time for things to average out to on getting their deserved redstone ore deposits.

Clearly what minecraft needs is a badge system. Merely running through a cave, whether it has redstone or not, should give "minepoints" which can then be redeemed for a selection of desired ores. Early on players might just get iron or coal, but as they advance they could redeem the same number of points for nicer things like gold and blue dye stuff. Months down the road Notch could implement diamond ore purchases.

It makes sense after all. I mean, why should a player run through a dangerous mine and possibly leave with nothing more than a few bits of iron and possibly his life?

Or maybe this doesn't make any sense at all. While it is redstone that drives me underground, my actual enjoyment isn't in receiving redstone, but in the gameplay itself. The fun is not the reward, and certainly not when it is handed out for trivial tasks, but in the exploration and adventure. Maybe the really deep chasm I found under my town doesn't have any redstone (it may take days to fully explore), but that's not the point. I go there because it is there. I have fun figuring out routes, whether in or out or looping back on myself ten times over while fleeing skeletons and spiders before I finally find the waterfall that I used as a ladder on my way down.

Yea, I made a ladder out of a waterfall. I was facing a really deep hole and it was either jump (die), dig around and around (boring), or dump the bucket of water and swim down. I didn't actually know why I decided to bring the water. Certainly not for this. But I figured, you gotta have a bucket of water. Everyone has one.

Minecraft needs rope too.

P.S. I am going to try to make tomorrow's post about Silverpine. Or maybe Civilization. My point is that I want to mix things up and not go on a Minecraft post binge. But maybe today's post isn't actually about Minecraft anyway.

P.P.S. I did eventually find a decent bit of redstone. As is typical, I found it within seconds of whining to a friend about my inability to find redstone.