I think motivation was something I was having major issues with in minecraft for a while. Exploration is only really interesting if there’s something wildly different far away. That being said, I’ve played more minecraft than I ever have before the last month because of the Vault Hunters mod. It essentially turns the game into a scavenger hunt mixed with a roguelite. You are given 4 items to go collect in the wild which gives you a “key” to enter the vault. The vault gets harder and harder and you’re given better and better items over time. You can use experience (knowledge and skill points) to give yourself passive or active abilities or even permanently increase your movement speed or attack damage. If modded minecraft doesn’t seem like a crazy amount of complicated nonsense to you, I’d highly recommend at least checking it out on youtube to see what it’s all about (though the SMP version is a bit different, so keep that in mind).