This is not a wishlist. Simply a collection of tweaks
The combat update has added a few great features to minecraft in combat, sounds, animations, and a few other miscellaneous things. While not at all a bad update, there are a few things that could use some tweaking, and could definitely benefit from them. I've tried to do some decent work on the layout of this post, and may update it later.
Combat
-COMBAT BASICS
The delayed attack animations are a decent addition to the game, that I have no problem with at all. It adds variation to the combat in combination with multiple other factors, and improves an aspect of the game that was, up to this point, rather lacking. The timing is right, and the damage is acceptable in most cases, but there are a few tweaks that are needed
-Animation: The delay is fine, but it's execution is sloppy, and tedious to deal with. Why bother giving weapons and every other block and item in the game a half done looking lift animation, when there's a perfect way to change swing speed already implemented into the game through potions. The swing speed could remain unchanged on every item that wasn't a weapon. Otherwise, the weapons and tools would have the normal swinging animation, but at a different speed. At the same time as both looking and functioning better, it would both add a short delay on the impact of heavier weapons, increasing the need for timing in combat, it would satisfy the people who complain about the removal of spam clicking, as you could still sort of do it. This would still allow for all of the special attacks added in the snapshot to function in a much better way.
-Delays: The basic, single punch takes exactly 0.3 seconds. Rapid block breaking is unchanged. The timings on weapons swings would be changed, and would have several modifiers on them based on several factors. First of all, the weapons would have a basic swing speed, rather than a recovery speed that can be interrupted. Swords have a swing speed of 0.5 seconds. Pickaxes have a swing speed of 0.6 seconds, as they are large, 2 handed tools in most cases. Shovels would swing at 0.5 seconds, as they are also 2 handed, but they are usually lighter than pickaxes. Axes would swing at 0.7 seconds, to make up for their obscene damage. Finally, hoes would swing at 0.4 seconds, as they do the least damage. Materials would now have an effect on the base swing speed of weapons. The basic speed is based off of iron and stone tools, which have no material modifiers. Wood subtracts 0.1 seconds from swing speed. Gold adds 0.2 seconds. Diamond adds 0.1 seconds.
-Damage: Basic iron tools will be the baseline for this description. A sword does 4 hearts of damage. An axe does 6.5 hearts of damage. A shovel does 3 hearts of damage. A pickaxe does 3.5 hearts of damage. A hoe does 2 hearts of damage. Wood, subtract one heart. Stone, subtract one half heart. Gold, add one heart. Diamond, add 2 hearts.
-ENCHANTMENTS
To fit the new combat system, a few enchantments would be simplified. I am unsure is my suggestion on the damage upgrades is already the case, but I feel stating it is necessary for perspective purposes. As well as this, a couple of new enchantments would be added as well.
-All damage enchantments, such as sharpness, and bane of arthropods and such, would add one heart of damage per level, without fail.
-Basic fire enchantments light a target on fire for 30 seconds. Each level adds 10 seconds of flames.
-Knockback and Punch level ones remain as is. All additional levels add one block of distance.
-First new enchantment, dexterity, reduces swing speed by 0.1 seconds, and goes up to level 2. This will not tilt the balance in any extreme way, but can help mildly. This enchantment could be found as an enchanted book in dungeons, nether fortresses, and both sand and jungle temple chests.
-Second new enchantment, quickdraw, reduces bow draw speed by 0.1 seconds. It goes up to level 3, at which point the bow charges almost instantly. This enchantment could be gained extremely rarely at it's level one phase from an upgraded enchanting table, and could be found up to it's maximum level in stronghold and end city chests.
-DUAL WIELDING
The dual wielding is balanced in a decent way, but a few tweaks are also necessary in this category, both in a refinement sense, and a balancing sense.
-Blocks can be placed from both hands. If you place a block in both your left and right hands, you will be unable to punch, but you will be able to place both blocks alternately. On the other hand, (No pun intended) you can place a block in your off hand while there's a sword in your main hand.
-For aesthetic purposes, you could block with a sword if it was in your off hand with the same function as a shield. This would be for the assassin types who want to dual wield, and want there to be a purpose. At the same time, the enchantments on separate tools and weapons could be used alternatively in combat with the hand switch button.
-Another aesthetic change is that any sword or shield that was in the off hand, and had not been blocked with, would lower slightly, so as not to obscure your vision.
-COMBAT SPECIFICS
The new attack abilities are cool, but could be further utilised for multiple tools.
-Swords have a 1 heart bonus on critical attacks
-Axes have their shield disabling ability, but also have a one block increased knock back on their sprint attack.
-Pickaxes gain the shield ability from axes, but have the critical bonus from swords
-Shovels gain the slashing ability, and have a half block knock back increase on all basic attacks
-Hoes have the same knock back ability as shovels, as well as the slash from swords, and the knock back while sprinting from axes
-ARMOUR
Armour is, let's face it, an untapped source of combat variation. This has been brought up several times, and armour does, without a doubt, need to have an effect on your character that is more noticeable overall. What I propose is a complete armour overhaul, that changes several aspects of it, and of how it works.
-Armour, first of all, changes your movement speed slightly. This is the least original of the suggestions in this category. Leather and chain armour have no effect on your speed, but iron reduces it by 0.1 seconds per block, diamond by 0.2, and gold by 0.3.
-Armour makes noise. Every armour type besides leather has a sound effect for making noise, and armour will make noises at random intervals, with a minimum of 15-20 seconds between each noise, though you can go several minutes in silence. Leather is completely silent so that you can use it for stealth. Chain armour makes noise twice as often. When your armour makes noise, it acts as a ping for all nearby mobs that can't see you within a 15 block radius. If any unaware mobs are nearby, they will hear, and come after you. At the same time, any nearby players may hear as well.
-The armour bar now acts a bit differently. Armour fills it the same amount it usually does, but when you are hit, it reduces like your health, taking the damage in it's place. Leather, iron, and diamond armour will recover from any damage done at the speed of level 1 regeneration, with a cool down of ten seconds after an attack before you start to heal. Chain heals with the same cool down, but at the speed of level 2 regeneration. Gold heals at level 1 regen, but with a 5 second cool down. When your armour is on cool down, it will have the same effect as your shield when it's disabled.
-MISCELLANEOUS
A few other assorted items up for changes
-Hoes now suffer a durability loss when hitting mobs
-Shields now have a basic 120 durability
-Bows have 100 durability
-Shields can only be held up for 1 second at a time, with a short recharge if they are held up for the full second. This encourages timing with your shield. Shields however, reduce damage by 90%
-Potion arrows will not be used unless they are in the off hand, and when they are, they are held like lowered swords and shields
-The improper use penalty is employed on only shovels, pickaxes, and hoes
-If an item is enchanted with bane of arthropods or smite, its improper use penalty will be completely removed from any enemies it has a damage boost on. At the same time, mobs unaffected by the damage boost will cause the improper use penalty
-Bows suffer an improper use penalty when fired before the last two stages of charging
-Due to the slower attacks being forced, the brief invincibility after being hit is removed from both players, and mobs
-Using a tool besides a sword will make you put away your offhand item, as they are all 2 handed items. This could have an arm animation Tools in the offhand still have no function
-You can hide from mobs in tall plants again, and it will silence your armour
So, that's all I have to suggest. It is basically a tweaking, and refinement of the new update. The new stuff adds variation, but the weapon and armour tiers, and tool types, are all variations of the same strategy. The slowness of diamond armour along with the more powerful axes will make good tank players. The strength and lightness off chain armour along with the massive potion variation will allow powerful wizards. The silence of leather armour, and the draw speed enchantment will allow archers to excel. The elytra, along with offhand sword blocking, and the swing speed increase enchantment will let ninjas become viable as well. Combat, with the new delays of heavier weapons, and regenerating armour that actually adds visible health will make the combat seem heavy, and brutal, and will allow fights to become long, and tactical. Please leave any suggestions or comments below.
I don't really know enough about the weapons mechanics to comment on those...
But I do like the idea of the armor making noise. Just a few things I think could be changed there. I've always wanted there to be more offhand and sneaky parts about Minecraft, taking some more planning and working than just "get the best armor and you win" kinda thing. I think that the level of the armor making noise would go up as the armor got better.
So Leather would make no noise
Chain would occasionally make a noise, but it would be more of a slithering metal on metal thing and less of a clink, so not as loud and only half a chance to make mobs aware of you.
Gold would make muffled clinks occasionally
Iron would make clinks fairly often
And Diamond would clink aaaall the time. Loudly. Like every other step.
A few other additions to make it easier on you iron armor folks
Sneaking would half the chance for your armor to make a noise.
Maybe an enchantment, like saaaay "Padded" Would both reduce how often your armor clinked, and how loud it was.
I kinda like the idea of the armor bar thing, though it would certainly need some tweaks. Right now it just shows you how much you have on, which is not the most useful. And it would give another few reasons for choosing this over that.
Yep!
Oh and I don't really like the draw penalty. The only time I hear people complaining about ruining the bows at scout camp is when you dry fire it, with no arrow. You can reduce how much you draw to fire along a smaller distance, no problem.
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I do agree with some of your points. Putting it simply, without all the details above, I want armour to work as a secondary health bar, that recharges over time, with a slight delay. The reason chain armour would make noise more often, is that it's made of chains so it would constantly shuffle around. This is made up for by chain acting as light armour, while still being decent. Gold and chain clink slightly more, but the faster recharge on gold armour is to make up for the fact that it's basically crap.
Stealth, on the other hand, was an option I wanted to expand heavily upon. Hiding in tallgrass is something that should have stayed in, but maybe it could also silence your armour, and even dim your nametag, so you could hide from people too. The secondary swords that can block was put in mostly for the assassin types, as you would look much cooler with two swords than a sword and a shield. As well, you can have different enchantments on the swords, and switch them out on the fly.
The draw penalty was put in with the damage caused by dryfire in mind, but there was no better way I could think of to implement it. Maybe add it only when you spam click the bow. This could double in effectiveness for mapmakers who want their bows to have less than the base durability, so they have to fire it a bunch to damage it.
The weapon mechanics now have a system where you swing, and it drops your weapon. A small bar will appear that shows how long you have before the weapon can swing again. Heavier tools such as axes have higher swing times. The problem with this, is that it looks shoddy, and carries over to every block and item in the game. The recharge bars are both somewhat difficult to see in the chaos of minecraft PvP. It is currently far too easy to misjudge the recharge, and swing too early, causing a massive damage reduction. My suggestion simply makes the weapon swing animation slower for heavier items, so you cannot interrupt the recharge. This would look better, and feel more like the weapons have weight, and not just a programmed recharge time. The removal of offhand for all tools (not swords though) is because most of the tools in the game are 2 handed items.
Can you please add some line breaks in your posts, including the original? It's very wall-of-texty...
The last thing you want to do is praise your own ideas and call them "DONE RIGHT!!!" because what if someone proves all that wrong? Then it's pretty embarrassing. And going "this needs to be more like this, and that needs be more of this" can come off like you know the game's development path better than anyone else and the rest of us are in the dark. No, be neutral. Never treat your idea like a hotfix.
The enchantments part is just a bunch of pointless buffs to already-powerful enchantments. I'm seeing much "done right" there. A quickdraw enchantment is one of the most oversuggested enchantments in the world, but I can't say there's anything wrong with having it.
I as much as I'd love to place 2 kinds of blocks at once, that would really screw me over if I suddenly get attacked and need to pull out a weapon. Though I guess there could be a hotkey setup for this kind of thing. The "combat specifics" are just minor tweaks, so I'm not seeing anything special there.
Overall, these seem to be tweaks that match what you like, rather than being "better". No support, sorry.
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Yeah, that guy in the avatar is me. I'm *that* strange. It happens. Sometimes people act like that. Just go with it. I can offer help with suggestions even before you post them - NOT make your suggestions - but help you with them.
First off, this is a wee bit painful to read. Can you put your subpoints in separate paragraphs, please?
Anyway, as for the actual critique:
Animations: Sure, I guess, but given that the animation occurs after an attack and is completely independent the rate at which you're swinging (which without your additions is as fast as the game can register separate mouseclicks) the best you can probably get is having uncharged attacks swing faster. To me, that looks like it should be dealing more damage, not less; if we change animations at all we should just use maybe 2-3 and switch between them at certain thresholds of attack charge. Easier for the player to distinguish how damaging an attack is that way.
Delays: No. A hard-coded delay removes the choice added by having the attack windup in the first place (spam for knockback or wait for damage?) by removing any choice entirely. Additionally, the way you've implemented this makes non-diamond swords attack at the maximum effective rate (due to mercy invincibility; it'd be the same as it was pre-1.9) essentially re-introducing spam.
Damage: The damage buffs here are extremely unnecessary and unbalanced; combined with your enchantment changes, enchanted diamond swords will OHK the vast, vast majority of majority of mobs. No changes to damage are necessary to begin with, aside from giving axes less-stupid scaling; why do we need this? ...at all?
Enchantments: No. The sharpness buff combined with the aforementioned damage buff makes BoA completely useless and Smite useful solely against the Wither; Sharpness V diamond swords will kill everything else affected in one hit, making the bonus damage offered by the specialized enchants wasted. 30 seconds of fire is massive AND extremely annoying; what we have is fine. Dexterity reintroduces spam for diamond weapons (we just got rid of that...) and maxes axes superior to all other weapons due to the existence of mercy invincibility enforcing a minimum effective attack speed of 0.5 seconds. Quickdraw throws even more spam into the mix by making bows spammier as well when they really have no reason to be; additionally it's hard to determine just how fast they fire ("-0.3 seconds" and "almost instantaneous" firing are two completely different things).
Dual-wielding blocks: Sure. Useful for builders, although not terribly useful for combat (Eff. V pickaxes are too fast to make defenses useful).
Sword-blocking: No. Diamond swords have much higher durability than shields and aren't that expensive, and even iron swords are more durable than shields and cost just about as much; this makes shields pointless.
Weapon specialization: Axes are the best regardless. (highest DPS thanks to Dexterity, and their higher base damage means they effectively get the crit boost from swords due to how crit bonus damage works; they don't have the sweep attack but that doesn't matter when you butcher everything anyway.) More weapon-specific bonuses is a good idea to incentivize diversity in combatants, but the lack of balance throughout this thread makes everything pointless in the end; you're also trying to shoehorn bonuses into items you've already designed to be ineffective as weapons. Design actual weapons rather than force the tools into new roles and make them act completely different to swords, and you'll be on to something.
Armor slowdown: Annoying for general gameplay, and defeats the purpose of having armor tiers. Diamond is supposed to be the best tier; it wouldn't be harder to get than the others otherwise.
Armor noises: Stealth won't matter because players in leather armor will be oneshot thanks to your damage changes. Ironically, diamond will be the best for stealth as if you get caught, you're on equal footing with your target; but if you don't, you're in a better position to kill your enemy than with leather.
Armor health: Will make combos too prevalent and powerful. Once someone starts a combo, the enemy's defense will be brutalized; the extreme damage from your weapons will make them ignore a ton of armor due to the new (bizarre) armor penetration mechanic, and now armor loses effectiveness as you get hit... yeah, you're not going to take more than 3 hits, 5 tops, before you're dead. Gold armor's armor regeneration is also pointless for the same reasons combos are going to be ridiculously powerful; armor penetration will be so extreme that it will literally do nothing even when it hasn't lost any effectiveness. (I may or may not be misunderstanding how this is actually supposed to work due to your wording; does armor act as a second health bar, or does it reduce damage as it does now but lose effectiveness when you get hit? If it acts as a second health bar... well, you'll die even quicker, then!)
Shield durability nerf: It was horrible before, why'd you make it worse?
Bow durability nerf: It was fine before, why nerf it? Aside from newfound spamminess from Quickdraw, but the problem there is with Quickdraw, not bow durability.
Limited shielding time: Clunky, but not bad. It is, however, pointless due to the newfound power of combos (you'll just drop your shield after a second passes and get brutalized; if you survive, the insane damage of weaponry and awful shield durability will leave it broken literally in five attacks. And then you die.).
Potion arrow change: Eh. More annoying and illogical than anything. Shields won't have that much power anyway so there isn't much incentive to not have an arrow there.
Penalty change: Fine. Ordinarily I'd say axes are still inferior to swords (and aside from the shield-disabling, they are) but you've made them the best weapon, so...
Two-handed nerf: Pointless for non-axe tools. It's realistic but those aren't going to be effective weapons anyway, at least not compared to swords/axes. Fine for axes, but nowhere near enough to balance them.
Hiding in grass: Tall grass is common, and mobs are already going to be cakewalks with these changes. Please don't make them even worse.
Adding variation to combat is something that needs to happen and is the one thing Mojang didn't really do. Knowing this was the one thing you got right; unfortunately, your awful balancing turned PvE into a wreck and made PvP worse than it is now (not quite as bad as pre-1.9 but that's pretty damn hard to do).
Thing is, 1.9 is actually kind of good right now. Aside from a few odds and ends, like the bizarre axe damage scaling and the awful regeneration change, 1.9 is a pretty good baseline. 1.9's problem is with what it didn't add, not with what it did add. Don't try to overhaul combat again when you can't balance a game; instead you should have tried to add new playstyles using the mechanics introduced by 1.9.
And don't touch damage. Seriously. Aside from axe scaling, damage is fine the way it is. Don't fiddle with attack speed enchants either; we have DPS-increasing enchants (Sharpness) already.
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I'm pretty sure that the fact that this post is in the suggestions thread makes the fact that, "DONE RIGHT" is an opinion kind of go without saying. You have to sell it. Basic marketing. That said, they wanted a combat update, and kind of didn't make that. I did this post with their usual habit of not including suggested items in mind, and tried to make sure most of it would be relatively easy to code.
Enchantments wise, the suggestion above is already very similar to the current enchants. You needed to read the entirety of my post to really get it, so maybe try that. The new enchants and damage are balanced with the new recovering armour in mind. Try to think a bit before deciding you don't like something ;D. Quickdraw allows people to actually use the archer class against the new armour. I know it's not completely original, but It really is needed, so I included it.
These, "not so special" combat specifics are details that make the weapons their own, rather than just something else to hit things with. Considering that the swing times on weapons would now be animated, rather than using a programmed recharge, they could easily use their own combat types. First, the hoe now acts as a normal weapon, so I added a bit of extra knockback through the abilities to balance it out.
I think that rather than these being tweaks that I like, they are simply tweaks you DON'T like. You cannot argue your opinion by stating that the opposing info is also an opinion. It simply doesn't work like that. This suggestion is a full rebalance of the combat system, built off of ideas that I know FOR A FACT, that much of the community supports. I fixed combat by making it look better, and play better, and now it meets in the middle with the spam clickers too.
Don't be so quick to dis something you disagree with. If you took the time to actually think out the implications of all these additions instead of starting to formulate your negative response before you finished the first topic, you would have been paying enough attention to put all the things in this post together as one suggestion, rather than a group of separate changes. That is what differentiates this from a wishlist. This is one, overall rebalance, that would improve and draw out PvP combat.
I'll try to cover all of this. It's a bit hefty of a reply.
Animations: I know the raising animation takes place after the swing.This, in my opinion, is the shoddy looking part of it. That and the fact that it carries over to all items in the game. My suggestion is to simply remove the recharge bar, and make the swings themselves slower, leaving all other items unaffected. You know when you have mining fatigue and your swing is slower. I say, just place that effect over the weapons at a slightly reduced rate, and then you'd have no choice but to wait on your swings. There would also be a slight delay before heavier weapons such as axes actually hit the enemy, so you'd have to time your attacks better.
Delays: All I've stated above is that the attacks themselves would be slower, rather than having a delay. It would look better, and even make the weapons feel like they have weight. As for the "mercy" delay, I stated in the misc. section that it would be removed. Now, axes would be powerful, heavy hitting, 1 or 2 hit kill weapons, while the hoes would be the weapon for spamming enemies with weak hits. You have to remember that the inability to swing before your attack fully recharges would carry over to opponents too. Basically, it would turn minecraft's melee combat into something reminiscent of ESO, (bad example, I know) or other fantasy fighting games. Spam clicking would not be introduced. While spam clickers could spam, and hit over and over again, they'd still be doing it at a reduced rate, and without timing, placing them at a huge disadvantage to the people who timed their attacks for the most possible damage.
Damage: The damage changes were thought out fully, and are not overpowered. Let's try linking some things together here. The fact that armour has a recharge time now, and fully protects from damage until it's disabled will make it so that people will often try run off and recover during fights. The new combat would basically be a game of waiting to charge up, and rushing in to try and overpower someone before they could escape and recover, so while armour is based on preservation, weapons need to be able to dish out as much dps as possible. Killing an enemy will be a game of truly overpowering him, as you have to get him in a situation where you can deal as much as 20 hearts of damage (with full diamond armour) before he cold run off for 10 seconds and let his armour recover. This is not just with my armour suggestion. The new healing mechanic already makes this a viable strategy. I just built on it. Think guerilla fighting. Launch an ambush, pick off a couple of guys, run off for some r&r, then come back.
Enchantments: The damage buff already put in place is a minor one at best. You have to go into this realizing that, with the new armour, most players will have up to twice as much health in combat, half of which can recover with a brief delay, so more damage is not OP, it's balanced. Taking into account the new improper use penalties that come with enchantments, sharpness would suffer improper use when not living things, smite when not fighting undead, and BoA when not fighting arthropods. Weapons would now be much more tailored for certain situations, giving you a reason to use a variety of them. Do realize that with the most powerful upgraded weapon available, the player would only be able to do a maximum of 13.5 hearts with a fully upgraded diamond axe, and that's only to one type of enemy without a penalty, remember? Players, with fully enchanted diamond armour, and potions, will enter combat with the equivalent of between 15 and 35 hearts, depending on armour type, and potion specifics. At the same time, lighter armour is quieter, and lets you move faster, allowing you to outrun any heavier players. Dexterity was balanced so that it would not reintroduce spam clicking. Spam clicking is around 1 click per 0.1/0.2 seconds, and only the fastest swinging weapons would be brought down that far, such as hoes, which are already like that, only now they'd lose durability from hitting people. At the same time, any level of dexterity, and anything past level one of the draw enchantment, can only be found rarely in generated structures, and dexterity is only in the End, and in strongholds, so it would be extremely hard to find. Finally, the bow enchant is to make up for the new defensive capabilities of players, and again, the enchantment is extremely rare.
Sword Blocking: As I said, there would be an improper use penalty on this. At the same time, I do agree that a diamond item would have too much durability. Perhaps swords would block 50% of damage, rather than shields 90%. This would be a fitting penalty for having quick access to 2 different weapons on the fly, which was one of the ideas behind this suggestion. The other is for assassins, and also, it looks pretty cool.
Weapon Specialisation: The DPS of a diamond axe with full sharpness and full dexterity is 13.5 hearts every 0.5 seconds, so 2 times a second, leading to 27 hearts of damage per second, but with a forced swing delay that cannot be interrupted, and enemies that also have these newly balanced weapons. Axes have their crit damage removed, and replaced with the new ability in combat specifics. Axes now have one basic damage output. Their new knockback ability makes up for this. The DPS of a Diamond sword with the same specifics is 9 hearts of damage every 0.3 seconds, adding up to 27 HEARTS OF DAMAGE EVERY SECOND. That balances out pretty good if you ask me. As well though, swords are still better for combat, as missing with a sword swing leaves much less of a recovery time, and the sword has its crit damage boost, taking it up to 30 hearts a second. It was not up to me to try and make the tools into weapons. I refuse to suggest new items, as it seems more like something that won't actually be considered if I do that. The tools are already being changed into weapons, what with their new swing delays. This suggestion simply refines the delays, and adds special abilities to every tool. Notice that the hoes, as usual, do very low damage. I made up for this in combat by giving them a bunch of knockback abilities, turning them into the go to defensive weapon for an archer, who just wants to get some distance. Combine this with his ability to outrun any player in armour heavier than chain, and you see where the differentiation comes in. Making them act COMPLETELY different form swords is actually impossible, due to the fact that minecraft is, and will always be, a game about hitting things, with other things.
Armour Slowdown: Diamond still Is the best tier. It essentially gives you double health, half of which recovers over time. It slows you down imperceptibly, and doesn't make much noise. I wanted the speed difference to be hard to notice in normal gameplay. You'll only notice it if you're wearing diamond armour, and chasing down someone in leather. He will escape, because he is minutely faster.
Stealth: The stealth is actually viable now. A player in combat with full leather will only be a one hit to the tankiest of players. Those done up in full diamond, with a fully enchanted diamond axe have ALWAYS been able to best you in combat. The goal of this is not to make it so that the guy in leather with an iron sword is AS GOOD as a guy decked out with diamonds. It's to make it so that, should he get caught by one of these tank players, he has a few different options. He actually has the capacity within the constraints of the game to have the guy in diamond armour actually guessing what he's going to do. Is he going to whip out a hoe and spam him with attacks so much he can't land one? Is he going to run off and actually have a chance of escaping due to his lighter armour. Is he going to dive off a balcony with the elytra and swoop up, firing of 4 or 5 arrows towards the tank with an upgraded bow? The possibilities are endless now. At the same time, you can hide in tallgrass again, and it will obscure your nametag, so it works for both players and mobs.
Armour Health: Not true. If a guy in iron armour with an iron sword tries to rush a guy with diamond gear, he will be used to mop the floor after the fight. If a guy in chain armour takes a couple of arrows from way off wherever, it won't affect his health. His armour with recover in a bit, and he'll be on his way. You have to remember that there are so many variables in place. Enchants, potions, different armour classes, different weapons. You still have your full health after that's gone. The only way a guy will be able to fully kill someone without them effectively countering will be if he sneaks up on him, which, as stated before, is now possible. If you have weak armour, you are either using a bow, or you're sneaking, and you can run away, so being in a situation where you get comboed to death will be uncommon. Diamond armour, and iron too, will be able to take enough hits that a guy can get his bearings, let the armour recover, and return to the fight ready for combat. Armour does not protect by percentage any more, it takes the damage for you instead, so how full the armour bar is doesn't effect how much the armour protects you.
Shield Durability: Did I not increase the durability? That was my goal, as I heard the durability of shields was pretty low. I'll have to change that.
Bow Durability: Yes, I know, it's fine. Just a bit excessive. This one, I admit, is more opinion, but having to worry about your bow breaking a bit more than you currently do would level it out with weapons and armour a bit.
Limited Shielding Time: The point of this, while I admit you're right on the clunky part, was to emphasize timing. When your enemy attacks, you will now, due to the animations, actually have a chance to see it coming and react. If you bring up your shield for less than the maximum second, it will count right back down, and you'll be able to block his next attack. The only weapon that would be able to outswing the usefulness of a shield is a hoe, and they do barely any damage. Also, what is up with this whole comboing thing. The weapons still swing slowly. You still have to wait before yo swing again. Now you don't have a choice. Interrupting a combo is as easy as hitting the guy while he's recovering, which, again, is not true with the hoe, but it does terrible damage.
Potion Arrow Change: This was an attempt to make it easier to select the arrows. This way, archers will actually have to play the archer, rather than having a sword they can quick switch to, and it will remove the gimpiness of firing a bow one handed while you hold a shield. This was the main goal here.
Penalty Change: Was an attempt to add drawbacks to misusing weapons. The axe is not the best weapon. You said this many times, but it's not. Do your math next time. Swords have an identical DPS, but swing faster, and have a crit bonus. They are still the most versatile weapons.
2 Handed Nerf: I get what you're saying, but maybe just axes and pickaxes, as they both act as heavy weapons. The axe is not the best weapon, tools are useful.
Hiding In Grass: Mobs will not be cakewalks in this update. Being overrun with the reduced attack speed is a big worry in the new update, and it still would be, in a much less forgiving way, as you have no low damage knockback hit to fall back on. As well, armour and weapons would also be more dangerous in the hands of mobs now, with these updates taken into account.
I understand your concerns, I really do. That said, most of what you had to say against balancing was based off assumptions, and proved untrue when I used some math. The basic idea is that this would add variety, and every buff the weapons get is active for every player and mob. I saw your concerns, and rebalanced armour accordingly. Combat would be, if anything, slowed down by this. I get the feeling you misunderstood what I had to say about the swing times, as you were acting like I basically said to put back spam clicking. I just proposed a way that forces you to follow through with your attacks, rather than spamming weak attacks every time you miss.
The different weapons are all aimed towards different playstyles. think like this. Sword:Fighter Pickaxe:Paladin Axe:Heavy Shovel:Knight Hoe:n00by Spammer Bow:Archer. Different weapons have different upsides and downsides, and the new armour makes up for the increased damage. Everything balances out. Give the idea a chance. I did my math. You should have done yours.
(FYI I'm going by what is used by the game in terms of damage. 1 damage = 1 half heart, players have 20 health, et cetera. It's what I'm used to.)
Delays: All I've stated above is that the attacks themselves would be slower, rather than having a delay. It would look better, and even make the weapons feel like they have weight. As for the "mercy" delay, I stated in the misc. section that it would be removed. Now, axes would be powerful, heavy hitting, 1 or 2 hit kill weapons, while the hoes would be the weapon for spamming enemies with weak hits. You have to remember that the inability to swing before your attack fully recharges would carry over to opponents too. Basically, it would turn minecraft's melee combat into something reminiscent of ESO, (bad example, I know) or other fantasy fighting games. Spam clicking would not be introduced. While spam clickers could spam, and hit over and over again, they'd still be doing it at a reduced rate, and without timing, placing them at a huge disadvantage to the people who timed their attacks for the most possible damage.
You removed mercy invincibility? That made things much worse.
Because of the ridiculously fast speed of a Dexterity hoe and the huge buffs given to their scaling and Sharpness, diamond hoes now have 90 DPS; 120, with Strength II. Players only have 20 health by default, y'know.
Ironically wooden hoes would technically have the highest DPS (120 with Sharpness V, 180 with Strength II on top of that). Durability's still crap but you can get 90-ish hits out of a hoe with Unbreaking III. Here's a tip: static damage buffs like Sharpness go very well with fast weapons. This is why there was a brief time period before the Sharpness nerf but after the introduction of attack windup, where both pickaxes and hoes were better weapons than axes...
Damage: The damage changes were thought out fully, and are not overpowered. Let's try linking some things together here. The fact that armour has a recharge time now, and fully protects from damage until it's disabled will make it so that people will often try run off and recover during fights. The new combat would basically be a game of waiting to charge up, and rushing in to try and overpower someone before they could escape and recover, so while armour is based on preservation, weapons need to be able to dish out as much dps as possible. Killing an enemy will be a game of truly overpowering him, as you have to get him in a situation where you can deal as much as 20 hearts of damage (with full diamond armour) before he cold run off for 10 seconds and let his armour recover. This is not just with my armour suggestion. The new healing mechanic already makes this a viable strategy. I just built on it. Think guerilla fighting. Launch an ambush, pick off a couple of guys, run off for some r&r, then come back.
You're vastly overestimating the protection of new armor. To put it into perspective, someone with full Protection IV diamond armor under your new system effectively has 121 health (40 health, aka 40 half hearts, divided by .33 as you only take 33% damage from Prot. IV). Remember that 90-dps figure? Yeah, people die in just over a second and a quarter... barely over a second, with Strength II. That's not "overpowering an enemy" at all! That's just brute reaction time. How about the insanity of someone using a buffed-up wooden hoe (lel)? 2/3rds of a second before they fall over! It's still better than pre-1.9 for PvP but that's not saying too much
I see what you're getting at with the system, but quite honestly it's not much different than just extending the health bar. You could get that fairly easily by making health regenerate slower for a time if you take damage, like most games tend to do.
Enchantments: The damage buff already put in place is a minor one at best. You have to go into this realizing that, with the new armour, most players will have up to twice as much health in combat, half of which can recover with a brief delay, so more damage is not OP, it's balanced. Taking into account the new improper use penalties that come with enchantments, sharpness would suffer improper use when not living things, smite when not fighting undead, and BoA when not fighting arthropods. Weapons would now be much more tailored for certain situations, giving you a reason to use a variety of them. Do realize that with the most powerful upgraded weapon available, the player would only be able to do a maximum of 13.5 hearts with a fully upgraded diamond axe, and that's only to one type of enemy without a penalty, remember? Players, with fully enchanted diamond armour, and potions, will enter combat with the equivalent of between 15 and 35 hearts, depending on armour type, and potion specifics. At the same time, lighter armour is quieter, and lets you move faster, allowing you to outrun any heavier players. Dexterity was balanced so that it would not reintroduce spam clicking. Spam clicking is around 1 click per 0.1/0.2 seconds, and only the fastest swinging weapons would be brought down that far, such as hoes, which are already like that, only now they'd lose durability from hitting people. At the same time, any level of dexterity, and anything past level one of the draw enchantment, can only be found rarely in generated structures, and dexterity is only in the End, and in strongholds, so it would be extremely hard to find. Finally, the bow enchant is to make up for the new defensive capabilities of players, and again, the enchantment is extremely rare.
You don't seem to realize that armor is worse under your new system. Sure, players have doubled health with diamond armor, but the damage reduction we had before (unless you're not removing that and I'm mistaken...?) still wouldn't do much due to armor penetration though) exceeded 50% on diamond armor and effectively gave players three times as much life.
When reading this I saw the +1 heart of damage per level as a minimum; guess I read wrong. Only now you've made BoA and Smite completely useless? You don't get the prior use penalty against relevant enemies any more, but now you kill irrelevant enemies in two hits (or more) instead of one and take more durability damage than you would otherwise. Makes them worthless, which is kinda sad because Smite was one of the few actual choices in PvE equipment. Either way the axe thing is irrelevant now because I said that under the assumption that mercy invincibility was still in play and they were the only weapon noticeably affected by Dexterity...
Your point about armor sorta makes sense now, but only really because Protection enchants are the only things relevant for actually protecting you, and even then you'll die super quickly no matter what you're wearing.
Rarity does not balance anything. The fact that it's rare arguably puts more emphasis on the worst part of PvP: the focus on out-gearing opponents. This just means people will be helpless against Dexterity II players if they don't have Dexterity II themselves (and even then there's not much they can do to survive against them.
Sword Blocking: As I said, there would be an improper use penalty on this. At the same time, I do agree that a diamond item would have too much durability. Perhaps swords would block 50% of damage, rather than shields 90%. This would be a fitting penalty for having quick access to 2 different weapons on the fly, which was one of the ideas behind this suggestion. The other is for assassins, and also, it looks pretty cool.
Only 50% would be worthless; you'll die in two seconds instead of one. 90% is hugely improved (10 seconds vs 1 second isn't that bad) though it'll break in a second as well due to how shield durability works.
Prior use penalty would be irrelevant (it'd still have more durability than a shield) but we're seeing eye-to-eye here sorta so whatever.
Weapon Specialisation: The DPS of a diamond axe with full sharpness and full dexterity is 13.5 hearts every 0.5 seconds, so 2 times a second, leading to 27 hearts of damage per second, but with a forced swing delay that cannot be interrupted, and enemies that also have these newly balanced weapons. Axes have their crit damage removed, and replaced with the new ability in combat specifics. Axes now have one basic damage output. Their new knockback ability makes up for this. The DPS of a Diamond sword with the same specifics is 9 hearts of damage every 0.3 seconds, adding up to 27 HEARTS OF DAMAGE EVERY SECOND. That balances out pretty good if you ask me. As well though, swords are still better for combat, as missing with a sword swing leaves much less of a recovery time, and the sword has its crit damage boost, taking it up to 30 hearts a second. It was not up to me to try and make the tools into weapons. I refuse to suggest new items, as it seems more like something that won't actually be considered if I do that. The tools are already being changed into weapons, what with their new swing delays. This suggestion simply refines the delays, and adds special abilities to every tool. Notice that the hoes, as usual, do very low damage. I made up for this in combat by giving them a bunch of knockback abilities, turning them into the go to defensive weapon for an archer, who just wants to get some distance. Combine this with his ability to outrun any player in armour heavier than chain, and you see where the differentiation comes in. Making them act COMPLETELY different form swords is actually impossible, due to the fact that minecraft is, and will always be, a game about hitting things, with other things.
You've removed crits entirely from weapons without the bonus? Do weapons with crits only gain a heart of bonus damage or the current boost plus a heart? If the former, crits are pretty pointless now which is sad as they're a pretty fun mechanic.
You're miscalculating the DPS for the sword. In practice it should be 45 DPS (1 damage = 1 half heart) unlike what you've stated (54 with proper conversions) for the axe compared to 55 DPS for the sword. An iron sword is actually more damaging than the diamond one, with 60 DPS. And I've already mentioned the stuff going on with hoes. Outside of PvE (which has been thoroughly wrecked with your changes so it's not even worth talking about) there's no reason to use anything but a hoe, just because the DPS is much higher.
Weapons acting differently from swords is far from impossible. You just haven't tried implementing one.
Armour Slowdown: Diamond still Is the best tier. It essentially gives you double health, half of which recovers over time. It slows you down imperceptibly, and doesn't make much noise. I wanted the speed difference to be hard to notice in normal gameplay. You'll only notice it if you're wearing diamond armour, and chasing down someone in leather. He will escape, because he is minutely faster.
The point is that you're trying to make other tiers viable. You either make diamond pointlessly more expensive than the others or still superior to all the others (in which case why did you try making the others viable?). With these changes diamond is probably the second worst tier (behind gold) due to the slowdown and noises; head-on fights are way too unreliable due to the massive damage being thrown around by players, so stealth is really the only way to win fights without being screwed over by lag or luck.
Stealth: The stealth is actually viable now. A player in combat with full leather will only be a one hit to the tankiest of players. Those done up in full diamond, with a fully enchanted diamond axe have ALWAYS been able to best you in combat. The goal of this is not to make it so that the guy in leather with an iron sword is AS GOOD as a guy decked out with diamonds. It's to make it so that, should he get caught by one of these tank players, he has a few different options. He actually has the capacity within the constraints of the game to have the guy in diamond armour actually guessing what he's going to do. Is he going to whip out a hoe and spam him with attacks so much he can't land one? Is he going to run off and actually have a chance of escaping due to his lighter armour. Is he going to dive off a balcony with the elytra and swoop up, firing of 4 or 5 arrows towards the tank with an upgraded bow? The possibilities are endless now. At the same time, you can hide in tallgrass again, and it will obscure your nametag, so it works for both players and mobs.
Stealth was always viable, it just wouldn't win you fights singlehandedly; it gave you an edge and would usually let you beat an equally-geared or marginally better opponent. Leather is what wasn't viable. Now it's the only viable tier if you don't want to constantly be on the lookout (and I mean constantly, because inattention at the wrong second will kill you), if only because the others slow you down (armor itself is nearly pointless due to the ridiculous DPS) while still being capable of accepting Protection.
With your theories, if the guy in diamond catches him and he has enough time to actually guess what the leather player will do, the leather guy still isn't going to win because he basically has half the life of the diamond guy. In practice, barring lag on the part of the diamond guy (which will kill him due to the insane DPS) the leather guy is either dead or going to run away (and will probably die if the diamond guy has a Quickdraw bow, as he'll just spam him down).
Armour Health: Not true. If a guy in iron armour with an iron sword tries to rush a guy with diamond gear, he will be used to mop the floor after the fight. If a guy in chain armour takes a couple of arrows from way off wherever, it won't affect his health. His armour with recover in a bit, and he'll be on his way. You have to remember that there are so many variables in place. Enchants, potions, different armour classes, different weapons. You still have your full health after that's gone. The only way a guy will be able to fully kill someone without them effectively countering will be if he sneaks up on him, which, as stated before, is now possible. If you have weak armour, you are either using a bow, or you're sneaking, and you can run away, so being in a situation where you get comboed to death will be uncommon. Diamond armour, and iron too, will be able to take enough hits that a guy can get his bearings, let the armour recover, and return to the fight ready for combat. Armour does not protect by percentage any more, it takes the damage for you instead, so how full the armour bar is doesn't effect how much the armour protects you.
Nope. If the iron guy starts a combo first, the guy in diamond will die. Simple as that. When death occurs in a second, a moment of inaction will kill them. You overestimate armor in your system. Don't you see how insane the damage is with your system? Healing, potions, etc., it's all irrelevant unless it's Sharpness on your hoe. The only thing that matters is if you get the jump on the enemy and if you hit and start a combo first. Armor regeneration is completely irrelevant aside from very-long range combat; leather is useful because it doesn't slow you down and can receive Protection, diamond is maybe useful if you have perfect reactions and can catch stealthy players long before they get close, everything else is pointless.
Also, why are you acting like you need light armor to use a bow? Heavy armor is practically necessary, as it means an enemy archer needs six hits to kill you (reasonable enough time to get behind cover).
"A few arrows" is easily enough to kill a chainmail-equipped player, and two will down them if they don't have Protection.
Shield Durability: Did I not increase the durability? That was my goal, as I heard the durability of shields was pretty low. I'll have to change that.
Shield durability is 181 in Vanilla. People complain a lot about the durability, but the problem is that they take much more damage than other items do (specifically, the damage of an incoming attack).
Bow Durability: Yes, I know, it's fine. Just a bit excessive. This one, I admit, is more opinion, but having to worry about your bow breaking a bit more than you currently do would level it out with weapons and armour a bit.
Eh. Perhaps.
Limited Shielding Time: The point of this, while I admit you're right on the clunky part, was to emphasize timing. When your enemy attacks, you will now, due to the animations, actually have a chance to see it coming and react. If you bring up your shield for less than the maximum second, it will count right back down, and you'll be able to block his next attack. The only weapon that would be able to outswing the usefulness of a shield is a hoe, and they do barely any damage. Also, what is up with this whole comboing thing. The weapons still swing slowly. You still have to wait before yo swing again. Now you don't have a choice. Interrupting a combo is as easy as hitting the guy while he's recovering, which, again, is not true with the hoe, but it does terrible damage.
In the end, shields will be irrelevant; DPS is high enough and weapons are spammy enough that it'll let you last maybe a second longer; one second to break the shield, and another to kill you.
Also, you do realize that every weapon, axes included, is *faster* now? Effective attack speed is 0.5. Always has been, 'til you removed it.
Potion Arrow Change: This was an attempt to make it easier to select the arrows. This way, archers will actually have to play the archer, rather than having a sword they can quick switch to, and it will remove the gimpiness of firing a bow one handed while you hold a shield. This was the main goal here.
You've got two conflicting ideas here: making "archers" play "archer", and making it easier to select arrows; you've done the latter at the expense of the opposite of the former. You could do this in the core game, you've just made it so you had to do that rather than fire from the inventory for anything but regular (and maybe spectral) arrows.
Penalty Change: Was an attempt to add drawbacks to misusing weapons. The axe is not the best weapon. You said this many times, but it's not. Do your math next time. Swords have an identical DPS, but swing faster, and have a crit bonus. They are still the most versatile weapons.
"Do your math" when your own math is wrong... pff. Yes, my math was wrong, but those calculations were made under the assumption that mercy invincibility was still in play.
Hiding In Grass: Mobs will not be cakewalks in this update. Being overrun with the reduced attack speed is a big worry in the new update, and it still would be, in a much less forgiving way, as you have no low damage knockback hit to fall back on. As well, armour and weapons would also be more dangerous in the hands of mobs now, with these updates taken into account.
You've increased attack speed. Every weapon, even the slower diamond variants, are faster than the old ones; whether it's because you've increased their speed directly or because you removed mercy invincibility. PvE is a joke with these changes.
I understand your concerns, I really do. That said, most of what you had to say against balancing was based off assumptions, and proved untrue when I used some math. The basic idea is that this would add variety, and every buff the weapons get is active for every player and mob. I saw your concerns, and rebalanced armour accordingly. Combat would be, if anything, slowed down by this. I get the feeling you misunderstood what I had to say about the swing times, as you were acting like I basically said to put back spam clicking. I just proposed a way that forces you to follow through with your attacks, rather than spamming weak attacks every time you miss.
The different weapons are all aimed towards different playstyles. think like this. Sword:Fighter Pickaxe:Paladin Axe:Heavy Shovel:Knight Hoe:n00by Spammer Bow:Archer. Different weapons have different upsides and downsides, and the new armour makes up for the increased damage. Everything balances out. Give the idea a chance. I did my math. You should have done yours.
Again, your math is wrong. My math before was wrong as well but only because it was using mercy invincibility as a "minimum" attack speed. This math is correct.
Alternate playstyles are pointless due to the existence of Glorious Spam in the form of hoes. Other weapons might have upsides, but "murder people in a second" kinda trumps them all completely since that's what weapons are supposed to do.
New armor does not make up for the increased damage. The new armor is worse than the old armor, aside from leather. The new armor doesn't solve the problems with higher damage, it makes them worse.
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Did something happen to you in your childhood to give you this unreasonable fear of rutabaga?
I'm pretty sure that the fact that this post is in the suggestions thread makes the fact that, "DONE RIGHT" is an opinion kind of go without saying. You have to sell it. Basic marketing.
I can't even comprehend how incorrect this one part of your post is. Shouting "DONE RIGHT!!!" with all caps does nothing more than say "I understand this better than Mojang! I have the answers here, not them!" I don't see how that's "just an opinion without saying". Maybe if you put "I think" after the screaming caps, then yeah.
As for selling, you can't just loudly shout how good your product is, you'll probably have to prove those words. Give me the address of any marketing teacher you ever had. I'll make sure to get them fired.
That said, they wanted a combat update, and kind of didn't make that. I did this post with their usual habit of not including suggested items in mind, and tried to make sure most of it would be relatively easy to code.
Yes, they did make it that. The update mostly focuses on combat. What did they miss out on?
I know it's not completely original, but It really is needed, so I included it.
If the core gameplay is not broken without it, it's not "needed". This a deep dark hole that many new suggesters here dig for themselves.
These, "not so special" combat specifics are details that make the weapons their own, rather than just something else to hit things with. Considering that the swing times on weapons would now be animated, rather than using a programmed recharge, they could easily use their own combat types. First, the hoe now acts as a normal weapon, so I added a bit of extra knockback through the abilities to balance it out.
Since the animation is just an enhanced aesthetic thing, I can get behind that.
I think that rather than these being tweaks that I like, they are simply tweaks you DON'T like. You cannot argue your opinion by stating that the opposing info is also an opinion. It simply doesn't work like that. This suggestion is a full rebalance of the combat system, built off of ideas that I know FOR A FACT, that much of the community supports. I fixed combat by making it look better, and play better, and now it meets in the middle with the spam clickers too.
You know what? You're absolutely right about the fighting-opinion-with-opinion thing. But if you walk in and go "this should do 1 more damage per hit", how do we know that that's a "must have"? To be honest, most of these tweaks you've given are quite menial, meaning that if Mojang added this, I wouldn't go "finally! they fixed that!" I'd go "Oh, cool? *shrug*"
What you're doing is polling the audience and saying what we all like, as if you can read our minds.
Don't be so quick to dis something you disagree with. If you took the time to actually think out the implications of all these additions instead of starting to formulate your negative response before you finished the first topic, you would have been paying enough attention to put all the things in this post together as one suggestion, rather than a group of separate changes. That is what differentiates this from a wishlist. This is one, overall rebalance, that would improve and draw out PvP combat.
I read your suggestion in its entirety and sadly, some ideas are still "less this, but more this". I'm not saying your suggestion is awful, but I'm still not seeing why some of these changes are... 'done right'. Also, the improper use thing seems like a bit much. I don't see much need for that kind of penalty. Our discussion is a bit scrambled here, so if you want, my next post will go over every single thing in your suggestion one-by-one.
If posting suggestions is something you're gonna do in the future, the stickied suggestion will be your best friend.
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Yeah, that guy in the avatar is me. I'm *that* strange. It happens. Sometimes people act like that. Just go with it. I can offer help with suggestions even before you post them - NOT make your suggestions - but help you with them.
I'm going to be completely honest with you. I put this together in 2 hours, at like 3 in the morning. I was exhausted, and I quite honestly thought it was half decent. The friendly, welcoming community of Minecraft Forum has made sure to inform me in no time flat that I was incorrect. That said, it's kind of depressing to look at all this, and realize that you care about my post more than I do. Put up stuff you like about it, or say you don't like it, but the only person here who didn't put in an unholy amount of effort into over analysing every minute detail of my post when it's convenient, then ignore the details that serve only to make up for these details, is chrispang, and he made it clear that he would have had you others not already beaten that dead horse into a fine broth. This is Minecraft. It's not religion, it's not politics, and it's not the annual assholery convention, so why is this all I'm getting. I put up a resource pack a while back, and this same thing happened, and the pack wasn't even a little bit half assed. I thought Planet Minecraft was the one full of dicks, but now I see that nowhere is safe, as not only has this happened twice now, you obviously have nothing better to do, as Kholdstare with his 'oh so brief' comments on this tracked the post to it's secondary version on reddit, and did the same thing there. You guys are scary, and if im going to be treated like I'm being an asshole by a bunch of guys who are obviously up on a high horse, for making a suggestion with the purpose of providing some improvments, then I'm outie, and all your 3 page long hate comments in disguise as logic will fall on dead ears. be happy. You convinced a regular guy to stop posting to this sight with your foolish ignorance. And on Christmas nonetheless. Have you all no decency?
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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MatthewSpaz
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I like how you said at the beginning that this would be a collection of tweaks and then went ahead and proposed a new armor overhaul system. I think Minecraft combat is good now in 1.9 and that we should leave it at that.
Chill out man, they all just gave their opinions about your idea. Remember this, you won't be able to make a great idea without other peoples' criticism. It's like the basic foundation of great ideas. They told you what they feel about your idea, now go and accept it. You don't have to be act like a.. I don't want to say it. We're only talking over new Minecraft ideas, there's no place for fights here.
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Hit that green button below if I helped~!
A Guide To Suggestion Ratings
Full Support
I love the idea; it is flawless.
Support
I like the idea. It has some minor problems but nothing which cannot be easily corrected.
Partial Support
I like some of the ideas but some I don't.
Partial Support II
I like the overall idea but the execution is bad
No Support
I don't support your idea
Extreme No Support
If this were to be added, I would be very cross.
Support Pending
If you fix a problem, I will support.
MINECRAFT
IMPROVING THE COMBAT UPDATE
This is not a wishlist. Simply a collection of tweaks
The combat update has added a few great features to minecraft in combat, sounds, animations, and a few other miscellaneous things. While not at all a bad update, there are a few things that could use some tweaking, and could definitely benefit from them. I've tried to do some decent work on the layout of this post, and may update it later.
Combat
-COMBAT BASICS
The delayed attack animations are a decent addition to the game, that I have no problem with at all. It adds variation to the combat in combination with multiple other factors, and improves an aspect of the game that was, up to this point, rather lacking. The timing is right, and the damage is acceptable in most cases, but there are a few tweaks that are needed
-Animation: The delay is fine, but it's execution is sloppy, and tedious to deal with. Why bother giving weapons and every other block and item in the game a half done looking lift animation, when there's a perfect way to change swing speed already implemented into the game through potions. The swing speed could remain unchanged on every item that wasn't a weapon. Otherwise, the weapons and tools would have the normal swinging animation, but at a different speed. At the same time as both looking and functioning better, it would both add a short delay on the impact of heavier weapons, increasing the need for timing in combat, it would satisfy the people who complain about the removal of spam clicking, as you could still sort of do it. This would still allow for all of the special attacks added in the snapshot to function in a much better way.
-Delays: The basic, single punch takes exactly 0.3 seconds. Rapid block breaking is unchanged. The timings on weapons swings would be changed, and would have several modifiers on them based on several factors. First of all, the weapons would have a basic swing speed, rather than a recovery speed that can be interrupted. Swords have a swing speed of 0.5 seconds. Pickaxes have a swing speed of 0.6 seconds, as they are large, 2 handed tools in most cases. Shovels would swing at 0.5 seconds, as they are also 2 handed, but they are usually lighter than pickaxes. Axes would swing at 0.7 seconds, to make up for their obscene damage. Finally, hoes would swing at 0.4 seconds, as they do the least damage. Materials would now have an effect on the base swing speed of weapons. The basic speed is based off of iron and stone tools, which have no material modifiers. Wood subtracts 0.1 seconds from swing speed. Gold adds 0.2 seconds. Diamond adds 0.1 seconds.
-Damage: Basic iron tools will be the baseline for this description. A sword does 4 hearts of damage. An axe does 6.5 hearts of damage. A shovel does 3 hearts of damage. A pickaxe does 3.5 hearts of damage. A hoe does 2 hearts of damage. Wood, subtract one heart. Stone, subtract one half heart. Gold, add one heart. Diamond, add 2 hearts.
-ENCHANTMENTS
To fit the new combat system, a few enchantments would be simplified. I am unsure is my suggestion on the damage upgrades is already the case, but I feel stating it is necessary for perspective purposes. As well as this, a couple of new enchantments would be added as well.
-All damage enchantments, such as sharpness, and bane of arthropods and such, would add one heart of damage per level, without fail.
-Basic fire enchantments light a target on fire for 30 seconds. Each level adds 10 seconds of flames.
-Knockback and Punch level ones remain as is. All additional levels add one block of distance.
-First new enchantment, dexterity, reduces swing speed by 0.1 seconds, and goes up to level 2. This will not tilt the balance in any extreme way, but can help mildly. This enchantment could be found as an enchanted book in dungeons, nether fortresses, and both sand and jungle temple chests.
-Second new enchantment, quickdraw, reduces bow draw speed by 0.1 seconds. It goes up to level 3, at which point the bow charges almost instantly. This enchantment could be gained extremely rarely at it's level one phase from an upgraded enchanting table, and could be found up to it's maximum level in stronghold and end city chests.
-DUAL WIELDING
The dual wielding is balanced in a decent way, but a few tweaks are also necessary in this category, both in a refinement sense, and a balancing sense.
-Blocks can be placed from both hands. If you place a block in both your left and right hands, you will be unable to punch, but you will be able to place both blocks alternately. On the other hand, (No pun intended) you can place a block in your off hand while there's a sword in your main hand.
-For aesthetic purposes, you could block with a sword if it was in your off hand with the same function as a shield. This would be for the assassin types who want to dual wield, and want there to be a purpose. At the same time, the enchantments on separate tools and weapons could be used alternatively in combat with the hand switch button.
-Another aesthetic change is that any sword or shield that was in the off hand, and had not been blocked with, would lower slightly, so as not to obscure your vision.
-COMBAT SPECIFICS
The new attack abilities are cool, but could be further utilised for multiple tools.
-Swords have a 1 heart bonus on critical attacks
-Axes have their shield disabling ability, but also have a one block increased knock back on their sprint attack.
-Pickaxes gain the shield ability from axes, but have the critical bonus from swords
-Shovels gain the slashing ability, and have a half block knock back increase on all basic attacks
-Hoes have the same knock back ability as shovels, as well as the slash from swords, and the knock back while sprinting from axes
-ARMOUR
Armour is, let's face it, an untapped source of combat variation. This has been brought up several times, and armour does, without a doubt, need to have an effect on your character that is more noticeable overall. What I propose is a complete armour overhaul, that changes several aspects of it, and of how it works.
-Armour, first of all, changes your movement speed slightly. This is the least original of the suggestions in this category. Leather and chain armour have no effect on your speed, but iron reduces it by 0.1 seconds per block, diamond by 0.2, and gold by 0.3.
-Armour makes noise. Every armour type besides leather has a sound effect for making noise, and armour will make noises at random intervals, with a minimum of 15-20 seconds between each noise, though you can go several minutes in silence. Leather is completely silent so that you can use it for stealth. Chain armour makes noise twice as often. When your armour makes noise, it acts as a ping for all nearby mobs that can't see you within a 15 block radius. If any unaware mobs are nearby, they will hear, and come after you. At the same time, any nearby players may hear as well.
-The armour bar now acts a bit differently. Armour fills it the same amount it usually does, but when you are hit, it reduces like your health, taking the damage in it's place. Leather, iron, and diamond armour will recover from any damage done at the speed of level 1 regeneration, with a cool down of ten seconds after an attack before you start to heal. Chain heals with the same cool down, but at the speed of level 2 regeneration. Gold heals at level 1 regen, but with a 5 second cool down. When your armour is on cool down, it will have the same effect as your shield when it's disabled.
-MISCELLANEOUS
A few other assorted items up for changes
-Hoes now suffer a durability loss when hitting mobs
-Shields now have a basic 120 durability
-Bows have 100 durability
-Shields can only be held up for 1 second at a time, with a short recharge if they are held up for the full second. This encourages timing with your shield. Shields however, reduce damage by 90%
-Potion arrows will not be used unless they are in the off hand, and when they are, they are held like lowered swords and shields
-The improper use penalty is employed on only shovels, pickaxes, and hoes
-If an item is enchanted with bane of arthropods or smite, its improper use penalty will be completely removed from any enemies it has a damage boost on. At the same time, mobs unaffected by the damage boost will cause the improper use penalty
-Bows suffer an improper use penalty when fired before the last two stages of charging
-Due to the slower attacks being forced, the brief invincibility after being hit is removed from both players, and mobs
-Using a tool besides a sword will make you put away your offhand item, as they are all 2 handed items. This could have an arm animation Tools in the offhand still have no function
-You can hide from mobs in tall plants again, and it will silence your armour
So, that's all I have to suggest. It is basically a tweaking, and refinement of the new update. The new stuff adds variation, but the weapon and armour tiers, and tool types, are all variations of the same strategy. The slowness of diamond armour along with the more powerful axes will make good tank players. The strength and lightness off chain armour along with the massive potion variation will allow powerful wizards. The silence of leather armour, and the draw speed enchantment will allow archers to excel. The elytra, along with offhand sword blocking, and the swing speed increase enchantment will let ninjas become viable as well. Combat, with the new delays of heavier weapons, and regenerating armour that actually adds visible health will make the combat seem heavy, and brutal, and will allow fights to become long, and tactical. Please leave any suggestions or comments below.
I don't really know enough about the weapons mechanics to comment on those...
But I do like the idea of the armor making noise. Just a few things I think could be changed there. I've always wanted there to be more offhand and sneaky parts about Minecraft, taking some more planning and working than just "get the best armor and you win" kinda thing. I think that the level of the armor making noise would go up as the armor got better.
So Leather would make no noise
Chain would occasionally make a noise, but it would be more of a slithering metal on metal thing and less of a clink, so not as loud and only half a chance to make mobs aware of you.
Gold would make muffled clinks occasionally
Iron would make clinks fairly often
And Diamond would clink aaaall the time. Loudly. Like every other step.
A few other additions to make it easier on you iron armor folks
Sneaking would half the chance for your armor to make a noise.
Maybe an enchantment, like saaaay "Padded" Would both reduce how often your armor clinked, and how loud it was.
I kinda like the idea of the armor bar thing, though it would certainly need some tweaks. Right now it just shows you how much you have on, which is not the most useful. And it would give another few reasons for choosing this over that.
Yep!
Oh and I don't really like the draw penalty. The only time I hear people complaining about ruining the bows at scout camp is when you dry fire it, with no arrow. You can reduce how much you draw to fire along a smaller distance, no problem.
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I do agree with some of your points. Putting it simply, without all the details above, I want armour to work as a secondary health bar, that recharges over time, with a slight delay. The reason chain armour would make noise more often, is that it's made of chains so it would constantly shuffle around. This is made up for by chain acting as light armour, while still being decent. Gold and chain clink slightly more, but the faster recharge on gold armour is to make up for the fact that it's basically crap.
Stealth, on the other hand, was an option I wanted to expand heavily upon. Hiding in tallgrass is something that should have stayed in, but maybe it could also silence your armour, and even dim your nametag, so you could hide from people too. The secondary swords that can block was put in mostly for the assassin types, as you would look much cooler with two swords than a sword and a shield. As well, you can have different enchantments on the swords, and switch them out on the fly.
The draw penalty was put in with the damage caused by dryfire in mind, but there was no better way I could think of to implement it. Maybe add it only when you spam click the bow. This could double in effectiveness for mapmakers who want their bows to have less than the base durability, so they have to fire it a bunch to damage it.
The weapon mechanics now have a system where you swing, and it drops your weapon. A small bar will appear that shows how long you have before the weapon can swing again. Heavier tools such as axes have higher swing times. The problem with this, is that it looks shoddy, and carries over to every block and item in the game. The recharge bars are both somewhat difficult to see in the chaos of minecraft PvP. It is currently far too easy to misjudge the recharge, and swing too early, causing a massive damage reduction. My suggestion simply makes the weapon swing animation slower for heavier items, so you cannot interrupt the recharge. This would look better, and feel more like the weapons have weight, and not just a programmed recharge time. The removal of offhand for all tools (not swords though) is because most of the tools in the game are 2 handed items.
Can you please add some line breaks in your posts, including the original? It's very wall-of-texty...
The last thing you want to do is praise your own ideas and call them "DONE RIGHT!!!" because what if someone proves all that wrong? Then it's pretty embarrassing. And going "this needs to be more like this, and that needs be more of this" can come off like you know the game's development path better than anyone else and the rest of us are in the dark. No, be neutral. Never treat your idea like a hotfix.
The enchantments part is just a bunch of pointless buffs to already-powerful enchantments. I'm seeing much "done right" there. A quickdraw enchantment is one of the most oversuggested enchantments in the world, but I can't say there's anything wrong with having it.
I as much as I'd love to place 2 kinds of blocks at once, that would really screw me over if I suddenly get attacked and need to pull out a weapon. Though I guess there could be a hotkey setup for this kind of thing. The "combat specifics" are just minor tweaks, so I'm not seeing anything special there.
Overall, these seem to be tweaks that match what you like, rather than being "better". No support, sorry.
Yeah, that guy in the avatar is me. I'm *that* strange. It happens. Sometimes people act like that. Just go with it. I can offer help with suggestions even before you post them - NOT make your suggestions - but help you with them.
Unofficial Suggestions Guide (2.0) - by Theriasis
Unofficial Critics Guide - by yoshi9048
First off, this is a wee bit painful to read. Can you put your subpoints in separate paragraphs, please?
Anyway, as for the actual critique:
Animations: Sure, I guess, but given that the animation occurs after an attack and is completely independent the rate at which you're swinging (which without your additions is as fast as the game can register separate mouseclicks) the best you can probably get is having uncharged attacks swing faster. To me, that looks like it should be dealing more damage, not less; if we change animations at all we should just use maybe 2-3 and switch between them at certain thresholds of attack charge. Easier for the player to distinguish how damaging an attack is that way.
Delays: No. A hard-coded delay removes the choice added by having the attack windup in the first place (spam for knockback or wait for damage?) by removing any choice entirely. Additionally, the way you've implemented this makes non-diamond swords attack at the maximum effective rate (due to mercy invincibility; it'd be the same as it was pre-1.9) essentially re-introducing spam.
Damage: The damage buffs here are extremely unnecessary and unbalanced; combined with your enchantment changes, enchanted diamond swords will OHK the vast, vast majority of majority of mobs. No changes to damage are necessary to begin with, aside from giving axes less-stupid scaling; why do we need this? ...at all?
Enchantments: No. The sharpness buff combined with the aforementioned damage buff makes BoA completely useless and Smite useful solely against the Wither; Sharpness V diamond swords will kill everything else affected in one hit, making the bonus damage offered by the specialized enchants wasted. 30 seconds of fire is massive AND extremely annoying; what we have is fine. Dexterity reintroduces spam for diamond weapons (we just got rid of that...) and maxes axes superior to all other weapons due to the existence of mercy invincibility enforcing a minimum effective attack speed of 0.5 seconds. Quickdraw throws even more spam into the mix by making bows spammier as well when they really have no reason to be; additionally it's hard to determine just how fast they fire ("-0.3 seconds" and "almost instantaneous" firing are two completely different things).
Dual-wielding blocks: Sure. Useful for builders, although not terribly useful for combat (Eff. V pickaxes are too fast to make defenses useful).
Sword-blocking: No. Diamond swords have much higher durability than shields and aren't that expensive, and even iron swords are more durable than shields and cost just about as much; this makes shields pointless.
Weapon specialization: Axes are the best regardless. (highest DPS thanks to Dexterity, and their higher base damage means they effectively get the crit boost from swords due to how crit bonus damage works; they don't have the sweep attack but that doesn't matter when you butcher everything anyway.) More weapon-specific bonuses is a good idea to incentivize diversity in combatants, but the lack of balance throughout this thread makes everything pointless in the end; you're also trying to shoehorn bonuses into items you've already designed to be ineffective as weapons. Design actual weapons rather than force the tools into new roles and make them act completely different to swords, and you'll be on to something.
Armor slowdown: Annoying for general gameplay, and defeats the purpose of having armor tiers. Diamond is supposed to be the best tier; it wouldn't be harder to get than the others otherwise.
Armor noises: Stealth won't matter because players in leather armor will be oneshot thanks to your damage changes. Ironically, diamond will be the best for stealth as if you get caught, you're on equal footing with your target; but if you don't, you're in a better position to kill your enemy than with leather.
Armor health: Will make combos too prevalent and powerful. Once someone starts a combo, the enemy's defense will be brutalized; the extreme damage from your weapons will make them ignore a ton of armor due to the new (bizarre) armor penetration mechanic, and now armor loses effectiveness as you get hit... yeah, you're not going to take more than 3 hits, 5 tops, before you're dead. Gold armor's armor regeneration is also pointless for the same reasons combos are going to be ridiculously powerful; armor penetration will be so extreme that it will literally do nothing even when it hasn't lost any effectiveness. (I may or may not be misunderstanding how this is actually supposed to work due to your wording; does armor act as a second health bar, or does it reduce damage as it does now but lose effectiveness when you get hit? If it acts as a second health bar... well, you'll die even quicker, then!)
Shield durability nerf: It was horrible before, why'd you make it worse?
Bow durability nerf: It was fine before, why nerf it? Aside from newfound spamminess from Quickdraw, but the problem there is with Quickdraw, not bow durability.
Limited shielding time: Clunky, but not bad. It is, however, pointless due to the newfound power of combos (you'll just drop your shield after a second passes and get brutalized; if you survive, the insane damage of weaponry and awful shield durability will leave it broken literally in five attacks. And then you die.).
Potion arrow change: Eh. More annoying and illogical than anything. Shields won't have that much power anyway so there isn't much incentive to not have an arrow there.
Penalty change: Fine. Ordinarily I'd say axes are still inferior to swords (and aside from the shield-disabling, they are) but you've made them the best weapon, so...
Two-handed nerf: Pointless for non-axe tools. It's realistic but those aren't going to be effective weapons anyway, at least not compared to swords/axes. Fine for axes, but nowhere near enough to balance them.
Hiding in grass: Tall grass is common, and mobs are already going to be cakewalks with these changes. Please don't make them even worse.
Adding variation to combat is something that needs to happen and is the one thing Mojang didn't really do. Knowing this was the one thing you got right; unfortunately, your awful balancing turned PvE into a wreck and made PvP worse than it is now (not quite as bad as pre-1.9 but that's pretty damn hard to do).
Thing is, 1.9 is actually kind of good right now. Aside from a few odds and ends, like the bizarre axe damage scaling and the awful regeneration change, 1.9 is a pretty good baseline. 1.9's problem is with what it didn't add, not with what it did add. Don't try to overhaul combat again when you can't balance a game; instead you should have tried to add new playstyles using the mechanics introduced by 1.9.
And don't touch damage. Seriously. Aside from axe scaling, damage is fine the way it is. Don't fiddle with attack speed enchants either; we have DPS-increasing enchants (Sharpness) already.
I'm pretty sure that the fact that this post is in the suggestions thread makes the fact that, "DONE RIGHT" is an opinion kind of go without saying. You have to sell it. Basic marketing. That said, they wanted a combat update, and kind of didn't make that. I did this post with their usual habit of not including suggested items in mind, and tried to make sure most of it would be relatively easy to code.
Enchantments wise, the suggestion above is already very similar to the current enchants. You needed to read the entirety of my post to really get it, so maybe try that. The new enchants and damage are balanced with the new recovering armour in mind. Try to think a bit before deciding you don't like something ;D. Quickdraw allows people to actually use the archer class against the new armour. I know it's not completely original, but It really is needed, so I included it.
These, "not so special" combat specifics are details that make the weapons their own, rather than just something else to hit things with. Considering that the swing times on weapons would now be animated, rather than using a programmed recharge, they could easily use their own combat types. First, the hoe now acts as a normal weapon, so I added a bit of extra knockback through the abilities to balance it out.
I think that rather than these being tweaks that I like, they are simply tweaks you DON'T like. You cannot argue your opinion by stating that the opposing info is also an opinion. It simply doesn't work like that. This suggestion is a full rebalance of the combat system, built off of ideas that I know FOR A FACT, that much of the community supports. I fixed combat by making it look better, and play better, and now it meets in the middle with the spam clickers too.
Don't be so quick to dis something you disagree with. If you took the time to actually think out the implications of all these additions instead of starting to formulate your negative response before you finished the first topic, you would have been paying enough attention to put all the things in this post together as one suggestion, rather than a group of separate changes. That is what differentiates this from a wishlist. This is one, overall rebalance, that would improve and draw out PvP combat.
I'll try to cover all of this. It's a bit hefty of a reply.
Animations: I know the raising animation takes place after the swing.This, in my opinion, is the shoddy looking part of it. That and the fact that it carries over to all items in the game. My suggestion is to simply remove the recharge bar, and make the swings themselves slower, leaving all other items unaffected. You know when you have mining fatigue and your swing is slower. I say, just place that effect over the weapons at a slightly reduced rate, and then you'd have no choice but to wait on your swings. There would also be a slight delay before heavier weapons such as axes actually hit the enemy, so you'd have to time your attacks better.
Delays: All I've stated above is that the attacks themselves would be slower, rather than having a delay. It would look better, and even make the weapons feel like they have weight. As for the "mercy" delay, I stated in the misc. section that it would be removed. Now, axes would be powerful, heavy hitting, 1 or 2 hit kill weapons, while the hoes would be the weapon for spamming enemies with weak hits. You have to remember that the inability to swing before your attack fully recharges would carry over to opponents too. Basically, it would turn minecraft's melee combat into something reminiscent of ESO, (bad example, I know) or other fantasy fighting games. Spam clicking would not be introduced. While spam clickers could spam, and hit over and over again, they'd still be doing it at a reduced rate, and without timing, placing them at a huge disadvantage to the people who timed their attacks for the most possible damage.
Damage: The damage changes were thought out fully, and are not overpowered. Let's try linking some things together here. The fact that armour has a recharge time now, and fully protects from damage until it's disabled will make it so that people will often try run off and recover during fights. The new combat would basically be a game of waiting to charge up, and rushing in to try and overpower someone before they could escape and recover, so while armour is based on preservation, weapons need to be able to dish out as much dps as possible. Killing an enemy will be a game of truly overpowering him, as you have to get him in a situation where you can deal as much as 20 hearts of damage (with full diamond armour) before he cold run off for 10 seconds and let his armour recover. This is not just with my armour suggestion. The new healing mechanic already makes this a viable strategy. I just built on it. Think guerilla fighting. Launch an ambush, pick off a couple of guys, run off for some r&r, then come back.
Enchantments: The damage buff already put in place is a minor one at best. You have to go into this realizing that, with the new armour, most players will have up to twice as much health in combat, half of which can recover with a brief delay, so more damage is not OP, it's balanced. Taking into account the new improper use penalties that come with enchantments, sharpness would suffer improper use when not living things, smite when not fighting undead, and BoA when not fighting arthropods. Weapons would now be much more tailored for certain situations, giving you a reason to use a variety of them. Do realize that with the most powerful upgraded weapon available, the player would only be able to do a maximum of 13.5 hearts with a fully upgraded diamond axe, and that's only to one type of enemy without a penalty, remember? Players, with fully enchanted diamond armour, and potions, will enter combat with the equivalent of between 15 and 35 hearts, depending on armour type, and potion specifics. At the same time, lighter armour is quieter, and lets you move faster, allowing you to outrun any heavier players. Dexterity was balanced so that it would not reintroduce spam clicking. Spam clicking is around 1 click per 0.1/0.2 seconds, and only the fastest swinging weapons would be brought down that far, such as hoes, which are already like that, only now they'd lose durability from hitting people. At the same time, any level of dexterity, and anything past level one of the draw enchantment, can only be found rarely in generated structures, and dexterity is only in the End, and in strongholds, so it would be extremely hard to find. Finally, the bow enchant is to make up for the new defensive capabilities of players, and again, the enchantment is extremely rare.
Sword Blocking: As I said, there would be an improper use penalty on this. At the same time, I do agree that a diamond item would have too much durability. Perhaps swords would block 50% of damage, rather than shields 90%. This would be a fitting penalty for having quick access to 2 different weapons on the fly, which was one of the ideas behind this suggestion. The other is for assassins, and also, it looks pretty cool.
Weapon Specialisation: The DPS of a diamond axe with full sharpness and full dexterity is 13.5 hearts every 0.5 seconds, so 2 times a second, leading to 27 hearts of damage per second, but with a forced swing delay that cannot be interrupted, and enemies that also have these newly balanced weapons. Axes have their crit damage removed, and replaced with the new ability in combat specifics. Axes now have one basic damage output. Their new knockback ability makes up for this. The DPS of a Diamond sword with the same specifics is 9 hearts of damage every 0.3 seconds, adding up to 27 HEARTS OF DAMAGE EVERY SECOND. That balances out pretty good if you ask me. As well though, swords are still better for combat, as missing with a sword swing leaves much less of a recovery time, and the sword has its crit damage boost, taking it up to 30 hearts a second. It was not up to me to try and make the tools into weapons. I refuse to suggest new items, as it seems more like something that won't actually be considered if I do that. The tools are already being changed into weapons, what with their new swing delays. This suggestion simply refines the delays, and adds special abilities to every tool. Notice that the hoes, as usual, do very low damage. I made up for this in combat by giving them a bunch of knockback abilities, turning them into the go to defensive weapon for an archer, who just wants to get some distance. Combine this with his ability to outrun any player in armour heavier than chain, and you see where the differentiation comes in. Making them act COMPLETELY different form swords is actually impossible, due to the fact that minecraft is, and will always be, a game about hitting things, with other things.
Armour Slowdown: Diamond still Is the best tier. It essentially gives you double health, half of which recovers over time. It slows you down imperceptibly, and doesn't make much noise. I wanted the speed difference to be hard to notice in normal gameplay. You'll only notice it if you're wearing diamond armour, and chasing down someone in leather. He will escape, because he is minutely faster.
Stealth: The stealth is actually viable now. A player in combat with full leather will only be a one hit to the tankiest of players. Those done up in full diamond, with a fully enchanted diamond axe have ALWAYS been able to best you in combat. The goal of this is not to make it so that the guy in leather with an iron sword is AS GOOD as a guy decked out with diamonds. It's to make it so that, should he get caught by one of these tank players, he has a few different options. He actually has the capacity within the constraints of the game to have the guy in diamond armour actually guessing what he's going to do. Is he going to whip out a hoe and spam him with attacks so much he can't land one? Is he going to run off and actually have a chance of escaping due to his lighter armour. Is he going to dive off a balcony with the elytra and swoop up, firing of 4 or 5 arrows towards the tank with an upgraded bow? The possibilities are endless now. At the same time, you can hide in tallgrass again, and it will obscure your nametag, so it works for both players and mobs.
Armour Health: Not true. If a guy in iron armour with an iron sword tries to rush a guy with diamond gear, he will be used to mop the floor after the fight. If a guy in chain armour takes a couple of arrows from way off wherever, it won't affect his health. His armour with recover in a bit, and he'll be on his way. You have to remember that there are so many variables in place. Enchants, potions, different armour classes, different weapons. You still have your full health after that's gone. The only way a guy will be able to fully kill someone without them effectively countering will be if he sneaks up on him, which, as stated before, is now possible. If you have weak armour, you are either using a bow, or you're sneaking, and you can run away, so being in a situation where you get comboed to death will be uncommon. Diamond armour, and iron too, will be able to take enough hits that a guy can get his bearings, let the armour recover, and return to the fight ready for combat. Armour does not protect by percentage any more, it takes the damage for you instead, so how full the armour bar is doesn't effect how much the armour protects you.
Shield Durability: Did I not increase the durability? That was my goal, as I heard the durability of shields was pretty low. I'll have to change that.
Bow Durability: Yes, I know, it's fine. Just a bit excessive. This one, I admit, is more opinion, but having to worry about your bow breaking a bit more than you currently do would level it out with weapons and armour a bit.
Limited Shielding Time: The point of this, while I admit you're right on the clunky part, was to emphasize timing. When your enemy attacks, you will now, due to the animations, actually have a chance to see it coming and react. If you bring up your shield for less than the maximum second, it will count right back down, and you'll be able to block his next attack. The only weapon that would be able to outswing the usefulness of a shield is a hoe, and they do barely any damage. Also, what is up with this whole comboing thing. The weapons still swing slowly. You still have to wait before yo swing again. Now you don't have a choice. Interrupting a combo is as easy as hitting the guy while he's recovering, which, again, is not true with the hoe, but it does terrible damage.
Potion Arrow Change: This was an attempt to make it easier to select the arrows. This way, archers will actually have to play the archer, rather than having a sword they can quick switch to, and it will remove the gimpiness of firing a bow one handed while you hold a shield. This was the main goal here.
Penalty Change: Was an attempt to add drawbacks to misusing weapons. The axe is not the best weapon. You said this many times, but it's not. Do your math next time. Swords have an identical DPS, but swing faster, and have a crit bonus. They are still the most versatile weapons.
2 Handed Nerf: I get what you're saying, but maybe just axes and pickaxes, as they both act as heavy weapons. The axe is not the best weapon, tools are useful.
Hiding In Grass: Mobs will not be cakewalks in this update. Being overrun with the reduced attack speed is a big worry in the new update, and it still would be, in a much less forgiving way, as you have no low damage knockback hit to fall back on. As well, armour and weapons would also be more dangerous in the hands of mobs now, with these updates taken into account.
I understand your concerns, I really do. That said, most of what you had to say against balancing was based off assumptions, and proved untrue when I used some math. The basic idea is that this would add variety, and every buff the weapons get is active for every player and mob. I saw your concerns, and rebalanced armour accordingly. Combat would be, if anything, slowed down by this. I get the feeling you misunderstood what I had to say about the swing times, as you were acting like I basically said to put back spam clicking. I just proposed a way that forces you to follow through with your attacks, rather than spamming weak attacks every time you miss.
The different weapons are all aimed towards different playstyles. think like this. Sword:Fighter Pickaxe:Paladin Axe:Heavy Shovel:Knight Hoe:n00by Spammer Bow:Archer. Different weapons have different upsides and downsides, and the new armour makes up for the increased damage. Everything balances out. Give the idea a chance. I did my math. You should have done yours.
(FYI I'm going by what is used by the game in terms of damage. 1 damage = 1 half heart, players have 20 health, et cetera. It's what I'm used to.)
You removed mercy invincibility? That made things much worse.
Because of the ridiculously fast speed of a Dexterity hoe and the huge buffs given to their scaling and Sharpness, diamond hoes now have 90 DPS; 120, with Strength II. Players only have 20 health by default, y'know.
Ironically wooden hoes would technically have the highest DPS (120 with Sharpness V, 180 with Strength II on top of that). Durability's still crap but you can get 90-ish hits out of a hoe with Unbreaking III. Here's a tip: static damage buffs like Sharpness go very well with fast weapons. This is why there was a brief time period before the Sharpness nerf but after the introduction of attack windup, where both pickaxes and hoes were better weapons than axes...
You're vastly overestimating the protection of new armor. To put it into perspective, someone with full Protection IV diamond armor under your new system effectively has 121 health (40 health, aka 40 half hearts, divided by .33 as you only take 33% damage from Prot. IV). Remember that 90-dps figure? Yeah, people die in just over a second and a quarter... barely over a second, with Strength II. That's not "overpowering an enemy" at all! That's just brute reaction time. How about the insanity of someone using a buffed-up wooden hoe (lel)? 2/3rds of a second before they fall over! It's still better than pre-1.9 for PvP but that's not saying too much
I see what you're getting at with the system, but quite honestly it's not much different than just extending the health bar. You could get that fairly easily by making health regenerate slower for a time if you take damage, like most games tend to do.
You don't seem to realize that armor is worse under your new system. Sure, players have doubled health with diamond armor, but the damage reduction we had before (unless you're not removing that and I'm mistaken...?) still wouldn't do much due to armor penetration though) exceeded 50% on diamond armor and effectively gave players three times as much life.
When reading this I saw the +1 heart of damage per level as a minimum; guess I read wrong. Only now you've made BoA and Smite completely useless? You don't get the prior use penalty against relevant enemies any more, but now you kill irrelevant enemies in two hits (or more) instead of one and take more durability damage than you would otherwise. Makes them worthless, which is kinda sad because Smite was one of the few actual choices in PvE equipment. Either way the axe thing is irrelevant now because I said that under the assumption that mercy invincibility was still in play and they were the only weapon noticeably affected by Dexterity...
Your point about armor sorta makes sense now, but only really because Protection enchants are the only things relevant for actually protecting you, and even then you'll die super quickly no matter what you're wearing.
Rarity does not balance anything. The fact that it's rare arguably puts more emphasis on the worst part of PvP: the focus on out-gearing opponents. This just means people will be helpless against Dexterity II players if they don't have Dexterity II themselves (and even then there's not much they can do to survive against them.
Only 50% would be worthless; you'll die in two seconds instead of one. 90% is hugely improved (10 seconds vs 1 second isn't that bad) though it'll break in a second as well due to how shield durability works.
Prior use penalty would be irrelevant (it'd still have more durability than a shield) but we're seeing eye-to-eye here sorta so whatever.
You've removed crits entirely from weapons without the bonus? Do weapons with crits only gain a heart of bonus damage or the current boost plus a heart? If the former, crits are pretty pointless now which is sad as they're a pretty fun mechanic.
You're miscalculating the DPS for the sword. In practice it should be 45 DPS (1 damage = 1 half heart) unlike what you've stated (54 with proper conversions) for the axe compared to 55 DPS for the sword. An iron sword is actually more damaging than the diamond one, with 60 DPS. And I've already mentioned the stuff going on with hoes. Outside of PvE (which has been thoroughly wrecked with your changes so it's not even worth talking about) there's no reason to use anything but a hoe, just because the DPS is much higher.
Weapons acting differently from swords is far from impossible. You just haven't tried implementing one.
The point is that you're trying to make other tiers viable. You either make diamond pointlessly more expensive than the others or still superior to all the others (in which case why did you try making the others viable?). With these changes diamond is probably the second worst tier (behind gold) due to the slowdown and noises; head-on fights are way too unreliable due to the massive damage being thrown around by players, so stealth is really the only way to win fights without being screwed over by lag or luck.
Stealth was always viable, it just wouldn't win you fights singlehandedly; it gave you an edge and would usually let you beat an equally-geared or marginally better opponent. Leather is what wasn't viable. Now it's the only viable tier if you don't want to constantly be on the lookout (and I mean constantly, because inattention at the wrong second will kill you), if only because the others slow you down (armor itself is nearly pointless due to the ridiculous DPS) while still being capable of accepting Protection.
With your theories, if the guy in diamond catches him and he has enough time to actually guess what the leather player will do, the leather guy still isn't going to win because he basically has half the life of the diamond guy. In practice, barring lag on the part of the diamond guy (which will kill him due to the insane DPS) the leather guy is either dead or going to run away (and will probably die if the diamond guy has a Quickdraw bow, as he'll just spam him down).
Nope. If the iron guy starts a combo first, the guy in diamond will die. Simple as that. When death occurs in a second, a moment of inaction will kill them. You overestimate armor in your system. Don't you see how insane the damage is with your system? Healing, potions, etc., it's all irrelevant unless it's Sharpness on your hoe. The only thing that matters is if you get the jump on the enemy and if you hit and start a combo first. Armor regeneration is completely irrelevant aside from very-long range combat; leather is useful because it doesn't slow you down and can receive Protection, diamond is maybe useful if you have perfect reactions and can catch stealthy players long before they get close, everything else is pointless.
Also, why are you acting like you need light armor to use a bow? Heavy armor is practically necessary, as it means an enemy archer needs six hits to kill you (reasonable enough time to get behind cover).
"A few arrows" is easily enough to kill a chainmail-equipped player, and two will down them if they don't have Protection.
Shield durability is 181 in Vanilla. People complain a lot about the durability, but the problem is that they take much more damage than other items do (specifically, the damage of an incoming attack).
Eh. Perhaps.
In the end, shields will be irrelevant; DPS is high enough and weapons are spammy enough that it'll let you last maybe a second longer; one second to break the shield, and another to kill you.
Also, you do realize that every weapon, axes included, is *faster* now? Effective attack speed is 0.5. Always has been, 'til you removed it.
You've got two conflicting ideas here: making "archers" play "archer", and making it easier to select arrows; you've done the latter at the expense of the opposite of the former. You could do this in the core game, you've just made it so you had to do that rather than fire from the inventory for anything but regular (and maybe spectral) arrows.
"Do your math" when your own math is wrong... pff. Yes, my math was wrong, but those calculations were made under the assumption that mercy invincibility was still in play.
You've increased attack speed. Every weapon, even the slower diamond variants, are faster than the old ones; whether it's because you've increased their speed directly or because you removed mercy invincibility. PvE is a joke with these changes.
Again, your math is wrong. My math before was wrong as well but only because it was using mercy invincibility as a "minimum" attack speed. This math is correct.
Alternate playstyles are pointless due to the existence of Glorious Spam in the form of hoes. Other weapons might have upsides, but "murder people in a second" kinda trumps them all completely since that's what weapons are supposed to do.
New armor does not make up for the increased damage. The new armor is worse than the old armor, aside from leather. The new armor doesn't solve the problems with higher damage, it makes them worse.
I can't even comprehend how incorrect this one part of your post is. Shouting "DONE RIGHT!!!" with all caps does nothing more than say "I understand this better than Mojang! I have the answers here, not them!" I don't see how that's "just an opinion without saying". Maybe if you put "I think" after the screaming caps, then yeah.
As for selling, you can't just loudly shout how good your product is, you'll probably have to prove those words. Give me the address of any marketing teacher you ever had. I'll make sure to get them fired.
Yes, they did make it that. The update mostly focuses on combat. What did they miss out on?
If the core gameplay is not broken without it, it's not "needed". This a deep dark hole that many new suggesters here dig for themselves.
Since the animation is just an enhanced aesthetic thing, I can get behind that.
You know what? You're absolutely right about the fighting-opinion-with-opinion thing. But if you walk in and go "this should do 1 more damage per hit", how do we know that that's a "must have"? To be honest, most of these tweaks you've given are quite menial, meaning that if Mojang added this, I wouldn't go "finally! they fixed that!" I'd go "Oh, cool? *shrug*"
What you're doing is polling the audience and saying what we all like, as if you can read our minds.
I read your suggestion in its entirety and sadly, some ideas are still "less this, but more this". I'm not saying your suggestion is awful, but I'm still not seeing why some of these changes are... 'done right'. Also, the improper use thing seems like a bit much. I don't see much need for that kind of penalty. Our discussion is a bit scrambled here, so if you want, my next post will go over every single thing in your suggestion one-by-one.
If posting suggestions is something you're gonna do in the future, the stickied suggestion will be your best friend.
Yeah, that guy in the avatar is me. I'm *that* strange. It happens. Sometimes people act like that. Just go with it. I can offer help with suggestions even before you post them - NOT make your suggestions - but help you with them.
Unofficial Suggestions Guide (2.0) - by Theriasis
Unofficial Critics Guide - by yoshi9048
I'm going to be completely honest with you. I put this together in 2 hours, at like 3 in the morning. I was exhausted, and I quite honestly thought it was half decent. The friendly, welcoming community of Minecraft Forum has made sure to inform me in no time flat that I was incorrect. That said, it's kind of depressing to look at all this, and realize that you care about my post more than I do. Put up stuff you like about it, or say you don't like it, but the only person here who didn't put in an unholy amount of effort into over analysing every minute detail of my post when it's convenient, then ignore the details that serve only to make up for these details, is chrispang, and he made it clear that he would have had you others not already beaten that dead horse into a fine broth. This is Minecraft. It's not religion, it's not politics, and it's not the annual assholery convention, so why is this all I'm getting. I put up a resource pack a while back, and this same thing happened, and the pack wasn't even a little bit half assed. I thought Planet Minecraft was the one full of dicks, but now I see that nowhere is safe, as not only has this happened twice now, you obviously have nothing better to do, as Kholdstare with his 'oh so brief' comments on this tracked the post to it's secondary version on reddit, and did the same thing there. You guys are scary, and if im going to be treated like I'm being an asshole by a bunch of guys who are obviously up on a high horse, for making a suggestion with the purpose of providing some improvments, then I'm outie, and all your 3 page long hate comments in disguise as logic will fall on dead ears. be happy. You convinced a regular guy to stop posting to this sight with your foolish ignorance. And on Christmas nonetheless. Have you all no decency?
I like how you said at the beginning that this would be a collection of tweaks and then went ahead and proposed a new armor overhaul system. I think Minecraft combat is good now in 1.9 and that we should leave it at that.
No support
FULL SUPPORT 1.9 is for NOOBS
Chill out man, they all just gave their opinions about your idea. Remember this, you won't be able to make a great idea without other peoples' criticism. It's like the basic foundation of great ideas. They told you what they feel about your idea, now go and accept it. You don't have to be act like a.. I don't want to say it. We're only talking over new Minecraft ideas, there's no place for fights here.
Hit that green button below if I helped~!
A Guide To Suggestion Ratings
Full Support
I love the idea; it is flawless.
Support
I like the idea. It has some minor problems but nothing which cannot be easily corrected.
Partial Support
I like some of the ideas but some I don't.
Partial Support II
I like the overall idea but the execution is bad
No Support
I don't support your idea
Extreme No Support
If this were to be added, I would be very cross.
Support Pending
If you fix a problem, I will support.
Support ________
Case by case usage.