Intrestingly enough, this is one of the only discussions where I walked out with a different opinion than I had at the start.
I feel the same way. I'm glad we could have an affect on each other.
Given what I have learned throughout this thread, this is my current suggestion:
The effectiveness of the item should be based off of what materials were used to make it. That much is obvious. The question that poses, however, is if the bed should be a single recipe like the compass (just an example) or have multiple variations like swords and armor. I propose a system where the latter is true, but, of course, better materials would lead to a better result.
Perhaps it could be done in such a way that the main material (iron, gold, diamond) filled the bottom 5 slots in a type of "u" shape while the rest was filled in with cloth. Maybe even make it so that one space is required to be filled by redstone for an alarm clock type of idea.
The limitations of the materials could be set either on a system where the beds only lasted a certain number of in-game days (though I kind of disagree with this in principle), or perhaps even a number of spawns:
Given this, it would require 5 steel bars, 3 cloth, and 1 redstone dust to make a bed that would allow to respawn at it twice before it disappeared. Destroying the bed would simply cause it to disappear as well, so picking up beds after one respawn to replace them and reset the count wouldn't be possible.
Feel free to pick at this idea. It's just a rough attempt to reach that beloved "middle ground".
-Duba
Edit: To the above poster:
Although I do like the idea because it's outside the box, you have to realize that this game is one day going to be the type of thing being sold in stores. Because of that, I'm reluctant to support ideas that I feel may confuse the average consumer. Basing the spawn off of a point within the different "chunks" that the world is created on is a good idea, but may be one that is hard for the average player to grasp and may eventually lead to frustration. If you could suggest a user-friendly way for it to be implemented, however, I would be completely behind you.
Nice ideas, Duba. The only times I die near my base (where my bed would be) is from innocent fall damage. Maybe the bed "material" would be less. Here's my recipie for a bed.
[]
[]
= Alarm
= Changeable material
= Cloth
Another idea: What if beds required something from the possible "enchanting system." If you place an unenchanted bed, you could pick it up and it would just be decoration. If you place an enchanted bed, you would not be able to pick it up, and it would work as your spawn point.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
[quote=8bit]
By balance, do you mean make it totally worthless?
I do not think people should be able to choose their eown beds. Reason being you could be in a cave, here skeleton noise, then set up a bed, charge in screaming and spawn four feet away when you die. Plus you'll be at full health.
Unless there's some way to set a spawn point and discourage abuse of it, I say no.
What I do is make a train station in the air and have a track leading to my base, and possibly a few other key locations.
Rofl.. post above = awesome solution. Im a newb at minecraft, and find that I'm sometimes annoyed with the spawnpoints in game, but rather than the actual spawnpoint being the problem I find that I'm most annoyed with the items lost upon death. That's not really a problem though, there has to be a penalty.
As to making an item that you could use to change spawnpoint, I'm all for it. This will make the game less frustrating for the more casual gamers. If people want to just gather stuff at daytime, and sit inside their castle all night, they can. If they want the nice items which require diamonds/gold etc they need to explore the deep caves, and a movable spawnpoint is not gonna help those people TOO much. Sure, some may not like it, but as I said it may be better for the more casual gamers. If you don't want the movable spawnpoint, you don't need to get it.
I find the spawn point quite an annoying feature D: It is just a waste of time for the player, having to walk the same stretch of land repeatedly to get home or beyond. The only way I can use other islands effectively seems to be creating a a giant minecart track, but those systems can only work for so long, and its still pretty inconvenient (And iron is so scarce aararahahahghghhgh)
I think beds would be a great idea that remedy this, and a restriction that would probably solve most exploit issues would be that they muse be visible or close to sunlight/sky or something like that. Perhaps your character has trouble having a deep sleep in the wonderful homely atmosphere of the underworld?
That way they can't be exploited for spelunking and future dungeoneering or whatever, but I don't have to walk a mile to get to a base on an adjacent island to my spawn, and then navigate the depths of the deep in order to pick up my last precious diamond pick.
Beds would just be a convenience and allow you to really spread out through the world, which in future versions is only going to be more varied and rewarding to explore 8D
I do not think people should be able to choose their eown beds. Reason being you could be in a cave, here skeleton noise, then set up a bed, charge in screaming and spawn four feet away when you die. Plus you'll be at full health.
I agreed with this at the start of my debate on the subject a few days ago, but my stance has since changed. It would seem that a lot of players like the idea of choosing their spawn point for the sake of exploring without quite so much a chance of not being able to return should they die. I agree with this, in essence.
What I don't agree with is how it would be abused to do just as you said. If you place a bed close enough to what the danger is, it belittles that danger to be little more than a minor annoyance. I've been preaching that since I started getting involved in this whole "Let's be allowed to choose our spawn point" discussion.
I haven't decided what would be a good solution to stop people from abusing it like that while still allowing them to adventure far away from their spawn point.
To the poster above me:
That was my first reaction as well. Make it so that they have to be close to the upper "base" layers of the world so that they can't be used deep below ground. Then I remembered that their are a fair amount of people who like to make underwater homes. That idea would be completely broken for them, really.
Edit:
Quote from Dolphintuna »
Nice ideas, Duba. The only times I die near my base (where my bed would be) is from innocent fall damage. Maybe the bed "material" would be less.
First: thank you. <3
Second: The problem with this is that, as the current "bed" model stands, it has no way to prevent the player from using it as a way to belittle the effects of death. That's why I proposed it be so expensive. If we could figure out a way to make it so that they couldn't use it next to a mob spawner and just run in punching things until it was all dead then I would agree with making the materials easier to gather.
Come on guys. Lets get a really good idea fleshed out here.
One thing I think some people have forgotten is that the supreme flexibility and infinite possibility of Minecraft means different people play for different reasons and enjoy different things. I like playing Single Player peaceful because I enjoy building things with the extended tools the full version offers over the Browser-based Creative Mode. But I hate having to leave a long trail of torches every time I leave base. And when I build a base far from my original spawn point, it's a massive pain finding my way back.
Allow me to chose where I want to spawn means I can further enjoy MY playstyle. If people prefer survival, that's cool, that's what they enjot. But I'd rather that their preferences of playstyle don't end up ruining MINE because they cried "NO FUN!" over user-specified spawn points.
Oh, well, I'm totally for allowing people to choose to change different aspects of the game. I was just speaking from the point of view of someone who does like the survival aspect. Maybe you would only be able to spawn from beds on peaceful?
Well, how about this: Make beds cheap, but allow you to set your spawn point only ONCE per life.
This discourages setting up a bed in the middle of a dungeon, but allows players to spawn at a secondary base of their choosing. Sure, one could still abuse the mechanic and set up a bed near danger, but that would be the only spawn point they got that life. If they survived the danger and collected the loot, they would be stuck with that spawn point until they die. I guess they could die intentionally near the bed, so they could reset the spawnpoint again, but there could be other consequences to death such as item wear.
You could also program it so that people spawning from a bed would have only half their hearts, or have some drowsiness mechanic where you couldn't do anything for a few minutes.
The posts here have raised a good point: Some people choose to play in other styles, so lets give them a choice on how they play:
Easy difficulty would allow for an infinite number of spawn point resets using beds
Normal difficulty would allow you to set your spawn point ONCE per life and wake up with half-health
Hard difficulty would have no setting of spawn points, or set your spawn point ONCE forever
Thoughts?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Unlike your chest, mine inspires hopes and dreams." - Sheryl Nome, Macross Frontier
Well, how about this: Make beds cheap, but allow you to set your spawn point only ONCE per life.
This discourages setting up a bed in the middle of a dungeon, but allows players to spawn at a secondary base of their choosing. Sure, one could still abuse the mechanic and set up a bed near danger, but that would be the only spawn point they got that life. If they survived the danger and collected the loot, they would be stuck with that spawn point until they die. I guess they could die intentionally near the bed, so they could reset the spawnpoint again, but there could be other consequences to death such as item wear.
You could also program it so that people spawning from a bed would have only half their hearts, or have some drowsiness mechanic where you couldn't do anything for a few minutes.
The posts here have raised a good point: Some people choose to play in other styles, so lets give them a choice on how they play:
Easy difficulty would allow for an infinite number of spawn point resets using beds
Normal difficulty would allow you to set your spawn point ONCE per life and wake up with half-health
Hard difficulty would have no setting of spawn points, or set your spawn point ONCE forever
Thoughts?
So if I decide I want to move to the forest instead of the desert where I originally set my spawn, I can't? No ,locking people to one permanent spawn is only slightly better than the current system.
In regards to the "oh no, danger-> place bed" problem
Look at it this way: If I place my bed there, I am far away from my base, and hence my emergency supplies. If I get killed, I am respawning with nothing right next to whatever killed me while I was equipped. The skeleton that killed me while I was in armour with a sword will likely smear me when I am bare-handed. If the bed has a limited number of respawns before it stops working, I will likely use it up. If I fell in lava, I am worse off becuase now my stuff is gone, and I have to return to base empty-handed. When you account for future changes(temporary torches and depth-based spawning), it will be very hard to guarantee your mine is safe. This means you have ot fight your way back to your supplies. If I had left my spawn point in base, I could have picked up some supplies, grabbed a sword, and fought my way back to my stuff(assuming that its not in lava) and picked up where I left off.
Allow me to chose where I want to spawn means I can further enjoy MY playstyle. If people prefer survival, that's cool, that's what they enjot. But I'd rather that their preferences of playstyle don't end up ruining MINE because they cried "NO FUN!" over user-specified spawn points.
That's my 2 cents to this discussion.
Allow me to copy something for you from the "About" section from the Minecraft.net website:
Quote from Notch »
I strongly believe that all good stories have a conflict, and that all good games tell a good story regardless of if it's pre-written or emergent. Free building mode is fine and dandy, but for many people it will ultimately become boring once you've got it figured out. It's like playing a first person shooter in god mode, or giving yourself infinite funds in a strategy game.. a lack of challenge kills the fun.
For survival mode, I'd rather make the game too difficult than too easy. That also means I'm going to have to include some way of winning the game (or some other climax) to prevent it becoming too exhausting.
The street goes both ways, my friend. The argument of "MY gameplay style is just as important is yours, so the developer(s) should add anything I want into the game that I think benefits MY gameplay style. You just dislike my ideas because they don't benefit your gameplay style" is so weak that, honestly, it makes me a little angry. Allowing people to spawn wherever they wish will only make this game easier. Which, as you can read from my quote, is completely against the original design intent.
TL:DR
Lets try to find a reasonable way to implement this into the game. Lets try to avoid the "But, but, but it's MY playstyle!" arguments if we could.
Edit: To Mystify:
The original idea of (oh no, danger -> place bed) is really only pertaining (at least, when I say it) to dungeons and extreme situations when you have large amounts of mobs in one area. Basically, you can cut off yourself from the mobs with some stone, set up a door, and place your bed inside this little "room". Then, if you die, you're only a few steps away from your items no matter where your original base is. That's the thing that kinda scares me about the idea of being able to choose your spawn point. I fear that it would, easily, be the most powerful item in all of alpha survival were it implemented without some kind of debuff.
I LOVE the idea of having a debuff where you can't do certain things for a set amount of time after you spawn. That actually makes the idea work in my opinion. Cut, print, ship!
I hate the idea of making beds hard to make (it's a bed, you should be able to make one on day 1 when setting up your house) or limiting how many times a bed can be used (breaking after a certain number of uses).
[*:9ell2ure]This bed has no expiration
[*:9ell2ure]This bed does NOT drop. At all. When destroyed it's gone. When dropped/thrown from your inventory it's gone.
[*:9ell2ure]This bed is NOT stackable in your inventory.
[*:9ell2ure]This bed cannot be dragged directly from crafting into a quickslot. It must be placed in your inventory first.
And here's the part that discourages carrying a large number of beds.
[*:9ell2ure]When not in a quickslot the bed takes up a 2x3 space in the inventory (2 rows, 3 columns)
You could carry spare beds in your quickslots, but then you lose space to carry tools. And if you have a bed in your inventory it'd severely limit other things that you'd want to carry. As a result beds would be something to make on-site (instead of simply carried around as part of an exploration package)
Of course you can carry around materials for beds with you. Wood is easy enough, and you'd likely have that with you anyways. But feathers and wool? Easy to gather, but that's two extra spaces taken up. And then you'll have to have/make a workbench and in general it'll just take extra time.
And yes, a bed right near a dungeon would make said dungeon faster to conquer and it'll be easier to get your items back, but it's no different then setting up a room right before the dungeon with lots of torches, maybe a door and windows between your safe room and the dungeon area, and then setting up a safe passage back to your base (you'd probably already have this anyways, since people seem to mine from their base outwards as a result of the limited spawning set up now.)
So the bed doesn't actually make it safer, it just cuts down on walking time. And this way you're not going to just be carrying beds everywhere you go. (Yes again, easy to make a bed, but at this point you'd basically be establishing a base of operations since you'll need a workbench and all of the materials for the bed)
As far as getting items back being too easy, perhaps this is the mechanic that should change then. Perhaps you could change this based on difficulty?
Peaceful: You don't lose your items when you die.
Easy: You drop your items when you die, but can go back and pick them up.
Normal: Same as easy, but if you die again the items are lost. (Think Demon's Souls death system)
Hard: You lose all of your items upon death. They don't drop, they're just gone.
And then make it so that difficulty can only be changed from the main menu (so you'd need to save and quit back to the main menu to change the difficulty)
Meh, it seems almost counter-productive while you're making a game to go back and change old tried-n-true mechanics just to make it so that a new item isn't grossly overpowered. Although I enjoy your way of thinking, I have to disagree with just one of your points.
Quote from SirPaper »
You could carry spare beds in your quickslots, but then you lose space to carry tools. And if you have a bed in your inventory it'd severely limit other things that you'd want to carry. As a result beds would be something to make on-site (instead of simply carried around as part of an exploration package)
You know that's ********, and I know that's ********. Everybody would just carry one in the last quickslot they have for dangerous underground expeditions. The amount of space it would take up in the inventory would boil down to little more than an annoying mechanic that requires you empty your inventory into a chest before you make a new one in your base. Nobody would make them on site. That would be stupid.
Really, you gotta think about it from a developer point of view. I would much rather come up with a clever way to implement this new item so that it isn't overpowered rather than having to go back and edit old code in order to shove it into place.
The way I see it, at this point, there are the two easily viable options:
Either have the bed apply a debuff when you respawn with it that disallows you from attacking for 3 minutes, or (as monkeedude suggested) make it so that the bed itself has an internal building time of one in-game day. That way, if people really want to use it as a way to easily spelunk they're going to spend a lot of time just sitting around doing nothing. In fact, it would make using it for the purpose pretty useless as it would actually slow down the process. However, if you're using it in order to explore and things of that nature you could simply eat up that "internal building time" while you make your home.
If either of these (note: not both) were implemented I would be perfectly fine with the materials being cheap.
The thing I was saying is it discourages carrying multiple beds, but I can see the issue with having to change already established code and game-mechanics.
I don't really like the debuff idea that much, but a building wait time of one day for a bed to be ready for use would be fine.
I currently, a bed messes with game balance horribly. But the game balance is already messed up in that regard, better to incorporate the bed into a reform of the system than to fear it for messing up that system. For instance, one change we could add is you only drop x% of your items upon death, and the others are gone. This makes spawning next to your stuff so you can get killed again a poor choice, and even if you do mange to collect everything that dropped, you have still taken a penalty. Adding in change of not respawning with full health also makes the fragility of being respawned more potent, so you would be even more hesitant of charging in bare-handed instead of retreating to your base to restock. The time that dropped items persist could also be lowered, since it does not have to account for the player marching across half a continent to get to their mine; since the expected distance between death and spawn is lower, so can be the time before items despawn.
The thing I was saying is it discourages carrying multiple beds, but I can see the issue with having to change already established code and game-mechanics.
I don't really like the debuff idea that much, but a building wait time of one day for a bed to be ready for use would be fine.
I agree, the debuff one seems a little too messy for my taste. Also, sorry about the "********" comment, didn't mean any offense by it. I throw lingo like that around constantly; it's just the way I was brought up.
Quote from Mystify »
I currently, a bed messes with game balance horribly. But the game balance is already messed up in that regard, better to incorporate the bed into a reform of the system than to fear it for messing up that system. For instance, one change we could add is you only drop x% of your items upon death, and the others are gone. This makes spawning next to your stuff so you can get killed again a poor choice, and even if you do mange to collect everything that dropped, you have still taken a penalty. Adding in change of not respawning with full health also makes the fragility of being respawned more potent, so you would be even more hesitant of charging in bare-handed instead of retreating to your base to restock. The time that dropped items persist could also be lowered, since it does not have to account for the player marching across half a continent to get to their mine; since the expected distance between death and spawn is lower, so can be the time before items despawn.
You make a fair point that I hadn't thought of before. I would like to have a harsher penalty of death, and if that was implemented (perhaps only on normal and hard game modes, leave peaceful the same) I would have no issue with beds being added as a cheap infinite-respawn item. Because, at that point, no matter how you slice it, dieing is still a poor choice because you could permanently lose items you're carrying without a chance to get them back.
Also, sorry about the "********" comment, didn't mean any offense by it. I throw lingo like that around constantly; it's just the way I was brought up.
Thanks. :smile.gif: That was kind of bugging me a bit, but I figured you didn't really mean any offense by it.
And I do like the percentage drop system. (Would it be a percentage of all items dropped, or just a percentage of inventory dropped while all quickslot items are just gone?) I'm still worried about people just switching to peaceful right before dying though. (Which is why I'd like the difficulty option to be main menu only)
As far as getting items back being too easy, perhaps this is the mechanic that should change then. Perhaps you could change this based on difficulty?
Peaceful: You don't lose your items when you die.
Easy: You drop your items when you die, but can go back and pick them up.
Normal: Same as easy, but if you die again the items are lost. (Think Demon's Souls death system)
Hard: You lose all of your items upon death. They don't drop, they're just gone.
Something that I would like to see is every time that you die and drop your items it would just spawn an indestructible [diamond?] chest where you died.
Right clicking it would open it and dump all of the items into your inventory and make the chest disappear.
It would actually make death while exploring somewhat interesting, imagine finding that chest with a bunch of your cool items a few months down the road.
Thanks. :smile.gif: That was kind of bugging me a bit, but I figured you didn't really mean any offense by it.
And I do like the percentage drop system. (Would it be a percentage of all items dropped, or just a percentage of inventory dropped while all quickslot items are just gone?) I'm still worried about people just switching to peaceful right before dying though. (Which is why I'd like the difficulty option to be main menu only)
No worries, and the way I read it was to be a % of all items in the inventory. So, say you had a full inventory, 20% of them would be deleted instantly upon death, regardless of stack size. I agree on the difficulty thing, though. Quick-switching to different difficulties with different rules is an extremely bad design choice in my opinion (but hey, that could be why Notch has about a million dollars on me at the moment).
Quote from DaFox »
Something that I would like to see is every time that you die and drop your items it would just spawn an indestructible [diamond?] chest where you died.
Right clicking it would open it and dump all of the items into your inventory and make the chest disappear.
It would actually make death while exploring somewhat interesting, imagine finding that chest with a bunch of your cool items a few months down the road.
As long as some of the items naturally disappear when you die, I'm fine with this. Kind of a cool idea, really.
I feel the same way. I'm glad we could have an affect on each other.
Given what I have learned throughout this thread, this is my current suggestion:
The effectiveness of the item should be based off of what materials were used to make it. That much is obvious. The question that poses, however, is if the bed should be a single recipe like the compass (just an example) or have multiple variations like swords and armor. I propose a system where the latter is true, but, of course, better materials would lead to a better result.
Perhaps it could be done in such a way that the main material (iron, gold, diamond) filled the bottom 5 slots in a type of "u" shape while the rest was filled in with cloth. Maybe even make it so that one space is required to be filled by redstone for an alarm clock type of idea.
The limitations of the materials could be set either on a system where the beds only lasted a certain number of in-game days (though I kind of disagree with this in principle), or perhaps even a number of spawns:
Iron: 2 respawns
Gold: 3 respawns
Diamond: 5 respawns
Given this, it would require 5 steel bars, 3 cloth, and 1 redstone dust to make a bed that would allow to respawn at it twice before it disappeared. Destroying the bed would simply cause it to disappear as well, so picking up beds after one respawn to replace them and reset the count wouldn't be possible.
Feel free to pick at this idea. It's just a rough attempt to reach that beloved "middle ground".
-Duba
Edit: To the above poster:
Although I do like the idea because it's outside the box, you have to realize that this game is one day going to be the type of thing being sold in stores. Because of that, I'm reluctant to support ideas that I feel may confuse the average consumer. Basing the spawn off of a point within the different "chunks" that the world is created on is a good idea, but may be one that is hard for the average player to grasp and may eventually lead to frustration. If you could suggest a user-friendly way for it to be implemented, however, I would be completely behind you.
[]
[]
= Alarm
= Changeable material
= Cloth
Another idea: What if beds required something from the possible "enchanting system." If you place an unenchanted bed, you could pick it up and it would just be decoration. If you place an enchanted bed, you would not be able to pick it up, and it would work as your spawn point.
[quote=8bit]
By balance, do you mean make it totally worthless?
Unless there's some way to set a spawn point and discourage abuse of it, I say no.
What I do is make a train station in the air and have a track leading to my base, and possibly a few other key locations.
As to making an item that you could use to change spawnpoint, I'm all for it. This will make the game less frustrating for the more casual gamers. If people want to just gather stuff at daytime, and sit inside their castle all night, they can. If they want the nice items which require diamonds/gold etc they need to explore the deep caves, and a movable spawnpoint is not gonna help those people TOO much. Sure, some may not like it, but as I said it may be better for the more casual gamers. If you don't want the movable spawnpoint, you don't need to get it.
I think beds would be a great idea that remedy this, and a restriction that would probably solve most exploit issues would be that they muse be visible or close to sunlight/sky or something like that. Perhaps your character has trouble having a deep sleep in the wonderful homely atmosphere of the underworld?
That way they can't be exploited for spelunking and future dungeoneering or whatever, but I don't have to walk a mile to get to a base on an adjacent island to my spawn, and then navigate the depths of the deep in order to pick up my last precious diamond pick.
Beds would just be a convenience and allow you to really spread out through the world, which in future versions is only going to be more varied and rewarding to explore 8D
What I don't agree with is how it would be abused to do just as you said. If you place a bed close enough to what the danger is, it belittles that danger to be little more than a minor annoyance. I've been preaching that since I started getting involved in this whole "Let's be allowed to choose our spawn point" discussion.
I haven't decided what would be a good solution to stop people from abusing it like that while still allowing them to adventure far away from their spawn point.
To the poster above me:
That was my first reaction as well. Make it so that they have to be close to the upper "base" layers of the world so that they can't be used deep below ground. Then I remembered that their are a fair amount of people who like to make underwater homes. That idea would be completely broken for them, really.
Edit:
First: thank you. <3
Second: The problem with this is that, as the current "bed" model stands, it has no way to prevent the player from using it as a way to belittle the effects of death. That's why I proposed it be so expensive. If we could figure out a way to make it so that they couldn't use it next to a mob spawner and just run in punching things until it was all dead then I would agree with making the materials easier to gather.
Come on guys. Lets get a really good idea fleshed out here.
-Duba
Allow me to chose where I want to spawn means I can further enjoy MY playstyle. If people prefer survival, that's cool, that's what they enjot. But I'd rather that their preferences of playstyle don't end up ruining MINE because they cried "NO FUN!" over user-specified spawn points.
That's my 2 cents to this discussion.
This discourages setting up a bed in the middle of a dungeon, but allows players to spawn at a secondary base of their choosing. Sure, one could still abuse the mechanic and set up a bed near danger, but that would be the only spawn point they got that life. If they survived the danger and collected the loot, they would be stuck with that spawn point until they die. I guess they could die intentionally near the bed, so they could reset the spawnpoint again, but there could be other consequences to death such as item wear.
You could also program it so that people spawning from a bed would have only half their hearts, or have some drowsiness mechanic where you couldn't do anything for a few minutes.
The posts here have raised a good point: Some people choose to play in other styles, so lets give them a choice on how they play:
Easy difficulty would allow for an infinite number of spawn point resets using beds
Normal difficulty would allow you to set your spawn point ONCE per life and wake up with half-health
Hard difficulty would have no setting of spawn points, or set your spawn point ONCE forever
Thoughts?
So if I decide I want to move to the forest instead of the desert where I originally set my spawn, I can't? No ,locking people to one permanent spawn is only slightly better than the current system.
In regards to the "oh no, danger-> place bed" problem
Look at it this way: If I place my bed there, I am far away from my base, and hence my emergency supplies. If I get killed, I am respawning with nothing right next to whatever killed me while I was equipped. The skeleton that killed me while I was in armour with a sword will likely smear me when I am bare-handed. If the bed has a limited number of respawns before it stops working, I will likely use it up. If I fell in lava, I am worse off becuase now my stuff is gone, and I have to return to base empty-handed. When you account for future changes(temporary torches and depth-based spawning), it will be very hard to guarantee your mine is safe. This means you have ot fight your way back to your supplies. If I had left my spawn point in base, I could have picked up some supplies, grabbed a sword, and fought my way back to my stuff(assuming that its not in lava) and picked up where I left off.
Allow me to copy something for you from the "About" section from the Minecraft.net website:
The street goes both ways, my friend. The argument of "MY gameplay style is just as important is yours, so the developer(s) should add anything I want into the game that I think benefits MY gameplay style. You just dislike my ideas because they don't benefit your gameplay style" is so weak that, honestly, it makes me a little angry. Allowing people to spawn wherever they wish will only make this game easier. Which, as you can read from my quote, is completely against the original design intent.
TL:DR
Lets try to find a reasonable way to implement this into the game. Lets try to avoid the "But, but, but it's MY playstyle!" arguments if we could.
Edit: To Mystify:
The original idea of (oh no, danger -> place bed) is really only pertaining (at least, when I say it) to dungeons and extreme situations when you have large amounts of mobs in one area. Basically, you can cut off yourself from the mobs with some stone, set up a door, and place your bed inside this little "room". Then, if you die, you're only a few steps away from your items no matter where your original base is. That's the thing that kinda scares me about the idea of being able to choose your spawn point. I fear that it would, easily, be the most powerful item in all of alpha survival were it implemented without some kind of debuff.
I LOVE the idea of having a debuff where you can't do certain things for a set amount of time after you spawn. That actually makes the idea work in my opinion. Cut, print, ship!
-Duba
I hate the idea of making beds hard to make (it's a bed, you should be able to make one on day 1 when setting up your house) or limiting how many times a bed can be used (breaking after a certain number of uses).
My solution?
Beds are fairly simple to make
<--- Wool (bedsheets)
]" title="-<->" /> ]" title="-<->" /> ]" title="-<->" /> <--- Feathers (mattress)
<--- Wood planks (bed frame)
[*:9ell2ure]This bed has no expiration
[*:9ell2ure]This bed does NOT drop. At all. When destroyed it's gone. When dropped/thrown from your inventory it's gone.
[*:9ell2ure]This bed is NOT stackable in your inventory.
[*:9ell2ure]This bed cannot be dragged directly from crafting into a quickslot. It must be placed in your inventory first.
And here's the part that discourages carrying a large number of beds.
[*:9ell2ure]When not in a quickslot the bed takes up a 2x3 space in the inventory (2 rows, 3 columns)
You could carry spare beds in your quickslots, but then you lose space to carry tools. And if you have a bed in your inventory it'd severely limit other things that you'd want to carry. As a result beds would be something to make on-site (instead of simply carried around as part of an exploration package)
Of course you can carry around materials for beds with you. Wood is easy enough, and you'd likely have that with you anyways. But feathers and wool? Easy to gather, but that's two extra spaces taken up. And then you'll have to have/make a workbench and in general it'll just take extra time.
And yes, a bed right near a dungeon would make said dungeon faster to conquer and it'll be easier to get your items back, but it's no different then setting up a room right before the dungeon with lots of torches, maybe a door and windows between your safe room and the dungeon area, and then setting up a safe passage back to your base (you'd probably already have this anyways, since people seem to mine from their base outwards as a result of the limited spawning set up now.)
So the bed doesn't actually make it safer, it just cuts down on walking time. And this way you're not going to just be carrying beds everywhere you go. (Yes again, easy to make a bed, but at this point you'd basically be establishing a base of operations since you'll need a workbench and all of the materials for the bed)
As far as getting items back being too easy, perhaps this is the mechanic that should change then. Perhaps you could change this based on difficulty?
Peaceful: You don't lose your items when you die.
Easy: You drop your items when you die, but can go back and pick them up.
Normal: Same as easy, but if you die again the items are lost. (Think Demon's Souls death system)
Hard: You lose all of your items upon death. They don't drop, they're just gone.
And then make it so that difficulty can only be changed from the main menu (so you'd need to save and quit back to the main menu to change the difficulty)
You know that's ********, and I know that's ********. Everybody would just carry one in the last quickslot they have for dangerous underground expeditions. The amount of space it would take up in the inventory would boil down to little more than an annoying mechanic that requires you empty your inventory into a chest before you make a new one in your base. Nobody would make them on site. That would be stupid.
Really, you gotta think about it from a developer point of view. I would much rather come up with a clever way to implement this new item so that it isn't overpowered rather than having to go back and edit old code in order to shove it into place.
The way I see it, at this point, there are the two easily viable options:
Either have the bed apply a debuff when you respawn with it that disallows you from attacking for 3 minutes, or (as monkeedude suggested) make it so that the bed itself has an internal building time of one in-game day. That way, if people really want to use it as a way to easily spelunk they're going to spend a lot of time just sitting around doing nothing. In fact, it would make using it for the purpose pretty useless as it would actually slow down the process. However, if you're using it in order to explore and things of that nature you could simply eat up that "internal building time" while you make your home.
If either of these (note: not both) were implemented I would be perfectly fine with the materials being cheap.
-Duba
I don't really like the debuff idea that much, but a building wait time of one day for a bed to be ready for use would be fine.
I agree, the debuff one seems a little too messy for my taste. Also, sorry about the "********" comment, didn't mean any offense by it. I throw lingo like that around constantly; it's just the way I was brought up.
You make a fair point that I hadn't thought of before. I would like to have a harsher penalty of death, and if that was implemented (perhaps only on normal and hard game modes, leave peaceful the same) I would have no issue with beds being added as a cheap infinite-respawn item. Because, at that point, no matter how you slice it, dieing is still a poor choice because you could permanently lose items you're carrying without a chance to get them back.
Add that to the list of possibilities!
-Duba
Thanks. :smile.gif: That was kind of bugging me a bit, but I figured you didn't really mean any offense by it.
And I do like the percentage drop system. (Would it be a percentage of all items dropped, or just a percentage of inventory dropped while all quickslot items are just gone?) I'm still worried about people just switching to peaceful right before dying though. (Which is why I'd like the difficulty option to be main menu only)
Something that I would like to see is every time that you die and drop your items it would just spawn an indestructible [diamond?] chest where you died.
Right clicking it would open it and dump all of the items into your inventory and make the chest disappear.
It would actually make death while exploring somewhat interesting, imagine finding that chest with a bunch of your cool items a few months down the road.
No worries, and the way I read it was to be a % of all items in the inventory. So, say you had a full inventory, 20% of them would be deleted instantly upon death, regardless of stack size. I agree on the difficulty thing, though. Quick-switching to different difficulties with different rules is an extremely bad design choice in my opinion (but hey, that could be why Notch has about a million dollars on me at the moment).
As long as some of the items naturally disappear when you die, I'm fine with this. Kind of a cool idea, really.
-Duba