I very much prefered being able to choose which version of java you wanted to run the game with, and, with recent changes, the version which was enforced (forgot whether it was java 21 or 22) looks visually worse than java 8 (pre 202), I was usuing jre-8u91 for reference. Besides the game unexpectedly looking worse after the update visually, the hit registration and game phyiscs also feel noticably more muted and less responsive. There aren't as many lag spikes from garbage collection, but personally I am fine with the tradeoff of a little bit of stability for better grahpics and responsiveness in game.

Differences in graphics and feel between java versions have always existed, but the lack of choice nowadays is a deal breaker for me, personally, as a long time player of the game.

Updating the version of java that the game ships with is fine, but in my opinion, this should not be strictly enforced, in order to launch the game, as players were able to choose between different versions of java previously.

I think this problem has to do with some updates to java starting at around JDK 19, as some other files need to be changed in the game in order for the newest versions to be compatible (which also makes older versions incompatible), but in my opinion, the old system was better, with a java_vm folder that was flexible and worked with many different versions of java excluding the most recent ones.