Vanilla Minecraft News Discussion

[eternal8phoenix]

Ok...a little more faith lost in Mojang. Horses are in but ideas like this are out....dammit, that sounded cool...

[Simurgh]

More interesting mobs would be welcome. Those spiders do sound pretty nice actually.

Do I trust mojang currently to do implement this?

No. Please see bats and witches.

[Foxy Boxes]

I don't know, one guy was tweeting at them to nerf skeletons because they were too hard since they spam arrows at close range and their response was just "play on a lower difficulty" and "don't get close". Now just to harden that shell I see hint of.

[Calo290]

I don't know, one guy was tweeting at them to nerf skeletons because they were too hard since they spam arrows at close range and their response was just "play on a lower difficulty" and "don't get close". Now just to harden that shell I see hint of.

I just don't like the logic behind that skeleton boost though. "This ranged mob is more dangerous the closer I get to it!" Just... yeah. You'd think you'd be at a disadvantage when fighting them from range, not the other way around.

[FlowerChild]

I just don't like the logic behind that skeleton boost though. "This ranged mob is more dangerous the closer I get to it!" Just... yeah. You'd think you'd be at a disadvantage when fighting them from range, not the other way around.

Yeah, I must admit that kind of balance is pretty lame and counter intuitive. Is this a 1.5 change or something for 1.6? If it's 1.5, I'll likely do something with it during the port as I don't want Mojang drunkenly stumbling about in my new and improved mob balance ;)

IMO: Ranged mobs like skellies should be strong at range so that closing with them (or getting away) is the issue. The above kind of change turns "rock, paper, scissors" into something more akin to "rock, rock, rock".

[Calo290]

Yeah, I must admit that kind of balance is pretty lame and counter intuitive. Is this a 1.5 change or something for 1.6? If it's 1.5, I'll likely do something with it during the port as I don't want Mojang drunkenly stumbling about in my new and improved mob balance ;)

IMO: Ranged mobs like skellies should be strong at range so that closing with them (or getting away) is the issue. The above kind of change turns "rock, paper, scissors" into something more akin to "rock, rock, rock".

It's a 1.5 change.

[FlowerChild]

It's a 1.5 change.

Thanks. Just added it to my list of things to take care of during the port.

Yeah, that was definitely silly on Mojang's part. About as subtle as a HP-boost (or shotgun) in terms of balancing. Go go team sans-design.

I've mentioned it before, but there was a very strong aspect of archetypes in Notch's mob design (grunt, infiltrator, sapper, suicide bomber, ranged attack). The relationship between those mobs attacking in combination is what provided the (theoretical) threat, not the individual mobs themselves. The above change pretty much throws that out the window in favor of a swiss army knife mob that is good at everything.

[dawnraider]

Snip -Flower

[FlowerChild]

Let's avoid spoilers outside of spoiler threads shall we? It's still too soon to be just throwing info like that out there.

[finite8]

I just don't like the logic behind that skeleton boost though. "This ranged mob is more dangerous the closer I get to it!" Just... yeah. You'd think you'd be at a disadvantage when fighting them from range, not the other way around.

Yeah, I must admit that kind of balance is pretty lame and counter intuitive. Is this a 1.5 change or something for 1.6? If it's 1.5, I'll likely do something with it during the port as I don't want Mojang drunkenly stumbling about in my new and improved mob balance ;)

IMO: Ranged mobs like skellies should be strong at range so that closing with them (or getting away) is the issue. The above kind of change turns "rock, paper, scissors" into something more akin to "rock, rock, rock".

On the vanilla SMP server i play on, this is a real pain. It's actually impossible to charge at at Skeleton due to their increased fire rate leaving you with the only choice of either hiding behind a corner and relying on the AI to walk into a melee-range trap or switching to a ranged weapon. If anything, they should try to back away as you get closer but god forbid Mojang have fun with the AI.

It seems like they made changes to the AI code a year ago to allow for more complex behaviours, but then decided "Fuck it. Quick fix is a good fix".

[Uristqwerty]

In my experience, the skeleton fire rate change actually makes hard difficulty hard. Before, it's just run at them, with well-timed blocking to negate almost all damage, then destroy them with melee, easy enough that you can just stay out all night, hunting them for bones, while after the change they tend to do enough damage that fighting more than one consecutive (or worse, simultaneous) skeleton will nearly kill you, especially early game. Using the terrain to your advantage is actually important, rather than at most saving you from an arrow or two.

Though, since the difference is probably not as significant on normal or easy difficulty, and the balance probably only makes sense with the vanilla mob behaviour, removing or changing it somewhat to fit BTW's changes probably is necessary.

[FlowerChild]

I don't think anyone was debating whether it was effective man. I know I certainly wasn't.

That doesn't make it the right way to go about adjusting difficulty though.

[Kmand]

Dinnerbone is considering making all recipes (except furnace) require smooth/smelted stone and not cobble.

Your thoughts?

[dawnraider]

Honestly, i think it would be far more a pain in the ass than it would add additional gameplay value. While the game definitely needs more difficulty (which FC has mid than made up for), this doesn't seem like a good thing to do IMO.

[Rianaru]

It would make slightly more sense if vMC didn't have furnace fuel bursting out of every crack and seam in the world, but since it is so plentiful, all it does is make getting higher tiers of metal take a few seconds longer. Could have worked if the way furnaces and fuel worked was different, but it just seems like an annoyance rather than something to prevent rushing to the end of the vMC tech shrub instead of taking it slower and enjoying it.

[JiiKoo]

I don't really see how it would provide any gameplay benefit. Finding trees in Minecraft is trivial, and since you can burn trees into charcoal in vanilla, all this would do is make it take longer for you to craft whatever it was you were going to craft. It simply wastes time. Now, if they added changes to coal and charcoal and all that stuff, I could maybe see this going somewhere, but this change on is own would just be a pain in the ass. More time consuming =/= more difficult.

His later mention of "It's not waiting, it's hunting for coal and not being able to make picks on the fly." kind of makes me facepalm, mostly because of the abundance of things you can burn, like the aforementioned charcoal. And of course, not being able to make picks on the fly... Assuming you already had a furnace for the pick you previously had, what would prevent you from plonking it down and burning some stone on the fly when mining? Making players wait is exactly the only thing this would do. I'm not a game designer or anything like that, but I don't think you want to have a system that makes the player wait around doing nothing instead of playing your damn game.

tl;dr: It wouldn't provide any new elements, it would only make playing more tedious. /kneejerk reaction

[JakeZKAM]

In vanilla yes this would simply be an annoyance, but in early game BTW... It changes the flow of what you do. The first night is generally trying to find a good amount of food, basic resources, and building some sort of basic shelter. These can all be very easy but if you get distracted, or if you find some coal, or possibly some iron your time gathering these resources becomes more precious. During the nomadic phase you'd possibly have to choose between cooking your food, or cooking up some new tools. I have no idea how it would really impact gameplay as I'd need to play it myself first, yet I don't think it'd be a huge challenge to overcome, yet it might change a couple first night scenarios in BTW.

[ScubaPlays]

It may have the benefit of making your first stone axe a little more rewarding to get (which is currently my primary weapon in early game BTW).

[FlowerChild]

His later mention of "It's not waiting, it's hunting for coal and not being able to make picks on the fly." kind of makes me facepalm, mostly because of the abundance of things you can burn, like the aforementioned charcoal. And of course, not being able to make picks on the fly... Assuming you already had a furnace for the pick you previously had, what would prevent you from plonking it down and burning some stone on the fly when mining? Making players wait is exactly the only thing this would do. I'm not a game designer or anything like that, but I don't think you want to have a system that makes the player wait around doing nothing instead of playing your damn game.

If you scroll down to his earlier tweets, you'll see that him and I had a bit of an exchange about charcoal recently, and I mentioned charcoal devaluing coal in the early game.

He may already be thinking about that, which is why the smoothstone thing is occurring to him now. I think he's working on the overall coal/charcoal problem himself and looking for additional ways to make it interesting.

Honestly, I don't think he deserves flack for this one. He's making an effort to think about actual gameplay, which is a good thing IMO.

[JiiKoo]

If you scroll down to his earlier tweets, you'll see that him and I had a bit of an exchange about charcoal recently, and I mentioned charcoal devaluing coal in the early game.

He may already be thinking about that, which is why the smoothstone thing is occurring to him now. I think he's working on the overall coal/charcoal problem himself and looking for additional ways to make it interesting.

Honestly, I don't think he deserves flack for this one. He's making an effort to think about actual gameplay, which is a good thing IMO.

Yeah, I did actually read that earlier. That's kind of why I mentioned this could work with changes to coal and charcoal. But I admit I didn't realize this could be related to those tweets in that he might have been thinking about those together.

And yeah, I agree that thinking about gameplay is a great thing. I just don't think on its own this would really positively affect gameplay, hence my negativity towards the idea. Don't really mean to give the man no flack, though, just voice my concerns. I guess I could watch my tone a bit :P

[FlowerChild]

I give the man flack (or more precisely...those that put him in that position) all the time, and I think it is deserved. However, what I see here is him at least attempting to think like a designer and start to actually consider gameplay rather than just flashy new features.

He's already taking so much shit for that from the 14 year olds, in terms of them pushing back against absolutely any idea that increases challenge even a small bit, that I'd really like people on the other side of the fence (namely us), give him a little support here for at least taking some tentative steps in the right direction.

It may be too little, it may not be particularly effective, but it's *something*, and that's a big step forward from a week ago.

Honestly, I was rather taken by surprise when my exchange with him about charcoal actually turned into him saying that he was considering gameplay differences between it and coal, and I saw a very small sliver of hope in that, which I now see continuing in this stone thing.

[JiiKoo]

snippity

Hmm, yeah, I see your point, I wasn't thinking about it from that point of view. Baby steps, eh? Well, here's hoping he was indeed thinking of it in context of those changes!

[Taleric]

Would love focus placed on more challenging mid range game modes for vMC. The option is there and would offer a test bed for changes short of world deletion on death.

Prior to migrating back to BTW HCS/HCH I had been playing with self imposed rules like "must have an emerald bock in hot bar or death is permanent".

The 14 year old crowd resisting a difficulty shift can keep their normal mode while there will be natural progression to more challenging modes once they are ready. (If ever)

[Eramus_the_5th]

I think Dinnerbone is doing what's safe instead of what's good for gameplay. It's safe to add new features, because some people (aforementioned 8-14 year-olds) get mad when old features are changed.

He may also, due to being a previous bukkit dev, be doing what's safe and lazy because he knows someone will make a mod to make the game harder. Then again, they are implementing horses, so my assumption has already been contradicted.

[jakerman999]

I think too many off the comments here are just based around bashing anything related to the updates of vMC. Specifically, having only smoothstone being used in crafting recipes: yes it draws out the early game, no it isn't bad or useless. If you look at BTW most of the recent changes are accomplishing that same thing. Lengthening the early game (even by just marginal amounts). The benefits come from that small amount of waiting time in which players have the opportunity to go do something else.

When you come back from mining, do you put your ore in the furnace and wait for it to finish? Personally, I go off and work upon any number of projects that are in various stages of completion. Cobblestone would just become another type of ore. It's not bad at all.