I don't agree, but that's beside the point. The fact that armor is "overpowered" is not the problem in and of itself. If Mojang has made a conscious choice to make the game easier, that's fine. (Though I doubt it was a conscious choice on their part, more likely it's an unintended consequence.)
Let me go back and remind you of my main point... the problem is that difficulty levels are meaningless now. Wearing full armor, there is very little difference in the damage that monsters to do you between difficulties. This surely was not an intended consequence of the armor update.
If it was not intended, which we dont know because Mojang didnt stated anything about it, its going to be changed sometime. We dont know if Jeb is working on that right now, we have to wait till then i guess. One way to solve this is to diminish the soaking hability of the armor each time you increase a level.
The result is that there are less options available to the player now. With the old armor system, we had a system where players who wanted more challenge could get it by selecting hard difficulty. Well, for some players it still wasn't hard enough, but at least the difficulty options had some meaning. Now, as an unintended consequence of the armor update, this option has basically been removed. There is no meaningful difference between difficulty levels anymore.
Im sure there are some modders out there that might be working on something to solve it or they will be glad to do something if you ask them nicely. There are some mods that add some kind of extra features that might make the game more interesting or more dificult.
play on hardcore and defeat ender dragon :wink.gif:
I killed the dragon naked on hardcore only using a stone sword, was just as easy.
Some say, "Oh! You should play with no armor."
I shouldn't HAVE to play w/o armor on FREAKING SO-CALLED HARD MODE for the game to be challenging. Hardcore doesn't make it any more difficult period.
Notch wanted to make the game more difficult before he wanted to make it easy, I thought everyone knew this. They obviously haven't got around to balancing the game around these new additions.
If everything does half a heart, armor is not simply armor, it is Steve ripping clad off a tank and wearing it.
Hardcore doesn't make it any more difficult period.
The only point of Hardcore Mode is that the world is deleted upon death. Other than that I believe it is exactly the same as the Hard difficulty level.
Anyway, just because you think the game is too easy doesn't mean the game is unbalanced. You're free to express your opinion and whatnot but your opinion is not fact and you shouldn't expect other people to treat it as such.
An example of an actual unbalanced game mechanic: The old bow mechanics. Notch stated plenty of times that guns simply do not fit his vision of Minecraft and he would never make guns part of the vanilla game. However the old bow functioned like one would expect an automatic firearm to function, but without the reloading. This is unbalanced because, since the developer specifically did not want a "machine gun" sort of weapon in the game and made other game design decisions based on that premise, it was overpowered.
To put it simply, the way the game mechanic functioned was at odds with the intention of the game developers. There is no evidence that the current armor and difficulty setting mechanics are at odds with the intention of the game developers, and without any statement of intention there is no evidence that it is unbalanced. Blizzard was often fond of a particular line when I still played WoW, they used it pretty much any time the community got all angry about changes to some ability or other, and I feel it applies here: "working as intended"
It was a mistake when they redid the armour and it's a bug
Again, there is no proof to support this claim. Feel free to make up exaggerated stories that seem to support your point all you like you still lack any proof that this is a bug rather than an intentional change.
I simply offer up the option that you play without armor.
And I explained why that option is worthless to me. I'm not interested in self-imposed challenges. Anyway, that's an irrelevant point because people could already do that with the old armor system, if they really wanted to. It's not a new option that has been created by the new armor system.
The new armor system has taken away options, not added them. We used to have a meaningful option between difficulty levels, and hard actually kind of meant "hard" (even if it wasn't hard enough for everyone, at least it was substantially different from easy.) Now, hard no longer means "hard." It means easy. There is no option for a harder difficulty level than easy. For all intents and purposes, the number of difficulty levels has been cut in half.
Seriously, every game I've ever played has one or two elements that I don't like. That doesn't mean the game is "broken". Just use a little creativity to work around it and enjoy yourself.
I agree with you about that... I wouldn't call the game "broken" either. Mainly because it's not a combat game. The creative side is what's most important, and that's better than ever. However, while I agree that the OP was exaggerating, he does make a good point. I believe the game was harmed by suddenly making armor massively overpowered. In doing so, they've accidentally watered down an element to the game that a lot of people used to enjoy, the adventure element. It's not game-breaking, but the game could seriously benefit by fixing this oversight.
I suppose you completely overlooked the sentence below when you read my post.
You mean: "I won't object if Mojang does something about it and either adds another difficulty level, nerfs armor or modifies the existing difficulty levels."?
I didn't overlook it. It's just a very passive statement... it sounds like you're saying you won't mind so much if armor is changed again, but you're fine with armor the way it is now. I assumed this because you seemed to be making a lot of arguments about why the game doesn't need to be fixed. Or did I misunderstand you? If so, please tell me, because I am not very good at mind reading.
You're right, there's no proof of anything, only guesses. But it's certainly possible that it's a bug. It could also just be a simple oversight. I honestly doubt that the current armor system is "working as intended." If it is, then IMO it's a stupid change as they've basically invalidated difficulty options, and watered down a game element that many people used to enjoy. But I highly doubt that was their intention... I fully expect armor to be fixed in some future patch.
I imagine they'll tone down the amount of damage reduction, since it is way too high at the moment, but maybe they'll revert back to the old system... which honestly would be fine. The only problem with the old system was having to throw away half-used armor... and that problem has already been fixed by having a repair system.
I killed the dragon naked on hardcore only using a stone sword, was just as easy.
Some say, "Oh! You should play with no armor."
I shouldn't HAVE to play w/o armor on FREAKING SO-CALLED HARD MODE for the game to be challenging. Hardcore doesn't make it any more difficult period.
Notch wanted to make the game more difficult before he wanted to make it easy, I thought everyone knew this. They obviously haven't got around to balancing the game around these new additions.
If everything does half a heart, armor is not simply armor, it is Steve ripping clad off a tank and wearing it.
Minecraft has gotten harder. You are just trying to sound cool by making up totally impossible stories.
I agree that Minecraft is a bit too easy as it is, though I never thought it was all that hard and personally was never scared about the "Twang" or the "SSSSssss" of the mobs I just fought them, their AI was always pathetic and made them nonthreatening. Creepers blowing up unnatural blocks (blocks placed by the player) is just putting in a legitimate griefer into the game, zombies breaking into buildings via doors and windows isn't a bad idea though if it's implemented properly(not saying anything like Terraria's blood-moon which is kinda dopey in my opinion). Increasing the difficulty should make mobs spawn at a higher rate rather than just increasing damage they do. Iron armor was the highest most people ever actually used unless they got a crap-ton of diamonds and it was adequate for earlier editions of Minecraft. Complaining doesn't do much on this forum, I doubt that Notch, Jeb or anyone who matters on the Mojang team search this forum for complaints. What has a chance to get something done is if you got a bunch of people to agree with you and then send messages to the Mojang team about the problem. People on this forum also act too childish as is a problem with many forums on the internet and flame wars pop up rather than people putting in intelligent input, lets keep this civil please. I am by no means saying I don't like Minecraft now, or I didn't like it before hand, I'm just saying it's been super easy the whole time even on hard mode. I only ever died by being knocked into lava or off a large ledge in my entire Minecraft single player experience. Multiplayer my friends have sometimes accidentally killed me with diamond swords or I died in PvP. Also don't get me wrong I'm not saying that the forums aren't a place that you can get people together to coordinate things such as E-mails and such I'm just trying to cover my opinions of what has been said in this thread.
TL;DR because at lest one person will say "WALL OF TEXT LOL NOT READING IT!": The game was always way too easy, it got easier, some ideas in this thread have been nice, this thread is showing signs of possible flame war please keep it civil. Send complaints to the Mojang employees.
Great point here.
People should learn, that games needs to be HARDER but they must stay fair. Just like many games from the past. I totaly approve your post. This game is't a survival. It's a piece of cake. Give enderman power to move almost every block( but only in Survival) and give Zombies power to break dirt/glass/door to get to you.
Zombies totally should be able to! Like for a zombie it takes perhaps a whole night to make a 2x3 hole in the wall (considering you use wood for your house), then there would actually be a reason to gather stone and make a house out of it. (It'd take like, 3 days to make a 1x2)
Something needs saying here- not only have mobs become easier, it seems they spawn so much less often. If I want an easy game that has no kick in the ass every once in a while, I'll go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Until then, I expect the creators of a game to do their god damn part, because they're getting payed to do this. They need to take our words and add things WE want, what the COMMUNITY of Minecraft want. Notch had me sick to my stomach as 1.0 came out, lily pads? A whole update later, and the only thing you do is give us lily pads as a solid block and enchanting? (which I enjoy btw)
Jeb - Step up man, that mod API is a great idea. Like he said, they'll never be able to create as much additions to the game as the whole internet, but instead of worrying about additions, they need to fix what we have currently!
Everyone always says "Hey this or that should be added!" instead of "Hey I believe this game needs a few basic things worked on real quick that would make the vanilla experience better as a whole"
No, I don't like having to complain to a company I really respect. I don't think anyone really does actually, but Minecraft....It's gone down the crapper since the last half-assed update.
(1.7 flashback 'multiplayer') - I was crossing a desert with my partner, low on supplies and looking for an environment to suit our needs of water and trees, notice the sun going down. "**** run!" he chats as we both pull out stone swords, I say "Lets climb this hill, come on!" as we get to the top, a few mobs (spiders, skeletons, zombies) give us a run for our money. We create a makeshift house, and as I look down over the barren desert as the sun falls and the moon shows its glimmering light, I see a land in which I have not seen in 1.0. I was scared, skeletons and zombies swarming us through the holes in our house of dirt, I see hundreds of mobs, crowding the desert. Anyone who tried to go through was killed on the spot with no chance of survival. As that sun came up, I felt a great relief, we shoveled out a door frame in our temporary house and continued on as mobs were burning around us. As we made our way eventually to a high mountain, we began building our wooden, mountain-top house (in which turned out beautiful).. As I grabbed the wood in my inventory and snuck over edges to fill in the floor, a zombie came up and whacked me off the cliff.
Point of the story is- no game can be good unless it can make you rage the f#%$ out. Its those moments when you actually have something to work for, getting those diamonds back that were left with your other supplies in a mineshaft after a creeper blew your ass up, that motivate you to play the game. (after raging a good 15 minutes of course) Its the moments in which you can just sit back and relax after acquiring your diamonds again, until it happens again a few seconds later. Its those kind of moments that make a game great-not just good.
A game is nothing without the little things that make you break your keyboard raging, and as we all no in simple terms..
A game shall not be fun, unless there is a challenge to overcome!-Kliuyyyy
Bringing armor durability and protection back to 1.7 stats is the start, from there its adjusting Mob AI and behaviors, adding in more mob variety ect.
Really? In 1.7.3, You could stand in lava just spamming porkchops, and bread and be alive. Now, you cant. It's more realisitc, and it's harder. It's a two in one special.
I agree as well also I think that Notch should do some more updates, because it's really boring now as you said. I remember hearing at school from friends or YouTube that I knew update was coming out, as soon as I got home I would check up on it and build up anticipation waiting ....... For the update to test out all the cool new things, now that Notch has stopped the updates that's all gone. I have noticed also that spiders seem ALOT easier to kill. I used to be frightened of them but not any more. Notch should address these issues because the game is loosing players, which is a sad thing.
Really? In 1.7.3, You could stand in lava just spamming porkchops, and bread and be alive. Now, you cant. It's more realisitc, and it's harder. It's a two in one special.
In 1.0.0 you can stand in lava for quite a long time as long as you have Diamond armor.
1. Why did Mojang buff up iron armour vs mob damage twice (hard) / three times (easy) when no one was complaining about it?
2. Why did Mojang buff up diamond armour vs mob damage by 21 times (hard) / 6 times (easy) when people only wanted a bit of a buff
3. Why did Mojang make diamond armour as protective in easy as it is in hard - was it their intention to make it that players using diamond in hard suddenly had as much protection as someone playing on easy? Does that make any sense to you at all?
4. Why did Mojang buff up diamond armour in lava (easy and hard) by 7.5 times? Were the community crying out for the ability to swimming for ages in lava?
1. Who says no one was complaining about it? At some point Minecraft went from being something that was spreading around the geeky parts of college campuses and got huge in middle schools. I've seen complaints that the mere existence of creepers makes the game too hard. I've seen complaints that Endermen are too hard and I was entirely disappointed that they weren't more of a challenge. That, however, is just my opinion. But almost certainly there were complaints about every tier of armor needing to be better, and there were probably also complaints that every tier of armor was making the game too easy long before this thread. If Mojang wants to target a different part of the fanbase by drawing focus away from combat that is their decision.
2. So everyone just wanted "a bit of a buff"? You seem to be assuming that everyone shares your opinions on the difficulty of Minecraft. I see plenty of threads about the game being too hard so I can only assume that you are not in some sort of huge majority as you may think. Again, they probably buffed the armor because they wanted to move the focus away from combat.
3. Yes, because that means that armor protection would not be variable across difficulties, it would just be a static number. I'm no computer programmer but as I understand the fewer variables that need to be calculated as the player interacts with the game world basically means fewer chances of bugs and lag. A lazy move? Perhaps. Unbalanced? Only if the developer were intentionally focusing on combat as a major aspect of the game. As I'm sure you can already figure out the main point of my argument is that Mojang doesn't really care about the combat aspect. At this point it mostly just seems like a means of obtaining ingredients for potions and points for enchanting.
4. Yea, they were, sort of. I do remember a rash of threads several months ago complaining that lava killed people too quickly. I found it to be entirely ridiculous. Not only has armor been buffed against lava but they also tweaked the fire damage mechanics to make it more likely that you'll live instead of burn to death. Here's another design decision I don't particularly agree with but it makes it even more obvious to me what they plan to focus on going forward.
Your data is pretty interesting, thank you for going to the effort of collecting it just for the sake of debate. However I think it doesn't necessarily defeat my argument. Since the difference seems to have come along at 1.8 (The Adventure Update!) then it would seem that was the point they decided to stop focusing on combat and focus instead on exploration. So while combat may be much easier now that does not automatically mean it is "unbalanced".
No, I don't think it's "common sense" that either Notch or Jeb would accidentally make all these changes, that doesn't even seem very likely. They were deliberate and intentional changes meant to balance the game, the only real problem is Mojang decided that the balancing Minecraft needed was easier combat and you disagree. Now if you can show me a tweet from Jeb saying that these changes are some sort of bug or accident and that they will revert back to pre-1.8 armor at some point then I will admit you were right. I just don't think that's going to happen.
P.S. - The gold armor being more resistant to lava part is probably just another way they were trying to make gold stuff not be so useless. This I would expect to see changed if they get some other idea of a way to make gold stuff less useless.
Let me bring up another point... the old armor system was cool because it was different from the way armor works in most games. Now, armor has been changed to be the same simple damage resistance system that most games use. In other words, from a design standpoint, armor has been changed to a generic and boring system.
The old armor system is better. It was balanced, and a much more interesting system too. We'd be better off just going back to the old system.
If it was not intended, which we dont know because Mojang didnt stated anything about it, its going to be changed sometime. We dont know if Jeb is working on that right now, we have to wait till then i guess. One way to solve this is to diminish the soaking hability of the armor each time you increase a level.
Im sure there are some modders out there that might be working on something to solve it or they will be glad to do something if you ask them nicely. There are some mods that add some kind of extra features that might make the game more interesting or more dificult.
Some say, "Oh! You should play with no armor."
I shouldn't HAVE to play w/o armor on FREAKING SO-CALLED HARD MODE for the game to be challenging. Hardcore doesn't make it any more difficult period.
Notch wanted to make the game more difficult before he wanted to make it easy, I thought everyone knew this. They obviously haven't got around to balancing the game around these new additions.
If everything does half a heart, armor is not simply armor, it is Steve ripping clad off a tank and wearing it.
The only point of Hardcore Mode is that the world is deleted upon death. Other than that I believe it is exactly the same as the Hard difficulty level.
Anyway, just because you think the game is too easy doesn't mean the game is unbalanced. You're free to express your opinion and whatnot but your opinion is not fact and you shouldn't expect other people to treat it as such.
An example of an actual unbalanced game mechanic: The old bow mechanics. Notch stated plenty of times that guns simply do not fit his vision of Minecraft and he would never make guns part of the vanilla game. However the old bow functioned like one would expect an automatic firearm to function, but without the reloading. This is unbalanced because, since the developer specifically did not want a "machine gun" sort of weapon in the game and made other game design decisions based on that premise, it was overpowered.
To put it simply, the way the game mechanic functioned was at odds with the intention of the game developers. There is no evidence that the current armor and difficulty setting mechanics are at odds with the intention of the game developers, and without any statement of intention there is no evidence that it is unbalanced. Blizzard was often fond of a particular line when I still played WoW, they used it pretty much any time the community got all angry about changes to some ability or other, and I feel it applies here: "working as intended"
Again, there is no proof to support this claim. Feel free to make up exaggerated stories that seem to support your point all you like you still lack any proof that this is a bug rather than an intentional change.
I knew skeles had become ****, but that was it.
Who else should decide?
That's a cop-out. Just because they can't make everyone happy doesn't mean they shouldn't try to improve the game.
And I explained why that option is worthless to me. I'm not interested in self-imposed challenges. Anyway, that's an irrelevant point because people could already do that with the old armor system, if they really wanted to. It's not a new option that has been created by the new armor system.
The new armor system has taken away options, not added them. We used to have a meaningful option between difficulty levels, and hard actually kind of meant "hard" (even if it wasn't hard enough for everyone, at least it was substantially different from easy.) Now, hard no longer means "hard." It means easy. There is no option for a harder difficulty level than easy. For all intents and purposes, the number of difficulty levels has been cut in half.
I agree with you about that... I wouldn't call the game "broken" either. Mainly because it's not a combat game. The creative side is what's most important, and that's better than ever. However, while I agree that the OP was exaggerating, he does make a good point. I believe the game was harmed by suddenly making armor massively overpowered. In doing so, they've accidentally watered down an element to the game that a lot of people used to enjoy, the adventure element. It's not game-breaking, but the game could seriously benefit by fixing this oversight.
You mean: "I won't object if Mojang does something about it and either adds another difficulty level, nerfs armor or modifies the existing difficulty levels."?
I didn't overlook it. It's just a very passive statement... it sounds like you're saying you won't mind so much if armor is changed again, but you're fine with armor the way it is now. I assumed this because you seemed to be making a lot of arguments about why the game doesn't need to be fixed. Or did I misunderstand you? If so, please tell me, because I am not very good at mind reading.
You're right, there's no proof of anything, only guesses. But it's certainly possible that it's a bug. It could also just be a simple oversight. I honestly doubt that the current armor system is "working as intended." If it is, then IMO it's a stupid change as they've basically invalidated difficulty options, and watered down a game element that many people used to enjoy. But I highly doubt that was their intention... I fully expect armor to be fixed in some future patch.
I imagine they'll tone down the amount of damage reduction, since it is way too high at the moment, but maybe they'll revert back to the old system... which honestly would be fine. The only problem with the old system was having to throw away half-used armor... and that problem has already been fixed by having a repair system.
Minecraft has gotten harder. You are just trying to sound cool by making up totally impossible stories.
And I disagree with everything you said. I still find the game challenging.
TL;DR because at lest one person will say "WALL OF TEXT LOL NOT READING IT!": The game was always way too easy, it got easier, some ideas in this thread have been nice, this thread is showing signs of possible flame war please keep it civil. Send complaints to the Mojang employees.
Zombies totally should be able to! Like for a zombie it takes perhaps a whole night to make a 2x3 hole in the wall (considering you use wood for your house), then there would actually be a reason to gather stone and make a house out of it. (It'd take like, 3 days to make a 1x2)
Jeb - Step up man, that mod API is a great idea. Like he said, they'll never be able to create as much additions to the game as the whole internet, but instead of worrying about additions, they need to fix what we have currently!
Everyone always says "Hey this or that should be added!" instead of "Hey I believe this game needs a few basic things worked on real quick that would make the vanilla experience better as a whole"
No, I don't like having to complain to a company I really respect. I don't think anyone really does actually, but Minecraft....It's gone down the crapper since the last half-assed update.
(1.7 flashback 'multiplayer') - I was crossing a desert with my partner, low on supplies and looking for an environment to suit our needs of water and trees, notice the sun going down. "**** run!" he chats as we both pull out stone swords, I say "Lets climb this hill, come on!" as we get to the top, a few mobs (spiders, skeletons, zombies) give us a run for our money. We create a makeshift house, and as I look down over the barren desert as the sun falls and the moon shows its glimmering light, I see a land in which I have not seen in 1.0. I was scared, skeletons and zombies swarming us through the holes in our house of dirt, I see hundreds of mobs, crowding the desert. Anyone who tried to go through was killed on the spot with no chance of survival. As that sun came up, I felt a great relief, we shoveled out a door frame in our temporary house and continued on as mobs were burning around us. As we made our way eventually to a high mountain, we began building our wooden, mountain-top house (in which turned out beautiful).. As I grabbed the wood in my inventory and snuck over edges to fill in the floor, a zombie came up and whacked me off the cliff.
Point of the story is- no game can be good unless it can make you rage the f#%$ out. Its those moments when you actually have something to work for, getting those diamonds back that were left with your other supplies in a mineshaft after a creeper blew your ass up, that motivate you to play the game. (after raging a good 15 minutes of course) Its the moments in which you can just sit back and relax after acquiring your diamonds again, until it happens again a few seconds later. Its those kind of moments that make a game great-not just good.
A game is nothing without the little things that make you break your keyboard raging, and as we all no in simple terms..
A game shall not be fun, unless there is a challenge to overcome!-Kliuyyyy
game is boring and reptative
every server I've ever managed to join is full of retards. seriously. what fun is that?
"get a mod" so funny... I've tried dozens of mods, NONE of them work. MOST crash the game and require a reload.
Notch has abandoned the game... read the blog. Minecraft is a twitching corpse.
I MADE MY SIGNATURE =D
Yeah. I hear ya!
But yet I keep loading it up and playing mods, adventure maps and just building crap. Odd how that works.
Realism.
1. Who says no one was complaining about it? At some point Minecraft went from being something that was spreading around the geeky parts of college campuses and got huge in middle schools. I've seen complaints that the mere existence of creepers makes the game too hard. I've seen complaints that Endermen are too hard and I was entirely disappointed that they weren't more of a challenge. That, however, is just my opinion. But almost certainly there were complaints about every tier of armor needing to be better, and there were probably also complaints that every tier of armor was making the game too easy long before this thread. If Mojang wants to target a different part of the fanbase by drawing focus away from combat that is their decision.
2. So everyone just wanted "a bit of a buff"? You seem to be assuming that everyone shares your opinions on the difficulty of Minecraft. I see plenty of threads about the game being too hard so I can only assume that you are not in some sort of huge majority as you may think. Again, they probably buffed the armor because they wanted to move the focus away from combat.
3. Yes, because that means that armor protection would not be variable across difficulties, it would just be a static number. I'm no computer programmer but as I understand the fewer variables that need to be calculated as the player interacts with the game world basically means fewer chances of bugs and lag. A lazy move? Perhaps. Unbalanced? Only if the developer were intentionally focusing on combat as a major aspect of the game. As I'm sure you can already figure out the main point of my argument is that Mojang doesn't really care about the combat aspect. At this point it mostly just seems like a means of obtaining ingredients for potions and points for enchanting.
4. Yea, they were, sort of. I do remember a rash of threads several months ago complaining that lava killed people too quickly. I found it to be entirely ridiculous. Not only has armor been buffed against lava but they also tweaked the fire damage mechanics to make it more likely that you'll live instead of burn to death. Here's another design decision I don't particularly agree with but it makes it even more obvious to me what they plan to focus on going forward.
Your data is pretty interesting, thank you for going to the effort of collecting it just for the sake of debate. However I think it doesn't necessarily defeat my argument. Since the difference seems to have come along at 1.8 (The Adventure Update!) then it would seem that was the point they decided to stop focusing on combat and focus instead on exploration. So while combat may be much easier now that does not automatically mean it is "unbalanced".
No, I don't think it's "common sense" that either Notch or Jeb would accidentally make all these changes, that doesn't even seem very likely. They were deliberate and intentional changes meant to balance the game, the only real problem is Mojang decided that the balancing Minecraft needed was easier combat and you disagree. Now if you can show me a tweet from Jeb saying that these changes are some sort of bug or accident and that they will revert back to pre-1.8 armor at some point then I will admit you were right. I just don't think that's going to happen.
P.S. - The gold armor being more resistant to lava part is probably just another way they were trying to make gold stuff not be so useless. This I would expect to see changed if they get some other idea of a way to make gold stuff less useless.
The old armor system is better. It was balanced, and a much more interesting system too. We'd be better off just going back to the old system.