Are there bad seeds?

[uwu]

I've sometimes read people saying a map they started was bad because the seed was bad. Is this even possible?

I'd assume that no matter what seed you start with, the overall map features will on average be the same across the entire map.

Are some seeds really better than others or is that just an illusion because of the spawn point etc?

[pampogokiraly]

They call a seed good or bad depending on the spawn point.
In MC there are bad or good seeds because they loose hungerpoints and the time also goes while they look for a "better start point".

So if you use no mods in MT, there is no such as bad or good seeds

[Krock]

What they refer as "bad seed" is mostly beginner-unfriendly starting positions. They might be spawned in a crater (cave on surface), on ice or somewhere in an endless desert biome.
The map is generated using multiple layers of Perlin Noise, thus teleporting 1 km further from spawn usually yields a better starting location.

[Hume2]

The people who explore seeds usually don't have time to explore whole the world. They usually have only enough time to explore the spawnpoint and the nearby areas. So "good/bad seed" usually refers only to the spawnpoint or the nearby areas.

If you play with a very large-scale mapgen features, it might happen that some features are far from average. I haven't seen any such experiments though.

[pampogokiraly]

the seeds also can be bad if you use a mod that makes the map smaller or brings in a borderr...
In this case the entire world is the spawnpoint (if you set the world to small), so it's kinda the same story :P

[cuthbertdoublebarrel]

i kept thinking i was getting bad seeds because when i spawned it was pitch black
then i sussed out i was spawning inside jungle trees and had hack my way out with an axe

[paramat]

Only near the Nick Caves.

[SB66]

Only near the Nick Caves.

Sounds good....

[runs]

Lakes is a lost feature. WE WANT LAKES!

[Sokomine]

Lakes is a lost feature. WE WANT LAKES!

Just use my lakes mod...

[talamh]

If finding seed that gives a nice spawn location is the issue then Amidst-for-Minetest is useful for quickly previewing maps https://github.com/Treer/Amidst-for-Minetest I'm suprised it's hasn't been mentioned already.

[The32bitguy]

"Bad seeds" is misleading, they are just slightly inconvenient to a player.