Zombie pigmen farms relying on pigmen aggressivity to get drop and XP are know to rely on a bug.
As far as I remember, before 1.16, Mojang said this bug would be fixed someday, not in 1.16 but in some future version (I'm not sure if the ever gave a precise version number for this.
But, listening to some recent farm makers tutorials, what is going to change or not is getting very confused as I could hear all kind of stuff and the opposite.
So what do we know if the following will change?
(Whenever I write pigmen here, I'm talking about zombified piglings.)
[ ] Pigmen dropping XP when angry even if not killed by player or dog. (This I think will changed it is listed as a bug.)
[ ] Pigmen having chances of dropping gold ingots even if not killed by player or dog (This on I guess will change too.)
[ ] Pigmen making all surrounding pigmen angry.
[ ] Farm-used named (alarm) pigmen refreshing anger of newly spawned pigmen ?
[ ] Other things ?
[ ] All of the above ?
Also, IMO, farms that give you minable resources (at least) need to be nerfed in a "cave update" - I made it so that all mobs only drop "mineral drops" if killed by a player, with iron golems and Looting requiring a direct kill to drop anything or have any effect (only melee attacks work, which also fixes MC-3304 - this was supposed to be the intended behavior). Mobs can't spawn on top of the Nether at all, which also deals void damage (i.e. you are seen as "out of the world") and bedrock-breaking exploits were patched by forbidding anything other than a player in Creative from replacing it at the lowest level of chunk data storage (not that 1.6.4 had much in the way of this, most of the bugs came about since 1.8). This would increase the appeal of mining if it is more effective than farms (which still do work, just not as effective, especially AFK farms), otherwise I'm sure that the majority of players will continue to farm as they currently do and lose interest in a "cave update" within a few weeks, if that (in fact, I've already seen people complaining in 1.17 update threads about how little content is added for the update frequency and how modders can add 10x the content in the same time).
Of course, as seen by the age of MC-56653 and the attempted fix version for MC-3304 I doubt Mojang will fix it anytime soon; they are hilariously bad at fixing bugs which are extremely easy to fix (I simply added a check to see if the source of damage that killed a mob is direct), even ones with fixes provided (like, why did they add a "fabulous graphics" setting which has minimal effect from what I've heard while not fixing smooth lighting bugs which are much more obvious, and in fact even worse in newer versions).
Well, many sources seemed to report that Mojang WILL fix this but no in 1.16 (that was before 1.16 came out), and people suggested maybe 1.17 or 1.18 or so.
Your "suggestion" to give players interest in mining reminds me how different players have evolved different interests in the game.
The things that I've come to enjoy the most in this game:
- Automating and optimising stuff to get freedom from repetitive work (would like to build better but I think I'm just average at it)
- Building a decent house that more or less fits the landscape and without destroying everything around it
- Exploring biomes (and making maps and just chilling out in Minecraft's nature)
- I also like to see farms like server-farms as some common projects that players can share.
(These precisely remind me that I initially tried Minecraft because it was cited as influence for both Factorio and Stardew Valley... Hence I like to see in Minecraft some aspects of a more relaxed Factorio. Sure ... someone's going to suggest that I try Satisfactory ... which I I hope to do some time) ... but still, I like to do these things in Minecraft.)
(And yes, I know that players who are into farms very often destroy all their landscape for it ... which I find a little depressing.
Not talking about ilmango-type crazy redstone projects, rather players who's "bases" are an entropic collection of large grey cubes and large hole because they need to produce every item in their base, even the server already has a public farm for it.
So I'm not that type, I'm still another type of player into farms.)
And I know that farms + economy in multiplayer games can bring servers down... (And also cause massive dramas.)
I'm somehow excited for 1.17, but for me it's more about exploring the new cave biomes than really about more mining.
So the idea that the game could switch back to something that requires me to spend more and more time mining underground and never get free from repetitive tasks ... that may just turn me off it this happens. Even if it could make sense because there's "Mine" in "Minecraft".
That's just how I've come to appreciate the game since I discovered it.
Zombie pigmen farms relying on pigmen aggressivity to get drop and XP are know to rely on a bug.
As far as I remember, before 1.16, Mojang said this bug would be fixed someday, not in 1.16 but in some future version (I'm not sure if the ever gave a precise version number for this.
But, listening to some recent farm makers tutorials, what is going to change or not is getting very confused as I could hear all kind of stuff and the opposite.
So what do we know if the following will change?
(Whenever I write pigmen here, I'm talking about zombified piglings.)
[ ] Pigmen dropping XP when angry even if not killed by player or dog. (This I think will changed it is listed as a bug.)
[ ] Pigmen having chances of dropping gold ingots even if not killed by player or dog (This on I guess will change too.)
[ ] Pigmen making all surrounding pigmen angry.
[ ] Farm-used named (alarm) pigmen refreshing anger of newly spawned pigmen ?
[ ] Other things ?
[ ] All of the above ?
As far as I can tell there is no planned fix version, the bug report indicates an attempted fix in 1.16-pre1:
MC-56653 Zombified Piglins drop XP and rare drops if killed by anything while in angered state
Also, IMO, farms that give you minable resources (at least) need to be nerfed in a "cave update" - I made it so that all mobs only drop "mineral drops" if killed by a player, with iron golems and Looting requiring a direct kill to drop anything or have any effect (only melee attacks work, which also fixes MC-3304 - this was supposed to be the intended behavior). Mobs can't spawn on top of the Nether at all, which also deals void damage (i.e. you are seen as "out of the world") and bedrock-breaking exploits were patched by forbidding anything other than a player in Creative from replacing it at the lowest level of chunk data storage (not that 1.6.4 had much in the way of this, most of the bugs came about since 1.8). This would increase the appeal of mining if it is more effective than farms (which still do work, just not as effective, especially AFK farms), otherwise I'm sure that the majority of players will continue to farm as they currently do and lose interest in a "cave update" within a few weeks, if that (in fact, I've already seen people complaining in 1.17 update threads about how little content is added for the update frequency and how modders can add 10x the content in the same time).
Of course, as seen by the age of MC-56653 and the attempted fix version for MC-3304 I doubt Mojang will fix it anytime soon; they are hilariously bad at fixing bugs which are extremely easy to fix (I simply added a check to see if the source of damage that killed a mob is direct), even ones with fixes provided (like, why did they add a "fabulous graphics" setting which has minimal effect from what I've heard while not fixing smooth lighting bugs which are much more obvious, and in fact even worse in newer versions).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Well, many sources seemed to report that Mojang WILL fix this but no in 1.16 (that was before 1.16 came out), and people suggested maybe 1.17 or 1.18 or so.
Your "suggestion" to give players interest in mining reminds me how different players have evolved different interests in the game.
The things that I've come to enjoy the most in this game:
- Automating and optimising stuff to get freedom from repetitive work (would like to build better but I think I'm just average at it)
- Building a decent house that more or less fits the landscape and without destroying everything around it
- Exploring biomes (and making maps and just chilling out in Minecraft's nature)
- I also like to see farms like server-farms as some common projects that players can share.
(These precisely remind me that I initially tried Minecraft because it was cited as influence for both Factorio and Stardew Valley... Hence I like to see in Minecraft some aspects of a more relaxed Factorio. Sure ... someone's going to suggest that I try Satisfactory ... which I I hope to do some time) ... but still, I like to do these things in Minecraft.)
(And yes, I know that players who are into farms very often destroy all their landscape for it ... which I find a little depressing.
Not talking about ilmango-type crazy redstone projects, rather players who's "bases" are an entropic collection of large grey cubes and large hole because they need to produce every item in their base, even the server already has a public farm for it.
So I'm not that type, I'm still another type of player into farms.)
And I know that farms + economy in multiplayer games can bring servers down... (And also cause massive dramas.)
I'm somehow excited for 1.17, but for me it's more about exploring the new cave biomes than really about more mining.
So the idea that the game could switch back to something that requires me to spend more and more time mining underground and never get free from repetitive tasks ... that may just turn me off it this happens. Even if it could make sense because there's "Mine" in "Minecraft".
That's just how I've come to appreciate the game since I discovered it.