Minecraft Forums

As most of us know, PvP is rather lackluster in Minecraft (If you didn't know, you know now). Most fights barely amount to anything other than who has better armor, who has an inventory full of potions, or who can simply click the fastest. However, this isn't just a PvP issue. It can also translate to single player, as I can demonstrate with this lazily made GIF image:

See what I mean? Sure that was just one Zombie, the easiest of all Minecraft enemies. A decently skilled player could fight 3-4 of them without a weapon and emerge victorious. The same cannot be said of Skeletons or Creepers, right? Well, not exactly, but both are still relatively easy to kill. But this suggestion will affect fighting them as well.

My suggestion is to change attacks from being instantaneous to having actual animation that take time to complete. I will state this now, and I will make it large so people see it. This will have absolutely NO effect when breaking blocks. Blocks will take the SAME time they currently do to break, and will STILL be dependent on what tool you are using. That being said, let me go into how the game currently works, and how I think it could be changed.

Currently, players can attack as fast as they can click, without any kind of limitation on how fast they can hit enemies. The limitation is instead built directly into their targets. After a mob or player receives damage, it bounces in the air and experiences a brief period of invincibility before you can then hit it again. This takes about a third of a second, limiting you to being able to hit a mob about 3 times every second when using melee. Anyone who can rapidly click their mouse can guarantee that they land a blow almost immediately after an enemy is vulnerable again.

My proposed solution is to give animations to each of the 5 basic melee attacks. If you look at the chart of different damage types here, you can see that Swords, Axes, Pickaxes, Shovels, and Hoes/Unarmed (by Unarmed it means holding nothing, or anything that I didn't just say). The other damage types are environmental or from the bow and do not matter for this thread.

Getting into the numbers, here is a rough idea of the type of animation each attack could have, and how long it would take to complete:

Unarmed/Hoe - Uses the existing animation: 0.9 Seconds
Shovel - Thusts the head of the shovel out like you would to scoop up dirt: 0.9 Seconds
Pickaxe - An overhead strike, like you would expect: 1.1 Seconds
Axe - A sideways chop, like chopping down a tree: 1.25 Seconds
Sword - A regular slash, one you would see in a sword fight: 1.4 Seconds.

Here is a chart giving the hit speed for each attack, the base damage for each tier of each attack, and the Damage per Second (DPS) of each attack. All values calculated without armor.

The only time an enemy would take damage from an attack is at the end of the animation, and only if at that time it connects with an enemy. If you are aiming at a Creeper and look down at the last part of your swing, you will just attack the ground. It would also make use of blocking with a Sword. Blocking would also get an animation that takes 0.5 seconds to complete. If the hit connects before you can finish the block animation, you take full damage.

As you can see, there would be no more doing 21 DPS because you have a Diamond Sword and can click really fast. While this would slow down combat, it would make people have to plan their attacks. This would also slow down combat and add more cooperation to a battle with multiple allies and enemies. I can't be 100% sure how well this would work in the actual game, but if I am correct it won't change PvE too much, while making PvP more interesting.

Another possible benefit is the fact that you could add in more weapons later. Currently it is hard to add new weapons because everything attacks at the same speed, so you can only compare damage and crafting material costs. I'm not saying they HAVE to be added, but they could be.

Now, I know I said this would not affect breaking blocks, and it wouldn't. If you hold Left Click on a block, the new animation plays, but the block still breaks at the rate it should. Durability also works in the same way. Your tool ONLY takes damage when a block breaks or when you damage an enemy. This might be kind of weird in some cases, like breaking a block before the animation finishes, but comparing it to rapidly jerking your arm at a block until it shatters I don't think it is a big deal.

I'm not even sure if this idea is a good one, but I spent a bit of time on it. Knowing that, I hope you guys can help discuss the idea a bit further and see if we can't make it better to where people would want it implemented.

Here is a thread that is related to this one. It involves changing the stats of armor, health, and damage for much more accurate calculations:

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1737692-minecraft-massive-stat-restructure