Well, I don't know how this would work in MP but here goes:
Why not have a craftable item (like a bed as suggested) that sets your spawn point, but when you spawn you are randomly placed within 1000m (or any number that's reasonable) from it? That way epic explorations topside aren't so...hm, fruitless, but still gives you some trouble returning home. It may actually encourage a little more exploration as you try to figure out what direction your home is. Dono how possible it is, just my 2 bits.
As an compromise, how about you make the materials needed to craft a spawn point relatively rare, and limit its usefulness by making it consume itself after you respawn (or possibly after a few respawns) and after it's gone you revert to your base spawn point or rebuild it.
If you farm enough materials to put a spawn point in/near every dungeon, it would not be an issue, but if the recipe is made like a chest, but comprised of something hard to come-by, like diamond, (think snow white's casket) and is good for limited uses (I am thinking one death, you awaken in the casket and have to break out) suddenly dying is still an issue, but not a "start-from-scratch-because-all-that-gear-is-so-far-away-it-will-vanish-before-I-could-possibly-return" equivalent.
It would still suck traveling to VERY far away lands, and being unable to farm enough materials in the new area to re-create the spawn point, but you should take those items with when you plan to travel far.
To prevent people from using a bed as an instant save point whenever you want it, you can make it so that there is a 24h activation time. That is, when you place a bed, it will only become your spawn point the next day.
To discourage people from moving it close to the front lines, make it an easily destroyable, attractive target to mobs, so that it has to be well guarded to remain intact.
ignoring all discussion thus far, I find it funny that the OP dies for the first time in minecraft and complains about the penalty getting removed hahaha. And it's not really a penalty, it's where your born and where you will reincarnate, you should feel lucky that you can get your items back.
I think there should be some new crafting item that requires rare materials hard to find and protected in hell to make a new spawn point. So if you sail far away and start a new then you will be able to spawn near it. So when you 'conquer' hell then you will be able to do such things as changing spawn points.
Sorry if this was already suggested I didn't read anything but the first few posts.
Suddenly there are people posting who haven't read most of the thread. Seems everybody's an expert on spawn points now.
Quote from GreyAcumen »
I have to admit, I haven't gotten far enough in any of my games for distance from a spawn point to be an issue yet. The only problem with a movable spawn point is that the more mobile it becomes, the less important death is.
You seem to have the wrong idea about movable spawn points, sir. With certain restrictions on how many you can place, where, and/or how often, movable spawn points could be one of the best things to happen to Minecraft. No one (sane) is suggesting unrestricted means of producing new spawn points. A simple bed respawn, made of obvious materials and limited to one at a time, wouldn't break the game at all. It would do quite the opposite, allowing people to leave their starting area. Since you haven't played the game enough, you probably haven't thought of what you'll do once you mine all the resources in your immediate area. You'll have to go further and further to get the things you need/want, and unless you feel like trudging (or carting) kilometers at a time to get a few iron bars or , you'll have to build a base away from home. But every time you die, you'd get pulled right back to the first place you saw in that world: your original spawn point. Meaning you need to trek all the way back to your new base.
...Or, you could have a respawn point closer to the new area you chose to explore, cutting down the amount of time spent traveling large distances between bases. Once you've explored a lot of the area around you, the only option you have is to branch out, or start a new world. One of those options ignores all the progress you had made in that world, while the other lets you get out and explore what you haven't yet seen, with all your items and buildings still intact. Which sounds better to you?
Of course, hell will mitigate the travel time. But going back to your starting spawn every time will eventually have a noticeable effect on your play experience the farther you explore, and no one wants to dash through miles of fiery wasteland to get to their precious dropped items in time.
Also, I'm just going to come out and say it: "Spawnflowers" is the worst respawn idea I've heard so far. If it was a choice between keeping the game the same and spawnflowers, I would vote against the flowers.
Call me a cheater, but when I start a new level, I explore for a long time until I find my perfect base spot, build it up to a nice starting home, and then go into an editor and move my spawn point to my home. I don't feel the need to move it ever again after that. You don't ever have an urge to do cheap spawn moving when in danger because that would require closing your game every time there is an enemy (maybe someone would do that, but I find that a bit ridiculous, its a game for god's sake). Whenever I start to build on a new area after I have built up around my spawn, I just build a booster mine track to it. While, I don't believe it is right to change your spawn every second so that you don't die, I also don't believe it is right to be stuck with a spawn miles away from your home. The game gets to a point where you don't really die anymore anyway. The most dying I do is when building something high up, my crouch key tends to not work so great :smile.gif: I already forget what it was like before crouch.
Also, I'm just going to come out and say it: "Spawnflowers" is the worst respawn idea I've heard so far. If it was a choice between keeping the game the same and spawnflowers, I would vote against the flowers.
And you are now, of course, going to make a further post detailing exactly why the spawnflower mechanic doesn't work. Aren't you?
Too complicated, and a bit rough. I'm all for more difficulty, but why so much work for something that should be in the background? Advatages of spawnflowers:
Not tied down to initial spawn, allowing further exploration of the world
With seeds, you can control your respawn Disadvantages of spawnflowers:
Used once each
Too easy to set new respawn points - Abusable. The idea of movable spawn points is to let players move away from the initial starting area, not teleport around the map at their leisure.
Too many possible respawn points/Random - If you respawn at the nearest horizontal spawnflower, what if the nearest one is out in the middle of nowhere? You have to restart with none of your items and no idea where you are. Forced restarts aren't cool. You couldn't even reliably die on purpose to get sent back to your initial spawn, since there might be another spawnflower horizontal to you.
Overall, the idea is overwrought and superfluous. What makes it a better idea than beds? Beds are simple: you wake up in a bed. Bam, respawn connection made right there, no confusion involved. I'm not a programmer or anything, but wouldn't it be more complicated to work in spawnflowers (making them grow and drop seeds in random areas throughout the world, while pulling in respawns in such a specific manner) than to add the bed (item that makes you respawn there when you die, with a few restrictions on placement)?
I'm not saying that spawnflowers wouldn't work, I'm sure it could be done. But it would be more work than needed for respawns, relying too much on players wandering around looking for flowers to make sure they know where they're going to respawn.
With the current spawn system, it's like we're dogs on a rubber leash. Sure, you can run around for a little bit without any resistance; but the farther you go, the tauter that leash gets. Eventually, you reach a point where it's just not worth the struggle to try to reach out any farther.
So even though we have this virtually endless world, we're really tethered to this relatively small radius.
A couple of these ideas I've just seen are actually getting close to understanding the real issue, but then totally miss the mark when it comes to their being temporary solutions. Items that set your primary spawn should you know, SET the spawn, not BE the spawn. Big big difference there. If the item gets destroyed, that spot is still your spawn; otherwise it's the same as now, still eventually taking people waaay back to the original place if you run out of spawners. Craftable items as temporary spawners only come into their own if you ALSO have a way to set your permanent base. Then their temporary function is actually worth the expense of some of these items. That would give you a one-shot close-respawn chance away from your main area; but still not lock you down to a single enforced basecamp on a map as big as Saturn, for the entirety of your game. Together these could provide a decent spawn system; with the proper limits on primary movement timing, and placement and numbers of tempspawns.
Spawnflower, still weirdly arbitrary and complex. It's too random to be better than selectable or current spawns in this game. It mentions that if the last spawnflower is destroyed when you die, another appears "somewhere" in your previously explored territory. And if that territory is 250Mb worth of map? That's actually kind of a really bad thing. That adds lots of extra travel time from these arbitrary spots each time you die, which actually makes this mechanic worse than current, since you can't even build a giant roadway to find your way back from spawn to base. It also makes the compass less useful than the current mechanic, since it doesn't even point to anything you're familiar with, just random and ever-changing spots on your map. That is a worse method for everybody than current, not just travelers; it's forcing the people who WANT to stay home to move randomly as well.
Do people really think that someone with a mobile spawn is playing smart, gaining advantage, or somehow "cheating" to set it inside a highly dangerous area anyway? This seems to be one of the major points that anti-movers come up with. I believe this makes your game harder on yourself (and rightly so) to use it in this method.
Here's an example of what soooooooo many people are afraid of: a dude with a mobile primary spawn near a hazardous work environment, say at the mouth of some highly dangerous cave he's exploring. For this little adventure, say we'll use a craftable item that permanently sets your spawn. Dude sets spawn, goes inside. Gets to say around 15 or so above bedrock after a long haul down. Suddenly, creepers! They asplode him. K, he reappears at his spawn! With none of his items, and bashed up armour, if he even had any. He goes back to get his floaty pile of crap. Suddenly, creepers! They asplode him, since this time he couldn't get close to his stuff because he's not even armed now. K, he reappears at his spawn! Now he has no armour for sure after two deaths, and his little pile of floaty crap expires in 42 seconds because he couldn't get to it during the first try. He tries to get away to restock. Suddenly, spiders! They eat him. It's night now, after wasting all that time the first couple deaths, and the monsters are out. K, he reappears at his spawn! Right in front of the spiders who just eated him. He's now borked himself till he can escape long enough to get somewhere with the appropriate resources to reset his ridiculously-located spawn. This is called "entertaining Let's Play video", not "smart gameplay" or "cheating the system". The game already has ways right now to discourage this weird image people have of mobile spawns being like some kind of "battle advantage" method.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from will_holmes »
Quote from anon »
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that I'm the only person who plays Minecraft normally.
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that there is no such thing as playing Minecraft normally.
@Tarman
I have a bed/bedding related suggestion in my sig, which I hope can answer some of the problem you have. The basic idea is that...
1. There's tiered level of spawn, with a higher cost "permanent" component and lower cost "temporary/consumable" component.
2. Lower tier "permanent" component is a bit more difficult to be kept up-to-date, as they rapidly consumes the "temporary" component.
3. Higher tier "permanent" component is far more, well, permanent, as they consume the "temporary" component at such a rate that it is practically impossible to run out of them.
Why in blazes would you bother *mining* the stuff? That's the stupid route. Get the lava and the water, and form it in place. I'm working on an obsidian tower using just that method right now, as a matter of fact--I just need to get around to mining down to the lava under my construction site rather than hauling 12 buckets at a time and being careful to not do something stupid like try to use a chest or worktable while I have one in hand...again.
That's an interesting concept. I should try that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[quote=8bit]
By balance, do you mean make it totally worthless?
I haven't read through all the posts here, but the new hell dimension offers the opportunity to quick travel large distances, with some risk involved, but I'm sure we will be able to figure out ways to reduce the risk and make this a viable and fun way to travel farther even with a static spawn point.
@Tarman
I have a bed/bedding related suggestion in my sig, which I hope can answer some of the problem you have. The basic idea is that...
1. There's tiered level of spawn, with a higher cost "permanent" component and lower cost "temporary/consumable" component.
2. Lower tier "permanent" component is a bit more difficult to be kept up-to-date, as they rapidly consumes the "temporary" component.
3. Higher tier "permanent" component is far more, well, permanent, as they consume the "temporary" component at such a rate that it is practically impossible to run out of them.
This bed idea (and the stuff in the thread itself) goes a long way towards the craftable part of my concerns over spawn mechanics; actually it's pretty slick. This would work really well for the temporary spawner system, and it has a lot of variation to add interest. I really like the varying degrees of health restoration according to bed quality, and the "closest-to" mechanic is nice, keeps where you're going to spawn nice and simple. Also, another use for the x-3 amount of useless string everyone has! But it still leaves that tether to original spawn, though it does mitigate it a huge amount. Zero beds by whatever disaster = back to original spawn, which is the biggest problem with, not the bed system, but the static spawn itself.
Mavajo used the "dog on a rubber leash" analogy which I thought was a really nice way to describe the current mobile player problem. Conversely, folks who never leave their original start never once have to do or build or craft anything at all to be within a good distance of spawn, either now or under a mobile system; so from my perspective, it's a huge inequality between the two styles. Static players automatically have a much easier game than mobiles, based simply on a single point of the map. For the people that think the current system is distance=punishment, the equation really is homebody=over-rewarded. The game right now rewards you for not going very far by making it really easy to just stay at home. I'd like to even that disparity somewhat to get more playstyles out of the game.
I'd like to combine the bed method, as the tempspawn system, with a long timer on setting primary spawn. Even an in-game week should be an acceptable waiting period to relocate your primary; as its purpose is to base you in a different region than when you started the game. Then from your primary you could set up these temporary workzone/firebase/guardtower type spawns, subject to damage, and all spawns subject to the "closest-to". This combo would let people who don't want to lose their floating piles still have a chance to run for the money, adds some extra interest and tactical gameplay to where and how you're going to set up spawns, and the fargamers can still stay on the move without worrying whether a single fire (I assume bedding would be flammable, it's blankies) will cause them to end up back at the very start of their 4700km hike. Running it this way, zero beds = go back to the last place you set a perma-spawn, making the punishment according to how well the player uses them instead of it being arbitrary. You forget to set a primary somewhere after you cross an ocean and creepers asplode you before you put down a bedroll, then you deserve to get sent back across; it's totally on you. :biggrin.gif: And the people who never leave the first spawn won't care anyway.
Thanks Uber, your idea helped my problem become what I think is a workable combo of spawn mechanics, making it interesting and gameplay-adding; yet not unwieldy, random, nor punishing on certain playstyles.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from will_holmes »
Quote from anon »
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that I'm the only person who plays Minecraft normally.
Every time I come to these forums, I think more and more that there is no such thing as playing Minecraft normally.
I just had an interesting idea. Maybe your respawn location should be your average location over the last *time period*. If you move to a new base, and stay in that area for a while, your respawn will be there. If you are being nomadic, you will only be set back half of a *time period*'s travel at most, depending on how much camping you do. Short journeys out will not get you lost, since you will still respawn in the area you travel most.
I just had an interesting idea. Maybe your respawn location should be your average location over the last *time period*. If you move to a new base, and stay in that area for a while, your respawn will be there. If you are being nomadic, you will only be set back half of a *time period*'s travel at most, depending on how much camping you do. Short journeys out will not get you lost, since you will still respawn in the area you travel most.
The question is how many running blocks you need to "store" for those averages?
Too short, and you effectively spawn where you die. Or a player can always abuse it by walking back and forth to "set" their spawn there.
Too long, and it takes a while to average them out (computationally) and you might start getting some bizzare spawn behavior (if you travel is a sufficiently large circle, and the average is over say 1000 blocks, you might spawn somewhere you neven been to).
And there's always a chance that it may spawn you somewhere that's impossible for you to get out of (on a small piece of land surrounded by lava, for example).
You only need to record it occasionally, say, every 10 seconds, or every minute. If the time period is 15 minutes, once every 10 seconds is only 90 locations to store. Easy.
Here's a thought. Just put a 'Set Respawn Point At Current Location' in the Options listing when you pause--when used, you get a verification dialogue *and* get sent back to the main menu, requiring you to re-load the world to return to playing. Convenient enough for when you want to set a new starting point, yet obnoxious enough to waste a *lot* of time for someone trying to 'abuse' it. And no safeguards, so that if you put it someplace *stupid*, it's your own fault.
The idea of movable spawn points is to let players move away from the initial starting area, not teleport around the map at their leisure.
You have misunderstood how the spawnflower mechanic would work. It simply would not allow the player to teleport at their leisure. At all.
And remember that you still have the penalty for dying in the form of dropping/losing items. If the player is wandering the wilderness with few items, they have little to lose by respawning except maybe their sense of direction. But once they are building and mining, they have more to lose.
I was referring to the idea of respawning at the nearest horizontal flower. Want to get somewhere else you've been qucikly? Put your stuff in a chest, plant a new flower (if you don't feel like walking back later), pick the correct altitude, then kill yourself. You're effectively teleported to your intended destination, providing you made real sure there weren't any local spawnflowers on the same plane. Also, with enough seeds, you could pack a room with spawnflowers, essentially making a spawn farm where you can harvest respawn flowers any time you want. Or have a mostly permanent spawn hub. On hard mode, you have a choice between almost never dying or not building anything too permanent.
Quote from Kell »
The difference between your idea of the spawnbed mechanic and my idea of the spawnflower mechanic is basically one of convenience. I tink what you're saying is that you want a moveable spawnpoint to simply be convenient, whereas I'm saying that respawning should be incorporated into the core gameplay.
Yes, I do believe a new respawn mechanic should be a little more convenient than the existing one. For anyone wanting it to be an active process you have to hunt for and keep track of, your idea works.
I've finally figured out how to properly restrict respawn points.
DISTANCE.
I had gotten onto the idea that respawn points, if obtainable through crafting, were the way to go, but I couldn't figure out how to justify restricting the placement of a bed based on how close it was to another bed, as well as keeping you from making multiple beds.
The Diamond Compass always points at absolute North. When combined with a regular compass, this can allow for highly accurate navigation no matter how near or far you are away from your Spawn point. This alone might seem to not nearly be worth the price of 4 diamonds, but the Diamond Compass holds a secret; Right Clicking with the Diamond Compass can set your spawn point to a new location.
This is not without restrictions:
- Repawn Points may not be created within the same map block as the spawn point that is currently active,(you must travel past the furthest point of the map that would be generated from standing at the spawn point)
- Successfully placing a new respawn point destroys the Diamond Compass used to place it. (a column of light will temporary generate to show where the spawn point is)
- Holding Right Click until the compass glows and gives off a bright blast of light, instead of merely pressing, will revert the spawn point generated by the Diamond Compass back to the original respawn point, allowing you to place a new one. Like placing respawn points, this only works if you are first outside of the range of the currently active respawn point. This allows people to move their respawn points by small amounts without needing to break 2 diamond compasses, but still requires a fair bit of travel.
These restrictions prevent people from exploring cave systems and using the feature repeatedly as a form of "quicksaving" and only benefits those people who want a new spawn point after having traveled a far distance.
Why not have a craftable item (like a bed as suggested) that sets your spawn point, but when you spawn you are randomly placed within 1000m (or any number that's reasonable) from it? That way epic explorations topside aren't so...hm, fruitless, but still gives you some trouble returning home. It may actually encourage a little more exploration as you try to figure out what direction your home is. Dono how possible it is, just my 2 bits.
If you farm enough materials to put a spawn point in/near every dungeon, it would not be an issue, but if the recipe is made like a chest, but comprised of something hard to come-by, like diamond, (think snow white's casket) and is good for limited uses (I am thinking one death, you awaken in the casket and have to break out) suddenly dying is still an issue, but not a "start-from-scratch-because-all-that-gear-is-so-far-away-it-will-vanish-before-I-could-possibly-return" equivalent.
It would still suck traveling to VERY far away lands, and being unable to farm enough materials in the new area to re-create the spawn point, but you should take those items with when you plan to travel far.
To discourage people from moving it close to the front lines, make it an easily destroyable, attractive target to mobs, so that it has to be well guarded to remain intact.
I think there should be some new crafting item that requires rare materials hard to find and protected in hell to make a new spawn point. So if you sail far away and start a new then you will be able to spawn near it. So when you 'conquer' hell then you will be able to do such things as changing spawn points.
Sorry if this was already suggested I didn't read anything but the first few posts.
You seem to have the wrong idea about movable spawn points, sir. With certain restrictions on how many you can place, where, and/or how often, movable spawn points could be one of the best things to happen to Minecraft. No one (sane) is suggesting unrestricted means of producing new spawn points. A simple bed respawn, made of obvious materials and limited to one at a time, wouldn't break the game at all. It would do quite the opposite, allowing people to leave their starting area. Since you haven't played the game enough, you probably haven't thought of what you'll do once you mine all the resources in your immediate area. You'll have to go further and further to get the things you need/want, and unless you feel like trudging (or carting) kilometers at a time to get a few iron bars or , you'll have to build a base away from home. But every time you die, you'd get pulled right back to the first place you saw in that world: your original spawn point. Meaning you need to trek all the way back to your new base.
...Or, you could have a respawn point closer to the new area you chose to explore, cutting down the amount of time spent traveling large distances between bases. Once you've explored a lot of the area around you, the only option you have is to branch out, or start a new world. One of those options ignores all the progress you had made in that world, while the other lets you get out and explore what you haven't yet seen, with all your items and buildings still intact. Which sounds better to you?
Of course, hell will mitigate the travel time. But going back to your starting spawn every time will eventually have a noticeable effect on your play experience the farther you explore, and no one wants to dash through miles of fiery wasteland to get to their precious dropped items in time.
Also, I'm just going to come out and say it: "Spawnflowers" is the worst respawn idea I've heard so far. If it was a choice between keeping the game the same and spawnflowers, I would vote against the flowers.
Too complicated, and a bit rough. I'm all for more difficulty, but why so much work for something that should be in the background?
Advatages of spawnflowers:
Not tied down to initial spawn, allowing further exploration of the world
With seeds, you can control your respawn
Disadvantages of spawnflowers:
Used once each
Too easy to set new respawn points - Abusable. The idea of movable spawn points is to let players move away from the initial starting area, not teleport around the map at their leisure.
Too many possible respawn points/Random - If you respawn at the nearest horizontal spawnflower, what if the nearest one is out in the middle of nowhere? You have to restart with none of your items and no idea where you are. Forced restarts aren't cool. You couldn't even reliably die on purpose to get sent back to your initial spawn, since there might be another spawnflower horizontal to you.
Overall, the idea is overwrought and superfluous. What makes it a better idea than beds? Beds are simple: you wake up in a bed. Bam, respawn connection made right there, no confusion involved. I'm not a programmer or anything, but wouldn't it be more complicated to work in spawnflowers (making them grow and drop seeds in random areas throughout the world, while pulling in respawns in such a specific manner) than to add the bed (item that makes you respawn there when you die, with a few restrictions on placement)?
I'm not saying that spawnflowers wouldn't work, I'm sure it could be done. But it would be more work than needed for respawns, relying too much on players wandering around looking for flowers to make sure they know where they're going to respawn.
So even though we have this virtually endless world, we're really tethered to this relatively small radius.
A couple of these ideas I've just seen are actually getting close to understanding the real issue, but then totally miss the mark when it comes to their being temporary solutions. Items that set your primary spawn should you know, SET the spawn, not BE the spawn. Big big difference there. If the item gets destroyed, that spot is still your spawn; otherwise it's the same as now, still eventually taking people waaay back to the original place if you run out of spawners. Craftable items as temporary spawners only come into their own if you ALSO have a way to set your permanent base. Then their temporary function is actually worth the expense of some of these items. That would give you a one-shot close-respawn chance away from your main area; but still not lock you down to a single enforced basecamp on a map as big as Saturn, for the entirety of your game. Together these could provide a decent spawn system; with the proper limits on primary movement timing, and placement and numbers of tempspawns.
Spawnflower, still weirdly arbitrary and complex. It's too random to be better than selectable or current spawns in this game. It mentions that if the last spawnflower is destroyed when you die, another appears "somewhere" in your previously explored territory. And if that territory is 250Mb worth of map? That's actually kind of a really bad thing. That adds lots of extra travel time from these arbitrary spots each time you die, which actually makes this mechanic worse than current, since you can't even build a giant roadway to find your way back from spawn to base. It also makes the compass less useful than the current mechanic, since it doesn't even point to anything you're familiar with, just random and ever-changing spots on your map. That is a worse method for everybody than current, not just travelers; it's forcing the people who WANT to stay home to move randomly as well.
Do people really think that someone with a mobile spawn is playing smart, gaining advantage, or somehow "cheating" to set it inside a highly dangerous area anyway? This seems to be one of the major points that anti-movers come up with. I believe this makes your game harder on yourself (and rightly so) to use it in this method.
Here's an example of what soooooooo many people are afraid of: a dude with a mobile primary spawn near a hazardous work environment, say at the mouth of some highly dangerous cave he's exploring. For this little adventure, say we'll use a craftable item that permanently sets your spawn. Dude sets spawn, goes inside. Gets to say around 15 or so above bedrock after a long haul down. Suddenly, creepers! They asplode him. K, he reappears at his spawn! With none of his items, and bashed up armour, if he even had any. He goes back to get his floaty pile of crap. Suddenly, creepers! They asplode him, since this time he couldn't get close to his stuff because he's not even armed now. K, he reappears at his spawn! Now he has no armour for sure after two deaths, and his little pile of floaty crap expires in 42 seconds because he couldn't get to it during the first try. He tries to get away to restock. Suddenly, spiders! They eat him. It's night now, after wasting all that time the first couple deaths, and the monsters are out. K, he reappears at his spawn! Right in front of the spiders who just eated him. He's now borked himself till he can escape long enough to get somewhere with the appropriate resources to reset his ridiculously-located spawn. This is called "entertaining Let's Play video", not "smart gameplay" or "cheating the system". The game already has ways right now to discourage this weird image people have of mobile spawns being like some kind of "battle advantage" method.
I have a bed/bedding related suggestion in my sig, which I hope can answer some of the problem you have. The basic idea is that...
1. There's tiered level of spawn, with a higher cost "permanent" component and lower cost "temporary/consumable" component.
2. Lower tier "permanent" component is a bit more difficult to be kept up-to-date, as they rapidly consumes the "temporary" component.
3. Higher tier "permanent" component is far more, well, permanent, as they consume the "temporary" component at such a rate that it is practically impossible to run out of them.
That's an interesting concept. I should try that.
[quote=8bit]
By balance, do you mean make it totally worthless?
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
This bed idea (and the stuff in the thread itself) goes a long way towards the craftable part of my concerns over spawn mechanics; actually it's pretty slick. This would work really well for the temporary spawner system, and it has a lot of variation to add interest. I really like the varying degrees of health restoration according to bed quality, and the "closest-to" mechanic is nice, keeps where you're going to spawn nice and simple. Also, another use for the x-3 amount of useless string everyone has! But it still leaves that tether to original spawn, though it does mitigate it a huge amount. Zero beds by whatever disaster = back to original spawn, which is the biggest problem with, not the bed system, but the static spawn itself.
Mavajo used the "dog on a rubber leash" analogy which I thought was a really nice way to describe the current mobile player problem. Conversely, folks who never leave their original start never once have to do or build or craft anything at all to be within a good distance of spawn, either now or under a mobile system; so from my perspective, it's a huge inequality between the two styles. Static players automatically have a much easier game than mobiles, based simply on a single point of the map. For the people that think the current system is distance=punishment, the equation really is homebody=over-rewarded. The game right now rewards you for not going very far by making it really easy to just stay at home. I'd like to even that disparity somewhat to get more playstyles out of the game.
I'd like to combine the bed method, as the tempspawn system, with a long timer on setting primary spawn. Even an in-game week should be an acceptable waiting period to relocate your primary; as its purpose is to base you in a different region than when you started the game. Then from your primary you could set up these temporary workzone/firebase/guardtower type spawns, subject to damage, and all spawns subject to the "closest-to". This combo would let people who don't want to lose their floating piles still have a chance to run for the money, adds some extra interest and tactical gameplay to where and how you're going to set up spawns, and the fargamers can still stay on the move without worrying whether a single fire (I assume bedding would be flammable, it's blankies) will cause them to end up back at the very start of their 4700km hike. Running it this way, zero beds = go back to the last place you set a perma-spawn, making the punishment according to how well the player uses them instead of it being arbitrary. You forget to set a primary somewhere after you cross an ocean and creepers asplode you before you put down a bedroll, then you deserve to get sent back across; it's totally on you. :biggrin.gif: And the people who never leave the first spawn won't care anyway.
Thanks Uber, your idea helped my problem become what I think is a workable combo of spawn mechanics, making it interesting and gameplay-adding; yet not unwieldy, random, nor punishing on certain playstyles.
The question is how many running blocks you need to "store" for those averages?
Too short, and you effectively spawn where you die. Or a player can always abuse it by walking back and forth to "set" their spawn there.
Too long, and it takes a while to average them out (computationally) and you might start getting some bizzare spawn behavior (if you travel is a sufficiently large circle, and the average is over say 1000 blocks, you might spawn somewhere you neven been to).
And there's always a chance that it may spawn you somewhere that's impossible for you to get out of (on a small piece of land surrounded by lava, for example).
I was referring to the idea of respawning at the nearest horizontal flower. Want to get somewhere else you've been qucikly? Put your stuff in a chest, plant a new flower (if you don't feel like walking back later), pick the correct altitude, then kill yourself. You're effectively teleported to your intended destination, providing you made real sure there weren't any local spawnflowers on the same plane. Also, with enough seeds, you could pack a room with spawnflowers, essentially making a spawn farm where you can harvest respawn flowers any time you want. Or have a mostly permanent spawn hub. On hard mode, you have a choice between almost never dying or not building anything too permanent.
Yes, I do believe a new respawn mechanic should be a little more convenient than the existing one. For anyone wanting it to be an active process you have to hunt for and keep track of, your idea works.
DISTANCE.
I had gotten onto the idea that respawn points, if obtainable through crafting, were the way to go, but I couldn't figure out how to justify restricting the placement of a bed based on how close it was to another bed, as well as keeping you from making multiple beds.
THIS METHOD fixes everything.
PLEASE ALSO SUPPORT:
Sabata & Grey Acumen's "New Nether"
Grey Acumen's Minecraft 2.0 Suggestion Series