Mods: This is a response to the number of complaints threads that have popped up and have been clogging this board for the past few days. I really do think there needs to be a little more action in this board to stem the tide, so to speak. At the moment, there are far too many complaint threads, most of them going over the same tired subjects without offering any solutions. The board is quite painful to read. If any thread contains a majority of posts that are uncivil (either towards other uses or Mojang), nonconstructive and overall rather petty and pointless, it ought to be locked.
I'd like this to be a thread specifically for constructive criticism of Mojang's latest patch for Minecraft, to serve as a replacement (not an addition to!) for the flood of negativity.
Let me just start off by explaining what I mean by constructive criticism: constructive criticism is meant to be a critique. It is expressed politely and rationally, and supported by examples. It does not attack the source of the work (ie. Notch/Jeb/Mojang), but rather strives to point out how the work could be improved.
It is expressly not the same as ranting/whining/attacking. On the contrary, constructive criticism is something that should be encouraged, because it ultimately results in a better product! Nothing should be immune to it.
An example of constructive criticism:
"I don't like how dark the swamp grass is at the moment. It doesn't blend very well with the surrounding biomes - there needs to be an applied gradient to make it seem more natural."
An example of nonconstructive criticism:
"The swamp grass is f***ing ugly. My god, Notch has lost it."
Exaggerated perhaps (or not, given some of the things I've read recently!), but you get the idea. :wink.gif:
I suppose I'll make a start - that point about the swamp biome is my first one. I actually do like swamps overall. I like how Notch has listened to the community and implemented their ideas. The lily pads are an especially nice touch. However, I believe they could still stand to improve. As I mentioned, a nicer gradient would help that dark grass to blend in with the surroundings - at the moment there's a very sharp cut off between the dark green of the swamp biome and the more vivid green of its surroundings:
Furthermore, I reckon Notch could take the murky-coloured water a step further, and implement biome-dependent water elsewhere. I'd love to see deep blue oceans, green rainforest rivers and bright tropical shores. I know of a mod that does precisely this, so it's most certainly possible.
Another point is related to this, actually - I'd like to see more diverse biomes. Making the biomes bigger was a great start. I love big oceans in particular, and have made my home on an island ever since the 1.8 patch. However, I do feel they're lacking a bit in variety somewhat. For instance, you almost never see mountain biomes or plains with trees - you might find one solitary tree in them occasionally, but that's about it:
In a way, it's a tad bleak on occasion. I'd love to see forested hills again. This might be resolved if there were two separate mountain biomes, one with rolling hills and lots of trees, the other with tall, snow-capped peaks.
Let's see, what else...I'm overall okay with the look of the villagers, but I do think they too could stand to have a bit more variety. I'm willing to accept this is subject to change, however, since they are after all very early models, mere preliminaries to the final result.
I'm sure I can think of more, but I guess that'll do for now. :smile.gif:
Feel free to post your thoughts on 1.9 and Mojang's progress, and what you think ought to be improved. Just please remember to keep it civil!
Edit: Thanks for your responses everyone! :smile.gif: Here's a summary of some of the topics of concern and some suggested fixes that have been posted so far (this doesn't cover all of the thread at the moment unfortunately - I'll post the other half tomorrow):
Villages and NPCs
- Village generation needs tweaking. NPC houses occasionally don’t line up with the road – this makes it hard both for people to enter the houses and for NPC to escape, potentially hindering their AI. Some houses have no steps to their entrance.
- Villagers and NPCs feel out of place in Minecraft’s “lonely” world.
- Villages need to be more common so they can be enjoyed more.
- The villages look a bit samey – perhaps more variety in buildings could be implemented, ie. different building designs, or different building materials (such as brick).
- Cobblestone or dirt paths could be substituted for gravel, since the gravitational-property of gravel makes it easy for the village to be damaged if spawned incorrectly.
Bugs and glitches
- Stone brick steps don’t light up properly.
- More time needs to be spent optimising the code and fixing lag problems. Lag is particularly bad for combating mobs.
Biomes and spawning conditions
- Dark swamp grass could stand to have a better transition with the surrounding lighter grass
- The new terrain generation results in biomes that are a little bland, and could do with more variety. Mountain biomes could have several versions, ie. forested hills, snow-capped peaks, etc. Mountain biomes could also have their own types of trees (ie. short stumpy pines). Rainforests could have ferns, more large trees, vine-covered hills and cocoa trees for brown dye.
- Snow biomes are too rare, and perhaps too big.
- More biome-coloured water (ie. deep blue oceans, green rainforest rivers, aqua shores) would enhance the beauty of Minecraft
- Sand looks out of place in swamp biomes – perhaps make a shader applied to sand based on dampness.
- Mushroom biomes could use some glowing mushrooms and also more biome-specific mobs.
- It’s currently a bit easy to harvest mushrooms - giant mushrooms could have a lower drop rate for mushrooms.
- Mushroom biomes could also stand to have a bit more “context”, being the only biome that is completely fantasy. Perhaps meteorite craters could be added to the game, containing odd / unnatural biomes such as the giant mushrooms.
- Perhaps mushroom biomes could be a little more common.
- Further improvement to be made to spawning conditions, since spawning on an island in the middle of the ocean with no trees around is less than ideal – perhaps this could be solved by implementing driftwood or increasing tree spawn rates on islands. Also, islands could have their own tree type – the palm tree.
- The Nether still needs new features, such as Nether-exclusive ores.
Mobs and farming
- The world feels a bit lifeless. This could be fixed by implementing more species of animals in each biome, including small ambient animals such as squirrels, insects, birds, etc.
- The Mooshroom and Magma cube are too unoriginal in the sense of being close to re-textured versions of existing mobs (cow and slime).
- Changes need to be made to passive mob spawning, since at the moment they spawn in herds/packs resulting in little wildlife variety (ie. twenty sheep in a single chunk with nothing else).
- Passive mobs should spawn on islands.
- New mob mounts that act simultaneously as transport and portable chests would be nice.
- We should be able to take the pumpkin heads off of Snow Golems. Also, crafting Snow Golems with jack-o-lanterns should result in the mob having a glowing head.
Update schedule / Mojang’s planning
- New elements need a cohesive theme, rather than each update being without apparent objective. Each update could have more of a unified theme, rather than a broad series of small additions.
- The updates are rushed, and covering ground already handled by modders. Perhaps this situation could be improved by employing more people at Mojang and get their ideas on what the public most wants.
- More mods ought to be implemented into the game, such as the Aether.
- New items ought to serve an immediate purpose, rather than being placeholders or preliminary versions for future updates.
- Each update should have more regression testing to ensure that basic mechanics are not being broken by the new features.
- The game could stand to have another six months or so for polishing before being released.
Mechanics
- Water physics could be improved (to make it less viscous and more like water)
- Redstone wires currently take up too much space – make it so that they don’t take up as much space, and allow for wall placement. Perhaps they could be made in a circuit box – these boxes could be chained together to save space and allow for design flexibility.
- Minecraft could stand to have more dynamic lighting
- Higher block height limit
Armour and weaponry
- Armour as it currently stands needs some work. I’m going to quote Mormon Partyboat’s excellent post in its entirety here. :biggrin.gif:
Quote from Mormon Partyboat »
Armor in its current state needs a bit of an update at lower tiers. Leather armor wears out way too fast and provides relatively little armor for the effort. By the time you get a full set of leather armor, you should be up to your neck in iron. Some changes would be warranted, and there's a couple different directions that this can be taken:
1) Simplified leather armor crafting. This would have a much smaller amount of leather required for each piece, roughly half what is currently required. An option on this route would be to replace the 'lost' leather with wool, but this carries its own issues (like spawning in an area where one or the other mob isn't very common). The idea here would be to make leather armor not a significant investment of leather due to leather's current rarity in casual acquisition.
2) Cloth armor & leather as a component of all armors. This route would take current armor designs and replace 1-2 blocks per piece with leather. Leather armor would be replaced with cloth armor (dyable?). This would keep leather relevant throughout the game as you replace your armor and would promote cow husbandry beyond keeping your one milking cow.
3) Mob drop modification. This route would replace current leather drops with 'hide' drops. The hides would be craftable into leather like wood -> planks, maybe 2 leather per hide. Cows would drop 1-2 hide per kill, pigs could drop 0-1. The hide itself wouldn't be very useful in its current incarnation, but it may be useful in the future if cosmetic items are added, like in making chairs or rugs. There could also be hide armor that uses hide instead of leather and provides the same protection but has double the durability.
4) All of the above. Replace leather drops with hide (and have pigs drop hide), have the baseline armor be hide armor, use leather as a component in every armor craft. Each armor craft would have the middle column blocks change to leather (boots would have the 'tops' change to leather). Hide boots, for example, would use 2 hide, 2 leather. Iron boots, 2 iron, 2 leather. This would keep leather relevant throughout, not have a strain on leather farming, provide a new resource for future crafting, and allow earlier armor crafting before diving deep enough to spare the iron on a full suit.
In any case, leather armor's durability needs to be increased, as it now suffers versus iron armor in three different ways (harder to get, less protection, significantly less durability).
And also:
Quote from Yockey2 »
These are good suggestions. Here is another perspective:
I always thought it was silly to make armor from iron. To my knowledge, no such armor has ever existed in all of history. Armor was made of steel, or other alloys. It was made from iron, but not completely- there were leather parts, wool padding, etc.
Wool armor was actually very common in many societies. I think you should be able to make the beginning armor from some combination of wool and leather, and the iron armor should contain iron and either wool or leather. Likewise, other advanced armors will still have leather in them. As it stands, leather is a useless resource; it is too difficult to get enough of it for anyone to bother, and leather has no other uses. If it was used in production of other armors, I might actually bother with it.
Miscellaneous
- Ropes for scaling caves and ravines, capturing animals. This could be made via the introduction of a new plant, such as hemp.
- Ores, such as lapis lazuli, need more uses. One example is for making blue torches, which could be used for marking dead ends in caves.
- Nether brick should be able to be crafted – perhaps via an intermediary smooth netherrack stone that can be crafted into nether brick blocks.
- Gates entrances are a bit odd in the sense of looking too small to walk through – perhaps they could be opened more like doors.
- Perhaps Minecraft could be split into different “modes” apart from the two that already exist (Creative and Survival) in order to appease the divided fanbase, such as Siege and Constructive:
Quote from Gnardak »
Siege would be for all the people who want to go out and fight things all the time and keep calling other people pussies and telling them to play peaceful. So you'd have increased hostile mob spawns, more damaging creepers, zombies digging through walls, endermen lifting blocks all over the place and general mayhem. For constructive just switch off block damage of mobs entirely, so creepers may explode and kill you but they won't destroy what you've been working on and endermen may attack when you look at them but they leave the landscape alone. I think this would allow the different parts of the forums that rage at each other at the moment to each have the gameplay that they want and so wouldn't feel the need to rage about some suggestion the other side makes to make the game more enjoyable for them.”
- Nether bricks look a little too red
- It would be cool to be able to make portals to other people’s worlds
I don't have any complaints about 1.9 or anything that happens with the game. I just go with the flow so to speak.
I just wanted to say good work It's nice to see a complaint thread that has maturity to it. Not the typical BS posts that have been popping up over the last few days.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please learn to use the search bar. 22-11-11The day I finally realized exactly how immature this community can be
Villager - ugly Squidward that does nothing *points at Millenaire mod*
Snow Golem - what's the point when they're snowballs do no damage *points at More Creeps and Weirdos*
Mooshroom - retarded idea and why are cows becoming sheep
Blaze - this is the best Mojang can think of *points at NetherCraft*
Nether bricks, fences, stairs - modders way ahead of you Notch
Lily pad - copying modders yet again
Blaze rod, Ghast tear - useless items
Gold nugget - why not make it that zombie pigmen have a 1/9 chance to drop a gold bar instead of making a new item
Nether wart - copy of wheat except in Nether
New generated structures - buggy and adds little to game
Swamp biomes - sharp contrast when swamp biome changes to grassland
Eh... honestly, the only thing I have a problem with is that the npc houses occasionally don't line up with the road.
Not only does it make it hard for people to enter the houses, but the npcs can't escape either, which will probably hinder the ai.
I mean, does the generator check to see if there's even enough room to fit a house there?
it'd be pretty neat to see mountain villages and such, but it'd be strange to have to hack open a back door to the house just to see the npc.
oh, and i wish the op luck, as this is the internet.
So far 1.9 is a pre-release so I'll just see what others say. Minecraft is in Beta so I'll just see what there is to fix. Right now everything that needs to be critisized is already in complaint threads and in proper threads (by proper I mean this one).
Honestly, most of the mods I've seen so far are absolute garbage. Millenaire, for example, makes the game interesting for about 2 minutes and gives you a way to trade and be a little more "economic focused" in SSP.. But the things you can do are extremely limited, and the NPCs themselves are very dumb and use a lot of tricks to get around that.
Even if you try to destroy the NPCs, they just respawn. They don't rebuild or fight back.
Aether looks alright, but some elements are pretty cheesey and out of place in Minecraft.
Oh, and hey, this is supposed to be "constructive criticism" not "Q.Q my mod no workz for 2 days when new version comes out". Don't update till your mod is updated -.-
I found a good number of the mods I've tried to be interesting. There are always things that can be improved or added, but if you don't like it make your own mod and see if others like it or not... If you want a serious game go to WoW or something (or that farm game that is made so you always will lose). Also, if you make backup your save before updating to the new version you can just no go into that world to destroy your progress and go into another world or something in the meantime (or go modless in general) and make do with what you have.
I've done an account only to be able to speak in this topic xd. By the way, I think is a nice idea.
I believe that the main problem is the random introduction of new elements without a proper development. Most of the new content is very specific minded or doesn't have an objective at all. Even some of them are impossible to locate, as I have been playing in creative mode for two hours and still I haven't seen any village or Moocows.
In my opinion, Notch should focus his updates in one specific element rather than a broad of tiny additions. This should generate less bugs and improve the feeling of an "update" as more about a theme could be more entertaining than "look, a swamp!, :mellow.gif: ". Farming, breeding, smelting,... I believe they are good fields to improve.
On the contrary, I think that villages and villagers NPCs are a bad idea to develop as minecraft always has been "do it your way" and the multiplayer fills the emptyness of companionship.
That's all
P.D: I apologize for my english. It's not my mother tongue and I don't usually write.
Villager - ugly Squidward that does nothing *points at Millenaire mod*
Snow Golem - what's the point when they're snowballs do no damage *points at More Creeps and Weirdos*
Mooshroom - retarded idea and why are cows becoming sheep
Blaze - this is the best Mojang can think of *points at NetherCraft*
Nether bricks, fences, stairs - modders way ahead of you Notch
Lily pad - copying modders yet again
Blaze rod, Ghast tear - useless items
Gold nugget - why not make it that zombie pigmen have a 1/9 chance to drop a gold bar instead of making a new item
Nether wart - copy of wheat except in Nether
New generated structures - buggy and adds little to game
Swamp biomes - sharp contrast when swamp biome changes to grassland
Constructive, dammit, constructive!
Did you not read the OP at all? Give us ideas to help these points you outlined above become better for you and for other players. How can Notch fix these? What techniques do you suggest?
It's a shame you were the first to comment; this thread had the chance to run smoothly...
The NPC villages are my main issue. Some houses have no steps and require 2 to 3 steps to gain access. Perhaps if they go over the code to make sure the houses have propper access this would be a good start.
As mentioned a smoother transition bewteen swamp and grassy biome would be awesome.
The Aether mod looks very good, perhaps Mojang should look at making a deal to just roll that mod into the game (permanently, with what ever tweaks it needs or they wanna make)just to push along the content in the game.
I dislike the chosen colouring of nether brick and wish it was made of a different material, I know its strange but the Nether feels a little too red for my tastes, though its not such a big deal.
It looks like 1.9 will have many more features in its official release than the pre-release judging by twitter posts. But I do hope Mojang doesn't add items that are useless. Once again its a personal problem and not much of a big deal.
I dislike the re-used skins of the mooshroom and the Nether slime thingy- I'm wish want this game to be more of a variety.
I dislike the old swamps, and the new ones too. What I want to see in a swamp is something similar to this upcoming mod.
I almost gagged when i saw the lack of new nether features. i can only hope that more are added in the official release of 1.9
I really don't like the change to jumping. I mean, I understand why they did it. It makes the game a little more realistic and encourages using stairs and such. But it's still irritating as hell >_<
To the people saying nothing changed in 1.9, I'm not in game development at all...but as a player I had a HUGE improvement in performance between 1.8.x and 1.9pre. And I certainly don't consider that nothing. While all the other stuff is great, and expanding the game a bit is very exciting, making sure people can actually play the game is the most important thing. Even in 1.8, the new brightness slider was probably the best/most important update for me and everything else was just icing on the cake.
For 1.9...I hope they make some changes to passive mob spawning, or breeding fixes things. Right now mobs seem to spawn in packs so there is very little variety in an area. You might have 20 sheep and nothing else lol. Maybe breeding will fix this, maybe they mean to change the spawning anyways, but taking it back a bit to what it was pre updates would be an improvement in my opinion.
Strongholds, villages and mushroom islands are all supposed to be rare. But at least in the case of villages, they could probably be a little more common so they can be enjoyed more (once finished). I've never seen any villagers but the monks/priest myself. And I'm just going to have to assume they are unfinished (by the name for one) and that the AI will change from a cross between chicken and Endermen to something all their own.
People have already pointed out that the houses need some fine tuning. And for the gravel paths, why was gravel used in the first place? It looks nice enough but the whole gravity thing makes it way too easy for things to go wrong with the villages. What about cobblestone paths instead?
Swamp biome transitions, already pointed out. It is a bit odd to have half a tree belong in the swamp and the other half in a forested spot. Again, just needs some finishing up to make it look nicer.
Trees on mountains, what if they had their own type of tree? Like short stumpy pines or something. And I like the idea of snow on the tallest ones.
Snowballs should do some damage (they don't right now do they?) people need to remember that at the end of the day this is supposed to be a fun/friendly game. Jackolanterns don't grow on vines in the real world, but they do in minecraft. And its cool that pumpkins are useful now. Yeah, its silly....but people seem to have found some great uses for them.
Gates, I wish they opened like doors instead of the way they do now (each block is 2 doors). It would be much nicer for creating double gates in fences etc. The way it opens now the doorway looks to small to walk through. And if we are going to use them for fencing in areas to breed animals in, it would be nicer to be able to open 2 gates to herd a group in or out. I doubt a sheep could fit through the current gates.
I would mostly like to see improvements/ new features in the terrain generator. Here is a list of issues/ideas:
1) Swamp Biomes - Let's get the obvious out of the way. As people have said before the swamp biomes borders need a smoother transition. I really like the look of them otherwise though. I think the darker/greenish water and foiliage is good.
2) Rainforest Biomes - Should be brought back with the improvements that the new terrain generator provides.
- Should have ferns, more large trees, and vines with moderately hill terrain.
- A new tree exclusive to the biome could be introduced - The Cocoa Tree for brown dye.
3) Snow/Winter biomes - Need some work. Currently the only biome with snow is the frozen plains biome. This is very very large and fairly rare to find, many people want to find snow for building (or snow golems) but don't want to live in a snow biome, so maybe their size should be decreased and their rarity decreased to be on par with the other biomes. Two kinds of pine forests could exist one without snow and one with snow as well.
4) Ocean Biomes - Currently they can span entire maps or more. I am actually fine with this as it is a rare occurrence to actually spawn marooned on one like above. Many people have been posting these seeds on the seed forum, I guess they think they are interesting.
There are two changes that could be implemented to make it more interesting to spawn on/find a desert island.
- Allow passive mobs to spawn in ocean biomes. (They don't in 1.8 or 1.9, excepting squids)
- Allow them to spawn more trees / give them a biome specific tree type. I'd love to be rewarded for finding a desert isle with Palm Trees. I may even set up a house there. If those two changes were made I would be playing the above map on survival mode right now. That would be awesome.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
When no one was looking, the Endermen took forty blocks.
They took 40 blocks. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s horrible.
Like most threads in this forum, most of you seem very unacquainted with the creative process of minecraft. I've been following his tumblr and twitter very very closely for longer than a year, so let me help you out with some concepts you seem to be missing out on. Overall a better than average thread though, but its too broad, threads should remain specific, and the forum is a junction point for many specific things. Oh, and to all of you I didn't respond to, your ideas/posts were either great or too useless to respond to. Now, here goes :smile.gif:
a nicer gradient would help that dark grass to blend in with the surroundings - at the moment there's a very sharp cut off between the dark green of the swamp biome and the more vivid green of its surroundings.
I believe Notch is aware of this, as he can see it too, and likely it is a bug, a silly oversight, or a test idea, and I would not expect him to keep it.
Minecraft is becoming an utter failure.They keep adding pointless **** into the game and ruin our excellent mods.I would be impressed if Notch hires a hundred or so employees, some of them modders, and then fire himself cause he's a terrible excuse for a game designer.
You sir, have been reported for trolling and spamming in blatant disregard for the original topic of the thread. If you could do us the favor of deleting your post, it would make this thread go much smoother, and help the mods and the readers.
And to everyone who responded to him:
Don't respond to trolls as an entire post. It's in the forum rules, contributes to spam, and can get you in trouble. If you append a word towards him at the end of another comment, it's okay, but if you dedicate a response to telling him off or reprimanding him, you are just making the thread full of more useless and spam posts. I'm reporting all of your responses as spam if they didn't add anything else to the thread besides a reprimand, so that the mods can delete your posts and unclutter the thread for Yrael. If you just delete your own posts, that would be just as good and even more helpful to Yrael, the readers, and the mods. Thanks guys!
Villager - ugly Squidward that does nothing *points at Millenaire mod*
Snow Golem - what's the point when they're snowballs do no damage *points at More Creeps and Weirdos*
Mooshroom - retarded idea and why are cows becoming sheep
Blaze - this is the best Mojang can think of *points at NetherCraft*
Nether bricks, fences, stairs - modders way ahead of you Notch
Lily pad - copying modders yet again
Blaze rod, Ghast tear - useless items
Gold nugget - why not make it that zombie pigmen have a 1/9 chance to drop a gold bar instead of making a new item
Nether wart - copy of wheat except in Nether
New generated structures - buggy and adds little to game
Swamp biomes - sharp contrast when swamp biome changes to grassland
This is still unconstructive, but better than your last attempt, but you also seem to have a lot of misconceptions and don't appear to put a lot of thought into your posts before writing, or you are unaware of certain things. Let me help.
1. It does nothing because it is unfinished. Its name is Testificate, as in TEST, it's only a test NPC placeholder for now. These have been planned to be in the game since its original development, and are now slowly making their way in, one test at a time so beta testers can find bugs in one thing before they add another thing.
2. Snow Golems are useful in many complex traps and sentry designs, and have been planned in one form or another for almost and entire year, originally to be designed as scarecrows in the Halowwen update last year.
3. I'm skeptical about mooshrooms as well, but I hope this is a precursor to the idea of more biome-centric creatures.
4. The Blaze is a very fun monster to fight and is adequately difficult for the placement and balance he has thrown into the game.
5. Notch planned these things before modders added them. Modders are not way ahead of him.
6. Modders are not allowed to make something and say "No notch I made that YOURE NOT ALLOWED TO PUT IT IN YOUR GAME". If you steal notchs ideas while hes busy, well then you're **** out of luck when he adds them in. That would be absurd if anything a modder made he was not allowed to put in the game, because its his game and modders have no right to steal the ideas he already has or plans to put in later.
7. They are useless for now, why are you complaining about something that is SUPPOSED TO BE unfinished? That's like complaining about an unfinished house being useless while it is still being built.
8. Gold has likely been added for other game purposes as well, we will see.
9. Not a copy of wheat, because it doesn't make bread and doesn't grow from tall grass seeds. If you mean a copy in that they both grow... well that is a stretch.
10. They are buggy, which is why he added them before they add something to the game, so testers (you) can report their bugs so he can fix them before they add more to the game. You don't get it yet, do you?
11. Likely a bug, but you are right, but I'm pretty sure he is aware of it by now.
I think we should be able to craft nether brick
Spawning in the center of a massive ocean is not ideal, I don't know how possible it is to force a single island with a single tree in such a circumstance would be... or implement driftwood?
The best and most original ideas so far in this thread, good job.
My overall gripe with this update is simple, it seems incredibly rushed with ideas that most modders have implemented already. Okay, it is nice that Notch is taking the ideas of others and implementing them into his dream, but come on man, you are the guy becoming rich out of folks buying the game, the modders are doing the work for you?
This is not true, Notch already owns the right to basically all mod content additions (but not the mods themselves). How would you feel if you were working on a game, and then someone else added in one of your ideas and then said YOU STOLE MY IDEA just because you were working on other stuff when the modder made it?
The Aether mod looks very good, perhaps Mojang should look at making a deal to just roll that mod into the game
That would dilute his vision far too much, but taking some ideas from it would be a good move. Also, the Aether actually stole NOTCHS idea of the skyrealm which he made over a year ago, they even used his generator. He's been planning to add the skyrealm for a while, since long before the Aether was even thought of, considering the idea of the Aether is based on notchs idea :tongue.gif:
I really don't like the change to jumping. I mean, I understand why they did it. It makes the game a little more realistic and encourages using stairs and such. But it's still irritating as hell >_<
I do believe he tweeted somewhere about changing it back to the old form. I'll have to search around for it though. >.<
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I have nothing really bad to say about the updates except this:
1. Endermen are nice but they shouldn't be able to destroy your wonderful creations. I think they should only be able to pick up certain blocks like dirt, gravel, or sand.
Off topic of new updates:
2. The current animals are nice and its going to be hella'fun once breeding comes in place but I think the world needs more types of animals including more predators to kill passive mobs and maybe even attack the player. Some predators could be Bears, Big Cats, and more types of dogs.
The Aether mod looks very good, perhaps Mojang should look at making a deal to just roll that mod into the game (permanently, with what ever tweaks it needs or they wanna make)just to push along the content in the game.
I believe Notch has said that he isn't going to add the Aether to vanilla Minecraft...ever.
Anyways, constructive criticism... I think mushroom biomes should be slightly more common. Not too much more, perhaps a smidgeon so as to make slightly less Wonderland-ish. The ability to take off the pumpkin from the Snow Golems would be a welcomed feature as well. I really want to see their faces.
I fee like even in Beta, especially so close to the release, that they should be performing more regression testing to ensure that the base things aren't broken. It is a part of software development at any stage, and should not be getting overlooked. I do feel that they have many unfinished thoughts at the moment. I have faith that Mojang will deliver a game beyond our expectations at launch time. I think this game really needs about another six months to ferment so to speak, before it is given a full release. I see where pieces of great ideas shine through from Mojang, but they have a habit of not finishing them all the way through, or forgetting about them all together.
I realize that we are the beta testers, but standard practices dictates unit testing from development before it gets put out for additional testing.
Armor in its current state needs a bit of an update at lower tiers. Leather armor wears out way too fast and provides relatively little armor for the effort. By the time you get a full set of leather armor, you should be up to your neck in iron. Some changes would be warranted, and there's a couple different directions that this can be taken:
1) Simplified leather armor crafting. This would have a much smaller amount of leather required for each piece, roughly half what is currently required. An option on this route would be to replace the 'lost' leather with wool, but this carries its own issues (like spawning in an area where one or the other mob isn't very common). The idea here would be to make leather armor not a significant investment of leather due to leather's current rarity in casual acquisition.
2) Cloth armor & leather as a component of all armors. This route would take current armor designs and replace 1-2 blocks per piece with leather. Leather armor would be replaced with cloth armor (dyable?). This would keep leather relevant throughout the game as you replace your armor and would promote cow husbandry beyond keeping your one milking cow.
3) Mob drop modification. This route would replace current leather drops with 'hide' drops. The hides would be craftable into leather like wood -> planks, maybe 2 leather per hide. Cows would drop 1-2 hide per kill, pigs could drop 0-1. The hide itself wouldn't be very useful in its current incarnation, but it may be useful in the future if cosmetic items are added, like in making chairs or rugs. There could also be hide armor that uses hide instead of leather and provides the same protection but has double the durability.
4) All of the above. Replace leather drops with hide (and have pigs drop hide), have the baseline armor be hide armor, use leather as a component in every armor craft. Each armor craft would have the middle column blocks change to leather (boots would have the 'tops' change to leather). Hide boots, for example, would use 2 hide, 2 leather. Iron boots, 2 iron, 2 leather. This would keep leather relevant throughout, not have a strain on leather farming, provide a new resource for future crafting, and allow earlier armor crafting before diving deep enough to spare the iron on a full suit.
In any case, leather armor's durability needs to be increased, as it now suffers versus iron armor in three different ways (harder to get, less protection, significantly less durability).
Armor in its current state needs a bit of an update at lower tiers. Leather armor wears out way too fast and provides relatively little armor for the effort. By the time you get a full set of leather armor, you should be up to your neck in iron. Some changes would be warranted, and there's a couple different directions that this can be taken:
1) Simplified leather armor crafting. This would have a much smaller amount of leather required for each piece, roughly half what is currently required. An option on this route would be to replace the 'lost' leather with wool, but this carries its own issues (like spawning in an area where one or the other mob isn't very common). The idea here would be to make leather armor not a significant investment of leather due to leather's current rarity in casual acquisition.
2) Cloth armor & leather as a component of all armors. This route would take current armor designs and replace 1-2 blocks per piece with leather. Leather armor would be replaced with cloth armor (dyable?). This would keep leather relevant throughout the game as you replace your armor and would promote cow husbandry beyond keeping your one milking cow.
3) Mob drop modification. This route would replace current leather drops with 'hide' drops. The hides would be craftable into leather like wood -> planks, maybe 2 leather per hide. Cows would drop 1-2 hide per kill, pigs could drop 0-1. The hide itself wouldn't be very useful in its current incarnation, but it may be useful in the future if cosmetic items are added, like in making chairs or rugs. There could also be hide armor that uses hide instead of leather and provides the same protection but has double the durability.
4) All of the above. Replace leather drops with hide (and have pigs drop hide), have the baseline armor be hide armor, use leather as a component in every armor craft. Each armor craft would have the middle column blocks change to leather (boots would have the 'tops' change to leather). Hide boots, for example, would use 2 hide, 2 leather. Iron boots, 2 iron, 2 leather. This would keep leather relevant throughout, not have a strain on leather farming, provide a new resource for future crafting, and allow earlier armor crafting before diving deep enough to spare the iron on a full suit.
In any case, leather armor's durability needs to be increased, as it now suffers versus iron armor in three different ways (harder to get, less protection, significantly less durability).
This idea is awesome!
And thank you op, you just gave me back belief to humanity.
Too long have i seen these whinetopics from butthurt kids.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Suddenly an wild minecraft appeared!
Minecraft uses addiction
Steve does... Well he doesnt do anything anymore...
I'd like this to be a thread specifically for constructive criticism of Mojang's latest patch for Minecraft, to serve as a replacement (not an addition to!) for the flood of negativity.
Let me just start off by explaining what I mean by constructive criticism: constructive criticism is meant to be a critique. It is expressed politely and rationally, and supported by examples. It does not attack the source of the work (ie. Notch/Jeb/Mojang), but rather strives to point out how the work could be improved.
It is expressly not the same as ranting/whining/attacking. On the contrary, constructive criticism is something that should be encouraged, because it ultimately results in a better product! Nothing should be immune to it.
An example of constructive criticism:
"I don't like how dark the swamp grass is at the moment. It doesn't blend very well with the surrounding biomes - there needs to be an applied gradient to make it seem more natural."
An example of nonconstructive criticism:
"The swamp grass is f***ing ugly. My god, Notch has lost it."
Exaggerated perhaps (or not, given some of the things I've read recently!), but you get the idea. :wink.gif:
I suppose I'll make a start - that point about the swamp biome is my first one. I actually do like swamps overall. I like how Notch has listened to the community and implemented their ideas. The lily pads are an especially nice touch. However, I believe they could still stand to improve. As I mentioned, a nicer gradient would help that dark grass to blend in with the surroundings - at the moment there's a very sharp cut off between the dark green of the swamp biome and the more vivid green of its surroundings:
Furthermore, I reckon Notch could take the murky-coloured water a step further, and implement biome-dependent water elsewhere. I'd love to see deep blue oceans, green rainforest rivers and bright tropical shores. I know of a mod that does precisely this, so it's most certainly possible.
Another point is related to this, actually - I'd like to see more diverse biomes. Making the biomes bigger was a great start. I love big oceans in particular, and have made my home on an island ever since the 1.8 patch. However, I do feel they're lacking a bit in variety somewhat. For instance, you almost never see mountain biomes or plains with trees - you might find one solitary tree in them occasionally, but that's about it:
In a way, it's a tad bleak on occasion. I'd love to see forested hills again. This might be resolved if there were two separate mountain biomes, one with rolling hills and lots of trees, the other with tall, snow-capped peaks.
Let's see, what else...I'm overall okay with the look of the villagers, but I do think they too could stand to have a bit more variety. I'm willing to accept this is subject to change, however, since they are after all very early models, mere preliminaries to the final result.
I'm sure I can think of more, but I guess that'll do for now. :smile.gif:
Feel free to post your thoughts on 1.9 and Mojang's progress, and what you think ought to be improved. Just please remember to keep it civil!
Edit: Thanks for your responses everyone! :smile.gif: Here's a summary of some of the topics of concern and some suggested fixes that have been posted so far (this doesn't cover all of the thread at the moment unfortunately - I'll post the other half tomorrow):
Villages and NPCs
- Village generation needs tweaking. NPC houses occasionally don’t line up with the road – this makes it hard both for people to enter the houses and for NPC to escape, potentially hindering their AI. Some houses have no steps to their entrance.
- Villagers and NPCs feel out of place in Minecraft’s “lonely” world.
- Villages need to be more common so they can be enjoyed more.
- The villages look a bit samey – perhaps more variety in buildings could be implemented, ie. different building designs, or different building materials (such as brick).
- Cobblestone or dirt paths could be substituted for gravel, since the gravitational-property of gravel makes it easy for the village to be damaged if spawned incorrectly.
Bugs and glitches
- Stone brick steps don’t light up properly.
- More time needs to be spent optimising the code and fixing lag problems. Lag is particularly bad for combating mobs.
Biomes and spawning conditions
- Dark swamp grass could stand to have a better transition with the surrounding lighter grass
- The new terrain generation results in biomes that are a little bland, and could do with more variety. Mountain biomes could have several versions, ie. forested hills, snow-capped peaks, etc. Mountain biomes could also have their own types of trees (ie. short stumpy pines). Rainforests could have ferns, more large trees, vine-covered hills and cocoa trees for brown dye.
- Snow biomes are too rare, and perhaps too big.
- More biome-coloured water (ie. deep blue oceans, green rainforest rivers, aqua shores) would enhance the beauty of Minecraft
- Sand looks out of place in swamp biomes – perhaps make a shader applied to sand based on dampness.
- Mushroom biomes could use some glowing mushrooms and also more biome-specific mobs.
- It’s currently a bit easy to harvest mushrooms - giant mushrooms could have a lower drop rate for mushrooms.
- Mushroom biomes could also stand to have a bit more “context”, being the only biome that is completely fantasy. Perhaps meteorite craters could be added to the game, containing odd / unnatural biomes such as the giant mushrooms.
- Perhaps mushroom biomes could be a little more common.
- Further improvement to be made to spawning conditions, since spawning on an island in the middle of the ocean with no trees around is less than ideal – perhaps this could be solved by implementing driftwood or increasing tree spawn rates on islands. Also, islands could have their own tree type – the palm tree.
- The Nether still needs new features, such as Nether-exclusive ores.
Mobs and farming
- The world feels a bit lifeless. This could be fixed by implementing more species of animals in each biome, including small ambient animals such as squirrels, insects, birds, etc.
- The Mooshroom and Magma cube are too unoriginal in the sense of being close to re-textured versions of existing mobs (cow and slime).
- Changes need to be made to passive mob spawning, since at the moment they spawn in herds/packs resulting in little wildlife variety (ie. twenty sheep in a single chunk with nothing else).
- Passive mobs should spawn on islands.
- New mob mounts that act simultaneously as transport and portable chests would be nice.
- We should be able to take the pumpkin heads off of Snow Golems. Also, crafting Snow Golems with jack-o-lanterns should result in the mob having a glowing head.
Update schedule / Mojang’s planning
- New elements need a cohesive theme, rather than each update being without apparent objective. Each update could have more of a unified theme, rather than a broad series of small additions.
- The updates are rushed, and covering ground already handled by modders. Perhaps this situation could be improved by employing more people at Mojang and get their ideas on what the public most wants.
- More mods ought to be implemented into the game, such as the Aether.
- New items ought to serve an immediate purpose, rather than being placeholders or preliminary versions for future updates.
- Each update should have more regression testing to ensure that basic mechanics are not being broken by the new features.
- The game could stand to have another six months or so for polishing before being released.
Mechanics
- Water physics could be improved (to make it less viscous and more like water)
- Redstone wires currently take up too much space – make it so that they don’t take up as much space, and allow for wall placement. Perhaps they could be made in a circuit box – these boxes could be chained together to save space and allow for design flexibility.
- Minecraft could stand to have more dynamic lighting
- Higher block height limit
Armour and weaponry
- Armour as it currently stands needs some work. I’m going to quote Mormon Partyboat’s excellent post in its entirety here. :biggrin.gif:
And also:
Miscellaneous
- Ropes for scaling caves and ravines, capturing animals. This could be made via the introduction of a new plant, such as hemp.
- Ores, such as lapis lazuli, need more uses. One example is for making blue torches, which could be used for marking dead ends in caves.
- Nether brick should be able to be crafted – perhaps via an intermediary smooth netherrack stone that can be crafted into nether brick blocks.
- Gates entrances are a bit odd in the sense of looking too small to walk through – perhaps they could be opened more like doors.
- Perhaps Minecraft could be split into different “modes” apart from the two that already exist (Creative and Survival) in order to appease the divided fanbase, such as Siege and Constructive:
- Nether bricks look a little too red
- It would be cool to be able to make portals to other people’s worlds
...not a good start. :/
Why is it a failure? How are the changes pointless? Above all, how could it be improved?
Elaborate please, and keep your swearing to a minimum.
I just wanted to say good work It's nice to see a complaint thread that has maturity to it. Not the typical BS posts that have been popping up over the last few days.
22-11-11The day I finally realized exactly how immature this community can be
Snow Golem - what's the point when they're snowballs do no damage *points at More Creeps and Weirdos*
Mooshroom - retarded idea and why are cows becoming sheep
Blaze - this is the best Mojang can think of *points at NetherCraft*
Nether bricks, fences, stairs - modders way ahead of you Notch
Lily pad - copying modders yet again
Blaze rod, Ghast tear - useless items
Gold nugget - why not make it that zombie pigmen have a 1/9 chance to drop a gold bar instead of making a new item
Nether wart - copy of wheat except in Nether
New generated structures - buggy and adds little to game
Swamp biomes - sharp contrast when swamp biome changes to grassland
Not only does it make it hard for people to enter the houses, but the npcs can't escape either, which will probably hinder the ai.
I mean, does the generator check to see if there's even enough room to fit a house there?
it'd be pretty neat to see mountain villages and such, but it'd be strange to have to hack open a back door to the house just to see the npc.
oh, and i wish the op luck, as this is the internet.
I found a good number of the mods I've tried to be interesting. There are always things that can be improved or added, but if you don't like it make your own mod and see if others like it or not... If you want a serious game go to WoW or something (or that farm game that is made so you always will lose). Also, if you make backup your save before updating to the new version you can just no go into that world to destroy your progress and go into another world or something in the meantime (or go modless in general) and make do with what you have.
I've done an account only to be able to speak in this topic xd. By the way, I think is a nice idea.
I believe that the main problem is the random introduction of new elements without a proper development. Most of the new content is very specific minded or doesn't have an objective at all. Even some of them are impossible to locate, as I have been playing in creative mode for two hours and still I haven't seen any village or Moocows.
In my opinion, Notch should focus his updates in one specific element rather than a broad of tiny additions. This should generate less bugs and improve the feeling of an "update" as more about a theme could be more entertaining than "look, a swamp!, :mellow.gif: ". Farming, breeding, smelting,... I believe they are good fields to improve.
On the contrary, I think that villages and villagers NPCs are a bad idea to develop as minecraft always has been "do it your way" and the multiplayer fills the emptyness of companionship.
That's all
P.D: I apologize for my english. It's not my mother tongue and I don't usually write.
Constructive, dammit, constructive!
Did you not read the OP at all? Give us ideas to help these points you outlined above become better for you and for other players. How can Notch fix these? What techniques do you suggest?
It's a shame you were the first to comment; this thread had the chance to run smoothly...
As mentioned a smoother transition bewteen swamp and grassy biome would be awesome.
The Aether mod looks very good, perhaps Mojang should look at making a deal to just roll that mod into the game (permanently, with what ever tweaks it needs or they wanna make)just to push along the content in the game.
I dislike the chosen colouring of nether brick and wish it was made of a different material, I know its strange but the Nether feels a little too red for my tastes, though its not such a big deal.
It looks like 1.9 will have many more features in its official release than the pre-release judging by twitter posts. But I do hope Mojang doesn't add items that are useless. Once again its a personal problem and not much of a big deal.
I dislike the re-used skins of the mooshroom and the Nether slime thingy- I'm wish want this game to be more of a variety.
I dislike the old swamps, and the new ones too. What I want to see in a swamp is something similar to this upcoming mod.
I almost gagged when i saw the lack of new nether features. i can only hope that more are added in the official release of 1.9
For 1.9...I hope they make some changes to passive mob spawning, or breeding fixes things. Right now mobs seem to spawn in packs so there is very little variety in an area. You might have 20 sheep and nothing else lol. Maybe breeding will fix this, maybe they mean to change the spawning anyways, but taking it back a bit to what it was pre updates would be an improvement in my opinion.
Strongholds, villages and mushroom islands are all supposed to be rare. But at least in the case of villages, they could probably be a little more common so they can be enjoyed more (once finished). I've never seen any villagers but the monks/priest myself. And I'm just going to have to assume they are unfinished (by the name for one) and that the AI will change from a cross between chicken and Endermen to something all their own.
People have already pointed out that the houses need some fine tuning. And for the gravel paths, why was gravel used in the first place? It looks nice enough but the whole gravity thing makes it way too easy for things to go wrong with the villages. What about cobblestone paths instead?
Swamp biome transitions, already pointed out. It is a bit odd to have half a tree belong in the swamp and the other half in a forested spot. Again, just needs some finishing up to make it look nicer.
Trees on mountains, what if they had their own type of tree? Like short stumpy pines or something. And I like the idea of snow on the tallest ones.
Snowballs should do some damage (they don't right now do they?) people need to remember that at the end of the day this is supposed to be a fun/friendly game. Jackolanterns don't grow on vines in the real world, but they do in minecraft. And its cool that pumpkins are useful now. Yeah, its silly....but people seem to have found some great uses for them.
Gates, I wish they opened like doors instead of the way they do now (each block is 2 doors). It would be much nicer for creating double gates in fences etc. The way it opens now the doorway looks to small to walk through. And if we are going to use them for fencing in areas to breed animals in, it would be nicer to be able to open 2 gates to herd a group in or out. I doubt a sheep could fit through the current gates.
1) Swamp Biomes - Let's get the obvious out of the way. As people have said before the swamp biomes borders need a smoother transition. I really like the look of them otherwise though. I think the darker/greenish water and foiliage is good.
2) Rainforest Biomes - Should be brought back with the improvements that the new terrain generator provides.
- Should have ferns, more large trees, and vines with moderately hill terrain.
- A new tree exclusive to the biome could be introduced - The Cocoa Tree for brown dye.
3) Snow/Winter biomes - Need some work. Currently the only biome with snow is the frozen plains biome. This is very very large and fairly rare to find, many people want to find snow for building (or snow golems) but don't want to live in a snow biome, so maybe their size should be decreased and their rarity decreased to be on par with the other biomes. Two kinds of pine forests could exist one without snow and one with snow as well.
4) Ocean Biomes - Currently they can span entire maps or more. I am actually fine with this as it is a rare occurrence to actually spawn marooned on one like above. Many people have been posting these seeds on the seed forum, I guess they think they are interesting.
There are two changes that could be implemented to make it more interesting to spawn on/find a desert island.
- Allow passive mobs to spawn in ocean biomes. (They don't in 1.8 or 1.9, excepting squids)
- Allow them to spawn more trees / give them a biome specific tree type. I'd love to be rewarded for finding a desert isle with Palm Trees. I may even set up a house there. If those two changes were made I would be playing the above map on survival mode right now. That would be awesome.
They took 40 blocks. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s horrible.
I believe Notch is aware of this, as he can see it too, and likely it is a bug, a silly oversight, or a test idea, and I would not expect him to keep it.
You sir, have been reported for trolling and spamming in blatant disregard for the original topic of the thread. If you could do us the favor of deleting your post, it would make this thread go much smoother, and help the mods and the readers.
And to everyone who responded to him:
Don't respond to trolls as an entire post. It's in the forum rules, contributes to spam, and can get you in trouble. If you append a word towards him at the end of another comment, it's okay, but if you dedicate a response to telling him off or reprimanding him, you are just making the thread full of more useless and spam posts. I'm reporting all of your responses as spam if they didn't add anything else to the thread besides a reprimand, so that the mods can delete your posts and unclutter the thread for Yrael. If you just delete your own posts, that would be just as good and even more helpful to Yrael, the readers, and the mods. Thanks guys!
I fail to see how talking about mods addresses this thread appropriately at all. Good try?
This is still unconstructive, but better than your last attempt, but you also seem to have a lot of misconceptions and don't appear to put a lot of thought into your posts before writing, or you are unaware of certain things. Let me help.
1. It does nothing because it is unfinished. Its name is Testificate, as in TEST, it's only a test NPC placeholder for now. These have been planned to be in the game since its original development, and are now slowly making their way in, one test at a time so beta testers can find bugs in one thing before they add another thing.
2. Snow Golems are useful in many complex traps and sentry designs, and have been planned in one form or another for almost and entire year, originally to be designed as scarecrows in the Halowwen update last year.
3. I'm skeptical about mooshrooms as well, but I hope this is a precursor to the idea of more biome-centric creatures.
4. The Blaze is a very fun monster to fight and is adequately difficult for the placement and balance he has thrown into the game.
5. Notch planned these things before modders added them. Modders are not way ahead of him.
6. Modders are not allowed to make something and say "No notch I made that YOURE NOT ALLOWED TO PUT IT IN YOUR GAME". If you steal notchs ideas while hes busy, well then you're **** out of luck when he adds them in. That would be absurd if anything a modder made he was not allowed to put in the game, because its his game and modders have no right to steal the ideas he already has or plans to put in later.
7. They are useless for now, why are you complaining about something that is SUPPOSED TO BE unfinished? That's like complaining about an unfinished house being useless while it is still being built.
8. Gold has likely been added for other game purposes as well, we will see.
9. Not a copy of wheat, because it doesn't make bread and doesn't grow from tall grass seeds. If you mean a copy in that they both grow... well that is a stretch.
10. They are buggy, which is why he added them before they add something to the game, so testers (you) can report their bugs so he can fix them before they add more to the game. You don't get it yet, do you?
11. Likely a bug, but you are right, but I'm pretty sure he is aware of it by now.
The best and most original ideas so far in this thread, good job.
This is not true, Notch already owns the right to basically all mod content additions (but not the mods themselves). How would you feel if you were working on a game, and then someone else added in one of your ideas and then said YOU STOLE MY IDEA just because you were working on other stuff when the modder made it?
That would dilute his vision far too much, but taking some ideas from it would be a good move. Also, the Aether actually stole NOTCHS idea of the skyrealm which he made over a year ago, they even used his generator. He's been planning to add the skyrealm for a while, since long before the Aether was even thought of, considering the idea of the Aether is based on notchs idea :tongue.gif:
*EDIT*
Wow I got Ninja'd by like 6 people.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
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Retired StaffI do believe he tweeted somewhere about changing it back to the old form. I'll have to search around for it though. >.<
Minecraft-things: http://skylinerw.com
More Minecraft-things: https://sourceblock.net
Guides for command-related features (eventually moving to Source Block): https://github.com/skylinerw/guides
I primarily hang out in the /r/MinecraftCommands discord, where there's a lot of people that help with commands: https://discord.gg/QAFXFtZ
Their corresponding subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/MinecraftCommands/
1. Endermen are nice but they shouldn't be able to destroy your wonderful creations. I think they should only be able to pick up certain blocks like dirt, gravel, or sand.
Off topic of new updates:
2. The current animals are nice and its going to be hella'fun once breeding comes in place but I think the world needs more types of animals including more predators to kill passive mobs and maybe even attack the player. Some predators could be Bears, Big Cats, and more types of dogs.
That is all.
I believe Notch has said that he isn't going to add the Aether to vanilla Minecraft...ever.
Anyways, constructive criticism... I think mushroom biomes should be slightly more common. Not too much more, perhaps a smidgeon so as to make slightly less Wonderland-ish. The ability to take off the pumpkin from the Snow Golems would be a welcomed feature as well. I really want to see their faces.
I realize that we are the beta testers, but standard practices dictates unit testing from development before it gets put out for additional testing.
1) Simplified leather armor crafting. This would have a much smaller amount of leather required for each piece, roughly half what is currently required. An option on this route would be to replace the 'lost' leather with wool, but this carries its own issues (like spawning in an area where one or the other mob isn't very common). The idea here would be to make leather armor not a significant investment of leather due to leather's current rarity in casual acquisition.
2) Cloth armor & leather as a component of all armors. This route would take current armor designs and replace 1-2 blocks per piece with leather. Leather armor would be replaced with cloth armor (dyable?). This would keep leather relevant throughout the game as you replace your armor and would promote cow husbandry beyond keeping your one milking cow.
3) Mob drop modification. This route would replace current leather drops with 'hide' drops. The hides would be craftable into leather like wood -> planks, maybe 2 leather per hide. Cows would drop 1-2 hide per kill, pigs could drop 0-1. The hide itself wouldn't be very useful in its current incarnation, but it may be useful in the future if cosmetic items are added, like in making chairs or rugs. There could also be hide armor that uses hide instead of leather and provides the same protection but has double the durability.
4) All of the above. Replace leather drops with hide (and have pigs drop hide), have the baseline armor be hide armor, use leather as a component in every armor craft. Each armor craft would have the middle column blocks change to leather (boots would have the 'tops' change to leather). Hide boots, for example, would use 2 hide, 2 leather. Iron boots, 2 iron, 2 leather. This would keep leather relevant throughout, not have a strain on leather farming, provide a new resource for future crafting, and allow earlier armor crafting before diving deep enough to spare the iron on a full suit.
In any case, leather armor's durability needs to be increased, as it now suffers versus iron armor in three different ways (harder to get, less protection, significantly less durability).
This idea is awesome!
And thank you op, you just gave me back belief to humanity.
Too long have i seen these whinetopics from butthurt kids.
Minecraft uses addiction
Steve does... Well he doesnt do anything anymore...