I wanted to love this block more than anything but I don't find myself using it as much as intended. What I would fix is getting rid of the horizontal block limit so I could complete large builds quicker. Imagine the satisfaction of building super long bridges or wide walls and it would also help players who aren't experts in speed bridging. And you could make a bigger mess of placing your scaffolding and then delete it all by destroying the one scaffolding block holding it all together.

They're one of the greatest tools in the game. Easy to set up and stack on top of each other. Easy to break down. Set up a bunch below your build to break your fall to save you from dying. Easy to craft. I see a lot of players that never use them, are they really that underrated?

Scaffolding was introduced in 1.14 and was designed to be a helpful block to use when constructing large builds. While it is somewhat useful and looks quite nice, many players still resort to using normal blocks to scaffold when building. In this post, I want to look into why this is, and how the block could be improved to make it properly serve its purpose.

The Problems

So why don't many players use scaffolding to scaffold? To put it bluntly, it can be annoying to use. While some of the mechanics of the block are already great and don't need changing, there are just a few that hold it back from being amazing.

1. The most obvious issue with scaffolding is that it can only go 6 blocks in a direction from the tower connecting it to the ground. I have never quite understood why exactly this is how it works. Scaffolding is one of the few blocks in the game that is affected by gravity, yet it's the one block you'd hope would float. All this mechanic does is disgustingly limit the usage of scaffolding when making large builds.

2. Next, shifting on scaffolding will always cause you to sink into it. If there is not a block underneath you, it will still stop you from falling, but that isn't the issue. The issue is that if I need to shift for any other reason, I'll start sinking into the block without wanting to.

3. Lastly, there is no smooth way of continuing a tower upwards if you're already at the top of it. If you try to shift to look over the edge and place it on the side, you go downwards. Similarly, there's no smooth way of building downwards. This isn't just an issue with scaffolding, however, but the game as a whole.

Improvements

1. My approach to the 6-block limit issue is simply just to remove the mechanic completely. I don't see any reason to limit the block this way. Almost all the blocks in Minecraft can float freely, so why does scaffolding suddenly need to be supported so much? The entire tower would still break if you removed all contact with the ground as it does now, that part shouldn't change.

2. To fix this issue, you just wouldn't sink into scaffolding when shifting if there is no block beneath you. I can't see any reason you'd want to sink down to the bottom of the block when it's floating. This would remove a lot of annoyances when needing to shift for other reasons.

3. For this one, I would slightly modify how the block placing works. Currently, clicking on the top of the block will place a new block in the direction that you're facing. While this would still work the same way, it would only happen when clicking on the outside edge of the top. When clicking in the middle, it will instead place a block either upwards or downwards. If there's a tower touching the ground beneath the block, it will go upwards, but if there isn't, it will place a block below it, allowing you to make downwards towers. This would be incredibly useful for downwards building, as there isn't currently a great way to do this in-game.

So that's how I would improve scaffolding. Lemme know what you think, and how you would do it differently. Of course, this is just how I feel about it, you might think it's already perfect as is, and that's great! I just think it has the potential to be so much more.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I am mostly familiar with Java edition, but playing on a bedrock server with friends...

Anyway, in Java you can place scaffolding on the side of another scaffolding block by clicking on the top surface, but in bedrock I can't seem to do this? I looked at the wiki (here: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Scaffolding#Usage) and it does say Java only. However I've seen posts (like this one: https://old.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/j2li9y/mhm_scaffolding_in_bedrock_edition/) of people making scaffolding bridges in bedrock. How is this done? I just went on a massive expedition to get some bamboo to aid construction and without this feature it's not nearly as useful as it is on Java!

Thanks :)