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[werty8472]

redsand, on 01 March 2012 - 06:13 AM, said:

No, you're right.  We should just be able to get experience from safely tending to our wheat instead of going out and working to kill mobs.

D_Cooper, on 01 March 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

Defeat implies combat. You don't defeat a spawner: You break it.

Combat = EXP has been a staple of games since...Well, whenever EXP first appeared. Literally farming for it just makes little sense. Really, why should you get EXP for tilling a bit of dirt? At least combat has some degree of risk.

D_Cooper, on 01 March 2012 - 07:19 AM, said:

Because that's the single laziest, undetailed suggestion ever?

But seriously...Seriously? Maybe if it spawned crab people.

Experience should not come without risk, period.

See, the problem with these suggestions are that it ignores a simple fact:  Killing mobs is not more risky than other behaviors in Minecraft.  You can find methods of making a spawner pump out a single guy every ten seconds, and have your health heal over and over again.  You can fight mobs only during early morning light.  It's not hard to find ways to make combat easy, because this is a creative game, which allows us to find cheesy ways of doing anything our little hearts desire.

IntangibleWaffle, on 01 March 2012 - 06:34 AM, said:

What I do, is when I find a dungeon, I add a water stream, so that when mobs spawn, they fall 23 blocks. This is enough to take them down to exactly half a heart, so you can kill them and get EXP with no tools, and at no danger to yourself.

This is a solution that requires prep-time, careful consideration, exploration of an area, and skill.  How is it that this method should not be rewarded?

[Marfagames]

I really like this idea. Could use a bit more exp through hard working. I mean I not cheating myself with a exp grinder, so it's not that easy to get exp. And I like although to mine a lot, work  on the forest and farm manuel, not using a machine for it too.

I guess people who grind everything and do everything automatical will never see a use for EXP through other meanings. But people who work hard and earnest to archive there goals with their own fist, actually would like it.

[redsand]

AnonTheMouse, on 01 March 2012 - 12:08 PM, said:

I understand that you are trying to defend the position that gains in experience should come with risk. However, in the first place they should not. They should come with effort. That aside, there is more risk in going underground for ore than there is in going to kill mobs. You have to go out to find the ore, going to where it is, and it doesn't come back once collected...meaning you have to continue to go further and further out, either putting more and more work into staying safe or taking greater and greater risk (and often doing both).

I see what you're saying but you get so much more from mining then when you kill a mob, if they didn't have EXP. Iron alone has just about as many uses than all mob drops combined, if not more.  Yes mining has it's risks.  What are they?  Mobs.  They'll sneak up on you and try to push you off a ravine into lava.  If you go mining on peaceful, what's the risk?

[D_Cooper]

werty8472, on 01 March 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

This is a solution that requires prep-time, careful consideration, exploration of an area, and skill.  How is it that this method should not be rewarded?

Because there is no risk. There is risk in combat. Risk of death and risk of losing all items and EXP if you cannot retrieve it in time.

As for mob farms, Mojang needs to change the way drops are handled. If the player does not personally harvest or kill, nothing should drop (whether crop or mob drop), including EXP. The exception being music discs, as they rely upon mobs killing other mobs.

[werty8472]

redsand, on 01 March 2012 - 03:51 PM, said:

I see what you're saying but you get so much more from mining then when you kill a mob, if they didn't have EXP. Iron alone has just about as many uses than all mob drops combined, if not more.  Yes mining has it's risks.  What are they?  Mobs.  They'll sneak up on you and try to push you off a ravine into lava.  If you go mining on peaceful, what's the risk?

Lava continues to be a risk throughout gameplay.  With, or without mobs on, because mining is pretty risky.  Ignoring that, people who are playing on peaceful are already exploring a different manner of gameplay.  They aren't playing the same game as someone playing on Hard mode.  That's not a bad thing, and shouldn't be punished.  Different strokes for different folks.

Besides, I think Anon made their best point, and had it totally ignored by your responce:  Experience should be granted for EFFORT and NOT risk.

D_Cooper, on 01 March 2012 - 08:30 PM, said:

Because there is no risk. There is risk in combat. Risk of death and risk of losing all items and EXP if you cannot retrieve it in time.

As for mob farms, Mojang needs to change the way drops are handled. If the player does not personally harvest or kill, nothing should drop (whether crop or mob drop), including EXP. The exception being music discs, as they rely upon mobs killing other mobs.

Drops are handled fine with grinders.  A zombie put through some absurd mechanism which kills zombies is still going to drop rotten meat, and it makes no sense for this to not happen just because the player did not deliver the fatal blow.

Here's what I'm gathering from this argument:

There is a group that believes that risk = reward.

There is a group that believes that effort = reward.

It seems to make the most sense for effort to give reward.  If you choose to spend time building or mining, or farming, or growing trees, or exploring, or whatever...  You should get some experience.  If you hunt passive mobs, you should get some experience.  But you should be getting much more experience when you add risk.  Going to a place that has more difficult mobs (such as the Nether) should give more experience than a place that has weaker mobs.  Killing said difficult mobs should give more experience than killing passive mobs.  The level of effort should be reciprocated by the level of experience.  The level of experience should be multiplied by aspects of risk.  If you're killing a mob with low life, you should get more experience than if you kill it with high life.  If you're killing a mob with low hunger, you should get more experience than someone with high hunger.  Killing a mob with low health and hunger should grant MUCH more experience than just having low health, or hunger.  If you're killing someone with a sword, you should get more experience than someone killing with a bow, and less that someone unarmed.

If you're mining on peaceful you should get less experience than mining on hard.  If you're fighting monsters on normal, you should make less experience than fighting monsters on hard.  If you're mining, you should make more experience than someone farming, and less than someone hunting.

[D_Cooper]

The group that believes risk=reward has far more to support their belief. For example, the entire gaming industry. Name me fifty games that reward you with EXP for every little thing involving "effort". I can easily name fifty that offer it for combat.

And no, drops are not handled fine with grinders. You just contradicted your "effort=reward" argument. Grinders are not something that require effort: You set them once, they work forever.

Also, effort already gives you reward anyway: Mining gives you materials. Farming gives you food and seeds. Combat gives you EXP. Each has its own rewards and there is absolutely no reason to change this just because the hippy-minded among us refuse to go kill something.

[werty8472]

D_Cooper, on 01 March 2012 - 11:47 PM, said:

The group that believes risk=reward has far more to support their belief. For example, the entire gaming industry. Name me fifty games that reward you with EXP for every little thing involving "effort". I can easily name fifty that offer it for combat.

And no, drops are not handled fine with grinders. You just contradicted your "effort=reward" argument. Grinders are not something that require effort: You set them once, they work forever.

Also, effort already gives you reward anyway: Mining gives you materials. Farming gives you food and seeds. Combat gives you EXP. Each has its own rewards and there is absolutely no reason to change this just because the hippy-minded among us refuse to go kill something.

You provide little evidence to suggest that "the entire gaming industry" support this risk = rewards policy.  Combat is not always risk.  In fact, in most RPGs (originators of the idea of experience points, by the by), combat is very rarely ever actually threatening to characters outside of boss battles, which offer additional experience far beyond what typical enemies do.  Effort, and not risk, is rewarded.  Risk is often negatively impacting toward reward.  The more you risk, the more likely you are to have to restart from the beginning.  It wasn't until relatively recently that games had started providing game mechanisms which rewarded risk, outside of games involving gambling.

Items are not a reward, they are a product.  They exist because the enemy has some capacity to have them on their body.  A pig, when killed, has ham meat on its body because it is a pig, and that's what pig have on their body.  They DON'T naturally contain experience points.  That is a reward.

As such, I was consistant with my statement.

Effort gives you reaction.  Mining gives you minerals.  Farming gives you food (seeds are not a reward, they are a prerequisite which is returned), and combat gives you monster drops.  The reward system, however, for arbitrary reasons, or conservatively traditional (lacking in reason for this type of game, mind you) places emphasis on combat.  Mining gives you minerals with no reward.  Farming gives you food with no reward.  Combat gives you monster drops AND experience.  That is a poor balance, and not in any way justified by the explaination you've given.

Also, for someone lambasting the posters for their use of derisive language, you seemed pretty collected about calling those who disagree with your points "hippy-minded" and generalizing their rationale, concluding that it was without reason.

You big dummy.

[D_Cooper]

werty8472, on 02 March 2012 - 12:01 AM, said:

Items are not a reward...

This is blatantly incorrect. Items are a reward for the effort of mining, farming, etcetera. You already get reward for your effort so you do not need more.

Farming = Effort = Reward (food)

Mining = Effort = Reward (stone and ore)

Combat = Effort + Risk = Reward (drops for effort, EXP for risk)

Nothing outside combat provides risk therefore nothing outside combat should reward you for risk.


What this suggestion really comes down to is "I want something but I don't want to do what's needed to get it!" - Okay. You don't enjoy the combat aspect. Fair enough. But let's say I don't like the mining aspect but I still want the materials it provides. Should I pester Mojang to add a new feature that gives me ores for killing mobs? Or let's say I'm not too into farming but I still want crops. Should mining give me wheat and melons? No and no.

[VermillionTwilight]

As much as i'd like to get exp from farming wheat, it is somewhat unfair. It doesn't cost much, just a good location. Every stalk of wheat you harvest gives 1-3 seeds, allowing you to double/triple your field every harvest.
At present, chickens, sheep, cows, pigs, squid all give small amounts of exp upon killing them. Farming them can therefore bring adequate exp to the peaceful players, while combat will bring larger amounts to those who want to "risk" losing a little health.

Instead, my suggestion to this matter would be to give large amounts of exp for each Achievement a player gets. There are a limited number of possible achievements and most are related to crafting, building and farming. Of course, more achievements would need to be added farm-wise to satisfy those people who farm.
Simple achievements could include: Harvesting 500 wheat, Growing 100 Saplings into trees, breeding 30 sheep, Harvesting 100 Melons/pumpkins, breeding 75 pigs, breeding 100 cows, breeding 150 chickens, breaking a spawner, killing a ghast with a sword, killing a creeper with fists, Brewing X item Xs, Completely filling a double-chest with stacks of wheat/cobblestone/stone/wool/sugar cane/etc, Building a Nether Portal, Activating an End frame and so on...
Additional achievements available for farming when you reach the double mark of the previous achievement.

This allows farming to bring exp, but only as a one time deal. Making combat a renewable source of exp. Progressive achievements get harder and harder and less likely to be attempted.

[D_Cooper]

VermillionTwilight, on 02 March 2012 - 01:11 AM, said:

Instead, my suggestion to this matter would be to give large amounts of exp for each Achievement a player gets. There are a limited number of possible achievements and most are related to crafting, building and farming. Of course, more achievements would need to be added farm-wise to satisfy those people who farm.
Simple achievements could include: Harvesting 500 wheat, Growing 100 Saplings into trees, breeding 30 sheep, Harvesting 100 Melons/pumpkins, breeding 75 pigs, breeding 100 cows, breeding 150 chickens, breaking a spawner, killing a ghast with a sword, killing a creeper with fists, Brewing X item Xs, Completely filling a double-chest with stacks of wheat/cobblestone/stone/wool/sugar cane/etc, Building a Nether Portal, Activating an End frame and so on...
Additional achievements available for farming when you reach the double mark of the previous achievement.

This allows farming to bring exp, but only as a one time deal. Making combat a renewable source of exp. Progressive achievements get harder and harder and less likely to be attempted.

Acceptable compromise is acceptable.

[werty8472]

D_Cooper, on 02 March 2012 - 12:12 AM, said:

This is blatantly incorrect. Items are a reward for the effort of mining, farming, etcetera. You already get reward for your effort so you do not need more.

Farming = Effort = Reward (food)

Mining = Effort = Reward (stone and ore)

Combat = Effort + Risk = Reward (drops for effort, EXP for risk)

Nothing outside combat provides risk therefore nothing outside combat should reward you for risk.


What this suggestion really comes down to is "I want something but I don't want to do what's needed to get it!" - Okay. You don't enjoy the combat aspect. Fair enough. But let's say I don't like the mining aspect but I still want the materials it provides. Should I pester Mojang to add a new feature that gives me ores for killing mobs? Or let's say I'm not too into farming but I still want crops. Should mining give me wheat and melons? No and no.

You apparently do not understand the idea of rewards.  Cause and effect:  You mine a stone, you get a cobblestone.  Cause and effect: you place seeds in farmland, you grow a thing of wheat (over time).  Cause and effect: You kill a mob, you get their drops.

There is nothing inherant about mobs dropping experience.  Experience is an additional quality added to gameplay over the initial cause and effect.  It is the "reward".  As is a chest in a dungeon.  It's an outlaying component.

Your idea of what consititutes risk is absurd.  Monsters are very rarely risky to be around.  Combat rarely acknowledges this risk.  In fact, the idea of risk's involvement in the calculating of experience is absent.  You don't get more experience for killing a horde of monsters at the same time.  You get experience for killing a monster.  As previously stated, you could sit around a spawner, and just kill monsters over and over to get experience without any actual risk.

The necessity of combat is overplayed, and your understandings of why these actions should be the sole producer of experience are not very convincing.

[D_Cooper]

werty8472, on 02 March 2012 - 01:55 AM, said:

As previously stated, you could sit around a spawner, and just kill monsters over and over to get experience without any actual risk.

Ores and crops are incentives to mine and farm, received for engaging in the incentivized tasks. A.k.a. rewards.

There is an actual risk of being killed when one fights.

But I understand your position. You're saying Mojang should definitely add a new feature that gives me crops for mining because I dislike farming but still want the rewards.

[werty8472]

D_Cooper, on 02 March 2012 - 02:06 AM, said:

Ores and crops are incentives to mine and farm, received for engaging in the incentivized tasks. A.k.a. rewards.

There is an actual risk of being killed when one fights.

See, you're adding apples with oranges, and getting the answer pineapples.

You're ignoring what I'm saying, either because you don't get it (which is fine), or because you're not listening (which is less fine).  If I mine, I get ore.  If I farm I get food.  If I hunt, I get drops.  There's no rewards here.  No incentives beyond cause and effect.  You get stone because that's the thing you mined.  That's not an incentive unless you went out of your way to mine that stone, in which the incentive was INHERENT.

Incentives are abstractions above and beyond what is a logical transformation.  Just because "you like what happens when you do something" doesn't make it a reward or incentive.  Example:  If you got rid of the experience system, would you still expect ores to drop from ore blocks?  Yes.  Would you still expect drops from mobs?  Yes.  The experience system incentivizes combat.  That is what it does.  This is what these words mean.  Trying to define them in a way that supports your answer is not making your answer more correct, because these words have actual meanings.

Again, your risk thing is not suggestive of actual conscious thought.  Risk =/= experience.  That's an arbitrary connection, which you're validating with "because I said so".

D_Cooper, on 02 March 2012 - 02:06 AM, said:

But I understand your position. You're saying Mojang should definitely add a new feature that gives me crops for mining because I dislike farming but still want the rewards,

I need to quote this seperately to accurately dissect this.  This statement is so absurd that I need anyone who looks at this comment to realize this specific explaination as a reason, if anything, why your opinion on this matter is invalid.

Three previously describes cause/effect systems:  farming = crops, mining = ore, hunting = drops

One previously described reward system:  hunting = experience

(a system which you unreasonably assert is due to some arbitrary "risk" dimension)

Proposed solution:

Cause/effect:  farming = crops, mining = ore, hunting = drops

Reward:  farming = very small amounts of experience, mining = some experience, hunting = more experience

Your statement about the solution:

Cause/effect farming = crops, mining = ore, hunting = drops

Reward:  mining = crops

[AnonTheMouse]

VermillionTwilight, on 02 March 2012 - 01:11 AM, said:

As much as i'd like to get exp from farming wheat, it is somewhat unfair. It doesn't cost much, just a good location. Every stalk of wheat you harvest gives 1-3 seeds, allowing you to double/triple your field every harvest.
At present, chickens, sheep, cows, pigs, squid all give small amounts of exp upon killing them. Farming them can therefore bring adequate exp to the peaceful players, while combat will bring larger amounts to those who want to "risk" losing a little health.

Instead, my suggestion to this matter would be to give large amounts of exp for each Achievement a player gets. There are a limited number of possible achievements and most are related to crafting, building and farming. Of course, more achievements would need to be added farm-wise to satisfy those people who farm.
Simple achievements could include: Harvesting 500 wheat, Growing 100 Saplings into trees, breeding 30 sheep, Harvesting 100 Melons/pumpkins, breeding 75 pigs, breeding 100 cows, breeding 150 chickens, breaking a spawner, killing a ghast with a sword, killing a creeper with fists, Brewing X item Xs, Completely filling a double-chest with stacks of wheat/cobblestone/stone/wool/sugar cane/etc, Building a Nether Portal, Activating an End frame and so on...
Additional achievements available for farming when you reach the double mark of the previous achievement.

This allows farming to bring exp, but only as a one time deal. Making combat a renewable source of exp. Progressive achievements get harder and harder and less likely to be attempted.

I've heard the "achievement experience" suggestion before. I know it sounds like a good idea on paper, but it's actually a really...really...bad idea. Let me explain:

• There are a limited number of achievements in the game.
  
• You can only get each one once.
  
• They are handled on an account-by-account basis, rather than map by map.

So, why does this make it a bad idea? Well, first of all due to them being non-renewable. Unless you can "get" the achievement every time you complete the prerequisite task, you get the experience and can never get it again. Never getting it again means players either risk losing experience points they can never get back, or have to go out of their way to put off doing things so that they can be sure to only get the experience when they can use it...in other words, it penalizes them for trying to enjoy every aspect of the game. That's leaving aside the fact that they could only get the experience for each task one time in their entire Minecraft "career". Even making it a "by map" achievement system doesn't really fix things. Get some achievements, Creeper blows you up, ragequit map because the experience points are lost forever.

On the other hand, letting them get achievments over and over is even worse. Just imagine someone making an "On A Rail" track that takes them around and around to get experience for every circuit of the track they complete. You want to talk about easy experience...that would be some easy experience. What about making it once per life? Would it be fair to make people only able to redo an achievement if they died? Well...no. In that scenario, the person just adds a suicide booth to their house. Do some easy achievements, craft your enchanted item, put it in a chest and hop into the suicide booth...or even just do the achievements and hop in, if your bed is close enough to collect the dropped orbs.

So, bottom line, giving experience for achievements would either be horribly unfair and make a lot of people complain, or it would be completely broken and make a lot of people complain.

[werty8472]

AnonTheMouse, on 02 March 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

I've heard the "achievement experience" suggestion before. I know it sounds like a good idea on paper, but it's actually a really...really...bad idea. Let me explain:

• There are a limited number of achievements in the game.
  
• You can only get each one once.
  
• They are handled on an account-by-account basis, rather than map by map.

So, why does this make it a bad idea? Well, first of all due to them being non-renewable. Unless you can "get" the achievement every time you complete the prerequisite task, you get the experience and can never get it again. Never getting it again means players either risk losing experience points they can never get back, or have to go out of their way to put off doing things so that they can be sure to only get the experience when they can use it...in other words, it penalizes them for trying to enjoy every aspect of the game. That's leaving aside the fact that they could only get the experience for each task one time in their entire Minecraft "career". Even making it a "by map" achievement system doesn't really fix things. Get some achievements, Creeper blows you up, ragequit map because the experience points are lost forever.

On the other hand, letting them get achievments over and over is even worse. Just imagine someone making an "On A Rail" track that takes them around and around to get experience for every circuit of the track they complete. You want to talk about easy experience...that would be some easy experience. What about making it once per life? Would it be fair to make people only able to redo an achievement if they died? Well...no. In that scenario, the person just adds a suicide booth to their house. Do some easy achievements, craft your enchanted item, put it in a chest and hop into the suicide booth...or even just do the achievements and hop in, if your bed is close enough to collect the dropped orbs.

So, bottom line, giving experience for achievements would either be horribly unfair and make a lot of people complain, or it would be completely broken and make a lot of people complain.

Adding to that, if people were not going out of their way to gain certain amounts of experience from said achievements, people who are actually trying to get all the achievements (for whatever reason) would be stuck trying to do 10,000 actions of whatever type, making these achievements really dull and time-intensive to get.

Something Notch has specifically explained that he was adverse to doing.

[SuperMinerCrafting]

Heres an idea. Each block would contain a set number of xp. For example, diamond could have 10. There would be 1/100 chance of you getting the xp out of that block when you mine it. So theres a 1/100 chance of you getting 10 xp out of a diamond ore.  probably like 1 for stuff like cobble and dirt. 7 for gold. And whatever else you can think of. But this would take a while to code every single block though.

[iKhriz]

Just in case this hasn't been initially mentioned, I thought the purpose of NPC villages was to have a means of questing.
What if your friendly little Testificates employed you to take out a certain number of zombies (I know, non-violent stuff, but hear me out).
Perhaps the village is in short supply of iron, or coal.
Maybe they require some healing potions for their sick and injured after the newly released zombie sieges?
You understand where I'm coming from, and a good reward for these quests would be a certain amount of exp and valuable items.
At the moment the NPCs seem to hold very little purpose other than for mild entertainment.

[IncredibleMeh]

I notice that some people are, for god knows what reason, against this idea. Let's actulay take a look t what experience means. Experience is basically what happens when you get knowledge and wisdom from doing a certain task. In real life, you can get experience from doing tasks other than killing things. Why not let it be the same for minecraft.

Besides, you frankly can't get a good amount of exp fast enough in minecraft, a few extra ways to get it can't hurt.

[314jake]

EXP was implemented to incentivise combat. The hostile mob-drops as they were in beta 1.8 and before were not enough to make me want to go and kill stuff. To give EXP rewards for anything other than combat defeats its purpose - everything else has its own reward: mining gains you resources, farming gains you food, combat gains you EXP. EXP is gained from peaceful mobs to allow peaceful players to enchant their tools.

[werty8472]

314jake, on 02 March 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

EXP was implemented to incentivise combat. The hostile mob-drops as they were in beta 1.8 and before were not enough to make me want to go and kill stuff. To give EXP rewards for anything other than combat defeats its purpose - everything else has its own reward: mining gains you resources, farming gains you food, combat gains you EXP. EXP is gained from peaceful mobs to allow peaceful players to enchant their tools.

As previously explained, mining = ores, farming = food, combat = drops.

Added to that, there's a reward and combat = experience.  This is not equal on all accounts.  A few posts up shows why this doesn't work.