I have been playing Minecraft since it started to grow in popularity, but every time I play I get the feeling that there's just something... MISSING. I don't want a new block, I don't want new creatures, I dont want to make the game easier or harder, and I don't want to take out the creativity of the game. Let me explain.
When you first tried out Minecraft, you got that first chunk of wood, made your first pickaxe, (or if you were me, didnt build any tools you got overly excited, crafted a door, and punched your way to bedrock for an hour using said door) and you started working out the game's little quirks that make it so much fun. Then the first night hits. You have to bury yourelf into a little dirt hole, not sure if the monsters will break through and find you, not sure if you need to eat food to stay alive and not really sure how to light up this damn 3x3 cave you have to spend the night in. When I got to this point in game, I fell in love. It's an entirely open world of random awesome just waiting to be harnessed.
The problem that I have with all of this though is that after you learn what Minecraft is all about, it stops being this. It just becomes a game of "oh no, a creeper came out of nowhere and now im dead" or "I fell into lava and now all my items are gone" or my personal favorite, "oh no, i died 30 feet from my spawn and now im going to have to keep running to my items and respawning until the sun comes up." This, to me, is A MAJOR PROBLEM that I feel people have grown to accept. I don't think this is the right way to go about a "survival mode." it's not really survival mode as it is a "sandbox game where you dont have all the materials at your fingertips and sometimes you get killed because of an unavoidable situation and now your day is ruined and you lost your 2 diamond you worked so hard for" mode.
Let's cut to the chase: Problems:
1. The respawn system is terrible, and needs an overhaul
2. You're alone
3. The food and health system makes little sense
4. Monsters are either laughably easy, or too difficult
5. No incentive to build better structures
6. The difficulty system is just not a proper difficulty system
Solutions: 1. The respawn system is SO bad right now. It really makes no sense as is. If you "die" you just get thrown back to your respawn point with full health and have to race back to your things. This makes less sense in a singleplayer game and needs to be rethought. My vision for a survival mode is exactly that. Your goal is to survive. If you think about why survival is important you get down to the heart of the matter. In the current Minecraft setup, you really only are trying to survive so you don't lose your stuff. You should be trying to SURVIVE! I think there needs to be a creative mode, and a survival mode. Creative mode should NOT be another sandbox mode, but rather exactly what minecraft is now. The real survival mode should be ONE life. This sounds harsh, but with a rethinking of the creatures in a later problem I will go over why it's not that farfetched. We have to unhinge ourselves from the current situation and think of what will make minecraft's survival mode truly great. I also wouldn't be opposed to the idea of a sort of item that works like a fairy in zelda games, that would revive you upon death but would be very rare, or very costly to make. Perhaps you could find lives in dungeons and these lives would let you warp to a safe zone upon death (but not restoring hearts). These would also be very difficult to find or make, but they would be That's up for you guys to decide really, but I think the fact of the matter is that the current respawn system shouldnt be kept. 2. You're alone when you start, and it's kinda sad. ha. The point here really, is that in a survival mode NPCs that you can trade with (I've been playing the YogBox lately so I'm used to having people around) and interact with could yield for a much different play experience. they could maybe join your squad like in an RPG, they could help you train different skills so youre better at sword fighting or makes your crops grow faster etc etc. There could be whole towns that you could visit to rest up and trade at. This is a must in my opinion. NPC's just add a level of depth that you wont be able to get playing alone all the time. Multiplayer is not a subsitute unless you want to tell your friend to sit in the inn all day and let people sleep there occassionally. You get the idea. 3. The food system is really a piece of work. In a real survival mode, food should be a necessary part of your survival. I don't want a simple mechanic of losing hearts over time and you need to eat to not die, I want a hunger meter that when full gives you EXTRA strength and when low makes you extremely weak. You shouldn't really be able to die of starvation but being undernourished should be so unpleasant and make you so weak that you are going to WANT to eat so you dont die. Food shouldnt recover hearts. Time should. SLOWLY. Maybe a 2 hearts per day/night cycle. Can be changed depending on difficulty. Food should also be easier to come by. a pig should ALWAYS return a porkchop. That just makes sense. Everything you kill should be edible. Eating a dead zombie, however, maybe will recover hunger but make you lose hearts etc. Maybe craft bandages that can cure hearts or increase your passive heart gain over time. Be creative with it, im only offering a change in gameplay, not specifics. (also I feel like more hearts should be given. Humans can take a lot of beating before we go down :wink.gif: 4. Monsters are really terrible right now. Creepers sometimes pop out of nowhere and sometimes you're screwed no matter what. With a one life no-respawn system it really can work that way. Let me talk about all the other monsters then we'll get to creepers last. all monsters shouldnt walk up to you and just hurt you. I'm going to cover the common ones here. Zombies:
Zombies should latch onto you, slowing you, and slowly drain hearts until you beat them away with a few hits like a zombie from a horror movie. They should actually stagger when hit, not just bounce back a square. Skeletons:
Skeletons are one of the ridiculously difficult creatures. They're strangely accurate with their bows unless youre constantly moving. I don't feel like they should be able to just shoot you to death as soon as youre in sight. sometimes terrain isnt optimal for running in a straight line and if there's more than one of them, forget about it. Skeletons should have a sort of archer mechanic to them where they will back away if you come up close (or pull out a sword and fight you that way) to them but they will constantly try to shoot you from a great distance. Also, arrows should hurt less if youre farther away, they should have smaller hit boxes and move faster, be slightly inaccurate (especially while moving) and not fall so quickly. These are obviously global bow changes, but it works for a real survival mode skeleton. While im at it, Skeleton riding spiders should be left alone (save for the individual spider and skeleton changes) Spiders:
I don't really have too much of a problem with spiders, except maybe the speed they crawl on the walls at. that should be slower. Also, they shouldnt jump. Spiders the size of horses shouldnt jump. They can crawl up walls; they have no need to jump. I also feel like their attack should be more spider-like. They should bite you which injects you with a poison that will hurt you over time for a heart or two. Creepers:
Ah creepers. These changes are probably going to get the most criticism, but if you think of survival as a 1 life scenario then you come to realize that these guys are just too unfair. if they pop out of nowhere and you're not packing significant armor, you might be screwed. There is really only one thing I've found frustrating about creepers. It bothers me that they will only ever explode if theyre in damaging range. if they arent going to do damage theyll keep coming after you until theyre in range. when a creeper starts hissing, it should start a fuse and explode every time. Its not even a fair fight when they are guaranteed to do some number of damage to you if you arent packing a bow and have good distance. Here's my suggested changes: Creepers really shouldnt do enough damage to kill you, but i think they would be much more interesting if they were really the saboteurs of the Minecraft enemies. I would increase the range of their explosions. Maybe triple what it is now. They should also explode when it would be productive to break through walls to get to you. I dont really think a creature that bangs on walls is so great, but using creepers as a way to get the hordes in would add so much more depth. the AI would need a bit of improving to accomodate their new tactics, but I think it would be better than just exploding on people. Think about the Lord of the Rings suicide bomber. That sort of idea. In short, they should be primarily used by the enemy as a way to get trough to you, blow up a larger radius, and deal minimal damage to you. Blowing you back further would be good as well, so being close to the explosion runs the risk of blowing you off of a cliff. the explosion shouldnt be their primary source of damage. 5. The incentive to build a dirt house is really high right now. In a survival mode, especially one with my suggested creeper changes, it would make a lot more sense to have to upgrade from dirt to wood to stone to iron to diamond walls (if you have that kinda cash lying around). Obviously this has been thought of, but in my proposed version of survival, you have to keep the goal of survival in mind and that just being able to die instantly would ruin your whole game for no reason, and that just sitting inside of a dirt hole wouldnt allow you to live forever. 6. The ability to set your difficulty to whatever you want whenever you want is just silly for this version of survival. You should choose your difficulty at the beginning and try to take on the high score, or try surviving for X days etc. Most importantly though, regardless of difficulty chosen, the game should get PROGRESSIVELY harder as time goes on. Every couple of days they should increase in number, the weather should get worse, (causing less sunlight and more monster spawns) and maybe they could get a slight upgrade occasionally. This should ramp very slowly, so it is possible to gather resources and food, which would now be necessary.
Those are my proposed changes, take em or leave em. I just dont feel like survival mode is what it says it is. It's more like annoying sandbox with monsters. Also, this would make co-op be extremely fun. I want it to be your typical surviving from day to day scenario. Nights will be spent defending the hordes, and days spent gathering weapons, repairing defenses, and gathering food. This would provide something for the people who dont feel like playing in a sandbox style mode. This is how I thought minecraft was going to be when I started playing it. I still feel like there is a whole game mode being ignored. Hope to hear some good feedback on this ^^ Keep on creepin' on guys.
-SnakPak
+ freaking 1. and creepers blowing through walls is, in my opinion, the best idea. Maybe if you are 15 blocks away or less, they'll try to blow up your wall. there would have to be a limit. and for the same reason, maybe blocks could have durability. dirt would be 1, so it could take 1 explosion, wood:2, cobble:3, Stone 5, etc.
you have some great ideas, hope you're reading Notch :smile.gif:
Your "problems".
1. The respawn system is fine. Most people will have set their spawn to their bed, or built a safe area around their spawn, or at least lit up the area around it. If you haven't, that's your fault. You were unprepared, not thinking ahead, and in general not being smart.
2. You're not alone. They invented SMP for a reason. It's not called "singleplayer" for nothing. And besides, with the addition of NPC villages soon, you'll be even less alone.
3. The food and health system makes near-perfect sense. Don't see how you'd have a problem with that.
4. Mobs are generally balanced; Skeleton arrows are not that hard to dodge (unless you don't know there's a skeleton), spiders aren't that hard to keep away from what with overhanging walls or just batting it back, creepers are SUPPOSED to be difficult, and zombies are the only somewhat easy mob in the game.
5. No incentive to build better structures? What are you talking about?
6. The difficulty system is not as good as it could be, but it's fine. For people who switch around as needed, that's their problem, and it doesn't affect you.
Now for your "solutions".
1. 1-life worlds? That makes the game too hard. And the current survival being renamed to "creative"? You do know what creative mode is right?
2. NPCs are being added. Don't see how you could've missed that.
3. Hunger's being added. Don't see how you could've missed that either.
4. Don't have a 1-life respawn then. Although the thing on zombies is pretty good, but spiders not jumping makes no sense. And if you don't want to be damaged by creepers, kill them. It's hard, but not that hard. And skeletons are fine as is.
You don't get the sense of this post, minecraft is going far away from
the awesome (and scary) sandbox game...
In 1.8:
Endermen: Teleport to you and have a longer reach than other mobs. Can also move blocks.
Silverfish: small, weak, swarming mob that can possibly burrow through certain materials.
villages.
Hunger: If hunger bar is above 90%, you slowly heal. If it is below 10%, you take damage until you die.
Food: Eating no longer heals you, and takes a certain amount of time to actually eat. Several new types of food.
Combat upgrades: Mobs get this too. Skeletons get the same bow-charge mechanics you do, and Notch has tweeted about giving zombies the ability to block and parry.
This is about half of your suggestion already confirmed in 1.8.
I admittedly havent seen any notes on 1.8 yet. these are just thoughts I've had. I merely suggest a more interesting "survival mode." It feels like its creative mode, but just with monsters sprinkled on top. I am merely looking for a way to build survival from the ground up, instead of throwing a bunch of enemies on top of everything. and the reason i suggest a 1 life mode is because reguardless of where you set your spawn, I dont feel like "respawning" and "surviving" go hand in hand. does that make sense? Im not saying theres anythign WRONG with minecraft, I just think that survival mode needs rethinking as a survival mode. Let's call it more of an arcade survival mode. That kinda puts it into perspective. And bringing it back to that comment about the spawn, i feel like the spawning is too easy to break for it to mean much.
Endermen: Teleport to you and have a longer reach than other mobs. Can also move blocks.
Silverfish: small, weak, swarming mob that can possibly burrow through certain materials.
villages.
Hunger: If hunger bar is above 90%, you slowly heal. If it is below 10%, you take damage until you die.
Food: Eating no longer heals you, and takes a certain amount of time to actually eat. Several new types of food.
Combat upgrades: Mobs get this too. Skeletons get the same bow-charge mechanics you do, and Notch has tweeted about giving zombies the ability to block and parry.
This is about half of your suggestion already confirmed in 1.8.
ah thanks I hadnt heard most of these things. I would also like to point out that I like this hunger mechanic better than mine :tongue.gif:
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When you first tried out Minecraft, you got that first chunk of wood, made your first pickaxe, (or if you were me, didnt build any tools you got overly excited, crafted a door, and punched your way to bedrock for an hour using said door) and you started working out the game's little quirks that make it so much fun. Then the first night hits. You have to bury yourelf into a little dirt hole, not sure if the monsters will break through and find you, not sure if you need to eat food to stay alive and not really sure how to light up this damn 3x3 cave you have to spend the night in. When I got to this point in game, I fell in love. It's an entirely open world of random awesome just waiting to be harnessed.
The problem that I have with all of this though is that after you learn what Minecraft is all about, it stops being this. It just becomes a game of "oh no, a creeper came out of nowhere and now im dead" or "I fell into lava and now all my items are gone" or my personal favorite, "oh no, i died 30 feet from my spawn and now im going to have to keep running to my items and respawning until the sun comes up." This, to me, is A MAJOR PROBLEM that I feel people have grown to accept. I don't think this is the right way to go about a "survival mode." it's not really survival mode as it is a "sandbox game where you dont have all the materials at your fingertips and sometimes you get killed because of an unavoidable situation and now your day is ruined and you lost your 2 diamond you worked so hard for" mode.
Let's cut to the chase:
Problems:
1. The respawn system is terrible, and needs an overhaul
2. You're alone
3. The food and health system makes little sense
4. Monsters are either laughably easy, or too difficult
5. No incentive to build better structures
6. The difficulty system is just not a proper difficulty system
Solutions:
1. The respawn system is SO bad right now. It really makes no sense as is. If you "die" you just get thrown back to your respawn point with full health and have to race back to your things. This makes less sense in a singleplayer game and needs to be rethought. My vision for a survival mode is exactly that. Your goal is to survive. If you think about why survival is important you get down to the heart of the matter. In the current Minecraft setup, you really only are trying to survive so you don't lose your stuff. You should be trying to SURVIVE! I think there needs to be a creative mode, and a survival mode. Creative mode should NOT be another sandbox mode, but rather exactly what minecraft is now. The real survival mode should be ONE life. This sounds harsh, but with a rethinking of the creatures in a later problem I will go over why it's not that farfetched. We have to unhinge ourselves from the current situation and think of what will make minecraft's survival mode truly great. I also wouldn't be opposed to the idea of a sort of item that works like a fairy in zelda games, that would revive you upon death but would be very rare, or very costly to make. Perhaps you could find lives in dungeons and these lives would let you warp to a safe zone upon death (but not restoring hearts). These would also be very difficult to find or make, but they would be That's up for you guys to decide really, but I think the fact of the matter is that the current respawn system shouldnt be kept.
2. You're alone when you start, and it's kinda sad. ha. The point here really, is that in a survival mode NPCs that you can trade with (I've been playing the YogBox lately so I'm used to having people around) and interact with could yield for a much different play experience. they could maybe join your squad like in an RPG, they could help you train different skills so youre better at sword fighting or makes your crops grow faster etc etc. There could be whole towns that you could visit to rest up and trade at. This is a must in my opinion. NPC's just add a level of depth that you wont be able to get playing alone all the time. Multiplayer is not a subsitute unless you want to tell your friend to sit in the inn all day and let people sleep there occassionally. You get the idea.
3. The food system is really a piece of work. In a real survival mode, food should be a necessary part of your survival. I don't want a simple mechanic of losing hearts over time and you need to eat to not die, I want a hunger meter that when full gives you EXTRA strength and when low makes you extremely weak. You shouldn't really be able to die of starvation but being undernourished should be so unpleasant and make you so weak that you are going to WANT to eat so you dont die. Food shouldnt recover hearts. Time should. SLOWLY. Maybe a 2 hearts per day/night cycle. Can be changed depending on difficulty. Food should also be easier to come by. a pig should ALWAYS return a porkchop. That just makes sense. Everything you kill should be edible. Eating a dead zombie, however, maybe will recover hunger but make you lose hearts etc. Maybe craft bandages that can cure hearts or increase your passive heart gain over time. Be creative with it, im only offering a change in gameplay, not specifics. (also I feel like more hearts should be given. Humans can take a lot of beating before we go down :wink.gif:
4. Monsters are really terrible right now. Creepers sometimes pop out of nowhere and sometimes you're screwed no matter what. With a one life no-respawn system it really can work that way. Let me talk about all the other monsters then we'll get to creepers last. all monsters shouldnt walk up to you and just hurt you. I'm going to cover the common ones here.
Zombies:
Zombies should latch onto you, slowing you, and slowly drain hearts until you beat them away with a few hits like a zombie from a horror movie. They should actually stagger when hit, not just bounce back a square.
Skeletons:
Skeletons are one of the ridiculously difficult creatures. They're strangely accurate with their bows unless youre constantly moving. I don't feel like they should be able to just shoot you to death as soon as youre in sight. sometimes terrain isnt optimal for running in a straight line and if there's more than one of them, forget about it. Skeletons should have a sort of archer mechanic to them where they will back away if you come up close (or pull out a sword and fight you that way) to them but they will constantly try to shoot you from a great distance. Also, arrows should hurt less if youre farther away, they should have smaller hit boxes and move faster, be slightly inaccurate (especially while moving) and not fall so quickly. These are obviously global bow changes, but it works for a real survival mode skeleton. While im at it, Skeleton riding spiders should be left alone (save for the individual spider and skeleton changes)
Spiders:
I don't really have too much of a problem with spiders, except maybe the speed they crawl on the walls at. that should be slower. Also, they shouldnt jump. Spiders the size of horses shouldnt jump. They can crawl up walls; they have no need to jump. I also feel like their attack should be more spider-like. They should bite you which injects you with a poison that will hurt you over time for a heart or two.
Creepers:
Ah creepers. These changes are probably going to get the most criticism, but if you think of survival as a 1 life scenario then you come to realize that these guys are just too unfair. if they pop out of nowhere and you're not packing significant armor, you might be screwed. There is really only one thing I've found frustrating about creepers. It bothers me that they will only ever explode if theyre in damaging range. if they arent going to do damage theyll keep coming after you until theyre in range. when a creeper starts hissing, it should start a fuse and explode every time. Its not even a fair fight when they are guaranteed to do some number of damage to you if you arent packing a bow and have good distance. Here's my suggested changes: Creepers really shouldnt do enough damage to kill you, but i think they would be much more interesting if they were really the saboteurs of the Minecraft enemies. I would increase the range of their explosions. Maybe triple what it is now. They should also explode when it would be productive to break through walls to get to you. I dont really think a creature that bangs on walls is so great, but using creepers as a way to get the hordes in would add so much more depth. the AI would need a bit of improving to accomodate their new tactics, but I think it would be better than just exploding on people. Think about the Lord of the Rings suicide bomber. That sort of idea. In short, they should be primarily used by the enemy as a way to get trough to you, blow up a larger radius, and deal minimal damage to you. Blowing you back further would be good as well, so being close to the explosion runs the risk of blowing you off of a cliff. the explosion shouldnt be their primary source of damage.
5. The incentive to build a dirt house is really high right now. In a survival mode, especially one with my suggested creeper changes, it would make a lot more sense to have to upgrade from dirt to wood to stone to iron to diamond walls (if you have that kinda cash lying around). Obviously this has been thought of, but in my proposed version of survival, you have to keep the goal of survival in mind and that just being able to die instantly would ruin your whole game for no reason, and that just sitting inside of a dirt hole wouldnt allow you to live forever.
6. The ability to set your difficulty to whatever you want whenever you want is just silly for this version of survival. You should choose your difficulty at the beginning and try to take on the high score, or try surviving for X days etc. Most importantly though, regardless of difficulty chosen, the game should get PROGRESSIVELY harder as time goes on. Every couple of days they should increase in number, the weather should get worse, (causing less sunlight and more monster spawns) and maybe they could get a slight upgrade occasionally. This should ramp very slowly, so it is possible to gather resources and food, which would now be necessary.
Those are my proposed changes, take em or leave em. I just dont feel like survival mode is what it says it is. It's more like annoying sandbox with monsters. Also, this would make co-op be extremely fun. I want it to be your typical surviving from day to day scenario. Nights will be spent defending the hordes, and days spent gathering weapons, repairing defenses, and gathering food. This would provide something for the people who dont feel like playing in a sandbox style mode. This is how I thought minecraft was going to be when I started playing it. I still feel like there is a whole game mode being ignored. Hope to hear some good feedback on this ^^ Keep on creepin' on guys.
-SnakPak
you have some great ideas, hope you're reading Notch :smile.gif:
1. The respawn system is fine. Most people will have set their spawn to their bed, or built a safe area around their spawn, or at least lit up the area around it. If you haven't, that's your fault. You were unprepared, not thinking ahead, and in general not being smart.
2. You're not alone. They invented SMP for a reason. It's not called "singleplayer" for nothing. And besides, with the addition of NPC villages soon, you'll be even less alone.
3. The food and health system makes near-perfect sense. Don't see how you'd have a problem with that.
4. Mobs are generally balanced; Skeleton arrows are not that hard to dodge (unless you don't know there's a skeleton), spiders aren't that hard to keep away from what with overhanging walls or just batting it back, creepers are SUPPOSED to be difficult, and zombies are the only somewhat easy mob in the game.
5. No incentive to build better structures? What are you talking about?
6. The difficulty system is not as good as it could be, but it's fine. For people who switch around as needed, that's their problem, and it doesn't affect you.
Now for your "solutions".
1. 1-life worlds? That makes the game too hard. And the current survival being renamed to "creative"? You do know what creative mode is right?
2. NPCs are being added. Don't see how you could've missed that.
3. Hunger's being added. Don't see how you could've missed that either.
4. Don't have a 1-life respawn then. Although the thing on zombies is pretty good, but spiders not jumping makes no sense. And if you don't want to be damaged by creepers, kill them. It's hard, but not that hard. And skeletons are fine as is.
5. Makes no sense.
6. Heck no. Just make "hard" harder.
There's a wall of text for your wall of text.
Great server, great people. Join now!
You don't get the sense of this post, minecraft is going far away from
the awesome (and scary) sandbox game...
In 1.8:
Endermen: Teleport to you and have a longer reach than other mobs. Can also move blocks.
Silverfish: small, weak, swarming mob that can possibly burrow through certain materials.
villages.
Hunger: If hunger bar is above 90%, you slowly heal. If it is below 10%, you take damage until you die.
Food: Eating no longer heals you, and takes a certain amount of time to actually eat. Several new types of food.
Combat upgrades: Mobs get this too. Skeletons get the same bow-charge mechanics you do, and Notch has tweeted about giving zombies the ability to block and parry.
This is about half of your suggestion already confirmed in 1.8.
ah thanks I hadnt heard most of these things. I would also like to point out that I like this hunger mechanic better than mine :tongue.gif: