Minecraft Forums

Quote from ChosenMental»

How about we make AFK fishing a world option instead where it is automatically off. We could, therefore, please both sides. I don't want the same thing happening with 1.9, it is already a huge mistake by Mojang to implement it.

I know you think you're being inclusive by adding a gamerule or world option or that adding an option would better fit a "sandbox game", but this kind of compromise is not a real solution, it's avoiding the problem.

If we can logically deduce that AFK Fishing Farms are actually balanced, immersive and fit the game's rules and lore, then there is no reason why we should make a gamerule to remove them. If on the other hand AFK Fish Farms are unbalanced and don't fit in Minecraft at all, there is no reason why this feature should remain in the game. Even if it didn't fall under the term "exploit", which it does, it definitely falls under the same category as being able to quick-shoot multiple crossbows.

(Also, don't forget the fact that a gamerule to unite the community would ironically divide the community into pro-AFK Fishing and anti-AFK Fishing servers. The best way to unite the community around the game is to make them play the same game...)

Now, if AFK Fishing Farms were removed in such a way that map makers might use it, that would be a good way to use a gamerule. That being said, given the changes that have been suggested for fixing this exploit issue, I don't see a need for this gamerule. Gamerules should not be added just for minor game design politics, because these politics change over time.

- An enableFishingXP gamerule seems bizarre and out of place. Why isn't there an enableWalkingXP or an enableEatingFoodXP? I'm not a fan of moving the standard such that "Oh well you added a gamerule to enable XP rewards for this random feature, why not this one?"

- The ability to enable/disable certain enchantments on certain tools... well that actually sounds pretty useful! However, I don't think that falls into the realm of gamerules. Perhaps this could be a part of data packs?

- Customizing the number of blocks of water a fishing rod needs to find before it gives fish seems like a weird one. I guess it might fit as a gamerule categorically, but I also think the only use people would get out of it is specifically to build AFK Fish Farms.

- As for whatever Ptolemy suggested with the controls, those almost definitely do not fall into the realm of gamerules.

Quote from quantumxg»

This is not an exploit. A developer stated that this was intended.

Citation first, then I'll be happy to take back any statement I made about this being an unintended feature though. I will say, however, that this only means Mojang needs to hire a better game design team if this is how loosely they treat balance.

Quote from Leed»

First of all, You can't have infinity and mending on the same bow.

I didn't say that; you're misquoting me. In fact, I clearly said "both Infinity and Mending bows." If I thought that Infinity and Mending could both be on a bow, then I would've just said "Infinity and Mending bows" or "Bows with Infinity and Mending."

It is a major turn off for a lot of players and what does having a bow get you? Nowhere. It doesn't you build you a base.

What kind of argument is this? "Bows aren't gud because they dont build u a base" When exactly did the standard for good features include "builds you a base?"

Who gives a crap if they're a "major turn-off for a lot of players?" How about the players who they aren't a major turn-off for? Are we just going to ignore the fact that we're giving out these powerful weapons to players?

Also, most popular MC Youtuber's I watch rarely use bows and light up areas to avoid mobs from spawning.

Ironic you would use this as a counterexample since you later complain about someone using a Reddit post as evidence while you just vaguely mention "Youtubers do this" without defining "Youtubers."

You're over exaggerating "lasting forever" on a fishing rod. Anything with mending does the exact same thing, and for a fishing rod that gets me mostly useless items It isn't game breaking to have one.

Not necessarily. Mending Pickaxes, Axes and Shovels still lose a lot of their durability over long mining sessions since most of the blocks they can mine do not drop XP. The thing about the Mending Fishing Rod is that what you do with them automatically heals them, so a Mending Fishing rod can essentially never lose all of its durability unless you use it on mobs or miss an insane amount of fish in a row.

The only other tool with this problem is the Sword, and that's still a problem.

Keep in mind this is Minecraft. Lots of things do not make sense compared to the real world. Is fortune III just 'free loot'?

Zero people here think that Minecraft was designed to be Real-World Simulator 2009. We're calling this "free loot" because it makes use of a system in order to turn raw game time into loot with no item costs at all.

Minecraft was designed to be beat in one to two weeks so everything does boil down to some free stuff from simple farms.

[citation needed]

Once I get a XP grinder from a Zombie spawner I would use a villager trading hall or enchantment table to get books. AFK fishing takes a ton of time for a random chance at getting a random book with mismatched enchantments that don't all work on whatever you are putting it on. It is just a early game thing.

An enchantment table requires obsidian and diamonds, right when the player starts going to the nether which I consider to be "mid-game." (Which makes some sense, allotting early-game to the Overworld, mid-game to the Nether and late-game to the End and beyond) Villager trading halls depend on large amounts of emeralds, which usually require you to plant massive amounts of crops of some kind. This isn't even mentioning the construction needed to build either of these.

If iron farms are exploits then lets remove them. Then villager breeders. Then slime farms. Maybe mob spawners because it is just 'free loot'. Also gold farms.

To Iron Farms, Gold Farms, and Slime farms, I agree. If we're going to remove farms, let's do this correctly. Villager breeders, I could care less about since these do not provide "loot" so much as they provide the opportunity to give loot.

See, it wouldn't be as bad if any of these farms actually cost items and a little bit of player interaction to work, but a farm that simply rewards the player for time itself is not balanced in any way.

Okay, your next paragraph seems almost completely unrelated to the part you actually quoted. (Which I should mention was the only part of my post that you actually quoted)

This is what I said:

Second, yes, Mending is game-breaking. Even as a late-game-only enchant, the ability to keep a tool you own for basically forever is not how the game is supposed to work. If armor and tools last eternally, then diamonds lose their use entirely.

This is what you said:

That is completely wrong. The whole point of the game is to beat the final boss (wither, dragon) and build a nice base.

This is uncited but I agree with this contention and it makes sense ("The End is the end of the game because it's called the end duh") so I'll move on.

Exploring and fighting is what the game was based and you encounter tons of fictional things. Enchanting? EXP? Zombies? Creepers? all completely fictional yet add something to the game.

At no point in my post did I say anything about fictional aspects of the game. In addition to that, breaking the realism of a game because of a fantasy setting is far different than an exploit that breaks the rules laid out by the game world.

Mending tools allows you to progress faster and build up your base and gathering resources easier but not game breaking.

I don't think you get how game design works. You just specified that beating the ender dragon and building an epic base are the two "goals" of the game. The whole point of game design is to design challenges the player must accomplish in order to attain those goals. If something exists in the game that helps you overlook certain challenges such as not having enough materials to build tools, that is game-breaking.

For the record, I don't suggest we remove Mending, but I think it should be nerfed. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be that the Mending enchantment changes how tools are repaired. One idea Wolftopia had in the Community Revamp Discord is that Mending should change the way a tool is repaired in the anvil, costing little-to-no XP per repair, but still requiring the material used to repair it.

That would mean that no tool would last forever for free, you'd still need to keep a steady flow of Diamonds coming from your mines in order for your Efficiency V Fortune III Mega Pickaxe to be invulnerable.

As I said earlier, this game was designed to be beaten in one to two weeks of playing so you do encounter stuff like mending.

As I said earlier, [citation needed].

I hate it when the other side makes these comments about my side, but I'm going to be a little hypocritical here: Why is it that everyone on this issue seems to be completely pro-AFK Fishing or completely against? I have not seen a single person on this issue say "Okay, I admit that it's unbalanced, but why just not play with them?" or "I agree that the Vanilla game is a game, and games have balance, but maybe they are balanced?"

Quote from Leed»

Again, most of those enchantments are junk. Mending is rare and I don't see a downside to getting it from a night or two of AFKing. Seriously, mending isn't game breaking and it would suck to remove this feature.

First, how about Mending on Fishing rods, which is actually incredibly common from an AFK Fish Farm? A Mending Fishing rod lasts forever. In addition, some of these nearly-indestructible rods come with all of the other good fishing rods enchants as well. Why exactly should the most powerful version of a tool be given to a player simply for using the brick-on-mouse method?

Second, yes, Mending is game-breaking. Even as a late-game-only enchant, the ability to keep a tool you own for basically forever is not how the game is supposed to work. If armor and tools last eternally, then diamonds lose their use entirely.

Also, Bows are kind of useless and you often get terribly enchanted ones anyways. Even then, most early game players do not need a bow because you wouldn't have the arrows to supply it.

Also, keep in mind it costs a lot of EXP to combine enchantments. It could take a whole night of AFKing to combine 1 or 2 books.

With iron farms I get free Iron and the designs now a days are so simple you can call them exploits.

I do think they're exploits.

Quote from 4Point»

Ok, everyone. Stop thinking our world's logic/physics and the minecraft world's logic/physics are the same. they're quite obviously different.
Minecraft's world has very little proper mass, it has infinite fish that occur out of nowhere. entities literally fabricate out of thin air, and the amount of time it takes for an animal to grow into an adult is less than two days.
This is not our world. do not compare them.

Thank you for completely ignoring the nuance behind anything we've said in this discussion about immersion/lore, but everyone who's so much as seen a screenshot of Minecraft can already tell that your statement is true.

Quote from SuperGamingKid»

yes. As long as the community accepts it's existence then I can say it's part of the game. Don't you think dictating others on how to play their game a bit fascist?

Exactly at what point did Mojang become constitutionally mandated to adhere to your exact wishes? Why are you drawing this comparison between us and some sadistic government lobbyists trying to take away your AFK Fish Farms?

Again, I don't care what you do with mods, plugins, data packs, etc. All I want is the vanilla game to not feed people resources just because they can turn the fishing system from a once-in-a-while "Oh hey I got treasure while I was looking for food!" into "Oh hey I got treasure while my brick was on my mouse!"

No. If it was intentional, people would still have an issue and want it removed.

When you quote me, can you split the quote into individual responses instead of doing this boldface thing? I can't quote the post properly if you do that.

I think you misunderstood my response. The reason I say "I don't think you can really say that we'd be talking about this if it was an intentional feature" is that there is no circumstance under which Mojang would make this an intentional feature. It's unbalanced, breaks lore and breaks immersion, so there's no reason why Mojang would intentionally add AFK Fish Farms.

I did. Just as Mojang's definition. Which is what counts.

Where exactly did you find Mojang's definition of an exploit and where exactly did you post that? Hint: Cherry-picking historical evidence and assuming intent does not count.

Yes & No. It's generally connected, you're just not seeing it from my point of view. That's why these things are difficult to debate.

I can see it exactly the same whether you write it in eight sentences or three, but eight sentences are more likely to make me impatient or to encourage me to skim over the text. Your point of view will be far better explained if you can express an answer simply and in fewer sentences.

And that is your opinion, with your own experience...

"My opinion," it's not to easy. It is what it is. For difficult, that's where I play hardcore and pvp servers. The same people who whined about too easy, complained about the phantom.

It's cool. PVP is not meant for everyone...

Okay, then there's no point in us discussing how easy the game is. Personally, I think it should be harder in a few ways, but we're getting too far offtopic here.

If I remember correctly, this mini-discussion was about balance in the game, and you attempted to discard such an idea by claiming you were so "gud" at the game that you could yeet the Ender Dragon with beds and snowballs in the first play session. However, if my play experience is just as valid as yours, then this does not qualify as an argument because both stories are only anecdotal evidence.

(Also... the phantom is legitimately a terrible idea. There is no valid reason for punishing the player for not sleeping in a bed, it discourages exploration and it's a dumb way to punish noobs. It's also not disclosed to the player either, so a new player doesn't know that this problem can be negated with a bed.)

If you mine it yourself, yes tools have progression. Everything has alternate means...

Yes? And? lol...

Yes, and then you need to make a Nether Portal. And then you need to find a Nether Fortress. And then you can do what you want with the End. While it's true that you can skip some of the progression by finding iron or diamonds in chests or whatnot, but that's such a rare chance that you're more likely to just play "the right way" unless you're on a server with an economy.

Let's forget progression for a minute and consider balance: even on servers with economies, unless by "economy" we're talking about admin-built stores that magically create diamonds for you if you give them virtual money, diamonds are going to be as valuable as the miner decides they are.

Well yes, none of it exclusive.Fantasy, realism, and immersion can all be present. But immersion is the engagement in which you have with a thing or setting. Imagine this. I was playing Minecraft, I got my first batch of shulker shells and made boxes. I go to put down my shulkers to replace my chests and it hits me, "Why can I not pick up my chest with stuff in it? That is immersion breaking.

It's the same magic that Ender Chests use: the shulker box is simply a portal to a dimension where stuff can be kept, whereas the chest is just a chest that would weigh too much for you to carry on your own. Does that work?

Okay sure, some of this stuff doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that you can't shove shulker boxes in shulker boxes. Still, some of this is done, ironically enough, because of that balance thing that you deny exists in this game. Gameplay > Realism/Immersion any day. That being said, this whole sub-argument spawned because AFK Fish Farms are good for neither Gameplay nor Immersion.

With this I close this particular response to anyone reading. If someone is playing Vanilla MC, what does their experience and what they do matter so much, that you want to change it when their decision is not forced on anyone else?

Why do you keep using this "forcing stuff on us" argument? Every addition to the game is forced upon you. Every implemented suggestion or addition by Mojang is 100% out of your control and the only way to opt-out is to stick to an older version of the game or turn to mods. Stop giving me this crap.

Yes, I do want to force people to play the game without the ability to skip to the late-game, getting Mending before they either get to The End, search through thousands of Mineshafts or shovel emeralds into the pocket of a Librarian Villager and the only way I want to let them skip this progression is if they commit to their cheating and use commands or Creative Mode to break balance or progression.

How about Survival Mode remains a balanced game where Mending books are not given out like Halloween Candy and Creative Mode/Mods/Commands can remain the fun realm of "B-Bu-But I want to play with super farms that give me free items!"

Quote from McNubberson»

That's cool, I get it. I just didn't like that it was based off of a throw away comment. It in turned highlights that, instead of what I really said, thus hijacking my main point. I really have myself to blame for giving that ammo.

There's no point in us continuing this meta-conversation, so I'm just going to skip over these parts.

My point with this was, if it was intentional, we would still be talking about this. Only in the matter of switching the words from unintentional to intentional and how and why they would do that on top of it. So whether it was intentional or unintentional, for reasons giving thus far, the people who are against it would still have the same issues. You'll see what I mean in a minute and will still call it broken.

I don't think you can really say that we'd be talking about this if it was an unintentional feature. Of course, people talk about removing or nerfing things like the Elytra, but the thing about the AFK Fish Farm is that it makes so little sense lore, immersion, and balance-wise that you would never add it intentionally by any means.

I have a love-hate relationships with buds. Back in the day they would ruin my builds an I would have to build around them.
They also were not 100% reliable, so building with them was not an option for me. With observers and such, I dig it even though it is a little... for better a better word weird. However, it is reliable, and now more helpful with complex builds.

I think you went on a tangent here with BUDs in general when I was talking about Piston Quasi-Connectivity which is occasionally used to make BUDs and how it can make redstone construction unnecessarily complicated.

What does fish have to do with this....

The fact that it was Fishg who you agreed with on the unintentional/intentional thing is irrelevant. What is important was that he had a definition (even if it was from Wikipedia) for "exploit" and your side has not provided one.

Because you break down my paragraphs into sections.

Paragraphs which don't need to be so long when a short, simple response devoid of offtopic talking points will convey a point far easier.

Typing in paragraphs have relations, or highlights that further go with what is being said. I mean these farms and afk farms take away from the core mechanics of the game to where half of the entire original point is moot. People can argue all day long how it gives more options of how ithas made the game better, because you don't have to spend half your (game) life underground. That it makes it less linear. That those that don't like to travel, can do everything they want in one spot. Etc. Etc. That multiple ways of getting things make it better. Things like that. Back on point. Every creation has changed how people get their stuff, how much they get of it, and when.

I get your point here about the "benefits" of being able to play the game in the different ways created by farming, and there's a conversation to be had there, but this has nothing to do with unintentional features that break immersion. (I don't intend on carrying this part of the conversation on for much longer, but I will say that while you may find staying in one place "better", on the other hand, I would say anything that encourages the player to stay in one place detracts from the benefits of exploration.)

Sure mate no problem. I have listed a few already, but I will cover them. I'm old school. I like doing things my way, and it is generally the long, hard way so I have a feel I have had valued play...

I've snipped this since while I read the rest of the paragraph, I don't think it's worth going into all of it since it's more of a self-anecdote.

I suppose this is a valid reason since fun is somewhat objective and I can't really critique someone for wanting to play the game with extra self-made challenges.

(You mention something about PVP in this paragraph. I don't think that's the only form of competition, I think that even in a non-PVP setting, people shouldn't be able to get late-game stuff through exploits and cheats. It breaks the value of items on the server like enchanted books when everybody has a couple hundred while non-AFK Fishers have 3 or 4. Sure, it might not matter on a server where people seldom interact, but on a server where people frequently interact, AFK Fish Farms affect everybody in some way.)

Second part, there is no balance in the sense anyonehere is using. It is a fantasy sandbox with no A-Z direction. It would have to disrupt the path to travel A-Z with the letters in between being check points that could be skipped. Now I know somewhere someone is going to say, "But the dragon is the end because once you defeat him, credits roll." Sigh. It was a fun way to tell a story, and quite frankly defeating the dragon, is where the game starts for me.

Okay, no. There is clearly an A-Z direction. There are tiers of tools, dimensions gated behind items, etc. The game has progression and while that progression can be broken by server economies and such, you still need to get items before you can get better items in some fashion.

Minecraft is not just a sandbox, it's a game with sandbox elements, some of which are gated behind playing the game itself. Games have balance and progression.

It's first or second session playtime for me. That's why it is important to me to try and get myself geared and pearls close to twelve in around the first, if not second session. Sometimes, I don't even bother going to the Nether until I have my pearls in hopes I have them by end session.

I always hear these stories about people beating the game in three seconds and that the game is "too easy", meanwhile I'm building a house in my first play session and I'll probably hit the Nether by the second play session.

Maybe I'm just an idiot at PVP (Gonna be honest, I think I was better in 1.8. I still think 1.8 isn't balanced.) but I really don't understand how people do this. Endermen are hard to kill and hard to find in my experience and sometimes they don't even drop a pearl.

I'm not sure why you chose to go after The End when I never even said anything about the End.

So really, there is no balance in the first place.

Hold on, no balance? Really?

Also, with the loot tables in this game, they are not level based. Thus I could spawn in the world next to two chests that have two mending books, and guess what I just got "late game" books, for literally opening a box in the first two minutes of play. It's a game of chance. It's random.

Okay sure, random stuff exists and sometimes it gives people an unfair advantage over other people's worlds, but that doesn't entirely negate progression. Mending tools can still be lost or destroyed through careless play. Diamond tools without Mending still decay after enough use.

You go into two paragraphs about immersion and I don't have time to go through these, but...

It's especially hard to have immersion in a fantasy setting as is.

You're confusing immersion with realism. Fantasy and Realism are related to the setting as you mention. Immersion simply means that the player feels less like they're playing a game with code and more like they're exploring and living in a different world.

Quote from McNubberson»

Ok look. Don't pick the one line that was written to be facetious, to try a make a point on.

Fine.

My comment had nothing to do with afk fishing farms, it was getting rid of creepers specifically, and not in a serious fashion.

I am aware of that. What I am trying to do is draw an analogy, albeit, in this case, it's more of the opposite of an analogy since I'm contrasting the two case studies. (I couldn't find a word for the opposite of an analogy even though I feel like it exists)

I would assume we are all intelligent or at least of average intelligence to know how game mechanics work in changing difficulty.

Considering some of the users (albeit not you) here keep repeating the same talking points over and over again, I have my doubts. (Also I like simple explanations.)

I Agree with Fish here that whether it was intentional or not is irrelevant.

I disagree. Unintentional gameplay exploits tend to look stupid and wrong in any other game, the only reason we give Minecraft a pass on this is that its physics and lore are already stupid and wrong (floating islands, etc.)

I think I misstated my point and I don't blame you for reading me wrong, but what I was trying to convey was: stupid exploits that look dumb, break immersion and abuse limitations in the mechanics of the game shouldn't be kept in the game. That point is especially true if the exploit is unbalanced.

But I would also like to point out examples of things that are put in intentionally like blocks and such make a bad example comparing them to things that are user created resulting in things that are unintentional. Most of the things in Minecraft where users have created things especially with redstone, are unintentional. Hence it being a sandbox. The theme create your own fun. Not following a blueprint. Playing with limited rules.

Two things:

1 - A redstone exploit like Piston Quasi-Connectivity isn't giving people resources, nor does it break the balance in any way besides adding a BUD switch which could enable certain farms. I don't think a BUD switch by itself is that harmful on its own, and we actually have an intentional one in the game now.

2 - There's actually a solid case to be made that weird redstone screw-ups like Quasi-Connectivity should be removed since they create strange exceptions in redstone mechanics that scare away people who are new to redstone. Granted, I think there are far fewer gains and far greater losses from removing QC compared to AFK Fish Farms, but I can see the argument to fix it as they did with the Bedrock Edition.

Most things created with redstone, were unintentional. If it wasn't, there would be a user guide on what to build. No need for creativity.

Okay, now you've stretched what I've said miles beyond its actual meaning. Just because a sandbox game has rules, does not mean that you are locked into constructing only what Mojang has dictated acceptable. It means that you can't build things that break the immersion or allow you to cheat the game's balance.

To call it an exploit is a little much.

That's funny, I seem to remember fishg himself giving his own opinion on this situation...

The wikipedia definition of an exploit is: In video games, an exploit is the use of a bug or glitches, game system, rates, hit boxes, speed or level design etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers.

But sure, AFK Fishing is definitely not an exploit by any means.

I mean, we live in a Minecraft you no longer ever have to go in a cave and mine. Which at one time, was half the game. The other half one could argue has only expanded because of it.

I have no idea why you decided to inject these three sentences into your paragraph, considering this seems unrelated and isn't helping you explain to me why unintentional, immersion-breaking "not exploits" should be left in the game.

Remember. I'm not using it, it doesn't benefit me. I do however support the part community that uses it, along with other unintentional creations (Iron farms I.E.) even though I am not a fan. It's the only reason why I sit here taking it.

Then I appreciate that you at least attempt to argue from logic and not because of "ease", however I now have to ask why you do not use it, considering you have denied in the past that the farm is unbalanced. If the farm is balanced, then there is no harm in using it, and if it is not balanced, then why should people be allowed to cheat through survival with it?

Quote from Phlexor»

Minecraft is a game of possibility and imagination. There are plenty of things that Mojang didn't intend and I bet they like it that way, especially if its a novel way of using the game mechanics.

I'm okay with "novel ways of using game mechanics" like Quasi-Connectivity (albeit again, it does scare away those who are new to redstone), what I am not okay with are things that break immersion and balance.

People with suggestion for adding interesting things to the game are wonderful and I'm sure that inspires a lof the the mods that are made.

This statement is irrelevant to your argument.

But taking things away shouldn't be Mojangs responsibility.

Yes, it should be. Mojang should take away milking squids even if people think it's a funny bug. It breaks immersion and anyone who isn't in on the joke just sees it as a broken feature left in by lazy developers.

Let that be the wet blankets that write bucket plugins who feel that they have to control or restrict how others play.

I would argue that the opposite should be true. Let Mojang write one balanced survival experience for everyone to play, then you can use mods or "bucket" plugins to screw up the balance and immersion in any way you prefer.

Minecraft should be for everyone and there is a mod or plugin for everyone out there, if not someone usually writes it.

Why is removing an immersion-breaking exploit that gives you free items somehow non-inclusive and discriminatory? In addition, exactly what category of people are turned off by this change other than people who use AFK Fish Farms?

Don't force your restrictive vision on others who don't agree just because it doesn't suit your playstyle or vision of balance.

Have you ever played like, any other game before? Usually in any other game, you can't get high-end powerful items by simply leaving your game running.

That's pretty much all I have to say on this.

And I think I've already thoroughly explained, for about the fourth time, why this specific argument which is apparently "all you have to say on this" (which isn't true, you made multiple different arguments earlier which we've also counterargued) is simply not a good argument when you consider the purpose of game design. Are you converted to our side now or does it turn out that you actually have more to say on this?

Quote from McNubberson»

Also, you can remove creepers. Peaceful mode

This is far different from AFK Fishing Farms.

The point of difficulty is to adjust the game to someone's gaming abilities, so that casual players aren't being turned into skeleton pincushions every night and experienced gamers feel a challenge. They don't exist so experienced gamers can switch to an easier difficulty because of the "ease and convenience."

AFK Fishing Farms are clearly not an intentional feature. They are a limitation of the realism possible with the game since they've chosen a very simple list of checks for "valid fishing conditions." They don't need to exist in the game just because someone would find the game easier if they existed.

If you want to suggest that regular fishing drops should be more common in Peaceful, Easy or Medium than Hard, that would be one conversation. Keeping an unintentional exploit that makes no sense lore-wise, balanced or not, is not good game design.

It's not often a newcomer makes a good suggestion, but this one is wonderful. While it would make lanterns more expensive, considering the fact that they already require iron it seems as though they were meant more for decoration than general lighting like the torch is. I'm also a fan of making the pig more useful considering their only benefit at the moment is the ability to eat non-wheat items, which isn't that great considering all of the crops are pretty easy to grow.

Mind you, I do think using raw pork fat is a bit inaccurate, instead:

Tallow is more commonly a form of beef or mutton fat but has occasionally contained pork fat as well. It is stable at room temperature and can be used for deep frying food, making soap, candles, and some more modern uses like an industrial lubricant.

(The use of pork fat to lubricate rifles is actually what started the mutiny against the British-India company in 1857: since Pork Fat is not Kosher, the Muslim soldiers in the British ranks left the company, then proceeded to drive the British off of India.)

Tallow is made by rendering the raw pork fat, also called suet. The process behind this can get somewhat complicated, but the most basic way to do this is to simply heat the fat above the boiling point of water so the moisture escapes. Seems like the best analog for this would be to cook Pork Fat/Suet in the Smoker or the Furnace.

(Now, you could say this renders (pun intended) the pork fat item useless, but to be fair, raw meats and ores already have this property of only being useful to smelt into different items, so I don't think it's that much of a problem.)

Quote from Mrstealyoursanity»

People must've loved it if you're being a game designer. You're starting to sound like those shady game designer trying to justify anti-customer practice.

Ad Hominem. In addition to that, removing exploits and balancing the game is not "anti-customer practice", nor is it "shady", though it does have something to do with "game design."

By your logic, doesn't every argument you give previously is worthless because you are part of the community you so belittle of. Good job c1ff.

Wrong. By my logic:

- The community does not have full-control over Mojang's decisions, however

- The community can influence their decisions in small ways if Mojang accepts their ideas

- Mojang shouldn't accept the ideas of the community if they are unbalanced or don't fit into the game.

Balance is a far higher priority than what the community thinks. The community is not some omniscient, flawless entity that knows how to design well balanced or fun games, and as this thread proves, it seems as though the community is corrupt enough to keep an exploit in the game despite logic saying that it neither belongs in the game nor does it balance the game.

You seem to have this idea in your head that if a majority of people want AFK Fishing, therefore it is best to keep AFK Fishing. This is not the case. The majority of people can all be passionate about an idea and also be wrong.

You have simplified my arguments into a bash against "duh comyoonitee" in order to create a strawman to fight, rather than reading the context of my statements or the nuances. Congratulations, I hope you're happy I've replied to your off-topic comments about Suggestions and The Community as opposed to AFK Fish Farms.

Quote from Phlexor»

I do not support this idea.

At the end of the day this not cheating or an exploit, it's basically game mechanics that is automated with redstone. You could get the same items if you manually did it.

Except the difference is that manually doing it requires that the player actually invest effort into casting the line and timing his catch. An AFK Fish Farm turns this process into simply putting a brick on your mouse and waiting.

Same with other farms and villager trading.

Villager Trading actually requires player interaction and input items, unlike this farm.

An exploit and cheating IS duping items and those are patched on a regular basis.

Why is duping items any different from this? The only difference is the far broader range of items you can create, and the fact that you can't set this up to run while you are sleeping or at work.

Maybe a compromise is in order. I don't believe compromises are the solution in every scenario, but at least it gets us somewhere. What if in order to fish, you at least needed input bait items? These would range from cheap items likely to get more fish or junk (Rotten Flesh, Spider Eyes) to far more expensive items that are more likely to get treasure items. (Likely something purchasable from a Villager) This would at least mean that in order to AFK Fish, you need to have an equal amount of input items going in. I still don't think it's entirely balanced, but it is more balanced than the current system.

Heck, if all farms at least required some form of input item, this would make them all far more balanced. I don't expect redstone to start requiring coal power anytime soon, but maybe certain plants like papyrus or melons would only grow if given bonemeal during their final growth stage, otherwise they'd either never finish growing or grow extremely slowly.

Quote from Pirateboy04»

Then what about automated Iron Golem farms? People got really mad when those stopped working for 1 snapshot a few years ago (Mojang made iron a player-only drop in 14w03a for 1.8), but it was worked around immediately by people like Docm77 (using potions of harming).

As I've mentioned before, Iron Golem farms are also unbalanced, albeit they at least require effort and a far larger quantity of resources to build as opposed to an AFK Fish Farm. That doesn't make them balanced, it just makes them slightly more balanced.

Why do you people keep using the threat of "madness" as an argument? I guarantee you that most people will not mass migrate away from Minecraft just because they remove AFK Fish Farms.

That's the thing: no matter how hard you try to anti-automate things, ways will be found to circumvent it.

And the "people will find a workaround" argument makes no sense either. Not only are there ways to almost completely remove any method of AFK Fishing, but I would find any action on this issue better than no action. At least if the Mending Fishing rods were nerfed so that they weren't practically indestructable, this would heavily nerf these farms.

People have made 3*3 auto-cow and auto-sheep farms. People have automated sugar cane, pumpkins, melons, and every other crop in the game.

I'm not saying that any of these are balanced either. Let's at least focus on removing one particularly unbalanced farm and then we can talk about the other farms.

There is no way to remove automated farms that give people items for "zero effort".

Not sure why you chose to increase your font size for emphasis when boldface exists, I assume you think I can't read so I'm going to also assume you're using this for Ad Hominem purposes. Shame on you! I can't believe you would stoop to those levels. (I'm kidding)

Other than the time it takes to build the farm. And in multiplayer, the time it takes to fix potential pranks. And the time it takes to fix the farms after half the patches in the game.

Which is a problem. As soon as we nerf or remove AFK Fish Farms, let's talk about adding a cost to these farms. Maybe there's something we can do to either better handle the large amounts of items created by these farms or how to nerf these farms so that they require more player input.

Just so you know, I am actually a fan of using redstone for automation of some kind since it means redstone can be used for things other than making cool computers or whatever. That being said, getting items for free is a big no-no.

Also, many of the most vocal members of the Minecraft community are the people that use or make Auto-fishers and other auto-farms. Think the HermitCraft and ZipKrowd , SethBling, anyone else that builds on a massive scale in survival. Removing these farms, especially because they aren't, in my and many other's opinions, unbalanced or cheaty, would be massively detrimental to the game.

I've watched a few HermitCraft members. Even some of them, the people who use farms in Minecraft probably more than most people, have begun to refuse using AFK Fish Farms because they are not balanced.

Quote from McNubberson»

And there you have it folks. This thread is moot because the community has no right to decide. Suggestion threads are now pointless. Thus, no matter the opinion, since it is in the game, it stays.

Hey I tried.

Congratulations, you have managed to remain blissfully ignorant of the reasons why this forum exists because you assume that we make suggestions here to get them implemented by Mojang overnight.

The suggestions forum is another privilege we have. (I guess from a certain point it's a right in that free speech is a right, but whatever) While Mojang does not read this specific forum, we are allowed to discuss the features in the game and suggest changes that could be made. One way in which this forum is useful is to develop ideas before they are posted to Mojang's Feedback website or the r/minecraftsuggestions subreddit. Mojang gives us the privilege of using those other methods to suggest ideas to them. That does not mean we have control over what ends up in the game, that just means we can influence the decision slightly.

Quote from Phlexor»

There is nothing more I can't stand that people who go around telling other people how to live their life or play their game. You are literally the worst.

Yes, because I hate it when people won't let me play Minecraft with glitches and exploits that allow me to propel myself lightyears ahead of players who play the game by the rules. Those people are literally the worst.

Games have rules because, without those rules, the game falls apart. If you can just use exploits to get around rules, you are ruining the feeling of accomplishment and you are diminishing the meaning of winning the game. If you like breaking rules, we have cheats to satisfy you directly without leaving in a crappy farm that can't be blocked by server owners, makes no sense lore-wise and doesn't deserve to remain in the game.

Saying it's a balance issue is complete bull. Why is everyone else concerned about how balanced the game I'm playing. Like I said, use a anti afk or anti afk fishing plugin for bucket/spigiot and be happy you experience is 'balanced'. I did a quick search, there are a few plugins, problem solved Now stop complaining.

It is a balance issue, and no, I will not use plugins to balance a game that Mojang is supposed to balance. If you would rather play an unbalanced game, then mods, plugins, and datapacks exist exactly for the purpose of unbalancing the game. That's not me being hypocritical, this is me pointing out that you have gotten Mojang's job wrong.

Mojang's job is not to build the game that best suits Phlexor or any other person's unhealthy taste for exploitable mechanics that make the rest of the game redundant. Their job is to build a balanced and fair game that rewards players for actually putting forth effort and not for using loopholes and exploits.

Quote from McNubberson»

"On multiplayer this gives you an unfair advantage." What unfair advantage? There is none.

Do you actually read anything we say? Access to Mending books alone should be enough of an advantage far into the early game.

You have to come to realize, anti afk farms are the minority. They have servers for you.

Truly amazing. You have decided to escape actual reasoning and hide behind consensus because you've lost the argument.

Claiming you have a consensus is not an argument, it is a bullying tactic. The majority can be wrong for many reasons: misconception, deceit, corruption, etc. Bringing up the number of people who agree with you is just showing us how many people will "get mad" if we fix an exploit in the game that should have never existed in the first place.

Should we go through all the things one by one and explain how each item they receive in a fish farm affects you when it doesn't, or should we just come out and say it was just about the enchanted books and you can clearly gear yourself out in the time it takes for them to get food setup, base setup, build the farm, and fish it for 3 straight days in hopes that they got lucky enough to be anywhere close or finished to have great gear? I feel like a lot of people do not really know how these things work.

The heavy damage done to balance is just all the more incentive to remove AFK Fish Farms. That being said, I wouldn't care if these were AFK Dirt Farms, they are an exploit and shouldn't exist. Items in the game, however inexpensive, should not be given to the player for zero effort. Stealing pennies from the cash register is not any less stealing than if they were twenty-dollar bills.

Quote from Mrstealyoursanity»

Except no one has any problem with the removal of duplication glitch because people thought that glitch is inherently broken.

AFK Fishing Farms are also inherently broken. They allow for free items at little-to-no cost, which I would describe as "broken".

AFK fishing? people have been using it for years and there's no sign of stopping them.

There is a sign of stopping them. Simply remove the functionality required to build such a farm and then they will be stopped. In addition, many people are coming to the realization that, guess what? AFK Fish Farms are far too overpowered and break the game in a bad way.

We can clearly see in this thread that players like AFK fishing as part of the game and doesn't want them to disappear.

"Doesn't want" does not translate to "Shouldn't want." From what I'm seeing, a lot of people want this in the game because they consider it a "fair cheat" for some reason. Cheats are by definition unfair because they break the rules which judge fairness.

You don't have the right to impose how the community plays the game, the community does. Also, you're comparing apples and oranges mate.

Wrong. The community has no right to decide how they play the Vanilla game. What the community does have are privileges, like the ability to play in so many different styles and to use mods when need be. Mojang has every right to ignore the community's ideas in any way they like and they have every right to take away our privileges. The only right we have is to buy the game or to not buy the game.

But now Minecraft has a fish mob that the player can see, why aren't Mojang changing fishing? Maybe because Mojang subconsciously knows that changing old mechanic will always be bad and will result in chaos within the community.

Or maybe because Mojang hasn't considered the issue yet and is coming up with a solution. You have now stooped to the level of assuming Mojang's intent based on their lack of action on a particular issue.

"How can steve carries lots of heavy anvil, Steve should get slowness 3 and mining fatigue whenever he carries 1 anvil!"

This is perhaps the only fair point you've made on this forum thus far.

Quote from DieHardTeam»

jesus alright mr criticism don't need to heavily defend the point.

I do need to heavily defend the point, because you don't seem to get it no matter how hard I hammer it into your thick skull.

Also draconic is not unbalanced at all.

"It requires this amount of grind"/"It's super rare" is not a justification for overpowered items that remove consequences for playing badly.

Who implied you have to make one. if you don't want an afk fishing farm THEN JUST DONT MAKE ONE IS IT THAT HARD GOD DAMN

I already addressed this point in my big post that I imagine you refused to read because you don't use proper capitalization and you think underlining, boldfacing and italicizing your words makes you sound intimidating over the internet.

Let's compare this situation to another game, which I find helpful in these deep game design discussions. Suppose we're developing an RTS, and we accidentally add in a unit that, if used properly, can obliterate an army of any other unit besides a few counters. The AI doesn't know how to do this, so this is mainly a multiplayer problem. Ask yourself this question: do you remove the unit or the specific functionality from the game, or do you just encourage people to "not use the unit that way if it ruins the fun for them"?

Quote from DieHardTeam»

it shouldn't be removed. While it is overpowered,

Being overpowered is enough of a reason why it should be removed.

While it is overpowered, it could do checks to see if one is afk fishing, and lower chances of dropping good loot.

Or it could be removed, and the player could play the game the way it was meant to be played.

They really only patch bugs and glitches, as it can cause crashes and whatnot.

This is not an argument. Broken game balance is a bug in the game. If a game mechanic can be exploited in such a way that breaks the game balance, it is broken and must be patched. To leave it in would be leaving the game broken.

An exploit is something that people find, and even if they remove it, they still find a way to AFK fish without either mods, or removing fishing entirely.

This is not an argument. Many unbalanced mods exist, (*cough* Draconic Evolution *cough*) and I do not care whether or not people use them. What matters to me is that the Vanilla game, i.e. the only game Mojang is supposed to be balancing, is balanced. What people do with datapacks or mods is irrelevant to me.

People use it because they find it convenient, as some things are very hard to get, and this is just making life easier, as they can fish rare loot and go do something else. IT SHOULDN'T BE REMOVED

It does make the game easier. Cheating tends to make games easier rather than harder. (Yes there are exceptions, don't split hairs with me over blanket statements.)

The problem is that this farm makes the game too easy, and allows the player to skip playing the game. If you want to skip playing the game, we already have cheats and Creative Mode, we don't need to keep a broken farm in the game and then "discourage" its use, we need to remove it.