In TU6 (or was it TU7?), the spawn rate of passive animals was tweaked to allow passive mobs to spawn more, which was a good holdover for us until breeding was added to the game.
Unfortunately, now that we have breeding, the current passive mob spawn rates are a nuisance, and an overpowered one at that.
Let's talk about the overpowered aspect first. See, our worlds are now very quick to spawn passive mobs to the mob cap, but mobs only spawn within a certain distance of the player. The effect this has is most noticable at the start of a new map: within minutes you have large herds of animals within meters of the spawn area. If you don't explore too far out, you can easily farm animals for resources without limit, killing two or three animals will cause them to be quickly replaced by new spawns. It's nice to start a new game and see a cow or two nearby, but when you can start a new game and have a good supply of meat, feathers, and leather in short order, and there's stilll large numbers of respawned animals around you, something is wrong.
Now, that's a matter of opinion, and there's always the counterargument that "if you think mob resources are overpowered, just limit yourself with how much you collect from them," right? Well there's still a problem: mob spawns break breeding. It's hard to breed new animals because of how quickly the mob spawn cap is reached, and every time you want to breed your penned animals, you often have to go out and kill free-roaming ones first. This makes breeding tedious, as well as useless. The purpose of breeding is that free-roaming animals aren't supposed to be so easy to farm anymore.
And this is slightly unrelated, but I'd also like to mention Ghasts. I feel like they spawn way too much. It's nice that there aren't swarms of pigmen, but when you slashed pigmen spawn rates, you left the door open for ghasts to get out of control in their place. I hope you consider toning that down as well, as ghasts make exploring open areas (especially on ledges and overhangs) near impossible.
While I have never reached the mob spawn cap, I agree with this. Especially considering they have a bad tendancy of spawning on 1x1 ledges (I like to build in mountains). I tend to go out every once in a while and do a little population control. Sometimes I have no clue what to do with all the drops I get...
And the ghasts! So annoying! I don't go into the nether very often when I'm not on peaceful because of them.
I still feel that the current passive mob spawn rate, breeding is pretty much useless.
You either hit the cap for mobs or you can more easily obtain things from passive mobs that spawn naturally than ones you breed since mobs spawn faster than you can breed them.
Yeah, I remember when they had to increase the rate because it was so low that finding sheep was impossible. Now, while working just under the surface, I have to mute my tv just because of all the noise the cows make. I came up from working on a project to find about ten cows stuck in a 6x6 hole I had prepped for a building support. I ate for weeks....
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The reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
Yeah passive mobs are out of control. Breeding is near useless, caving is too easy due to lack of monster spawn rates, and you have enough food to supply an army within a few mc-days. It needs to be fixed.
I really think they should at least drop the rate by at least 50%, that way there will still be natural spawns noticeable but will not be overcrowding effect. I mean I enjoy all the animals being easy to obtain, but right now it is stupid easy. As in they respawn faster than you can kill them...><
usually I just ignore till they get in the way, then I slaughter. Other than that at least the next update will have reason for keeping sheep around in pens...:D
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I play on a server, and the passive cap is actually a problem. A person came on and took him forever to find sheep for a bed. When 4 or 5 people have their own pens, it monopolizes the animal population and well... that can be a problem.
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I agree with OP. The spawn for animals need to be reduced. But in my opinion the ghasts should have a way smaller range of fire, its nearly impossible to kill them with a sword now :x
i like the large ghast spawn rate but can see why others might not.
the vast numbers of cows and pigs is pretty silly. i have to go wandering for a bit to find two chickens to breed together.. i'd like cows and pigs to be a little sparser.. it would be nice to go hunting instead of slaughtering.
i would like to see these shift with difficulty. easy spawning a lot of food and fewer enemies, hard spawning fewer food and more enemies. i went from playing easy to playing hard and barely noticed a difference. in fact, i think creepers kill me less now.. it's hard to tell. i could have just gotten better at running like a coward.
If anything I wish we had more animals and the cap was way higher. It still takes too long to get wool in this game. I do agree that animals spawning on 1 x 1s on the mountains is quite annoying though. I have had to climb a lot of mountains to get kill the animals so that I could potentially get more sheep.
I, personally, think it should go to the way it is on the PC. On the PC, passive mobs spawn on newly generated chunks for the most part, but they have a chance to spawn a herd every 1/400 ticks (20 seconds). Besides having few animals for my multiplayer map, I liked it better like that. It made it possible to actually HUNT animals. Not walk outside your door and kill a billion cows...
I think it's so high because it's spawning them from the code that fixed the TU5 (adventure update) bug as well as the original mob spawn code from that update (that made everything incredibly rare), which I assume may have worked itself out since then, effectively spawning animals twice. That may also be why some animals are despawning: the animals spawned in to fix the TU5 bug despawned, while the ones spawned by the TU5 code don't. I've never had problems with the spawn cap, but I wouldn't mind it being toned down.
I, personally, think it should go to the way it is on the PC. On the PC, passive mobs spawn on newly generated chunks for the most part, but they have a chance to spawn a herd every 1/400 ticks (20 seconds). Besides having few animals for my multiplayer map, I liked it better like that. It made it possible to actually HUNT animals. Not walk outside your door and kill a billion cows...
Funny thing is, that is how the animal spawning was in TU5. But, since we didn't get breeding the same update, people complained and 4J switched it back to the old spawning system. Then, when we did finally get breeding, they never switched it back to the TU5 way of only spawning in new chunks. So now we have breeding, and infinite spawning passive mobs. Which in my opinion is stupid. I can't breed because there are too many passive mobs already.
Passives definitely need to be toned down. It was funny at first, but now seeing five mobs trying to spawn on a single 1x1 block while hard mode is easily survivable with a stick is just silly. Plus, building in water tends to create an abundance of swimming/drowning animals.
Unfortunately, now that we have breeding, the current passive mob spawn rates are a nuisance, and an overpowered one at that.
Let's talk about the overpowered aspect first. See, our worlds are now very quick to spawn passive mobs to the mob cap, but mobs only spawn within a certain distance of the player. The effect this has is most noticable at the start of a new map: within minutes you have large herds of animals within meters of the spawn area. If you don't explore too far out, you can easily farm animals for resources without limit, killing two or three animals will cause them to be quickly replaced by new spawns. It's nice to start a new game and see a cow or two nearby, but when you can start a new game and have a good supply of meat, feathers, and leather in short order, and there's stilll large numbers of respawned animals around you, something is wrong.
Now, that's a matter of opinion, and there's always the counterargument that "if you think mob resources are overpowered, just limit yourself with how much you collect from them," right? Well there's still a problem: mob spawns break breeding. It's hard to breed new animals because of how quickly the mob spawn cap is reached, and every time you want to breed your penned animals, you often have to go out and kill free-roaming ones first. This makes breeding tedious, as well as useless. The purpose of breeding is that free-roaming animals aren't supposed to be so easy to farm anymore.
And this is slightly unrelated, but I'd also like to mention Ghasts. I feel like they spawn way too much. It's nice that there aren't swarms of pigmen, but when you slashed pigmen spawn rates, you left the door open for ghasts to get out of control in their place. I hope you consider toning that down as well, as ghasts make exploring open areas (especially on ledges and overhangs) near impossible.
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And the ghasts! So annoying! I don't go into the nether very often when I'm not on peaceful because of them.
You either hit the cap for mobs or you can more easily obtain things from passive mobs that spawn naturally than ones you breed since mobs spawn faster than you can breed them.
my current house. i agree it needs to be fixed.
...But the animals stuck on ledges is the issue...
Regardless the spawn rate needs to calm down....
Stay fluffy~
usually I just ignore till they get in the way, then I slaughter. Other than that at least the next update will have reason for keeping sheep around in pens...:D
the vast numbers of cows and pigs is pretty silly. i have to go wandering for a bit to find two chickens to breed together.. i'd like cows and pigs to be a little sparser.. it would be nice to go hunting instead of slaughtering.
i would like to see these shift with difficulty. easy spawning a lot of food and fewer enemies, hard spawning fewer food and more enemies. i went from playing easy to playing hard and barely noticed a difference. in fact, i think creepers kill me less now.. it's hard to tell. i could have just gotten better at running like a coward.