Minecraft Forums

Quote from Hybran

Minecraft is a sandbox.

Who said Survival had to be difficult? I'm not sure Jeb or Notch ever stated that. Find me proof.

Notch has. It's been awhile, and I don't remember where. I'll let other people quote his tweet, his blog, etc.

Quote from mistercrtaz »

as it sits exp can be very difficult to obtain.

Then a simple question for you: Should every enchantment be level 50? If so, why have XP? Why have XP hard to obtain? Should you ever have to choose to make a bunch of low level enchantments? Should the high-end items be really rare?

Or should everything be common; should level 50's be so common that you can toss them out once per hour, and regard diamond picks as "Geez, only efficiency 4, what a waste"?

THAT's what I'm seeing, and that's what I think is a fail.

Make several lower level enchantments.

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For everyone who says that a mob grinder is "hard to make": What if you're wrong? What if it's as simple as a hundred block high tower that funnels mobs into a 22 drop fall with an enclosed glass viewport and "exposed feet" for you to swing at, or toss one potion at?

Mob grinders are easy to make. If you think they are hard, then maybe it's you?

Quote from survivedcreeperexpolsion

Look, I go on mob killing sprees all the time, but it after killing a lot of mobs and wasting several iron swords, what level did I get on? 11. Now, just give me a couple hours and my mob farm chugs out 10 levels worth of exp.

THIS IS MY POINT

Your mob grinder / XP farm makes all the point of XP pointless.

Why have an XP system -- Why have a system that limits enchantments -- if you're going to bypass it all anyways?

This, in a nutshell, by someone who disagrees with me, is exactly what I'm getting at, and why I think it needs to be done.

And frankly, if you need a couple of hours to only get 10 levels of XP, your mob farm stinks.

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I really want to dissect your post. Please forgive this. But please listen to yourself.

Do you have any idea how long it took me to make my mob farm?

I don't know how long it took to make your farms. Do you know how many hours I spent on a wheat farm? I took what I thought was a "solved" problem, only to find that Etho's greenhouse was actually designed for flowers, not for wheat -- and needed significant change. Or the time that I spend surveying land before building staircases and laying out rooms. Or just hours and hours of tree farming so that I can say I have 2x6x64 legitimately obtained wood for each of the three tree types I have so far, plus another 2x64 planks for each, plus some spares so that eventually I'll have 2x64 slabs and stairs of each.

Time to build something is "hardly" the issue, and at the same time, the whole issue. That's playing the game. Some people will take longer to get resources than others; I won't play the "limited resource survivals" (skyblock, ocean block, sky grid, etc) because it takes too long for a cobble generator to generate enough to be worth working with, or in Ocean Block (no lava) just waiting for trees to grow and always being short.

How much times I died because I personally tested out the traps?

Again, I don't know how many times you died to testing out traps. Care to guess how many times I died to carelessness? Care to guess how many times I died because a co-player's "water-vator" turned into a death trap when I fell out? Care to guess how many times I ran into a ravine because I was too frustrated to pay attention to what I was doing?

(1 for mistaking food and hearts. Two for two different forms of the water-vator. Once for frustration. Dropping from about level 15-20 down to 2-6 in each case. All honestly earned levels, no grinders.)

How much times I have used trial and error to solve probelms? And how I nearly lost my 50 levels of exp because a mob accidentally spawned an knocked me into a free-fall trap?

Trial and error isn't a bad thing. What's your point here?

Losing 50 levels because you didn't light up properly? That can happen while caving. Maybe a better question: What were you doing with 50 levels? How many of them were earned from fighting, and how many were "free" from your farm?

Not to mention, if you get rid of this, I guarantee that there will be massive rage quits, and a lot of people refusing to update their version.

Every version has people saying "I won't upgrade". What's your point?

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You talk about how minecraft is all about being creative. This proposal would simply say that that one particular creative structure would work for a little bit, and then stop. You would then need to either (A) Let a creeper blow some of it up, or (B) Find a new place to make a new, different grinder, or (C) Do something entirely different -- be brand new creative.

Doing something that everyone does -- a rubber stamp grinder -- is not creative.

Doing a variation on a theme -- a new form of grinder -- is a little creative. Now, can you do another 30 new forms at 30 new dungeons?

Doing something entirely different -- not a grinder at all -- is so creative that I don't know what it looks like at all. Care to show me?

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TL; DR:

Let me turn this around. Lets say I'm on something like SkyBlock, or SkyGrid, or OceanBlock. Lets say I've just set up my first resource generator (my first cobblestone generator, or planted my first tree).

Would you consider it cheating, or against the spirit of those maps, to switch to creative mode, and give myself 2 double chests full of that resource block, in no time? 6x9x64, x2, of that very resource that those maps make hard to get as part of the endurance challenge of them? Is that "fair"? "In the spirit of the map"? "Cheap"?

Would you consider it legit for someone who had a mob grinder built to switch to creative mode, and make a double chest full of bottles-o-enchanting for free levels? Or just flat-out using the "/xp" command?

That's what you are doing.

EDIT: "Skyzone" was the other limited map. (It's a map generator based on SkyBlock that adds some things that SB is missing.)

Quote from Neospector

Yes, we would consider it cheating for you to use creative. How in the bloody universe do you think you're going to compare switching to creative mode and spawning unlimited items and using the /xp command to constructing something that takes time, resources, and effort to build?

So let me repeat this:

1. I have just built a tree farm on a map that restricts my trees initially. I could spend 3 hours planting and chopping, planting, chopping, etc. Or, I could just save time and use creative mode to give me a chest of wood. I have torches and/or beds so mobs can't reach me. Fair/unfair?

2. I have just built a mob farm that will give me unlimited XP over time. I could spend hours sitting here, collecting levels. Or, I could use creative mode, magic up 50 levels, and cast right away. Fair/Unfair?

spawning unlimited items

And a gravity fall drop spawns unlimited amounts of mob drops -- gunpowder, bones, arrows, etc. Fair/unfair?

---

The context here, was a map where you had a long, repetitive, boring grind to plant and harvest trees to make wood, or to sit by a cobblestone generator to harvest cobblestone. You seem to feel that something that gives you wood or stone quickly and easily is wrong.

So let me turn that around: If you have to spend time and effort to harvest XP orbs, zombie flesh, spider string, etc; and instead, build an automatic harvester that gives you chest after chest worth of drops in minutes, is that wrong?

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You said yourself constantly that you copy some greenhouse design or other, what's the difference? You're being hypocritical here:

No, not really.

How water flows -- how water falling down spreads 7 blocks (or 8, depending on circumstances) -- leads to one basic design for water flowing into a center space.

Etho's design was specifically based around what grass blocks you could reach, plant bonemeal on, and harvest for the flowers; it had complexity around the whole "Don't let any flowers get trapped by water flow".

Making a wheat farm -- where you do not need to place bonemeal on the ground -- resulted in the whole thing scaling up from 13x13 to 17x17 (numbers from memory, might be wrong), and all the water flow ways having to be redesigned. But guess what: ** There is only one such design **. It's a function of the laws of physics in minecraft. I guarantee that if I gave you the design goals, you'll build 98% the same design.

To repeat: I thought Etho had already designed and shown what I wanted. It turned out that he did not. Some work and experimentation to figure out how to build what I wanted revealed that the game physics only gave one way.

So you're missing the entire point, let me say it again:

Mob grinders require time, effort, and resources to construct, this is the main thing here, they are not just some random structure you built like a dirt hut.

I agree that they require time to build.
I agree that some designs require lots of resources (ok, all of them require at least a little.)
I agree that they require some effort.

My question: Why do you think that after spending a little bit of time, effort, and resources, that you should get unlimited supplies of _X_? And if you do, why not just skip straight to creative, and magic it up without bothering to wait?

If I spend a week gathering resources, building a drop trap that reduces mob health to a perfect number without killing them, and then kill them for XP, I deserve to get XP. If you spend a week gathering resources, building wheat farm that produces more than enough wheat for you to survive, you deserve to be rewarded.

This is the key point; I do not believe these are the same.

Wheat is supposed to reproduce large amounts of wheat and seeds; you are supposed to be able to farm it for food.

Monsters are supposed to be things to fight, you are supposed to have a risk to get the rewards from them.

You are bypassing the risk, going straight to the rewards; a well designed system gives you chest after chest full of drops. Why not just use creative to magic it up?

And if you don't like creative to magic it up, why not prohibit the freebie farm in the first place?

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It's also worth noting that you now get XP from mining and smelting blocks. Does that not cheapen the value of XP since you can do it entirely without combat now?

No. The XP system was broken before, in that the only way to get XP was in combat, and peaceful players could not get it at all. The XP system was broken in that, in a game where you are a miner, and gain the ability to enchant tools to mine better, required combat.

In fairness, I am a skill system player, not a "generic-XP level up" system player.

I am the type of person that makes areas safe and does a lot of mining. Being able to get that XP for enchanting while safe makes a lot of sense.

... So let me guess Neospector's next complaint: "My mob farm lets me collect XP safely, how does it differ?". Answer: Time/effort.

I have to go to the caves, find the ores, mine them.
No different than "I have to go to the flat plains, with my bows, stay out at night, and shoot things".

But very different from "I sit in front of the mob dispenser, and just punch mindlessly as they show up", or "I just toss one potion and they all die".

After all, didn't Neospector just say that using creative mode to do it instantly is unfair? Time/effort does matter, right?

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Where do you draw the line? What's good/bad here?

1. Going into the outdoors at night, with bows/arrows, fighting monsters, dealing with the risk, and collecting some drops and XP over the course of 10-12 minutes.

2. Using a Mob Grinder to reduce mobs to a single punch, generating mobs 10-20 times as fast as the outdoor hunt, with no risk. But it takes time and attention.

3. Using a gravity fall to collect all the drops even faster, with no attention time. But no XP.

4. Using creative mode to give you chests of drops, and/or XP bottles.

I draw the line between 1 and 2. As soon as the risk goes away, the rewards should go away. You seem to be of the opinion that 3 is fair game. But then, other than sitting mindlessly holding "punch", or walking by the pickup spot every 4.5 minutes, what's different than creative mode?

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Design challenge. Design a wheat farm with the following goals:
1. Harvesting is done by standing in one spot, in the center, placing a water block on top, and letting the water flow send all the wheat and seeds to you.
2. Make it the largest amount of harvest-able wheat that you can get from a single water block placement.

3. There is a bug where water falling down from above will destroy the wheat, instead of harvesting it. Assume that bug is fixed (it's already fixed in the snapshots, and I wasn't aware of it when I built the thing).

I suspect that 98% of your design will match mine. The design is heavily restricted by the water physics of minecraft.

Quote from tchntm43

The OP wants to control how other people play the game by themselves. This is the worst category of minecraft player (including the griefers), and makes me wonder what kind of people these are in real-life.

There is one game called "Minecraft creative". In there, you can get anything you want, place anything you want, etc. With a few limits.

There is another game called "MC Edit minecraft maps". In there, people like Vechs can do anything, with fewer limits. And we like the results of that.

And then, there's a game called "Minecraft survival". It has rules -- you cannot just do anything. Rules that restrict what you can and cannot do.

People like jeb_, notch, dinnerbones, etc., are all trying to restrict what you can and cannot do.

I'm just trying to point out additional restrictions that seem to be sensible.

Now, are people like notch and jeb_ really in "the worst category" of minecraft players? Do you like the rules that they have? Do you think the rules should be changed?

I'm just pointing out that this is a rule behavior that Notch has stated was bad, that Jeb seems to have stated is nothing more than "We never got rid of it before", and here is a proposal for removing it that is relatively easy to implement.

So my question to you: Would this rule change -- only minimal free XP, only minimal free drops without risk -- make for a better game, given that it's a game with rules and restrictions?