How about a couple of very easy ways to improve the fighting aspect of minecraft without making any huge changes such as reworking the combat system or adding shields, magic fireballs, new mobs etc.?
First off, Make it so that zombies and skeletons don't burn up in the daylight (on hard mode at least). At the moment the only monsters you really need to fight (unless you go spelunking instead of making a mine) are creepers because they stay around around and ambush you while you build or gather resources. There is absolutely no reason to go out at night (especially since beds were added but those were definitely a good idea) the drops you get from zombies and skeletons aren't that good and you get them when they burn up anyways, meanwhile going out at night means tons of risk and little gain since the enemies just constantly respawn. However if you actually had to clear out monsters every morning so that you could get to work or gather resources it would make fighting into a vital part of survival in the game.
Second, some mobs just aren't very rewarding to fight, spiders and zombies don't give very good drops but they're pretty easy to kill, creepers are dangerous but they give you gunpowder which is awesome. Skeletons meanwhile are almost impossible to kill without losing health or your armor being damaged or if you kill them with arrows you end up losing 5 arrows in order to get 0-2 back. The addition of Bones has made this a little bit better but they are still sort of useless and it is still annoying to be constantly losing arrows. I would suggest either make skeletons drop more arrows or drop flint instead (1 arrow gives you 1 arrow, 1 flint can make 4 arrows, this would also make killing zombies and skeletons go hand and hand if you get the arrows from zombies and flint from skeletons).
The other one is Ghasts which are completely wrong, for some massive monster that shoots cannon balls they are absurdly easy to kill and drop only a tiny amount of gunpowder (which usually falls into lava or somewhere unreachable anyways, however they are still almost impossible to deal with because they have no problem bombarding you from far beyond the range of your bow. Hiding or running from an easy to kill monster simply because you can't reach it is really not fun in the slightest. Ghasts should have far more health, at least 10 hearts maybe 20 or more if possible, they should drop more gunpowder, 5-10ish, and they should have far less range, only attacking when they are very close so that you may easily fight back.
Let's see, what else, oh the spider jockey, why are these things so rare again? To scare players who don't read the wiki that one time they see it if at all? You've seen spiders, you've seen skeletons, spider jockeys aren't really that scary but they could be fun enemies, make them more common.
Any other ideas?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Well, after enjoying Minecraft for a long time I finally broke down and contributed back: exactly one adventure map. TRY IT NOW! YAY! Fall of Kingdoms
First off, Make it so that zombies and skeletons don't burn up in the daylight (on hard mode at least). At the moment the only monsters you really need to fight (unless you go spelunking instead of making a mine) are creepers because they stay around around and ambush you while you build or gather resources. There is absolutely no reason to go out at night (especially since beds were added but those were definitely a good idea) the drops you get from zombies and skeletons aren't that good and you get them when they burn up anyways, meanwhile going out at night means tons of risk and little gain since the enemies just constantly respawn. However if you actually had to clear out monsters every morning so that you could get to work or gather resources it would make fighting into a vital part of survival in the game.
Second, some mobs just aren't very rewarding to fight, spiders and zombies don't give very good drops but they're pretty easy to kill, creepers are dangerous but they give you gunpowder which is awesome. Skeletons meanwhile are almost impossible to kill without losing health or your armor being damaged or if you kill them with arrows you end up losing 5 arrows in order to get 0-2 back. The addition of Bones has made this a little bit better but they are still sort of useless and it is still annoying to be constantly losing arrows. I would suggest either make skeletons drop more arrows or drop flint instead (1 arrow gives you 1 arrow, 1 flint can make 4 arrows, this would also make killing zombies and skeletons go hand and hand if you get the arrows from zombies and flint from skeletons).
The other one is Ghasts which are completely wrong, for some massive monster that shoots cannon balls they are absurdly easy to kill and drop only a tiny amount of gunpowder (which usually falls into lava or somewhere unreachable anyways, however they are still almost impossible to deal with because they have no problem bombarding you from far beyond the range of your bow. Hiding or running from an easy to kill monster simply because you can't reach it is really not fun in the slightest. Ghasts should have far more health, at least 10 hearts maybe 20 or more if possible, they should drop more gunpowder, 5-10ish, and they should have far less range, only attacking when they are very close so that you may easily fight back.
Let's see, what else, oh the spider jockey, why are these things so rare again? To scare players who don't read the wiki that one time they see it if at all? You've seen spiders, you've seen skeletons, spider jockeys aren't really that scary but they could be fun enemies, make them more common.
Any other ideas?