Has your argument truly devolved into: "They shouldn't have let me buy it"?
I've said that multiple times in the past and elaborated on it. When you sell a game and make it available, it becomes a consumer product and there are rules and expectations that go with that. You can't develop a massively sold consumer product like this and then start changing it on everyone. Eventually enough consumers will become alienated that it risks violation of consumer protection laws; them not getting what they thought they were paying for.
I bought the game well over a year ago. I have been impatiently waiting for notch to start to add the real survival and RPG elements he promised in early alpha, but I understood that he was working on other things and would be getting to it later, which is okay with me because I rather enjoy the constantly changing nature of the game. Now that he finally adds them, like promised to anyone who researched their product before buying it (a responsible consumer does this), you are asking him to stop what he's doing and pander to the people who chose to ignorantly avoid understanding what they were buying?
Actually I'm just asking him to create a mode or provide options so those of us who have enjoyed the game as it was pre-1.8 mechanics-wise can continue to enjoy that. I've never once stated he can't continue to evolve the game.
Sir, you are trapped only by your own ignorance. How dare he let you buy it early at a discount.
For the record, you were forced to agree to this before you made the purchase:
It's been addressed. Checking a box in purchase forms isn't the end-all-be-all legal agreement many people seem to think it is. Courts can rule based on the fact that they're commonly checked without reading and on the fact that laymen don't understand what the terms actually mean.
It's like an English-speaker signing a form that's in Spanish. Just because they sign it doesn't mean it's 100% legally binding--the court can determine that they were mislead.
And it still does. Point me at anything in that video that is incorrect. The terrain generation is different. There is no tall grass. It never demonsrates fighting mobs, it doesn't demonstrate the healing mechanics. Why? Because that is not the point of minecraft. The mining and building are, that is what they demonstrated, and that is still what you get. That video is not mis-representing anything.
And hunger and the bow mechanics are just the beginning of Notch's changes. NPC Villages, NPCs, hunger, bow, sprinting, abandoned mines, limited fortresses, experience, etc., all point to an RPG game. Those videos show a sandbox game.
Could you say that Final Fantasy 8 is a card game because it has a card game in it? No. It's an RPG because everything that surrounds the card game makes it an RPG. Everything around what those videos show is making Minecraft an RPG. There's also rumors of skills, levels, the ability to "win". It's becoming less and less the sandbox game portrayed in those videos.
And if your philosphy was held as the rule for game design, games would suck. Revisions to gameplay are normal in development.
In alpha development, yes, long before you open the game up to every single customer. Before you allow a huge modding community to be built around it.
Removing the rapid fire bow mechanics was a much-needed change that fixed a long-standing issue. but because it is a change, we can't have that. Despite making the bow stronger, funner, and more practical, you don't want that change because it is different. They altered how the bow mechanics work because they were problematic. I don't understand the idea of preserving gameplay problems fo nostolgia.
I enjoyed the old mechanics. Rate of fire vs. damage amount. That's a common give-and-take relationship with weapons. And I never had a problem using the bow before. I used it almost exclusively--almost never used swords. And it made skeleton spawner traps quite valuable.
Yes, big surprise. You were using the system in exactly the way they didn't want it to work, they change it to remove that, and you want them to add it back in, depsite the fact that it was specicially removed.
Welcome to sandbox games, where people are suppose to be able to play how they want and not have their playstyle dictated by mechanics.
Idea: learn the new mechanics and use them. On the continuum of "this is exactly how they want you to fight" to "I have exploited every loophole in the game", you were around "I am bending the combat rules to my advantage".
They already negated much of the rapid-fire advantage by making it so mobs can only be damaged at a limited rate. If you spammed a single target you'd waste easily half the arrows. So you have to adapt.
That shows how much you know. Their making it a commercial, available product from its very early stages is the primary reason it is successfull. Its the primary reason it still exists. It is what has drawn a significant number of people to the game. The appeal of being able to influence the game's development with our feedback has been a strong motivating element for the community. And no, that does not mean every whim is catered to and every idea is included. It does mean that as a whole, we have a voice. We provide feedback, we find bugs. That is part of what has made the game. If find it laughable all the people who say they should not have released it in its infantile stages because that is exactly what made it successfull and made notch rich. Crticizing that decision, with the full benefits of hindsight, being able to see how well it has worked, does not say much for your judgement.
And you can't sell a person an apple but before handing it to them change it into an orange then a pear then a tomato. I wanted an orange. I paid for an orange. Mojang is changing it into an pear. If they want to keep changing it then they need to make the game a fruit basket offering the game in each major phase.
That's why I'm alternatively pushing for a new Adventure Mode for these new mechanics. Creative (stage 1), Survival (stage 2), Adventure (stage 3). Each less of a sandbox than the prior with an increasing focus on being an RPG.
You say you don't care about the balance of the option. That is not a valid game design decision. If you are supporting a mechanic, it should be balanced.
Giving players options to determine their own balance is a perfectly viable design option. Take Monopoly. It has official rules, but households often adopt their own rules, too--like getting all tax money if you land on Free Parking, or $400 if you land on GO. That changes the balance of the game substantially. But that's perfectly fine if those who play agree to it.
I recently bought Monopoly Streets for my PS3. It's got standard game modes. You know what else it has? HOUSE RULES! It lets you adjust a lot of things.
Can you buy your way out of jail? Yes/no.
How much does it cost?
How many turns do you stay in jail?
Do you get money if you land on Free Parking?
Do you get double money if you land on GO?
How much is the Luxury Tax?
These are just some of the options offered. Does that change the balance? Hell yeah. But it enables the player to play how they like.
Are you saying that game had a bad design philosophy?
MMO:
You pay a fee
You play the game for a month
you pay another fee
you play the game for a month
They make a change
you don't like it
you stop paying a fee
and you lose ALL access to the game, in any form
Minecraft:
You pay a fee
You play for as long as you want
they make a change
you don't like it
you don't update
you continue to enjoy the game as it was before they changed it, for all eternity
In what way is the MMO model more sensible? How does paying more and being left with less come off as more acceptable to you? Do you realize how mind-bogglingly inconsitent you are being?
When did I ever say the MMO model was more sensible? I hate the MMO model. I played WoW for 5 years and became incredibly bitter over time because they kept changing things about the game and I had no recourse. I also got a bit tired of the carrot-on-a-stick philosophy.
But I also know they don't have much choice. It's not viable to maintain servers for every major version of the game, let alone splitting the playerbase on that. That's the price of communal games; if all players play together then they all have to play by the same rules, which means they all have to update even if they don't like it.
Moving to easy:
Means keeping all fighting
Means keeping monster traps
Means keeping the challenge
Means keeping mining
Means keeping your sense of accomplishement
Means keeping the same game mechanics so you can ignore hunger while continuing with everything else.
Yet because it creates a slight difference is what falling damage is lethal, this isn't good enough for you. But a toggle that would significantly alter mechanics and disrupt game balance would be acceptable to you. Again, you are being inconsistent
I've always said it's fine for game balance to be up to the player, or the SMP server. There's no inconsistency. Besides, doesn't Peaceful Mode kind of change game balance? Doesn't NPC villages and having free housing and food change game balance? Every option affects game balance in some way.
Mods have a high potential to change game balance, too. Yet people seem to suggest mods as a completely viable alternative. So why is it alright for a person to change their balance with a mod, but not through an option provided by Mojang?
Which side is being inconsistent here?
Oh, there is most definitely loss and gain between using the old and new system. It is not a self-contained element of the game, it is a revision to the balance. Toggling hunger and going back to the old system has far more reaching impacts on your game than playing easy does. Yet easy isn't a valid option. Why not? You don't have to worry about hunger, and the disadvantages to doing so put you at the equivelent of normal mode, well within the normal balance bounds of the game.
You can't completely ignore hunger on Easy. Your character will still deteriorate if you ignore it, making them more susceptible to death by falling, lava, or drowning. A point blank creeper explosion will kill you at half-health, too. And in the past those are the only things that ever posed a threat, anyway. Spiders, skeletons, zombies, etc., have never been threats, at least to me.
Okay... I guess the odd spider falling on my head came close to making me **** myself...
You say you are fine with Ntoch expanding on mechanics. Well guess what? The updating changes are expansions on what you can do in the game. He is not going to be reducing your possibilities at all. Leveling is an expansion. Quests are an expanson. osses are an expansion. All completely ignorable if you don't want it. Why should he put the optional content is a seperate mode?
To clearly separate the focus, just like the focus of Creative and Survival are separated.
They aren't pushing their new code at you. You have the option to no update and not receive the new content. You are rejecting playing 1.7 because you don't get the other new content and expansions, and instead have ceased playing period. That does not even make sense. "1.7 isn't good enough for me, despite having all of the old mechanics I've loved for the last 10 months, so no I won't play teh game at all".
There are certain things that transcend modes, that are applied to all of them. Graphical changes, world generation, new blocks, etc. Just like those are applied to Creative Mode, I'd want them applied to the pre-1.8 Survival Mode and the Adventure Mode.
Stopping at a specific version would prevent me from getting those changes, bug fixes, and the final product. Staying at 1.7 also makes multiplayer increasingly unviable, which is my preferred environment: what's the point of building if nobody can see it?
In other words (again) I want the player mechanics of pre-1.8. That's it. Everything else I was current.
If a significant number of people truly felt that 1.8 was ruining the game, there would be 1.7 servers still running. Either they are still there and running, so you can continue to enjoy multiplayer, or there aren't, and this isn't as bug a deal-breaker as you are making it out to be. In which case you have to deal with your own idiosynchrities, you shouldn't force them on others.
An option/separate mode isn't forcing anything on other people.
You do realzie that the lack of progress in that time span is probably the #1 complain about the game? There have been numberous threads ridicouling mojang for not getting stuff done and berating them for not adding a ton of stuff. And now that they are, you want an option to undo it.
It's also the state of the game in that time period that earned Minecraft awards and 3.5 million customers. People will always complain and want more. That doesn't negate the fact that obviously a lot of people like it the way it is.
Yes, it is their problem. If they give you the option, they are implying it will be balanced. If you want the option without the guarantee, then use a mod. That is precisecly the type of thing they are good for. But as soon as an option is in-game, it is under the same quality requirements as anything else. Balancing a game is key to the design and development.
See my Monopoly example above. And Monopoly isn't the only game that has options like that.
Why is this change so important that it needs to be altered and not everthing else? I have seen much, much stronger arguments for disabling creepers.
I know. I've made some of them.
There are much stronger aarguements on both sides for removign and boosting the endermen's block movement.
I know. I've made some of them.
There are stroner arguements for removign the bedrock fog,
I already offered Tribblepoo my support in pushing for that as a graphics option.
and for removing the water drips.
I know. I've made some of them. Seeing so many of my structures now dripping was the straw that broke the camels back and caused me to quit playing. Even on Peaceful mode that screwed me over.
Pretty much every single feature in the game has some group that is not happy with it. If you think your group is special, you are mistaken.
And if you think this is the only change I'm pushing for, you're mistaken.
Coding may not be, besides the extra effort of adding in the options. But game design is. From a design standpoint, the option is a huge, tangled mess.
And Mojang is perfectly capable of determining what the default options are, to make the default gameplay meet their ideas of balance. That doesn't mean players can't have the ability to override it.
It is your misconception about the nature of the game. You did not do adequate research to understand it. Nothing on the site or that has been published by mojang would lead you to beleive that the combat mechanics would never change. That is a notion you got into your head all by yourself.
I'm suppose to prove a negative? You expect every purchaser of the game to read the entire history of Notch's Twitter feeds before buying? A person can't know what information they don't have, nor can they reasonably be expected to know every place to look for information.
For 15 years I've bought games based on the game's website or maybe review sites like Gamespot. That's always given me enough. I've never had to watch a person's Twitter for months or years to know what I'm buying. And to expect that is simply ridiculous.
This is the sanest thing you have said. Both have pros and cons.you prefer the old way. That does not mean the game is now unplayable and you can't enjoy it anymore. As I said in my post you didn't read, learn the new system. Master it, get past the "oh no, its different" phase, then tell me it is worth a toggle.
You assume I'm not familiar with the system. I am. And I still prefer the old. Why is that so unfathomable?
Dang, that's a good arguement. Who will I side with? Hmm. Probs you :smile.gif:
lol, I thank you. Though I do encourage you to read at least some of this thread (I know--it's huge) and get further background. I'd love support but prefer it to be based on as well a formed opinion as possible.
lol, I thank you. Though I do encourage you to read at least some of this thread (I know--it's huge) and get further background. I'd love support but prefer it to be based on as well a formed opinion as possible.
I read through all of it, what makes you think I didn't?
Notch said when you bought the game that this is early alpha/beta and the game wont be anything like this when its done so if that wasn't enough of a warning for you then that is pretty pathetic and dont blame notch that you didnt read it.
What I bought was beta, and betas are for testing--not radical feature changes and primary development. So even labeling the game "beta" carries with it certain common expectations.
But, this has been discussed to death already in this thread and I'm particularly in the mood to repeat myself. Learn for yourself. Research what the beta phase is suppose to entail in software release cycles.
And hunger and the bow mechanics are just the beginning of Notch's changes. NPC Villages, NPCs, hunger, bow, sprinting, abandoned mines, limited fortresses, experience, etc., all point to an RPG game. Those videos show a sandbox game.
Why is that so black and white? Is it really beyond your conception that it can be both, at the same time? It is possible to add the "RPG elements" in a way that does not destroy the sandbox nature. And that is exactly what they are doing. The sandbox is still there. There is just more surrounding it. All the video shows is running around a natural alndscape, picking up blocks, and building some houses with it. All of which are very much core to the game. Yes, even now.
Could you say that Final Fantasy 8 is a card game because it has a card game in it? No. It's an RPG because everything that surrounds the card game makes it an RPG. Everything around what those videos show is making Minecraft an RPG. There's also rumors of skills, levels, the ability to "win". It's becoming less and less the sandbox game portrayed in those videos.
Can you say that Minecraft is and RPG because it will have an RPG in it? No. Its a sandbox because everything that surrounds the RPG makes it into a sandbox. You will be free to play and completely ignore all of the RPG aspects. It is a sandbox game at its core, and that core is still there. They are just expanding it. If they were destroying the core gameplay, I would be complaining. I've been playing the game much longer than you have, and I have grown quite attached to it as well. And I can still go out, and utilizing the new game elements, play the same game I have been for years.
I enjoyed the old mechanics. Rate of fire vs. damage amount. That's a common give-and-take relationship with weapons. And I never had a problem using the bow before. I used it almost exclusively--almost never used swords. And it made skeleton spawner traps quite valuable.
Mob grinders have never been an intended part of the gameplay. They have allowed them because it is an emergent aspect of the game that people were creative enough to make. They are not part of the balance, and any balance that relies on them is flawed. I don't use mob grinders. As such, arrows were rather infeasible. I mostly ignored them because 5 arrows per mob adds up very quickly, and is infeasible with legit arrows for regular use. Now, it takes 2, and I feel like I can afford to shoot a mob with a bow. It feels much more satisfying and is balanced better. The only reason its worse for you is because you were removing the resource component of it, which is meant to be a limit. I still don't arrow every mob to death, and I use my sword, but there are arrows exchanged in combat now. As it is meant to be.
Welcome to sandbox games, where people are suppose to be able to play how they want and not have their playstyle dictated by mechanics.
uhhh... no. Sandbox games have mechanics. They constrain what you want to do. If you want to have no constraints, get some action figures and go outside. Have fun doing whatever you want. If you are going to use "its a sandbox" as an excuse to allow anything, then you have to allow everything. What if my intended playstyle is to start with diamond everything and go rampaging against 10,000 creepers?
Its a game. There are rules and constraints. You are meant to operate within a ruleset, and there is a lot of flexibility within that ruleset. This defines the gameplay. Gameplay is crucial to a game, and must be carefully cultivated.
The "eat in combat to heal" mechanic is something notch has always disliked and has been trying to limit. He has now managed to remove it. You are upset because your exploit is gone.
And you can't sell a person an apple but before handing it to them change it into an orange then a pear then a tomato. I wanted an orange. I paid for an orange. Mojang is changing it into an pear. If they want to keep changing it then they need to make the game a fruit basket offering the game in each major phase.
You went to a fruit market, grabbed an orange, bought it, then complained when you realized it is a tangerine because you didn't pay enough attention.
That's why I'm alternatively pushing for a new Adventure Mode for these new mechanics. Creative (stage 1), Survival (stage 2), Adventure (stage 3). Each less of a sandbox than the prior with an increasing focus on being an RPG.
There is not meant to be a distinction! It is all supposed to work a single, unified game.
Giving players options to determine their own balance is a perfectly viable design option. Take Monopoly. It has official rules, but households often adopt their own rules, too--like getting all tax money if you land on Free Parking, or $400 if you land on GO. That changes the balance of the game substantially. But that's perfectly fine if those who play agree to it.
Yes, different options have a different balance to it. I would be stupid if I claimed that hard mode and easy mode had the same balance. But they are both balanced still. The extra monopoly rules are still balanced. If the rule was "first person to roll two sixes gets $10,000", it is unbalanced. That would be an awful optional rule. Even optional rules must maintain game balance. Or what if they made the go amount $4,000? The game would never end. You would not be able to drain a person of their resources, you would just suck up all of the money in the bank, and it would be horrible. By stating that the optional rule is to get $400 from go implies that it is a balanced number to use.
When did I ever say the MMO model was more sensible? I hate the MMO model. I played WoW for 5 years and became incredibly bitter over time because they kept changing things about the game and I had no recourse. I also got a bit tired of the carrot-on-a-stick philosophy.
But I also know they don't have much choice. It's not viable to maintain servers for every major version of the game, let alone splitting the playerbase on that. That's the price of communal games; if all players play together then they all have to play by the same rules, which means they all have to update even if they don't like it.
So because they are operating under a model that gives the players a worst deal, they can take greater liberties with the game? Why? Because they said you are buying a month of the game? WEll, Mojang said you are buying hte game as-is, and they will give you future updates. You got the game as-is.
I've always said it's fine for game balance should be up to the player, or the SMP server. There's no inconsistency. Besides, doesn't Peaceful Mode kind of change game balance? Doesn't NPC villages and having free housing and food change game balance? Every option affects game balance in some way.
and when you know the game, you can add mechanics such that they will maintain the balance. They may shift the balance to compensate for their additions. It is part of their jobs ad the game designers. Believe me, they have changed the ore densities many times in response to new additions. However, you are asking them to maintain a dozen more options for balance. OR look at blazes. They added a mob that can set you on fire in the nether, and you can't put water on yourself in that case. So they weakened fire to make it so its not a death sentence. They adapted the balance of the game to account for their additions.
And that is a great example of where the balance of the game with and without hunger differs. With hunger, the slow burn for that duration was lethal. they could calculate it, determine the effect, and deem it unbalanced. With insta-heal food, that burning is not as big of a problem. east a few pork chops, and you pull through. However, now that persistent damage will still be dealing x hearts to you, which will consume y healing items to heal it. From a supply limited by the players inventory. A person with health regen will recover from being on fire if they survive with minimal extra resource expenditure from a much larger pool of resources. A person with the old food system will have a significant portion of their food consumed from a single attack.The entire mechanic is not really viable under the old system.
Mods have a high potential to change game balance, too. Yet people seem to suggest mods as a completely viable alternative. So why is it alright for a person to change their balance with a mod, but not through an option provided by Mojang?
Which side is being inconsistent here?
A mod does not have to maintain game balance. It is external to the game, and hence exempt from the same design constraints as the developers. As I modder, I could add in BFG2000 that kills all mobs on screen. That would be an acceptable mod. If mojang added the BFG2000, they had better add in a ton of mitigating factors to balance it out. If you are willing to break the balance of the game by removing hunger, you can mod it away. The game balance is broken, but it is something you have willfully done. If the game balance is messed up by doing it, you can't complain to mojang. That would be like saying "single player commands allowed be to attack things 100 blocks away, and now ghasts are too easy!". You have taken on the implications of changing the game.
But once mojang offers the option, they are saying that it is balanced. Just like the monopoly alternate rules are implied to be balanced. They can shift the balance, but it must still be balanced. If mojang offered an option to remove trees, people would complain because you can't really do anything in the game without a tree. Hence, if they removed trees, they would have to offer a viable tree-alternative.
You can't completely ignore hunger on Easy. Your character will still deteriorate if you ignore it, making them more susceptible to death by falling, lava, or drowning. A point blank creeper explosion will kill you at half-health, too. And in the past those are the only things that ever posed a threat, anyway. Spiders, skeletons, zombies, etc., have never been threats, at least to me.
A creeper explosion on easy is half strength too. If it would kill you at half health on easy, it would kill you with full health on hard. the band in which falling is different is fairly narrow. Drowning is mainly determined by the air bar, which is unchanged. If you are taking drowning damage you have already messed up, so hitting that narrow band where it will be freshly lethal is rather narrow. And lava tends to be highly lethal anyways.No, its not 100% perfect. But it is very close. If your concern is that you can't build or wait around without starving, it will serve you perfectly fine.
The main legitimate complaint against hunger is that you will starve to death if you don't eat periodically. Easy takes that away. You can neglect hunger, and it won't kill you. It won't even leave you particularly vulnerable. If your complaint is against hunger, you are just being stubborn by not accepting easy.
If your complaint is about the lack of instant heal, that is the intentional shift to the combat mechanics. They are planning on adding healing potions to replace the need for an instance heal, and by doing so lets them control its power and rarity independatly of your overall ability to heal.
To clearly separate the focus, just like the focus of Creative and Survival are separated.
But it is not trying to separate the focus. It is expanding your options. If I am playing fallout:new vegas, they offer me the option to learn caravan, a gambling strategy card game. I can ignore it and go on the rest of the game without it, or I could become a cardshark and master the game. They don;t need to make a seperate "caravan mode" where the game is included because it is ignorable from within the game.
If you don't like the villages and strongholds, you will be able to fairly simply not engange in them. If you don't like the idea of getting quests and collecting artifacts, you can simply not get them. The world is not going to end, you are not going to be punished.
There are certain things that transcend modes, that are applied to all of them. Graphical changes, world generation, new blocks, etc. Just like those are applied to Creative Mode, I'd want them applied to the pre-1.8 Survival Mode and the Adventure Mode.
Stopping at a specific version would prevent me from getting those changes, bug fixes, and the final product. Staying at 1.7 also makes multiplayer increasingly unviable, which is my preferred environment: what's the point of building if nobody can see it?
In other words (again) I want the player mechanics of pre-1.8. That's it. Everything else I was current.
Yet you seem to think not playing at all is better than playing 1.7.3.
It's also the state of the game in that time period that earned Minecraft awards and 3.5 million customers. People will always complain and want more. That doesn't negate the fact that obviously a lot of people like it the way it is.
I know. I've made some of them.
I know. I've made some of them.
I already offered Tribblepoo my support in pushing for that as a graphics option.
I know. I've made some of them. Seeing so many of my structures now dripping was the straw that broke the camels back and caused me to quit playing. Even on Peaceful mode that screwed me over.
and if you think this is the only change I'm pushing for, you're mistaken.
you can't make everything an option and have a coherent game
creepers
endermen block movement none, low, high
bedrock fog
water drips
hunger
a fairly small list of options, and there are already 48 configurations of them alone. 192 if you factor in difficulty settings. And any change this is made must be balanced, and tested, in all 148. Compared to the 4 we have now. And yes, even the purely graphical ones could change things. Example: bedrock fog. Say there is an enemy found at the bottom of the map. If you know if fog is on or not, you can design it around that. If it is on, you can design it to use the fog to its advange, fleeing into concealment before returning to attack. However, realizing that it is not visible beyond that range, you don;t give it attacks that go that far. Without the bedrock fog, that entire design is defunct. However, there is no reason not to give it a long-range attack now, which would be a horrible design with the fog.
What if they want to add acid? damages the player while it it, flows as fst as water. You dig up into a pool of it, it will deal massive damage. Hence, you need the warning.
Every option constrains the potential gameplay, and complicated the balance. Hence, any options that exist must have a really good reason to exist. They do impact everybody, even those who are not using them. It is hard enough designing a robust, flexible, and balanced system when you know the parameters.
And Mojang is perfectly capable of determining what the default options are, to make the default gameplay meet their ideas of balance. That doesn't mean players can't have the ability to override it.
AS I've said, if they give the option, they are bringing the implicit guarantee that it is balanced. If I played a game, and it offered me th option to be a wizard or a fighter, and I discover that a wizard is vastly underpowered and dies in one hit, and hence is unviable in the game, I would find that to be a serious flaw. It doesn't matter if the game was designed for the fighter, merely by offering me the option of the wizard you are implying it is a valid choice.
If a player is going to make an option that will disrupt the balance, that disruption needs to be a willful choice, not something that slips by because they assume that a checkbox in the menu is not going to disrupt the game.
Hence, mods. Mods do not carry the implication that the balance of the game will be preserved. If that is part of the mod, they explicitly state it.
See also: Cheats. If a game has cheat codes, there is no implication that using them will preserve your game balance. In fact, just the opposite. Thats why they are called cheats.
I'm suppose to prove a negative? You expect every purchaser of the game to read the entire history of Notch's Twitter feeds before buying? A person can't know what information they don't have, nor can they reasonably be expected to know every place to look for information.
For 15 years I've bought games based on the game's website or maybe review sites like Gamespot. I've never been so mislead. I've never had to watch a person's Twitter for months or years to know what I'm buying. And to expect that is simply ridiculous.
And the site is 100% accurate. Complaining that they changed the combat mechanics, which are not shown on the site, and so what you learned from the site is misleading is false. What if you had bought the game right after 1.8 came out. You would have had the same information from the site to make your purchase decision, but you would not have had the ten months playing the game to be surprised by the changed in 1.8. If I looked at the site, bought the game, and got 1.8, I would not feel it was misrepresented or ripped off. I wouldn't have bought it for the healing mechanic and discovered a different one. I would have boughtit for the block manipulation and building, and discovered that it delivered.
You are upset because the notions you developed after buying the game were changed. You are upset because they altered the system you had gotten used to. And that does not justify introducing a massive disruption into the game to please you.
You assume I'm not familiar with the system. I am. And I still prefer the old. Why is that so unfathomable?
Because nobody has had time to master it yet. You have had 10 months of getting indocrinated with old system, learning the tactics, mastering the skills needed. You had developed the habits and playstyles that were never intended, and when they correct the issue they cause, it throws your game off. Learn the new system, learn the tactics, master the new skills. Whether or not you like the old ones better, the new ones are not worth abandoning the game. They are perfectly good mechanics, and you should be able to get by with them just fine.
What I bought was beta, and betas are for testing--not radical feature changes and primary development. So even labeling the game "beta" carries with it certain common expectations.
But, this has been discussed to death already in this thread and I'm particularly in the mood to repeat myself. Learn for yourself. Research what the beta phase is suppose to entail in software release cycles.
Betas are also for balancing. And hence, altering battle mechanics is perfectly normal. Ask any starcraft II beta tester.
I'm frankly amazed this thread has grown like it has. And amused. People hear the term 'sandbox' and they assume it means that the designers have to cater to every whim they might have. Every nuance and outcome utterly manageable, toggle-able or otherwise changeable. But even sandboxes have rules, as defined by the designers.
A modicum of control is good, but to be honest, catering too deeply to every want and desire of the players eventually grows to be counterproductive. How much time should the developers spend making facets of the game modular and how long shall the list of toggles be before everyone is pleased?
Not my place to say, but it's something to be considered.
And to be honest? I don't think anyone could hope to get anywhere suing Mojang based on not getting what you paid for. You paid for a game that was early in its development. Things change. Play the semantics of what is alpha, what is beta, etc, but the core of this is you paid for an unfinished product. After that, you don't get to ask for your money back when it turns out to be a product that isn't to your precise preference. Just like, for example, MMO players can't sue if the owner of said game decides to mix up the mechanics. So even bringing that up is amusing considering how pointless it is.
Right! This has developed into a quite nasty name calling, bashing fest with no thesible conclusion to discussion here.
There has been some wonderful posts, yet they are being swamped by rage, complaints, and views of folk who do not agree, and unleash this disagreement with petty name calling.
This does not belong in the 1.9 board as is either, but I left it as I felt it was fruitful discussion. It's now served its purpose, and I'm ending it now before it just devolves into a literal hell in here. :smile.gif:
I've said that multiple times in the past and elaborated on it. When you sell a game and make it available, it becomes a consumer product and there are rules and expectations that go with that. You can't develop a massively sold consumer product like this and then start changing it on everyone. Eventually enough consumers will become alienated that it risks violation of consumer protection laws; them not getting what they thought they were paying for.
Actually I'm just asking him to create a mode or provide options so those of us who have enjoyed the game as it was pre-1.8 mechanics-wise can continue to enjoy that. I've never once stated he can't continue to evolve the game.
It's been addressed. Checking a box in purchase forms isn't the end-all-be-all legal agreement many people seem to think it is. Courts can rule based on the fact that they're commonly checked without reading and on the fact that laymen don't understand what the terms actually mean.
It's like an English-speaker signing a form that's in Spanish. Just because they sign it doesn't mean it's 100% legally binding--the court can determine that they were mislead.
And hunger and the bow mechanics are just the beginning of Notch's changes. NPC Villages, NPCs, hunger, bow, sprinting, abandoned mines, limited fortresses, experience, etc., all point to an RPG game. Those videos show a sandbox game.
Could you say that Final Fantasy 8 is a card game because it has a card game in it? No. It's an RPG because everything that surrounds the card game makes it an RPG. Everything around what those videos show is making Minecraft an RPG. There's also rumors of skills, levels, the ability to "win". It's becoming less and less the sandbox game portrayed in those videos.
In alpha development, yes, long before you open the game up to every single customer. Before you allow a huge modding community to be built around it.
I enjoyed the old mechanics. Rate of fire vs. damage amount. That's a common give-and-take relationship with weapons. And I never had a problem using the bow before. I used it almost exclusively--almost never used swords. And it made skeleton spawner traps quite valuable.
Welcome to sandbox games, where people are suppose to be able to play how they want and not have their playstyle dictated by mechanics.
They already negated much of the rapid-fire advantage by making it so mobs can only be damaged at a limited rate. If you spammed a single target you'd waste easily half the arrows. So you have to adapt.
And you can't sell a person an apple but before handing it to them change it into an orange then a pear then a tomato. I wanted an orange. I paid for an orange. Mojang is changing it into an pear. If they want to keep changing it then they need to make the game a fruit basket offering the game in each major phase.
That's why I'm alternatively pushing for a new Adventure Mode for these new mechanics. Creative (stage 1), Survival (stage 2), Adventure (stage 3). Each less of a sandbox than the prior with an increasing focus on being an RPG.
Giving players options to determine their own balance is a perfectly viable design option. Take Monopoly. It has official rules, but households often adopt their own rules, too--like getting all tax money if you land on Free Parking, or $400 if you land on GO. That changes the balance of the game substantially. But that's perfectly fine if those who play agree to it.
I recently bought Monopoly Streets for my PS3. It's got standard game modes. You know what else it has? HOUSE RULES! It lets you adjust a lot of things.
Can you buy your way out of jail? Yes/no.
How much does it cost?
How many turns do you stay in jail?
Do you get money if you land on Free Parking?
Do you get double money if you land on GO?
How much is the Luxury Tax?
These are just some of the options offered. Does that change the balance? Hell yeah. But it enables the player to play how they like.
Are you saying that game had a bad design philosophy?
When did I ever say the MMO model was more sensible? I hate the MMO model. I played WoW for 5 years and became incredibly bitter over time because they kept changing things about the game and I had no recourse. I also got a bit tired of the carrot-on-a-stick philosophy.
But I also know they don't have much choice. It's not viable to maintain servers for every major version of the game, let alone splitting the playerbase on that. That's the price of communal games; if all players play together then they all have to play by the same rules, which means they all have to update even if they don't like it.
I've always said it's fine for game balance to be up to the player, or the SMP server. There's no inconsistency. Besides, doesn't Peaceful Mode kind of change game balance? Doesn't NPC villages and having free housing and food change game balance? Every option affects game balance in some way.
Mods have a high potential to change game balance, too. Yet people seem to suggest mods as a completely viable alternative. So why is it alright for a person to change their balance with a mod, but not through an option provided by Mojang?
Which side is being inconsistent here?
You can't completely ignore hunger on Easy. Your character will still deteriorate if you ignore it, making them more susceptible to death by falling, lava, or drowning. A point blank creeper explosion will kill you at half-health, too. And in the past those are the only things that ever posed a threat, anyway. Spiders, skeletons, zombies, etc., have never been threats, at least to me.
Okay... I guess the odd spider falling on my head came close to making me **** myself...
To clearly separate the focus, just like the focus of Creative and Survival are separated.
There are certain things that transcend modes, that are applied to all of them. Graphical changes, world generation, new blocks, etc. Just like those are applied to Creative Mode, I'd want them applied to the pre-1.8 Survival Mode and the Adventure Mode.
Stopping at a specific version would prevent me from getting those changes, bug fixes, and the final product. Staying at 1.7 also makes multiplayer increasingly unviable, which is my preferred environment: what's the point of building if nobody can see it?
In other words (again) I want the player mechanics of pre-1.8. That's it. Everything else I was current.
An option/separate mode isn't forcing anything on other people.
It's also the state of the game in that time period that earned Minecraft awards and 3.5 million customers. People will always complain and want more. That doesn't negate the fact that obviously a lot of people like it the way it is.
See my Monopoly example above. And Monopoly isn't the only game that has options like that.
I know. I've made some of them.
I know. I've made some of them.
I already offered Tribblepoo my support in pushing for that as a graphics option.
I know. I've made some of them. Seeing so many of my structures now dripping was the straw that broke the camels back and caused me to quit playing. Even on Peaceful mode that screwed me over.
And if you think this is the only change I'm pushing for, you're mistaken.
And Mojang is perfectly capable of determining what the default options are, to make the default gameplay meet their ideas of balance. That doesn't mean players can't have the ability to override it.
I'm suppose to prove a negative? You expect every purchaser of the game to read the entire history of Notch's Twitter feeds before buying? A person can't know what information they don't have, nor can they reasonably be expected to know every place to look for information.
For 15 years I've bought games based on the game's website or maybe review sites like Gamespot. That's always given me enough. I've never had to watch a person's Twitter for months or years to know what I'm buying. And to expect that is simply ridiculous.
You assume I'm not familiar with the system. I am. And I still prefer the old. Why is that so unfathomable?
Dang, that's a good arguement. Who will I side with? Hmm. Probs you :smile.gif:
DEAL WITH IT.
lol, I thank you. Though I do encourage you to read at least some of this thread (I know--it's huge) and get further background. I'd love support but prefer it to be based on as well a formed opinion as possible.
I read through all of it, what makes you think I didn't?
DEAL WITH IT.
What I bought was beta, and betas are for testing--not radical feature changes and primary development. So even labeling the game "beta" carries with it certain common expectations.
But, this has been discussed to death already in this thread and I'm particularly in the mood to repeat myself. Learn for yourself. Research what the beta phase is suppose to entail in software release cycles.
Assumption, admittedly. To read all this... you must have balls of solid obsidian.
P.S. Obsidian as in Minecraft's hardest material. Not glass. :tongue.gif:
That is funny :smile.gif:
Why is that so black and white? Is it really beyond your conception that it can be both, at the same time? It is possible to add the "RPG elements" in a way that does not destroy the sandbox nature. And that is exactly what they are doing. The sandbox is still there. There is just more surrounding it. All the video shows is running around a natural alndscape, picking up blocks, and building some houses with it. All of which are very much core to the game. Yes, even now.
Can you say that Minecraft is and RPG because it will have an RPG in it? No. Its a sandbox because everything that surrounds the RPG makes it into a sandbox. You will be free to play and completely ignore all of the RPG aspects. It is a sandbox game at its core, and that core is still there. They are just expanding it. If they were destroying the core gameplay, I would be complaining. I've been playing the game much longer than you have, and I have grown quite attached to it as well. And I can still go out, and utilizing the new game elements, play the same game I have been for years.
No, in beta, and in release. Beta's are famous for changing mechanics. It is not unheard of in released games.
Mob grinders have never been an intended part of the gameplay. They have allowed them because it is an emergent aspect of the game that people were creative enough to make. They are not part of the balance, and any balance that relies on them is flawed. I don't use mob grinders. As such, arrows were rather infeasible. I mostly ignored them because 5 arrows per mob adds up very quickly, and is infeasible with legit arrows for regular use. Now, it takes 2, and I feel like I can afford to shoot a mob with a bow. It feels much more satisfying and is balanced better. The only reason its worse for you is because you were removing the resource component of it, which is meant to be a limit. I still don't arrow every mob to death, and I use my sword, but there are arrows exchanged in combat now. As it is meant to be.
uhhh... no. Sandbox games have mechanics. They constrain what you want to do. If you want to have no constraints, get some action figures and go outside. Have fun doing whatever you want. If you are going to use "its a sandbox" as an excuse to allow anything, then you have to allow everything. What if my intended playstyle is to start with diamond everything and go rampaging against 10,000 creepers?
Its a game. There are rules and constraints. You are meant to operate within a ruleset, and there is a lot of flexibility within that ruleset. This defines the gameplay. Gameplay is crucial to a game, and must be carefully cultivated.
The "eat in combat to heal" mechanic is something notch has always disliked and has been trying to limit. He has now managed to remove it. You are upset because your exploit is gone.
You went to a fruit market, grabbed an orange, bought it, then complained when you realized it is a tangerine because you didn't pay enough attention.
There is not meant to be a distinction! It is all supposed to work a single, unified game.
Yes, different options have a different balance to it. I would be stupid if I claimed that hard mode and easy mode had the same balance. But they are both balanced still. The extra monopoly rules are still balanced. If the rule was "first person to roll two sixes gets $10,000", it is unbalanced. That would be an awful optional rule. Even optional rules must maintain game balance. Or what if they made the go amount $4,000? The game would never end. You would not be able to drain a person of their resources, you would just suck up all of the money in the bank, and it would be horrible. By stating that the optional rule is to get $400 from go implies that it is a balanced number to use.
So because they are operating under a model that gives the players a worst deal, they can take greater liberties with the game? Why? Because they said you are buying a month of the game? WEll, Mojang said you are buying hte game as-is, and they will give you future updates. You got the game as-is.
and when you know the game, you can add mechanics such that they will maintain the balance. They may shift the balance to compensate for their additions. It is part of their jobs ad the game designers. Believe me, they have changed the ore densities many times in response to new additions. However, you are asking them to maintain a dozen more options for balance. OR look at blazes. They added a mob that can set you on fire in the nether, and you can't put water on yourself in that case. So they weakened fire to make it so its not a death sentence. They adapted the balance of the game to account for their additions.
And that is a great example of where the balance of the game with and without hunger differs. With hunger, the slow burn for that duration was lethal. they could calculate it, determine the effect, and deem it unbalanced. With insta-heal food, that burning is not as big of a problem. east a few pork chops, and you pull through. However, now that persistent damage will still be dealing x hearts to you, which will consume y healing items to heal it. From a supply limited by the players inventory. A person with health regen will recover from being on fire if they survive with minimal extra resource expenditure from a much larger pool of resources. A person with the old food system will have a significant portion of their food consumed from a single attack.The entire mechanic is not really viable under the old system.
A mod does not have to maintain game balance. It is external to the game, and hence exempt from the same design constraints as the developers. As I modder, I could add in BFG2000 that kills all mobs on screen. That would be an acceptable mod. If mojang added the BFG2000, they had better add in a ton of mitigating factors to balance it out. If you are willing to break the balance of the game by removing hunger, you can mod it away. The game balance is broken, but it is something you have willfully done. If the game balance is messed up by doing it, you can't complain to mojang. That would be like saying "single player commands allowed be to attack things 100 blocks away, and now ghasts are too easy!". You have taken on the implications of changing the game.
But once mojang offers the option, they are saying that it is balanced. Just like the monopoly alternate rules are implied to be balanced. They can shift the balance, but it must still be balanced. If mojang offered an option to remove trees, people would complain because you can't really do anything in the game without a tree. Hence, if they removed trees, they would have to offer a viable tree-alternative.
A creeper explosion on easy is half strength too. If it would kill you at half health on easy, it would kill you with full health on hard. the band in which falling is different is fairly narrow. Drowning is mainly determined by the air bar, which is unchanged. If you are taking drowning damage you have already messed up, so hitting that narrow band where it will be freshly lethal is rather narrow. And lava tends to be highly lethal anyways.No, its not 100% perfect. But it is very close. If your concern is that you can't build or wait around without starving, it will serve you perfectly fine.
The main legitimate complaint against hunger is that you will starve to death if you don't eat periodically. Easy takes that away. You can neglect hunger, and it won't kill you. It won't even leave you particularly vulnerable. If your complaint is against hunger, you are just being stubborn by not accepting easy.
If your complaint is about the lack of instant heal, that is the intentional shift to the combat mechanics. They are planning on adding healing potions to replace the need for an instance heal, and by doing so lets them control its power and rarity independatly of your overall ability to heal.
But it is not trying to separate the focus. It is expanding your options. If I am playing fallout:new vegas, they offer me the option to learn caravan, a gambling strategy card game. I can ignore it and go on the rest of the game without it, or I could become a cardshark and master the game. They don;t need to make a seperate "caravan mode" where the game is included because it is ignorable from within the game.
If you don't like the villages and strongholds, you will be able to fairly simply not engange in them. If you don't like the idea of getting quests and collecting artifacts, you can simply not get them. The world is not going to end, you are not going to be punished.
Yet you seem to think not playing at all is better than playing 1.7.3.
But the balance and development implications of making it is.
and that is still present.
you can't make everything an option and have a coherent game
creepers
endermen block movement none, low, high
bedrock fog
water drips
hunger
a fairly small list of options, and there are already 48 configurations of them alone. 192 if you factor in difficulty settings. And any change this is made must be balanced, and tested, in all 148. Compared to the 4 we have now. And yes, even the purely graphical ones could change things. Example: bedrock fog. Say there is an enemy found at the bottom of the map. If you know if fog is on or not, you can design it around that. If it is on, you can design it to use the fog to its advange, fleeing into concealment before returning to attack. However, realizing that it is not visible beyond that range, you don;t give it attacks that go that far. Without the bedrock fog, that entire design is defunct. However, there is no reason not to give it a long-range attack now, which would be a horrible design with the fog.
What if they want to add acid? damages the player while it it, flows as fst as water. You dig up into a pool of it, it will deal massive damage. Hence, you need the warning.
Every option constrains the potential gameplay, and complicated the balance. Hence, any options that exist must have a really good reason to exist. They do impact everybody, even those who are not using them. It is hard enough designing a robust, flexible, and balanced system when you know the parameters.
AS I've said, if they give the option, they are bringing the implicit guarantee that it is balanced. If I played a game, and it offered me th option to be a wizard or a fighter, and I discover that a wizard is vastly underpowered and dies in one hit, and hence is unviable in the game, I would find that to be a serious flaw. It doesn't matter if the game was designed for the fighter, merely by offering me the option of the wizard you are implying it is a valid choice.
If a player is going to make an option that will disrupt the balance, that disruption needs to be a willful choice, not something that slips by because they assume that a checkbox in the menu is not going to disrupt the game.
Hence, mods. Mods do not carry the implication that the balance of the game will be preserved. If that is part of the mod, they explicitly state it.
See also: Cheats. If a game has cheat codes, there is no implication that using them will preserve your game balance. In fact, just the opposite. Thats why they are called cheats.
And the site is 100% accurate. Complaining that they changed the combat mechanics, which are not shown on the site, and so what you learned from the site is misleading is false. What if you had bought the game right after 1.8 came out. You would have had the same information from the site to make your purchase decision, but you would not have had the ten months playing the game to be surprised by the changed in 1.8. If I looked at the site, bought the game, and got 1.8, I would not feel it was misrepresented or ripped off. I wouldn't have bought it for the healing mechanic and discovered a different one. I would have boughtit for the block manipulation and building, and discovered that it delivered.
You are upset because the notions you developed after buying the game were changed. You are upset because they altered the system you had gotten used to. And that does not justify introducing a massive disruption into the game to please you.
Because nobody has had time to master it yet. You have had 10 months of getting indocrinated with old system, learning the tactics, mastering the skills needed. You had developed the habits and playstyles that were never intended, and when they correct the issue they cause, it throws your game off. Learn the new system, learn the tactics, master the new skills. Whether or not you like the old ones better, the new ones are not worth abandoning the game. They are perfectly good mechanics, and you should be able to get by with them just fine.
Betas are also for balancing. And hence, altering battle mechanics is perfectly normal. Ask any starcraft II beta tester.
A modicum of control is good, but to be honest, catering too deeply to every want and desire of the players eventually grows to be counterproductive. How much time should the developers spend making facets of the game modular and how long shall the list of toggles be before everyone is pleased?
Not my place to say, but it's something to be considered.
And to be honest? I don't think anyone could hope to get anywhere suing Mojang based on not getting what you paid for. You paid for a game that was early in its development. Things change. Play the semantics of what is alpha, what is beta, etc, but the core of this is you paid for an unfinished product. After that, you don't get to ask for your money back when it turns out to be a product that isn't to your precise preference. Just like, for example, MMO players can't sue if the owner of said game decides to mix up the mechanics. So even bringing that up is amusing considering how pointless it is.
There has been some wonderful posts, yet they are being swamped by rage, complaints, and views of folk who do not agree, and unleash this disagreement with petty name calling.
This does not belong in the 1.9 board as is either, but I left it as I felt it was fruitful discussion. It's now served its purpose, and I'm ending it now before it just devolves into a literal hell in here. :smile.gif: