I'm not going to discuss the specifics of that here, since as you so graciously pointed out, it has its own thread, but I will say that when comparing the spoils received from an action that is "iterated many, many times" to an action that is performed only a handful of times is sure to have unbalanced results. The "ore lottery" is iterated a seemingly infinite number of times, so the difference in rarity between each ore affects more the rate at which the ore is collected, rather than the odds that the player will encounter it. Should I also iterate the enchantment process an infinite number of times, I would end with a similar result: That I get less rare enchantments than common enchantments, but I am guaranteed to get both. However, I understand that the enchantment process cannot be iterated an infinite number of times, and as such, I see less rare enchantments than I see rare ores. Because of this, I believe that the mechanics for ore and enchantment are so fundamentally different that it's nigh impossible to compare the two without some element of subjectivity or interpretation.
The fact that they are fundamentally different is my entire point. People like to say "oh, well fidning diamonds is random, so its the same thing". But the entire dynamic is pretty much oppisite, even getting down to basic mathematical properties of the system. Ores do it right. That is how probabilities in games should work, and is a tried and true mechanic that you can see in games stretching back to the dawn of time. The very idea that you are going to have a highly random lottery in the game that you cna't average out is bad design.
You seem to have missed the entire point of my OP, and many of my posts afterward. I'm aware of the randomness enchantment. I am aware that the system could benefit from some tweaks, as could many features we currently have in Minecraft. As I said before, I believe that the problem is that players feel entitled to the high-level enchantments. You made some comments that demonstrate my point perfectly:
The definition of "should" is the very topic under debate. I believe that players "should" only expect to receive the bottom tier of enchantments, and anything above that is like winning the lottery: That's what you came for, that's what you were hoping for, and it certainly is possible, but it's not likely, and to become upset upon losing said lottery is a bit silly since the odds were stacked against you from the very beginning. I mentioned before that the ability to manipulate the odds is a boon, but players have let it go to their heads, thinking that because they can manipulate the odds at all, they should be able to do so fully.
Its not that I think you are justified to get the best enchantment every time. However, someone who has put in many times the effort to get the enchantment compared to someone else should not get something worse.
If you collected experience, spent that experience on an enchantment, and got an enchantment in return, then you did indeed get the spoils.
No, you got the spoils for 1/2 of the work, and the rest of it was obliverated by chance. If you think the minimum enchantment for a level is all you are entitled to, then it is horrendously overpriced(which is may be anyways), and that should be fixed.
Again, I see this as backwards logic. This whole statement's foundation is upon the idea that the player expects the very best, and feels slighted otherwise. For a moment, imagine this instead: You go to work, expecting a paycheque at your normal wage. Instead, you see that your boss has given you, out of all employees, a special bonus ($100) for employee of the month. You walk away with extra cash, happy as a lark. On your way out the door, you see Simon stomping his hat into the dirt. "Why so upset, Simon?" It turns out that Simon got runner-up for employee of the month, and only got a $50 bonus. I don't think Simon should be upset. He worked very hard and still got a bonus. Everyone else in the store worked very hard and got no bonus at all. But hey, there's always next month.
Its not like you pay 40 for an enchantment, get 40 worth of bonuses, and if you are luckly get another 1-5 bonus levels. That is the situation you are painting. Both of you have earned your fair wage, and are getting a bonus on top of that. If you work minumum waage(lets call it 6$/hour) for 40 hours a week, by the end of the month you have earned $960. That is the value for your work. What you are saying is one person gets a bonus so they get $1060, and another only earns $50 bonus so gets $1010. If that was the situation, it would be fine. You would be getting your fair value. Its more like one person gets lucky and is paid $2000, and you are unlucky and are getting paid $100. Not as a bonus, as your wage. if $100 really is the baseline you should be expecting for 160 hours of work, then you are being paid unfairly. It doesn't matter if on average you earn $1000, if you are given the $100, you are not getting the proper value of your work. a guy that worked for 2 days and receives his fair pay earns $100. You are getting paid for 2 days of work when you put in 20 days worth of effort.
What I want to know is: at what point was there a guarantee that each and every player should get the best enchantment? At what point did the absolute, very best, rarest, most unobtainable enchantment become the norm upon which we base the value of what we receive? I think that if people try to look at the enchantment process for what it is, they might at least feel a bit less "ripped off" every time they don't get the best of the best. I'm not trying to be pretentious, but all of this unhappiness is stemming from a negative (or perhaps overconfident) outlook.
Its not that we aren't getting hte best ofthe best. Its that we often get the worst of the worst.
Let's say you entered a lottery with a single ticket, and the other guy bought twenty tickets - each at a much higher cost then yours.
"Should" you each have an equal chance of winning? Under MineCraft's enchanting system, it's as near as makes no difference.
Actually, it would make a nigh insignificant difference in the lottery as well. In a 6-49 lottery, buying one more ticket only increases your odds by just over 0.0000001%. As for the price at which they're bought, I'd say that the person who paid more is only a victim of their own actions. They could have gone and bought them at the lower price.
There's another reason your analogy doesn't work: In Minecraft, the more expensive tickets have the potential for better prizes. As the cost increases, your odds get better. The cheap tickets will never win the big jackpot. I'd say that you are getting your money's worth. You're purchasing better odds.
Ironically, in most any other game experience would be used to customise a character. MineCraft, that's otherwise all about customisation, doesn't use it for that purpose.
It was stated at PAX that we would see a skill tree, and there's been no official word on whether that's been scrapped.
It's like the story of the old monk selling tea on a mountain - he had two types on offer, a $2 cup and a $200 cup. When asked the difference, he'd say, "$198".
Once one knows the "secret", there's no point to the $200 cup. Anyone who buys it before finding this out is obviously going to feel gypped (even if they could've asked at any time); it's not so simple to ask MineCraft however (there are no in-game hints other then those learned by spending way too much exp), and why would people expect the enchanting table to con them so badly?
There have never been in-game hints in Minecraft, so to expect them in this case is neither here nor there. Again I have to say that I don't think this analogy applies. In this metaphor, there is no possible situation for the customer to get better tea out of the more expensive one. In Minecraft, there is. If I had to tweak your story so it fits:
There are eighteen monks, each selling two cups of tea, one normal cup at $2 and the other at $200.
Half of the monks are selling two identical cups of tea,
Four of the monks are selling one normal cup and one slightly better cup,
Two of the monks are selling one normal cup and one very good cup of tea,
And the last two monks are selling one normal cup and one invaluable, unique, exquisite cup of tea each.
You know that to buy the cheap cup guarantees a normal cup of tea, but if you choose, you can spend more money for a chance to sip the nectar of the gods. If you end up with a normal cup, getting mad at the monk will do you no good. You're the one who decided to make the gamble.
The fact that they are fundamentally different is my entire point. People like to say "oh, well fidning diamonds is random, so its the same thing". But the entire dynamic is pretty much oppisite, even getting down to basic mathematical properties of the system. Ores do it right. That is how probabilities in games should work, and is a tried and true mechanic that you can see in games stretching back to the dawn of time. The very idea that you are going to have a highly random lottery in the game that you cna't average out is bad design.
You're still throwing around "should" a whole lot. Like I said, it's very hard to compare them without subjectivity. I think it's a step in a new direction, and a mechanic I don't often see in games. As I've said time and time again, players are so used to control that I think wrenching it out of their hands once in a while is a good thing.
Its not that I think you are justified to get the best enchantment every time. However, someone who has put in many times the effort to get the enchantment compared to someone else should not get something worse.
No, you got the spoils for 1/2 of the work, and the rest of it was obliverated by chance. If you think the minimum enchantment for a level is all you are entitled to, then it is horrendously overpriced(which is may be anyways), and that should be fixed.
Again, you don't understand the way I see things. You see it as the one player got 100%, and the other player got 50%. I see one player who got 100%, and another who got 200%. I'll repeat myself again to say that the intricate numbers and the minimum levels, etc. could use some tweaks, but as I said earlier in this post, the player was never informed that they're purchasing an enchantment. They're purchasing better odds toward getting a better enchantment. The way I see it, those odds are what could use a tweak, not an overhaul of the whole system.
Its not like you pay 40 for an enchantment, get 40 worth of bonuses, and if you are luckly get another 1-5 bonus levels. That is the situation you are painting. Both of you have earned your fair wage, and are getting a bonus on top of that. If you work minumum waage(lets call it 6$/hour) for 40 hours a week, by the end of the month you have earned $960. That is the value for your work. What you are saying is one person gets a bonus so they get $1060, and another only earns $50 bonus so gets $1010. If that was the situation, it would be fine. You would be getting your fair value. Its more like one person gets lucky and is paid $2000, and you are unlucky and are getting paid $100. Not as a bonus, as your wage. if $100 really is the baseline you should be expecting for 160 hours of work, then you are being paid unfairly. It doesn't matter if on average you earn $1000, if you are given the $100, you are not getting the proper value of your work. a guy that worked for 2 days and receives his fair pay earns $100. You are getting paid for 2 days of work when you put in 20 days worth of effort.
I'll again say that the player isn't working for cash, they're working for a better chance at getting more cash.
Its not that we aren't getting hte best ofthe best. Its that we often get the worst of the worst.
And that's where I think the tweaks should come in. I don't think the player should ever have a 100% chance of getting a rare enchantment, nor a 0% chance of getting a common one, but I agree that the odds of getting a feeble enchantment should drop more quickly as the experience levels rise. My point has been that I don't think the system itself is flawed.
EDIT: As another response to to Mystify's last post, the enchantment system in Minecraft seems to work much like random-loot monster drops in various MMOs. Two teams could work hard to get to a high level, get the right equipment to survive, go fight a boss, and walk away with two very different sets of loot. A lot of those games have rare loot that is far more rare than the best enchantments in Minecraft.
The biggest difference is the time between the first and second attempts. Most games don't cause you to lose your levels, but Minecraft does. When compared to other games, this could be perceived as an unfair tactic, but when viewed on its own, I see nothing wrong. Since, at this point, the only thing levels affect is enchantments (as opposed to another game where it would make you weaker or less proficient at skills), all it does is assign a higher value to enchanted tools. If I could "spend" my 30 levels over and over again, I think that would be more unbalanced than taking those levels away upon spending them.
WARNING: Speculation ahead!
Even when/if the skill tree is implemented, it was mentioned that skills would be lost upon death, but they don't wear out like enchantments do, and it is a direct purchase with no gambling. If, hypothetically, this potential feature were to be implemented, this would further balance the randomness of enchantment in my eyes. Now the player can choose to spend their money on skills, or gamble for enchantments. Giving the player a more consistent opportunity to use their levels allows for more randomness and harsher odds when gambling for an enchantment. I suspect that the odds are so stacked right now because they're set up for when a similar skill tree feature is implemented later on.
You're still throwing around "should" a whole lot. Like I said, it's very hard to compare them without subjectivity. I think it's a step in a new direction, and a mechanic I don't often see in games. As I've said time and time again, players are so used to control that I think wrenching it out of their hands once in a while is a good thing.
Again, you don't understand the way I see things. You see it as the one player got 100%, and the other player got 50%. I see one player who got 100%, and another who got 200%. I'll repeat myself again to say that the intricate numbers and the minimum levels, etc. could use some tweaks, but as I said earlier in this post, the player was never informed that they're purchasing an enchantment. They're purchasing better odds toward getting a better enchantment. The way I see it, those odds are what could use a tweak, not an overhaul of the whole system.
I'll again say that the player isn't working for cash, they're working for a better chance at getting more cash.
And that's where I think the tweaks should come in. I don't think the player should ever have a 100% chance of getting a rare enchantment, nor a 0% chance of getting a common one, but I agree that the odds of getting a feeble enchantment should drop more quickly as the experience levels rise. My point has been that I don't think the system itself is flawed.
At the very, very least, everying costs about 10000x what its worth, if you think that the minimum for each price is acceptable. Esp. since a 40 point enchantment has much more than double the work to get than a 20 point enchantment. Blatant randomness that has such a huge impact and no chance to mellow out is a very bad design. It doesn't even matter if its only a chance to get extra. Even if you can guarantee a worthwhile baseline, the chance to get significantly more than you should is also a bad design. If you accept a effficiceny III as an accpetable reward for 50 levels, then an efficiency V unbreakable V fortune II is extremely overpowered and should not be given to the player. Some randomness and unpredictability is fine. In extreme doses like this, all it does is guarantee that it will be unbalanced.
2 people spend 25 to enchant a diamond sword. One guy gets sharpness II, another gets sharpness IV and fire aspect. By your reasoning, you should only expect sharpness II, so the other guy is just getting a large bonus. But now he is overpowered. If he goes off to fight mobs, he will have a significant advantage over the othe guy. If they get into a fight, he is likely going to win. If they go of to fight a dragon, he has a considerable advantage. And why? He put in exactly the same amount of effort. If the sharpness II guy is getting his fair value, then the sharpness IV fire aspect sword guy is getting an unfair bonus.
Say they are on hardcore mode, and are each playing their own game. They put forth the same effort, and are playing equally well. One guy gets the sharpness II, the other the sharpness IV fire aspect sword. They both end up in a tough fight, and the first guy is killed, but the second guy, playing equally as well, wins because he has a better sword. They both did exactly the same thing, had exactly the same skill, but the first guy dies. Why? because he wasn't lucky. Now his world is deleted. This is the oppisite of good design.
And what about the guy who bought a 1 point sword and got sharpness II? The other guy put in well over 25x the amount of work, yes has exactly the same bonus. That is extremely, fundamentally unbalanced.
At the very, very least, everying costs about 10000x what its worth, if you think that the minimum for each price is acceptable. Esp. since a 40 point enchantment has much more than double the work to get than a 20 point enchantment. Blatant randomness that has such a huge impact and no chance to mellow out is a very bad design. It doesn't even matter if its only a chance to get extra. Even if you can guarantee a worthwhile baseline, the chance to get significantly more than you should is also a bad design. If you accept a effficiceny III as an accpetable reward for 50 levels, then an efficiency V unbreakable V fortune II is extremely overpowered and should not be given to the player. Some randomness and unpredictability is fine. In extreme doses like this, all it does is guarantee that it will be unbalanced.
2 people spend 25 to enchant a diamond sword. One guy gets sharpness II, another gets sharpness IV and fire aspect. By your reasoning, you should only expect sharpness II, so the other guy is just getting a large bonus. But now he is overpowered. If he goes off to fight mobs, he will have a significant advantage over the othe guy. If they get into a fight, he is likely going to win. If they go of to fight a dragon, he has a considerable advantage. And why? He put in exactly the same amount of effort. If the sharpness II guy is getting his fair value, then the sharpness IV fire aspect sword guy is getting an unfair bonus.
Say they are on hardcore mode, and are each playing their own game. They put forth the same effort, and are playing equally well. One guy gets the sharpness II, the other the sharpness IV fire aspect sword. They both end up in a tough fight, and the first guy is killed, but the second guy, playing equally as well, wins because he has a better sword. They both did exactly the same thing, had exactly the same skill, but the first guy dies. Why? because he wasn't lucky. Now his world is deleted. This is the oppisite of good design.
And what about the guy who bought a 1 point sword and got sharpness II? The other guy put in well over 25x the amount of work, yes has exactly the same bonus. That is extremely, fundamentally unbalanced.
The system needs some serious revision.
Overpowered is another subjective term; I'd say the player with the weaker sword died because he overestimated himself, but that's just me.
Otherwise, yeah, I agree that the numbers are off. My OP, and most of the posts afterward, were addressing those who wanted a direct spend-and-receive no-gamble version of enchantment.
Good chat. This is a good thread. I like it.
P.S. Your post just now was before I edited mine, if you missed that.
EDIT: As another response to to Mystify's last post, the enchantment system in Minecraft seems to work much like random-loot monster drops in various MMOs. Two teams could work hard to get to a high level, get the right equipment to survive, go fight a boss, and walk away with two very different sets of loot. A lot of those games have rare loot that is far more rare than the best enchantments in Minecraft.
And there is exactly the difference I was harping on. With random loot, you get a TON of chances for it to drop. On any given monster, you may not find anything, but you are killing hundreds, and so the chance of getting something in line with the expected power curve is really good. Random loot follows exaclty the propbability patterns that I have outlined as being good for a game. The enchanting system does not.
The biggest difference is the time between the first and second attempts. Most games don't cause you to lose your levels, but Minecraft does. When compared to other games, this could be perceived as an unfair tactic, but when viewed on its own, I see nothing wrong. Since, at this point, the only thing levels affect is enchantments (as opposed to another game where it would make you weaker or less proficient at skills), all it does is assign a higher value to enchanted tools. If I could "spend" my 30 levels over and over again, I think that would be more unbalanced than taking those levels away upon spending them.
The first attempt, you have all of the experience you gain normally through playing the game. For the second attempt, you either have to slowly accumulate it over hours and hours of play, or specifically grind for it. This makes any repeated attempts to get something worthwhile a arduous ordeal, which itself has a good chance of not giving good returns.
WARNING: Speculation ahead!
Even when/if the skill tree is implemented, it was mentioned that skills would be lost upon death, but they don't wear out like enchantments do, and it is a direct purchase with no gambling. If, hypothetically, this potential feature were to be implemented, this would further balance the randomness of enchantment in my eyes. Now the player can choose to spend their money on skills, or gamble for enchantments. Giving the player a more consistent opportunity to use their levels allows for more randomness and harsher odds when gambling for an enchantment. I suspect that the odds are so stacked right now because they're set up for when a similar skill tree feature is implemented later on.
This would just make the enchantment system completly worthless. People already think that it is not worthwhile to spend levels on enchantments. If they had anything else to spend them on, they would drop the enchantment system like a hot potatoe. That sign, in and of itself, shows that the system is deepyl flawed.
And there is exactly the difference I was harping on. With random loot, you get a TON of chances for it to drop. On any given monster, you may not find anything, but you are killing hundreds, and so the chance of getting something in line with the expected power curve is really good. Random loot follows exaclty the propbability patterns that I have outlined as being good for a game. The enchanting system does not.
I was talking about boss monsters which, at most, can be defeated once every few hours.
I think This would just make the enchantment system completly worthless. Some People already think that it is not worthwhile to spend levels on enchantments. If they had anything else to spend them on, they would likely drop the enchantment system like a hot potatoe. That sign, in and of itself, shows me that the system is deepyl flawed.
Again, a lot of subjectivity. I agree that the numbers need to be reworked, but I like the system. Enchantment would still have unique effects that couldn't be acquired anywhere else, and would not be lost upon death. They can also be traded between players, which opens up some interesting bartering in SMP, but that's hardly relevant.
The whole system is incomplete, so to declare it worthless, flawed, useless before it's fully implemented is kind of moot. Like I said, I'm defending the idea of a gambling-based enchantment system, not defending the exact numbers and odds as they are today.
Unless your normal style of playing the game is "run around all night battling monsters", it's going to take a loooong time to afford any of the higher-end enchantments. For example, once I'm established enough to be getting diamonds, here's the activities I'm normally engaged in:
* Mining - a few monsters from running into caves, but not many.
* In-Town Building - no monsters.
* Expanding - some monsters, but not huge hordes.
* Exploring - plenty of monsters, but:
** I've usually explored the local vicinity by this point, so expeditions are less frequent.
** I might die on the trip anyway, losing any XP gained in the process.
** If I'm trying not to die, I won't be out brawling all night.
Really, the only way I anticipate getting significant quantities of XP is by setting up a manual grinder, and I'd rather not spend longer there than I have to.
there is an easy way to gain xp, build a small room, collect eggs, keep filling the room with chickens, kill them
I was talking about boss monsters which, at most, can be defeated once every few hours.
Forcing people to wait hours between re-fighting a boss to have a chance at a good drop is also poor game desing. If I'm not mistaken, that is normally a feature you will see in MMOs, and not other genres of games. This is because they want tyo uto keep playing as long as possible, to keep sucking in subscription fees, and so half of the game design is based around artificially extending your play time. This does not make it a good game design.
Again, a lot of subjectivity. I agree that the numbers need to be reworked, but I like the system. Enchantment would still have unique effects that couldn't be acquired anywhere else, and would not be lost upon death. They can also be traded between players, which opens up some interesting bartering in SMP, but that's hardly relevant.
The whole system is incomplete, so to declare it worthless, flawed, useless before it's fully implemented is kind of moot. Like I said, I'm defending the idea of a gambling-based enchantment system, not defending the exact numbers and odds as they are today.
Most enchantments last far longer than your lifespan. Esp. if you are playing hardcore. A diamond sword enchantment may outlast you, but you will burn through an enchanted pick in a matter of minutes, and you frequently cycle through new armour. The lifespan of an item is far less than the lifespan of a person. So, the item enchantment is the more temporary bonus. Your lifespan is also within your control, your item has a finite number of uses.
So given the choice between reliably getting a bonus that will last until you die(i.e. forever on hardcore mode) or having a small chance at getting a good bonus that will last you a short while, the disparity is clear.
And I'm not saying you can't have a gambling based system. I'm saying all of the properties of this system are completly wrong, and not what you want in a chance-based element of gameplay.
The problem with the enchanting as it stands is not that there are bad enchantments per se, but that it is entirely random and uncontrollable. I'll give an example.
I had wanted to see what I could get on an Iron Pick for 2 levels. I went in, and after spending a few minutes removing and putting my pick back in (took a while for a level 2 enchantment to show up) I found one and got Efficiency I.
Moderately pleased, I decided to see what I could get for a higher level. So after spending a couple nights grinding I ended up at level 12. I rushed back to my table and put another Iron Pick back in. Guess what those 12 levels were spent on?
I got Efficiency I. The EXACT SAME thing I got before, the only difference is it costed 10 more levels.
As I see it the problems are these:
A: The table doesn't limit what enchantments show up based on your level. Meaning you can see a bunch of enchantments that you can't even get yet. Not too big of a deal but it's REALLY annoying.
B: Some different level enchantments give you the same effect. Meaning even if you spend a lot, there could be the same effect for a much lower cost, leading you to feeling like you got screwed.
C: The randomness of it in general puts a lot of people off. Many people don't see a point in bothering with it if they can't get what they want. Especially when chasing the more elusive enchantments like Silk Touch or Smite.
It has all to do with the chance of getting Efficiency I, Protection I, etc. IMO, I just enchant every iron item at a level of 1-3 for extra effects. If I ever get a lot of levels I'll of course use them all up at once (since to do otherwise is to waste a lot of XP)
Also, Diamond is worse than iron for enchanting tools/weapons. Who'd a thunk it!
Esp. since a 40 point enchantment has much more than double the work to get than a 20 point enchantment. Blatant randomness that has such a huge impact and no chance to mellow out is a very bad design.
And what about the guy who bought a 1 point sword and got sharpness II? The other guy (level 25) put in well over 25x the amount of work, yes has exactly the same bonus. That is extremely, fundamentally unbalanced.
The system needs some serious revision.
Here are the actual relative values for Mystify's examples, in case anyone wanted to know.
Level 40 is worth 3.9x the xp as level 20.
Level 25 is worth 325x the xp as level 1. So if you did get an enchantment at level 25 that you could have reasonably gotten at 1 you got seriously ripped off.
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When no one was looking, the Endermen took forty blocks.
They took 40 blocks. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s horrible.
And I'm not saying you can't have a gambling based system. I'm saying all of the properties of this system are completly wrong, and not what you want in a chance-based element of gameplay.
I'd say you'd want random effects to a minimum. All they really encourage in the long run is either people not using or getting into the system, or people grinding the heck out of it to get what they want. Neither is good gameplay.
There needs to be a decent baseline return on whatever you spend, and honestly I think you need to have a bit of control over it. If the system becomes unbalanced if people can choose to get a bonus they can rightly afford, then the system is just unbalanced in general -- it doesn't become more balanced by restricting broken things to people who are LUCKY. That just makes it both broken AND capricious.
Having some relatively small fluctuations around that decent baseline is fine.
Here are the actual relative values for Mystify's examples, in case anyone wanted to know.
Level 40 is worth 3.9x the xp as level 20.
Level 25 is worth 325x the xp as level 1. So if you did get an enchantment at level 25 that you could have reasonably gotten at 1 you got seriously ripped off.
Wow. I knew there was a disparity, I didn't realize it was that extreme. This just proved my point that the cost/benefit ratio is completly out of whack.
I'd say you'd want random effects to a minimum. All they really encourage in the long run is either people not using or getting into the system, or people grinding the heck out of it to get what they want. Neither is good gameplay.
There needs to be a decent baseline return on whatever you spend, and honestly I think you need to have a bit of control over it. If the system becomes unbalanced if people can choose to get a bonus they can rightly afford, then the system is just unbalanced in general -- it doesn't become more balanced by restricting broken things to people who are LUCKY. That just makes it both broken AND capricious.
Having some relatively small fluctuations around that decent baseline is fine.
Yes, exactly. Randomly being unbalanced isn't any better.
People complain i guess because they want to get the specific enchantment they want every time.
The desire for some reasonable level of control is part of it. Equally important, imho, is the fact that how much you spend doesn't necessarily correlate at all to what you receive.
I for one am a big fan of enchanting, albeit if people think it is flawed. Before enchanting, I would use 1 diamond pickaxe to find roughly 2-3 diamond patches for around 15 diamonds. Now that it takes about 2 enchanting levels to get unbreakable 1 on a diamond pickaxe, I can find twice as many patches for the same cost of diamond. On top of that, I was fortunate enough to get fortune II on a pickaxe that I keep as secondary and the output has been ~200% on diamond hauls, so in effect killing about 10 mobs to get a few levels to re-enchant a new pickaxe and I get 4x more diamonds than I used to get.
On top of that, I don't see why people are saying 'hours and hours' to get levels. I was able to get to level 32 in less than an hour by farming blazes in the nether...
I for one am a big fan of enchanting, albeit if people think it is flawed. Before enchanting, I would use 1 diamond pickaxe to find roughly 2-3 diamond patches for around 15 diamonds. Now that it takes about 2 enchanting levels to get unbreakable 1 on a diamond pickaxe, I can find twice as many patches for the same cost of diamond...
That's what any sane person would do with the current system, as the higher level enchantments are horribly wasteful and you'll never get your exp's worth.
On top of that, I don't see why people are saying 'hours and hours' to get levels. I was able to get to level 32 in less than an hour by farming blazes in the nether...
By farming, yes. It's not a good system for people just trying to play the game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
The fact that they are fundamentally different is my entire point. People like to say "oh, well fidning diamonds is random, so its the same thing". But the entire dynamic is pretty much oppisite, even getting down to basic mathematical properties of the system. Ores do it right. That is how probabilities in games should work, and is a tried and true mechanic that you can see in games stretching back to the dawn of time. The very idea that you are going to have a highly random lottery in the game that you cna't average out is bad design.
Its not that I think you are justified to get the best enchantment every time. However, someone who has put in many times the effort to get the enchantment compared to someone else should not get something worse.
No, you got the spoils for 1/2 of the work, and the rest of it was obliverated by chance. If you think the minimum enchantment for a level is all you are entitled to, then it is horrendously overpriced(which is may be anyways), and that should be fixed.
Its not like you pay 40 for an enchantment, get 40 worth of bonuses, and if you are luckly get another 1-5 bonus levels. That is the situation you are painting. Both of you have earned your fair wage, and are getting a bonus on top of that. If you work minumum waage(lets call it 6$/hour) for 40 hours a week, by the end of the month you have earned $960. That is the value for your work. What you are saying is one person gets a bonus so they get $1060, and another only earns $50 bonus so gets $1010. If that was the situation, it would be fine. You would be getting your fair value. Its more like one person gets lucky and is paid $2000, and you are unlucky and are getting paid $100. Not as a bonus, as your wage. if $100 really is the baseline you should be expecting for 160 hours of work, then you are being paid unfairly. It doesn't matter if on average you earn $1000, if you are given the $100, you are not getting the proper value of your work. a guy that worked for 2 days and receives his fair pay earns $100. You are getting paid for 2 days of work when you put in 20 days worth of effort.
Its not that we aren't getting hte best ofthe best. Its that we often get the worst of the worst.
Actually, it would make a nigh insignificant difference in the lottery as well. In a 6-49 lottery, buying one more ticket only increases your odds by just over 0.0000001%. As for the price at which they're bought, I'd say that the person who paid more is only a victim of their own actions. They could have gone and bought them at the lower price.
There's another reason your analogy doesn't work: In Minecraft, the more expensive tickets have the potential for better prizes. As the cost increases, your odds get better. The cheap tickets will never win the big jackpot. I'd say that you are getting your money's worth. You're purchasing better odds.
It was stated at PAX that we would see a skill tree, and there's been no official word on whether that's been scrapped.
There have never been in-game hints in Minecraft, so to expect them in this case is neither here nor there. Again I have to say that I don't think this analogy applies. In this metaphor, there is no possible situation for the customer to get better tea out of the more expensive one. In Minecraft, there is. If I had to tweak your story so it fits:
There are eighteen monks, each selling two cups of tea, one normal cup at $2 and the other at $200.
Half of the monks are selling two identical cups of tea,
Four of the monks are selling one normal cup and one slightly better cup,
Two of the monks are selling one normal cup and one very good cup of tea,
And the last two monks are selling one normal cup and one invaluable, unique, exquisite cup of tea each.
You know that to buy the cheap cup guarantees a normal cup of tea, but if you choose, you can spend more money for a chance to sip the nectar of the gods. If you end up with a normal cup, getting mad at the monk will do you no good. You're the one who decided to make the gamble.
You're still throwing around "should" a whole lot. Like I said, it's very hard to compare them without subjectivity. I think it's a step in a new direction, and a mechanic I don't often see in games. As I've said time and time again, players are so used to control that I think wrenching it out of their hands once in a while is a good thing.
Again, you don't understand the way I see things. You see it as the one player got 100%, and the other player got 50%. I see one player who got 100%, and another who got 200%. I'll repeat myself again to say that the intricate numbers and the minimum levels, etc. could use some tweaks, but as I said earlier in this post, the player was never informed that they're purchasing an enchantment. They're purchasing better odds toward getting a better enchantment. The way I see it, those odds are what could use a tweak, not an overhaul of the whole system.
I'll again say that the player isn't working for cash, they're working for a better chance at getting more cash.
And that's where I think the tweaks should come in. I don't think the player should ever have a 100% chance of getting a rare enchantment, nor a 0% chance of getting a common one, but I agree that the odds of getting a feeble enchantment should drop more quickly as the experience levels rise. My point has been that I don't think the system itself is flawed.
EDIT: As another response to to Mystify's last post, the enchantment system in Minecraft seems to work much like random-loot monster drops in various MMOs. Two teams could work hard to get to a high level, get the right equipment to survive, go fight a boss, and walk away with two very different sets of loot. A lot of those games have rare loot that is far more rare than the best enchantments in Minecraft.
The biggest difference is the time between the first and second attempts. Most games don't cause you to lose your levels, but Minecraft does. When compared to other games, this could be perceived as an unfair tactic, but when viewed on its own, I see nothing wrong. Since, at this point, the only thing levels affect is enchantments (as opposed to another game where it would make you weaker or less proficient at skills), all it does is assign a higher value to enchanted tools. If I could "spend" my 30 levels over and over again, I think that would be more unbalanced than taking those levels away upon spending them.
WARNING: Speculation ahead!
Even when/if the skill tree is implemented, it was mentioned that skills would be lost upon death, but they don't wear out like enchantments do, and it is a direct purchase with no gambling. If, hypothetically, this potential feature were to be implemented, this would further balance the randomness of enchantment in my eyes. Now the player can choose to spend their money on skills, or gamble for enchantments. Giving the player a more consistent opportunity to use their levels allows for more randomness and harsher odds when gambling for an enchantment. I suspect that the odds are so stacked right now because they're set up for when a similar skill tree feature is implemented later on.
At the very, very least, everying costs about 10000x what its worth, if you think that the minimum for each price is acceptable. Esp. since a 40 point enchantment has much more than double the work to get than a 20 point enchantment. Blatant randomness that has such a huge impact and no chance to mellow out is a very bad design. It doesn't even matter if its only a chance to get extra. Even if you can guarantee a worthwhile baseline, the chance to get significantly more than you should is also a bad design. If you accept a effficiceny III as an accpetable reward for 50 levels, then an efficiency V unbreakable V fortune II is extremely overpowered and should not be given to the player. Some randomness and unpredictability is fine. In extreme doses like this, all it does is guarantee that it will be unbalanced.
2 people spend 25 to enchant a diamond sword. One guy gets sharpness II, another gets sharpness IV and fire aspect. By your reasoning, you should only expect sharpness II, so the other guy is just getting a large bonus. But now he is overpowered. If he goes off to fight mobs, he will have a significant advantage over the othe guy. If they get into a fight, he is likely going to win. If they go of to fight a dragon, he has a considerable advantage. And why? He put in exactly the same amount of effort. If the sharpness II guy is getting his fair value, then the sharpness IV fire aspect sword guy is getting an unfair bonus.
Say they are on hardcore mode, and are each playing their own game. They put forth the same effort, and are playing equally well. One guy gets the sharpness II, the other the sharpness IV fire aspect sword. They both end up in a tough fight, and the first guy is killed, but the second guy, playing equally as well, wins because he has a better sword. They both did exactly the same thing, had exactly the same skill, but the first guy dies. Why? because he wasn't lucky. Now his world is deleted. This is the oppisite of good design.
And what about the guy who bought a 1 point sword and got sharpness II? The other guy put in well over 25x the amount of work, yes has exactly the same bonus. That is extremely, fundamentally unbalanced.
The system needs some serious revision.
Overpowered is another subjective term; I'd say the player with the weaker sword died because he overestimated himself, but that's just me.
Otherwise, yeah, I agree that the numbers are off. My OP, and most of the posts afterward, were addressing those who wanted a direct spend-and-receive no-gamble version of enchantment.
Good chat. This is a good thread. I like it.
P.S. Your post just now was before I edited mine, if you missed that.
And there is exactly the difference I was harping on. With random loot, you get a TON of chances for it to drop. On any given monster, you may not find anything, but you are killing hundreds, and so the chance of getting something in line with the expected power curve is really good. Random loot follows exaclty the propbability patterns that I have outlined as being good for a game. The enchanting system does not.
The first attempt, you have all of the experience you gain normally through playing the game. For the second attempt, you either have to slowly accumulate it over hours and hours of play, or specifically grind for it. This makes any repeated attempts to get something worthwhile a arduous ordeal, which itself has a good chance of not giving good returns.
This would just make the enchantment system completly worthless. People already think that it is not worthwhile to spend levels on enchantments. If they had anything else to spend them on, they would drop the enchantment system like a hot potatoe. That sign, in and of itself, shows that the system is deepyl flawed.
I was talking about boss monsters which, at most, can be defeated once every few hours.
Again, a lot of subjectivity. I agree that the numbers need to be reworked, but I like the system. Enchantment would still have unique effects that couldn't be acquired anywhere else, and would not be lost upon death. They can also be traded between players, which opens up some interesting bartering in SMP, but that's hardly relevant.
The whole system is incomplete, so to declare it worthless, flawed, useless before it's fully implemented is kind of moot. Like I said, I'm defending the idea of a gambling-based enchantment system, not defending the exact numbers and odds as they are today.
there is an easy way to gain xp, build a small room, collect eggs, keep filling the room with chickens, kill them
Forcing people to wait hours between re-fighting a boss to have a chance at a good drop is also poor game desing. If I'm not mistaken, that is normally a feature you will see in MMOs, and not other genres of games. This is because they want tyo uto keep playing as long as possible, to keep sucking in subscription fees, and so half of the game design is based around artificially extending your play time. This does not make it a good game design.
Most enchantments last far longer than your lifespan. Esp. if you are playing hardcore. A diamond sword enchantment may outlast you, but you will burn through an enchanted pick in a matter of minutes, and you frequently cycle through new armour. The lifespan of an item is far less than the lifespan of a person. So, the item enchantment is the more temporary bonus. Your lifespan is also within your control, your item has a finite number of uses.
So given the choice between reliably getting a bonus that will last until you die(i.e. forever on hardcore mode) or having a small chance at getting a good bonus that will last you a short while, the disparity is clear.
And I'm not saying you can't have a gambling based system. I'm saying all of the properties of this system are completly wrong, and not what you want in a chance-based element of gameplay.
http://pernsteiner.org/minecraft/enchant/
It has all to do with the chance of getting Efficiency I, Protection I, etc. IMO, I just enchant every iron item at a level of 1-3 for extra effects. If I ever get a lot of levels I'll of course use them all up at once (since to do otherwise is to waste a lot of XP)
Also, Diamond is worse than iron for enchanting tools/weapons. Who'd a thunk it!
Here are the actual relative values for Mystify's examples, in case anyone wanted to know.
Level 40 is worth 3.9x the xp as level 20.
Level 25 is worth 325x the xp as level 1. So if you did get an enchantment at level 25 that you could have reasonably gotten at 1 you got seriously ripped off.
They took 40 blocks. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s horrible.
I'd say you'd want random effects to a minimum. All they really encourage in the long run is either people not using or getting into the system, or people grinding the heck out of it to get what they want. Neither is good gameplay.
There needs to be a decent baseline return on whatever you spend, and honestly I think you need to have a bit of control over it. If the system becomes unbalanced if people can choose to get a bonus they can rightly afford, then the system is just unbalanced in general -- it doesn't become more balanced by restricting broken things to people who are LUCKY. That just makes it both broken AND capricious.
Having some relatively small fluctuations around that decent baseline is fine.
Wow. I knew there was a disparity, I didn't realize it was that extreme. This just proved my point that the cost/benefit ratio is completly out of whack.
Yes, exactly. Randomly being unbalanced isn't any better.
The desire for some reasonable level of control is part of it. Equally important, imho, is the fact that how much you spend doesn't necessarily correlate at all to what you receive.
So I got back to level 30 again, enchanted a second diamond pickaxe...
Efficiency IV
Unbreaking III
Silk Touch I
Yay!!!
Considering I evidently have a horse-shoe up my ass, im liking the random nature of enchants :tongue.gif:
Horse shoes indeed.
Now that you have this ridiculously awesome pick axe are you actually going to use it or store it in a chest so you will have it forever.
My Fortune I pick axe stays in a chest near the surface, it only comes out when I find diamonds. Can't get enough diamonds.
Make sure to acquire some grass, mycelium and ice with it and some pig spawners. (Before the next update)
They took 40 blocks. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s horrible.
On top of that, I don't see why people are saying 'hours and hours' to get levels. I was able to get to level 32 in less than an hour by farming blazes in the nether...
By farming, yes. It's not a good system for people just trying to play the game.
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
I don't like farming either.