We are all familiar with that point in the game, where you are completely safe, and haven't died in months because of that full set of iron armour which you crafted on your second day. Maybe its a measure of skill, and the entire Minecraft community just happens to have excessive amounts of it, however I’m inclined to believe that the game's difficulty fails to scale with the player's achievements.
Maybe some of you have never played pokemon, but i think it's a great analogy to make here that hopefully most of you will get: y'know those level 3 caterpies at the very beginning? when you just started the game your level 5 squirtle was barely enough to take them out remember? And of course you worked your way through the game and leveled up your squirtle and eventually you become incapable of attacking a caterpie without 1 hit KOing it. Now imagine that the elite four had nothing but level 3 caterpies. It would be way too easy, it wouldn't even be a game anymore because all you would have to do is spam the A button and hey you win! So this is my point: A creeper is the same whether you have a diamond sword or your fist.
It simply wouldn't be fair to (or possible i believe) to make a mobs strength variable directly depending on the equipment of the player (especially in multiplayer), nor would it make any sense.
So wait.. why are there mobs to begin with? Now it might just be me, but im fairly certain they're just guarding the diamonds . So what would happen if you stole some of their diamonds? They'd probably be sssssssed. (<-creeper joke not to be confused with vulgarity).
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ALRIGHT. there's the pretext, now the actual suggestion. Mobs currently have a chance of spawning with armour/weapons. Mobs should also have a chance to spawn with potion effects. And importantly- this chance should be affected by the resource/concentration of an area. The net effect being- the more you mine (and thus the further you advance in the game), the stronger the mobs get. This of course could be “reset” by moving to a new area (more resources = less angry mobs). The duration of these buffs would be PERMANENT until death or despawn (or at least as permanent as currently allowed, so ~ 1,000,000 seconds)
Now how should these mechanics actually work?
#1: Every chunk is given a resource value which is calculated like this-
100 points for every diamond
40 points for every gold
20 points for every redstone
10 points for every iron
1 point for every coal
Which gives an average resource value for any random chunk of about 2048 (2^11) This number would only have to update when ore blocks are removed or placed. The player would never actually see this number, however it could be included in the f3 view simply because that's already kinda cheaty.
#2: The chance of a mob spawning with a potion effect/buff or armour/items in a given chunk is inversely proportional to the resource value for that chunk.
Chance of Spawn with Buff with given resource value: 2,048: 0% (no resources harvested) 1,792: 5% (mining all coal and nothing else) 1,536: 10% (removing half of all diamonds and iron from a chunk and nothing else) 1,024: 20% (removing half of all ore from a chunk) <- most likely 896: 40% 384: 80% (keep in mind this is A LOT of mining) 0: 100% (strip mine)
Note: the theoretical maximum amount of ore in a chunk (all veins being generated, and all of the maximum size) would yield a resource value of 4380. This is extremely unlikely.. however, any value above 2048 would be treated as if it were just 2048. The flip side of this is that it is possible, for absolutely no ore to generate in a chunk (if all veins were placed in dirt or gravel or cave or water or lava) however this is also extremely unlikely. The natural variance without setting up a super computer and generating 100 billion chunks, would rarely be more than a few hundred points.
In actual play, most chunks even around a well explored area, would likely never exceed 10-20% buffed mob spawning. (i just drew a curve in photoshop that seemed close, so this graph isn't super accurate, look at the numbers in the above list)
#3: Potion effects which may be randomly selected are:
Strength 25%
Resistance 25%
Speed 20%
Jump Boost 14%
Fire Resistance 14%
Invisibility 2% (not actually sure whether this should be included, because invisible creepers would be more an annoyance than a challenge, and a BIG annoyance at that)
Most of the time (95%) buffs will be level I, rarely however (5%) the buff effect level II is given instead of level I (possibly level III at 1%)
OK so I think I’ve addressed everything. It might seem complex but really it is a very simple concept you’d hardly have to think about in-game, except possibly where you want to branch mine, and whether or not you want a few very dangerous chunks where almost all the resources have been mined, or a lot of slightly more dangerous chunks. So that’s it! If you don’t like it please explain why, and if there are any changes that you would make that would make you like it. Thanks.
Sorry dont know why the text has a yellow background, especially since it isn't consistent.. oh well it isnt that bad, but if anyone knows how to fix it let me know? actually it might be a white background that just looks yellow because of the blue surrounding it.. weird.
Considering that chunks are only 16x16 blocks, you're talking about an extremely random application of this "scaled" difficulty. A player could easily spawn on day 1 next to a very low-resource block. Branch-mining players are going to quickly mine all of the resources they'll ever mine out of a chunk, as their mines will expand horizontally rather than vertically.
The basic idea of scaling monsters doesn't fit well with minecraft anyway. Players should feel rewarded for getting to new weapon tiers and enchanting levels, not have their upgrades rendered moot by scaling enemies. Meanwhile, as soon as the player loses all of his diamonds he's now stuck with more powerful monsters without the tools to fight them. What Minecraft needs is greater challenges to be sought out, such as in other dimensions.
What would really be cool is if the world had a couple hundred blocks of depth to it, and the deeper you dug the more powerful the monsters would be.
Yes it is random, and it is possible for a chunk to spawn with zero diamonds, however this is very unlikely. I can change the relationship from linear to exponential, so that the first few hundred points don't really do much, but only with excessive mining does the buffed spawn chance increase substantially. Again i'll say though, that you really don't remove as great a percentage of the ore as you might think. Also: if you die and lose your last diamonds, then you really haven't mined out that much. there would likely be only about 5% buffed mob spawns at that point. Also- these buffs are not super threatening, Resistance 1 would just result in maybe one or two extra hits from a sword. Even with all mobs spawning with buffs the game really wouldn't be that much more difficult. They would not render diamonds a useless upgrade at all.
Anyway- thanks to your comment i did look at minimum and maximum amounts of ore per chunk a little more closely, and think i will redo some of the numbers a little bit to prevent too many mobs from being buffed too quickly.
Well, it makes sense. Although we forget about what happens when you lose everything to lava. I think a better way to scale the difficulty of a mob is depending on the experience you have.
I think some form of mob scaling would be a good idea. I'd prefer something tied a little more concretely towards the player's overall game progress - one idea I'd been kicking around is that the first time the player crafts an Anvil, stronger/smarter mobs will start spawning, and so on through milestones such as Enchanting Tables, Brewing Stands, and Beacons.
Plus, per-chunk difficulty scaling in this manner could be really easily exploited with Silk Touch - just pile up a few gold ore in your "home" chunks and you never have to worry about the advanced mobs.
@mordikins: except that "exploiting" it in this way would be a lot of work, would make the regions where gold was harvested more dangerous, and the end result is that your home chunks would be just as dangerous as they were in 1.5 (now). The point is, that i think most players would welcome the extra challenge. Being able to work around it is just part of the nature of a sandbox game. Those people that want the game to be easier can instead just set their game to "easy" that's what the setting is there for
Edit: also it could very easily only count generated ore blocks if it was decided it was that much of an issue*
@unitedsquadron: except that experience goes up and down A LOT.
I do turn it to hard, but the problem is that simply making the numbers bigger is kind of an awful way to increase difficulty. And although i think hardcore is a good idea, and im sure many people like it, having the world get deleted doesn't appeal to me, it just makes you scared to take any risk. its always better to add things different things which are less easy to predict. but sorry i did forget to make a none of the above option for the third question.
Edit: updated the poll if you ever come back you can delete your vote and revote if you like.
We are all familiar with that point in the game, where you are completely safe, and haven't died in months because of that full set of iron armour which you crafted on your second day. Maybe its a measure of skill, and the entire Minecraft community just happens to have excessive amounts of it, however I’m inclined to believe that the game's difficulty fails to scale with the player's achievements.
Maybe some of you have never played pokemon, but i think it's a great analogy to make here that hopefully most of you will get: y'know those level 3 caterpies at the very beginning? when you just started the game your level 5 squirtle was barely enough to take them out remember? And of course you worked your way through the game and leveled up your squirtle and eventually you become incapable of attacking a caterpie without 1 hit KOing it. Now imagine that the elite four had nothing but level 3 caterpies. It would be way too easy, it wouldn't even be a game anymore because all you would have to do is spam the A button and hey you win! So this is my point: A creeper is the same whether you have a diamond sword or your fist.
It simply wouldn't be fair to (or possible i believe) to make a mobs strength variable directly depending on the equipment of the player (especially in multiplayer), nor would it make any sense.
So wait.. why are there mobs to begin with? Now it might just be me, but im fairly certain they're just guarding the diamonds . So what would happen if you stole some of their diamonds? They'd probably be sssssssed. (<-creeper joke not to be confused with vulgarity).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALRIGHT. there's the pretext, now the actual suggestion. Mobs currently have a chance of spawning with armour/weapons. Mobs should also have a chance to spawn with potion effects. And importantly- this chance should be affected by the resource/concentration of an area. The net effect being- the more you mine (and thus the further you advance in the game), the stronger the mobs get. This of course could be “reset” by moving to a new area (more resources = less angry mobs). The duration of these buffs would be PERMANENT until death or despawn (or at least as permanent as currently allowed, so ~ 1,000,000 seconds)
Now how should these mechanics actually work?
#1: Every chunk is given a resource value which is calculated like this-
40 points for every gold
20 points for every redstone
10 points for every iron
1 point for every coal
This number would only have to update when ore blocks are removed or placed. The player would never actually see this number, however it could be included in the f3 view simply because that's already kinda cheaty.
#2: The chance of a mob spawning with a potion effect/buff or armour/items in a given chunk is inversely proportional to the resource value for that chunk.
Chance of Spawn with Buff with given resource value:
2,048: 0% (no resources harvested)
1,792: 5% (mining all coal and nothing else)
1,536: 10% (removing half of all diamonds and iron from a chunk and nothing else)
1,024: 20% (removing half of all ore from a chunk) <- most likely
896: 40%
384: 80% (keep in mind this is A LOT of mining)
0: 100% (strip mine)
Note: the theoretical maximum amount of ore in a chunk (all veins being generated, and all of the maximum size) would yield a resource value of 4380. This is extremely unlikely.. however, any value above 2048 would be treated as if it were just 2048. The flip side of this is that it is possible, for absolutely no ore to generate in a chunk (if all veins were placed in dirt or gravel or cave or water or lava) however this is also extremely unlikely. The natural variance without setting up a super computer and generating 100 billion chunks, would rarely be more than a few hundred points.
In actual play, most chunks even around a well explored area, would likely never exceed 10-20% buffed mob spawning. (i just drew a curve in photoshop that seemed close, so this graph isn't super accurate, look at the numbers in the above list)
#3: Potion effects which may be randomly selected are:
Resistance 25%
Speed 20%
Jump Boost 14%
Fire Resistance 14%
Invisibility 2% (not actually sure whether this should be included, because invisible creepers would be more an annoyance than a challenge, and a BIG annoyance at that)
Most of the time (95%) buffs will be level I, rarely however (5%) the buff effect level II is given instead of level I (possibly level III at 1%)
OK so I think I’ve addressed everything. It might seem complex but really it is a very simple concept you’d hardly have to think about in-game, except possibly where you want to branch mine, and whether or not you want a few very dangerous chunks where almost all the resources have been mined, or a lot of slightly more dangerous chunks. So that’s it! If you don’t like it please explain why, and if there are any changes that you would make that would make you like it. Thanks.
The basic idea of scaling monsters doesn't fit well with minecraft anyway. Players should feel rewarded for getting to new weapon tiers and enchanting levels, not have their upgrades rendered moot by scaling enemies. Meanwhile, as soon as the player loses all of his diamonds he's now stuck with more powerful monsters without the tools to fight them. What Minecraft needs is greater challenges to be sought out, such as in other dimensions.
What would really be cool is if the world had a couple hundred blocks of depth to it, and the deeper you dug the more powerful the monsters would be.
Anyway- thanks to your comment i did look at minimum and maximum amounts of ore per chunk a little more closely, and think i will redo some of the numbers a little bit to prevent too many mobs from being buffed too quickly.
Plus, per-chunk difficulty scaling in this manner could be really easily exploited with Silk Touch - just pile up a few gold ore in your "home" chunks and you never have to worry about the advanced mobs.
Edit: also it could very easily only count generated ore blocks if it was decided it was that much of an issue*
@unitedsquadron: except that experience goes up and down A LOT.
It would actually make people think before making those. I think that's a good purpose right there, having consequences for everything!
Edit: updated the poll if you ever come back you can delete your vote and revote if you like.