Minecraft Forums

I made this world just to play with the new villager AI in 12w08 (creative mode screwing around), but later found something potentially interesting that I might try out as well... There isn't really much to the landmass where you spawn, it's basically all plains and swamp and not that large. From where I spawned I could see the tiny 4-building village, a swamp area, and beaches on both sides.



The village is kind of messed up, I had to dig out some of the villagers and make stairs for them because it generated on/in a kind of hill. But it has a blacksmith with a decent chest, a church and a library house. Oddly, I think this is the first time I've seen a village with NO wheat farm. So if you want wheat you're on your own...





There are also tons of cows and other livestock, so the enterprising player may raid the blacksmith chest and then collect as much beef, wood, chicken eggs or whatever as possible before heading for the closest swamp...

Seed is 'yona yona yona'

Spawn in a forest next to plains. Jungle, village and mountain biome are visible in the distance. Pic 1, Pic 2

Village on the plains, somewhat close to the jungle. Caves open right under the village, the ground is practically hollow.


Beautiful jungle beaches and bays:




A stronghold is located in this area at x:15, z:682 (dig right into the beach) and from what I could tell there are 2 spider spawners and a skele spawner within or bordering the stronghold:



Spiders at x:-4.7, y:51, z:696 and x:-38, y:22, z:687
Skeletons at x:-103, y:14, z: 678

There's also a really pretty mountainous jungle area around x:1800, z:950 with a lot of nice scenery.

Screenshots here

I have mixed views on this, but in the end i'm going to go with the hordes being too annoying.

Adding difficulty is CERTAINLY a step in the right direction, don't get me wrong. The problem is, Dinnerbone isn't going about it right.

Zombies in 1.5.2 were only a (minor) threat very early on in the game before you got your first set of iron armor, after which you could bulldoze through them. Now, they're exactly the same, except there are a lot more of them. This changes from a minor threat in the early game to a major threat in the early game while being a major annoyance in the late game. Essentially, they were upgraded from Mook to Goddamn Spider status; they were weak before and they're just as weak now, but oh my god they're everywhere. A group still won't kill you if you keep your wits about you, but it's going to be a drag mowing down them all. (On the bright side you may get some carrots and potatoes.)

A better option would have been to leave it as it was in 1.5.2 on Easy, but keep in a toned down version on the other difficulties (the increased sight radius on Normal and a chance to spawn extra zombies when a zombie spawns on Hard). This would still make the early game a bit harder but would not affect the late game as much. Then, Mojang should have simply added some new underground mobs that are stronger than the current mobs, which would completely ignore the difficulty of the early game (unless jumping into caves asap is your thing) and would improve the difficulty of the late game as well. (Additionally if Mojang wanted they could implement the 1.6.2 zombie spawning mechanics in caves as well.)



I don't really like the feature much, but it's a step in the right direction which is why I welcome it.

Quote from Ouatcheur

So wrong! It *is* easy!

Just make the game difficulty level affect ALL the aspects that define a mob not just the damage it deals.

...{snipped out lots more awesomeness}...

Easy = Minimal. Really dumb zombies. they burn to death, fall in pits, etc.
Normal = Okay. Go to shade or to water when on fire, avoid getting in the sun, move around simple obstacles.
Hard = Brainiac zombies able to take a long detour to be able to reach the player.

Dude, if I could +1 your post 100 times I totally would.

Quote from Blaikie

Can people answer me one simple question?

Zombies only spawn at night, so what is the big problem here? Night in Minecraft is where the survival kicks in and you should hide in your house instead of roaming around if you find it difficult.

At night, and in caves, and any dark place outside, and whenever it's raining, etc. Out in an open field at night is one thing, but massive zombie hordes anywhere the light level is below 7 gets a bit extreme. Caving is dangerous enough for casual players as it is, it's now impossible for someone new to the game. That's not fun anymore, that's just stupid.

Again, we aren't asking for them to remove the changes -- JUST LIMIT THEM TO HARD MODE!

What's your problem with that? You insist that "Hard" should be hard, but don't want to let "Easy" be easy?

Honestly, I'm surprised that anyone wouldn't want them to remove these changes from the lower difficulty levels. As it stands now, there's very few differences between Easy and Hard. I would think that all these people that want Minecraft to be a hack and slash game would actually RATHER the changes only be to hard mode, so they can brag and say "I play the game on HARD!" and have it actually mean something.

Quote from Doublepulse

I agree the AI should be scaled on th difficulty and I know not everyone is a fan of hardcore, but it is not going to be fixed in 1 update, it's not easy to balance things out.

So wrong! It *is* easy!

Just make the game difficulty level affect ALL the aspects that define a mob not just the damage it deals.

i.e. Let's take the Zombies as an Example:

E/N/H Values: E for Easy, N for Normal, H for Hard.

- Health Points Rule: Easy = 50% the hit points of Normal, H = +50% the hit points of Normal.
So, for a Zombie: E/N/H Values = 10 / 20 / 30 HP.

- Armor Points: E/N/H = 1/2/3

- Attack Strength: Scales with zombie strength (as a % of zombie current health vs maximum health) and difficulty:
E/N/H values:
HP over 75% of maximum: 2/3/4
HP over 50% up to 75% of maximum: 3/4/6
HP over 25% up to 50% of maximum: 3/5/7
HP up to 25% of maximum: 4/6/9

- Pick up items: 10%/15%/45%
- Spawn with enchanted item: 0%/10%/20%
- Spawn with enchanted armor: 0%/25%/50%

- Regional difficulty: Easy = No; Normal = No; Hard = Yes.

- Infect Villagers: Easy = 0%; Normal = 25%; Hard = 100%.

- Zombie Group Max Spawning Size: Base rule is Easy comes with 50% smaller max spawn group size. So, E/N/H = 3/6/6.

- Chance to Summon Another Zombie when hurt: Easy = No; Normal = No; Hard = Yes.

- Walking Speed: Easy = 75% of Normal; Hard = 110% of Normal.

- Aggro range (in blocks): E/N/H = 8/16/24. (making the aggro range too high would transform the game into an endless swarm of zombies constantly coming at you).

- Pathing Skills:
Easy = Minimal. Really dumb zombies. they burn to death, fall in pits, etc.
Normal = Okay. Go to shade or to water when on fire, avoid getting in the sun, move around simple obstacles.
Hard = Brainiac zombies able to take a long detour to be able to reach the player.

Quote from Blaikie

Don't call me a muppet you little brat, and it's "You're". Tons of players have turned away from Minecraft because each update has made survival mode easier and easier until Dinnerbone's tricky AI was implemented.

...

{Snipped out lots of words and triple-posting}

I'm going to quote a post I made in the other thread here, because it applies to you too:

Quote from Divinius

People like you are what's ruining Minecraft.

I'd be fine with all these crazy stupid "difficulty" changes, if they limited them to "Hard" mode. That way, all these people that are whining about the game being "too easy" can have their fun, and the rest of us can enjoy a game that isn't all about hack and slash.

The problem is that these people that have been playing Minecraft for years have gotten bored, because they lack any form of creative thinking, and don't have the ability to realize that Minecraft is supposed to be a fun game about mining and crafting, with some extra fun that comes from enemies that show up at night. They don't want to play Minecraft anymore... they want to play "Super Zombie Killer EXTREME" using the Minecraft engine, and don't understand why the rest of us just want our fun game back.

We don't want to play in Creative, that takes all the fun out of gathering your materials. We don't want to play on Peaceful difficulty, because we need to get the items that the mobs drop, and we don't mind having to kill a few mobs to get them. What we DON'T want is to have our entire Minecraft existence be centered around nothing but having to kill a billion zombies anytime we want to go outside our house.

Stuff like this kills the game for new players especially. By making these changes apply to EVERY difficulty level, even Easy is making it too hard for a new player (that doesn't know what he's doing) to survive long enough in a new world, so they can get established. It's just going to frustrate people like that.

And the really ironic part is that to a player on the opposite end of the spectrum, a veteran player that has a well-established world, even these crazy changes still don't make the game "hard"... they just make it "annoying". It's going to frustrate a lot of those players too, just for a different reason.

Honestly, the only people that really seem to like changes like this are people that probably shouldn't be playing Minecraft anymore. They should be playing something else if all they want to do is kill mobs all day long. Try Diablo III... I hear that's pretty good.

And to add to these comment I made last night, I'd also like to point out that people "leaving" minecraft is going to happen regardless of these changes. The reasons might be different, but people quit playing games all the time. Honestly, Mojang is shooting themselves in the foot attempting to keep current players by making changes like these that actually alienate new players. Existing players have already paid for the game. New players, who will likely be scared off by a game that is getting less and less "beginner friendly" with all these crazy updates, are not going to be buying the game.

Once again, I'll reiterate what I said at the top of my quote: I'd be perfectly fine with all these changes, if they limited them to "Hard" mode. By having them apply to ALL difficulty settings, the settings become less meaningful, and it doesn't leave any room for the casual players.

Chalk me up to one of those people who doesn't like how overkill it is. I'm a veteran player (I just don't post all too much) and frankly, as someone who enjoys going out and killing mobs, I worried quite a bit about this. Increasing the aggro radius OR giving them the chance to spawn additional zombies, one or the other, seemed like a solid and interesting mechanic. But giving them both is absurd, because for one, it'll lag anyone without a supercomputer out (I have a darn good rig and it can get lagged easily enough dependent on number of mobs), and two, it's a major difficulty increase not dictated by the difficulty slider.

This isn't a "if you didn't want to survive go play creative" thing and anyone who says so should take the time to understand the problem, not assume the multitude of complainers are simply wrong. It's not that it's dangerous. To the contrary, I went out unarmored with a few stone swords to see just how the behavior worked, and was disappointed in that I wiped the floor with zombies I came across...it's just that there were so many I eventually got bored and went back inside my home base to sleep. Village balance is completely broken unless you've already set up and fortified a village, by virtue of the fact the zombies are now legion and spawn magically.

It's not difficult. It's not hard. It's tiring and annoying, an exercise in frustration, not because zombies are difficult to kill, but because there's basically no lull in the horde and you have to engage them or get swarmed to death. After all, there's no "safe" zone to sit out of sight where you can still see the zombie -- you see them, they're aggroing, pretty much.

Horses don't fit the game because they have too many polygons as opposed to other mobs?



I'm sorry, but no. I would have to agree with Strottinglemon a little bit; personally I would prefer it if several new mobs were added with similar joint count and model movement. Namely, Fanfish, Jellyfish, or the caterpillar and the carnivorous plant shown here.
Just because some things look good in complexity does not mean others look good, yes, but the opposite is also true: While a sheep may fit with simplicity, a horse does not (yes, I realize that was a joke picture and that it does not need to be that ugly, I was just making a point). You can complain about it not fitting with the blocky landscape all you want, but the fact is that horses look just fine.
As for variation, also no. I would also prefer to have more mob variation (E.G, several skins for zombies).
I do not like the current horse growth, no. I think it's silly to deviate from an already functioning growth system, but it's not as if the system doesn't fit at all with the game.

My oldest son is almost 3, and autistic.
You did offend me, TC, and I would love to say some very mean things to you, but I wont.
I want you to know this, though: my son is very good at several games, including Minecraft, and we enjoy playing it together. Don't underestimate autistic kids. My son can't speak at all, but that doesn't mean he isn't smarter than you.
Oh, and just to brag, he loves Mega Man, and can almost beat all 8 of the 8-bit games.

Quote from rorybg

You are in a very bad mood aren't you?
(that time of the month again?)

Lets try to keep on topic

Wow, really? That's the second gendered insult I've seen today. If I could down vote posts I'd certainly down vote yours. That is incredibly inappropriate. Please keep in mind that the presence of (or a desire for) a vagina does not make someone less of a person. This joke is bad on two levels. The first of which being that you're trying to insult someone by implying that they are female. Because yeah, nothing's worse than being a girl, amiright? Secondly, PMS jokes are repugnant because of the implication that a female cannot have a valid complaint (or just be in a mad mood) without hormones being to blame.

Quote from Locklear308

Dieing from one hit? What kind of crap is that? You must be joking. Most of us who are complaining are most likely older, and have played the old classic games, Half life, System Shock, Halo 1.

I'm 35. I've been a gamer all my life. I'd even venture to guess that I've played a lot more games than you, especially if you consider games like Half life, System Shock, Halo 1, "Classics". Adventure for the Atari 2600... now THAT was a classic (and you died in one hit). :smile.gif:

Quote from Locklear308

We do not want the game to be Saints row anything.
We want it to be as challenging as it was in Alpha. Back then, you FEARED the night, you fricking BOOKED it back to your home or safe zone once it started getting dark. This fear, this knowledge that the night brought mobs, who posed a serious threat to your life.

A threat to your life, was a threat to your stuff. Stuff that took hours to find and collect.

You either respected the night, or braved it and struggled to survive and make it back alive. BUT once you did my friend...once you got back and closed the door, put your diamonds safely in a chest so you can relax. It felt good. You had done it! You braved the terror and threat of the caves and the night time horrors to finally barely make it back, alive, and with your gear.

THAT is what we want.

That is what YOU want. That is what a few others want. That is NOT what I want, and what many others want. You know why the game isn't like it was back in Alpha? Because that was Alpha. That was before they adjusted the game to how it was supposed to be. What MineCraft is supposed to be. And what the rest of us want is to play MineCraft. Not another Halo game.

I want a game where the primary goal is to build cool stuff while fending off enemies, and not one where you have to spend every single second worrying that you can instantly be killed by something you never saw (I swear to god, creepers literally appear behind me sometimes). That kind of stuff makes a game like this go from fun to frustrating, especially now that there's a very steep experience point penalty associated with dying (going from level 35 to 6 is not cool).

Quote from Locklear308

Mobs should ALWAYS be superior to the player. NO armor or weapon should EVER
Make you stronger than the enemies.

And this right here, is what's totally wrong with your argument. What the hell is the point of gathering materials and crafting armor and weapons if you can NEVER be stronger than your enemies? That's just plain stupid. The whole POINT of the game is to overcome the environment and tame it. You do that BY becoming stronger than your enemies.

And you realize that even if armor and weapons didn't exist, everything COULD one-shot you, and mobs had 3 times the HP, that you could still theoretically punch a creeper to death, right? It would just be all about fighting style and tactics.

This game is not supposed to be all about fighting style and tactics. It's a building game, with an awesome survival and adventure aspect. There's literally HUNDREDS of games out there that are all about killing and surviving by adjusting and improving your fighting style and tactics. Please go play one of those.

Please, please stop trying to turn MineCraft into "just another melee FPS".

P.S. For the record, I'm not arguing against the change to armor. If all that was changed with armor is that it is now calculating damage as it was supposed to be, then that's fine. It's not as strong, but it's still not completely useless. I'm good with that. The devs could even make armor weaker than it is now on Hard mode. I'd be good with that too. But it seems from reading this post, that that's not good enough for the next-gen gamers, the Halo crowd, who want to turn every game into a tactical FPS. Those people need to go away and leave this game alone.