What if fire got an overhaul?

[Shoom]

I think fire is a kinda overlooked and often forgotten mechanic in the game, I know a lot of people play with fire spread off and I think in large part it is to how messy it leaves the terrain with scattered, floating blocks and such. What if fire got a complete overhaul? As of now, from my knowledge it behaves like it does and has done in Minecraft for a very long time, while it gets the job done I think it's a bit underwhelming.

I think it could be interesting to discuss how it could potentially be overhauled/upgraded. Instead of outright deleting blocks I think it should leave charred variants and maybe some small piles of coal and maybe the visuals could be improved somehow.

[LadyWYT]

50 minutes ago, Shoom said:

I know a lot of people play with fire spread off and I think in large part it is to how messy it leaves the terrain with scattered, floating blocks and such.

My main beef is that when lightning burns down a forest, that spot is going to be forever barren unless I go and fix it myself. I'm not really sure how to let the areas regenerate though, without running into performance issues.

[Shoom]

26 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

My main beef is that when lightning burns down a forest, that spot is going to be forever barren unless I go and fix it myself. I'm not really sure how to let the areas regenerate though, without running into performance issues.

I've been pondering for a bit, perhaps there's no elegant solution to regenerating forests. But if burnable blocks got replaced with a charred variant instead of deleted, at least the areas wouldn't appear barren and you'd be able to tell what happened and still harvest some material. I guess it would ultimately be up to the player to replant trees in the end if you decide to play with the option on. Maybe that's a fair compromise?

Currently I think the main issue with fire is that it outright deletes blocks, I think replacing blocks with charred variants would be a lot better, that way you get a visual indicator as to what happened if you accidentally lit your house on fire and left, and then you could quite easily rebuild something affected by fire, just replace the burnt blocks rather than having to rebuild everything from scratch.

I just think it's a shame most people seem to play with the mechanic off after their first mishap, I do think fire has a lot of potential as a mechanic and that it makes sense that it would be a concern, I mean it has been throughout the ages for people everywhere. But I also get that it could potentially be a lot of work for something most people might just turn off anyway. Would love to hear what others think?

[Cedric the Silent]

Would be interesting if you start controlled cultural fires purposely to make farming fields with a bonus effect to the soil from the burning of the plant material releasing nutrients into said soil.