So I've been seeing this a lot around the suggestion forums about "Complete the End!!" and I decided we all needed one, coherent thread about it. A quick search told me that there was not a thread, so excuse me if there is. Anywho, here my introduction to Expanding the End!
Preface
Ah, the End. The home of the Endermen, the Enderdragon, and player upon player ragequitting after being thrown off the edge of an obsidian player and then being horribly mauled by Endermen. But that's how it is with all good boss rooms, isn't it? That brings me to my first point. The End is not a dimension. It is not a completely new playable area. It is not meant to be a substitute for the Aether or the Nether or anything like that. It is a boss room. However, the nature of minecraft dictates we should get some reward for killing mobs (and the Enderdragon is one heck of a mob!). Sure, you get a block of obsidian and a TON of experience. That's nice. But it doesn't really matter, seeing as enchanting is still very random and potions aren't THAT useful. We need something material. Something we can take back to our home base and display proudly. We also need the End to be less impossible (I've never personally beat an Enderdragon in survival, and I have not ever met anyone who has). These two points form a good summary of what I would like to happen.
• The End needs to be challenging, but not stupidly hard.
• The End needs to have more material rewards for players.
Improving the Battle
First and foremost, lets get something out of the way. The current tactic used to fight the Enderdragon, as it stands right now, is just cumbersome. Fun does not come to mind when entering the End with a pumpkin, building pillars/bridges to huge obsidian towers, and blowing up crystals. Oh, and after all that, you get to spend the next hour or so trying to hit the Dragon.
No.
No. No. No. No. No. No.
I propose the new battle just be ever so slightly modified to not only make it possible, but also give the End a bit more flavor than what it has now. My suggestions wouldn't be too hard to implement, I don't think.
Obsidian bridges between each pillar (the two closest ones), would be great. The pillars would generate their own bridges one at a time, and they would each check to see if a bridge had already been made between them and another pillar. If they had, then they would simply just make a bridge going to a different pillar. To make this even better, these bridges could be wavy or even slightly broken. The point is to allow a player a mode of transportation that doesn't involve bringing 12938109283 ladders.
Crystals, when blown up, should always do damage to the Enderdragon. Nothing major- just 2 or 3 hearts or so. This will allow the player to feel like they are making progress on the mob, and not just running around wasting arrows.
The Enderdragon should have more tactics than just charging the player. In order to make up for the player being able to hit it more, it should also have a better AI that allows it to use different types of attacks. The implementation of shooting multiple fireballs is the first thing that comes to mind. I'm sure there are more.
Endermen should be passive within the End unless you attack them. I figure this would be a nice gesture to the player, because fighting a fire-breathing dragon that can destroy anything in its path (minus what was generated) is hard enough, and fighting teleporting zombies is even worse.
The Rewards!
So you have slain the mighty Enderdragon! That is an achievement within itself. Feel proud. But don't you want something a little more than a useless egg, a bunch of experience, and some weird stone? That's what I thought. So I'll cut to the chase about what I think needs to be changed about the rewarding system in the End.
Yes. The Egg should hatch, and you should get your own pet Enderdragon. I've read a little on what it takes to mount of one those things, and doing so would cause too much lag for an SMP server apparently. If it can be worked out so that it doesn't cause that much lag, then that would be great. But for now, I propose that the hatched Enderdragon will have a GUI that will allow the player to set the parameters of where it goes and how to call it back. The hatched enderdragon will not be capable of breaking blocks, but it will attack any hostile mobs in the area (except Endermen) as well as being able to be commanded to sit or walk, instead of fly.
However, I also think that hatching the Egg should be a task in itself. I would propose something like putting it over a bunch of flaming netherrack or submersing it in lava, but that's too easy. I think the Egg should hatch by incubating it using an Endstone Furnace (A furnace crafted out of Endstone) that is using lava buckets as fuel.
The proposed Endstone Furnace could also be used for other things, such as turning coal (preferably coal blocks, but that is another suggestion) into diamonds.
I also think Endstone should have some kind of special property. I'm not sure what, but maybe something like being unable to be picked up by Enderman? Unable to destroy via explosions? I really don't know.
Well, that's it! Feedback is appreciated. I would make pictures, but I'm lazy. Thanks!
The proposed Endstone Furnace could also be used for other things, such as turning coal (preferably coal blocks, but that is another suggestion) into diamonds.
So after we beat the dragon we can essentially make diamonds from wood...
This is combination of a complaint about the easy end being to hard, and the overdone, unbalanced, and unfair in SMP pet enderdragon. You also put in a little more crap on the side, like how you can't fight endermen.
The end is a final boss room, we don't want to force it on anyone by making the reward too good, or weaken it to the point that people carelessly jump into the portal with an iron sword and bow, later coming back victoriously without even trying.
So after we beat the dragon we can essentially make diamonds from wood...
The way I see it, not really. By the time you fight the Enderdragon, you're probably very well off with your survival world at this point. The furnace allows you to simply continue your play by giving you the ability to sacrifice 3 iron, lava, and 9 coal for a diamond. Albeit if I could think of better purposes for Endstone, I would give them. But that is what critique is for.
This is combination of a complaint about the easy end being to hard, and the overdone, unbalanced, and unfair in SMP pet enderdragon. You also put in a little more crap on the side, like how you can't fight endermen.
The end is a final boss room, we don't want to force it on anyone by making the reward too good, or weaken it to the point that people carelessly jump into the portal with an iron sword and bow, later coming back victoriously without even trying.
I agree we shouldn't make it too hard or too necessary- but as it stands right now, the fight is way too hard and also not rewarding enough.
the endstone funace would be the same as a regular furnace, only faster, meaning double the cooking, 1 coal would cook 16 objects instead of 8... you can also make a endstone crafting table by puting 9 of those in a crafting table, this one has 1 more row and 1 more column for crafting on, the background for these would be endstone/enderman eyes (not eyes of ender, i mean purple eyes)
The way I see it, not really. By the time you fight the Enderdragon, you're probably very well off with your survival world at this point. The furnace allows you to simply continue your play by giving you the ability to sacrifice 3 iron, lava, and 9 coal for a diamond. Albeit if I could think of better purposes for Endstone, I would give them. But that is what critique is for.
I agree we shouldn't make it too hard or too necessary- but as it stands right now, the fight is way too hard and also not rewarding enough.
The reward problem is actually an enchantment problem, with enchanting being too random. Also, you should be developed enough in the game to be completely ready for the fight by the time it happens.
I see where you're coming from, and it's not the fight that's too hard for you, but combat in general. Normal combat in the desert at night is harder than the enderdragon. You must always be alert, able to use the terrain, and able to fight a variety of monsters. Without creepers, skeletons, or more than one hostile mob in the end, you don't need much skill to fight the enderdragon.
I think the reward for fighting the enderdragon should be fighting it again; placing the egg back on the pedastal respawns an enderdragon that drops less XP, when the fight ends, the egg reappears.
So after we beat the dragon we can essentially make diamonds from wood...
The end is a final boss room, we don't want to force it on anyone by making the reward too good, or weaken it to the point that people carelessly jump into the portal with an iron sword and bow, later coming back victoriously without even trying.
The way I see it, not really. By the time you fight the Enderdragon, you're probably very well off with your survival world at this point. The furnace allows you to simply continue your play by giving you the ability to sacrifice 3 iron, lava, and 9 coal for a diamond. Albeit if I could think of better purposes for Endstone, I would give them. But that is what critique is for.
I agree we shouldn't make it too hard or too necessary- but as it stands right now, the fight is way too hard and also not rewarding enough.
The reward problem is actually an enchantment problem, with enchanting being too random. Also, you should be developed enough in the game to be completely ready for the fight by the time it happens.
I see where you're coming from, and it's not the fight that's too hard for you, but combat in general. Normal combat in the desert at night is harder than the enderdragon. You must always be alert, able to use the terrain, and able to fight a variety of monsters. Without creepers, skeletons, or more than one hostile mob in the end, you don't need much skill to fight the enderdragon.
I think the reward for fighting the enderdragon should be fighting it again; placing the egg back on the pedastal respawns an enderdragon that drops less XP, when the fight ends, the egg reappears.