Clarification: When I refer to how bonemeal was, I mean when it was insta-grow.
Top reasons why bonemeal was NOT OP:
1. It does not give you anything new. It only speeds up a process that would occur naturally anyways. (The exceptions are giant mushrooms and grass/flowers, but these weren't affected by the nerf)
2. To collect it, you have to fight Skeletons, one of the hardest mobs in the Overworld. Consider their recent buff, also. This is a daunting task in a newly created world.
Most common pro-nerf arguments and rebuttals
1. "I support anything that makes the game more difficult."
--You could choose to never use bonemeal if you think it makes the game to easy. There is no reason to punish player who don't want this added difficulty.
2. "But then people who do use it will have an advantage in PVP."
--Not starving to death is as much of an advantage as not being on fire. You can't kill someone with bread.
3. "I have chests full of bonemeal. It's way too common and needs a nerf."
--Bonemeal is much harder to gather for players who are just starting out. I could use a similar arguement to say that, "I have chests full of cobblestone. Therefore, cobblestone is OP and it should take 3 times as much to do anything with it."
4. "This is more realistic."
--This is laughable. Minecraft is NOT realistic and will never be. If it was, then I couldn't chop down a tree with my bare hands, skeletons and zombies wouldn't walk the earth, and the alternate dimensions wouldn't even exist.
Tl;dr-
I can quote myself specifically if needed to counter your arguements.
4. "This is more realistic."
--This is laughable. Minecraft is NOT realistic and will never be. If it was, then I couldn't chop down a tree with my bare hands, skeletons and zombies wouldn't walk the earth, and the alternate dimensions wouldn't even exist.
The nether and the end both exist. The nether is underneath Newark, NJ and the end is inside a crackhouse in east L.A.
On topic, I find it doesn't really matter to me. I usually plant a ton of wheat and eat apples (from farming wood early on) or animals until it grows. Then use the wheat for cows. Cows make one of the top foods, early armor and later in the game are needed for enchanting(books).
Ya know what. I'm done with this entire conversation. I made my point. Bonemeal has been nerfed and it will never return to what it originally was. The vast majority of players agree with the nerf and are happy with the new balancing. Just like the "Nether Water," and the "New Bookshelves," I gotta say I called it bang on!
Way to go Mojang by not listening to the cry babies who don't want any level of difficulty. The reasonable members of this community who supported the change thank you!
You didn't win anything. The people who understand about the need for good ergonomics in user interfaces lost a streamlined mechanism.
Mojang aren't always that great with their first (and sometime their final) attempts at game adjustments. The fact that you side with this change isn't necessarily to your credit.
As for the 'reasonable members' of the community you refer to. Most of them couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag. All I've seen from the majority on that side is subjective statements with nothing to back them up.
Usually important factors are missing from their considerations leading to a less than holistic conclusion. What grates the most is that after you point out the important factors they missed, they still fail to recognise, or for some reason deny their existence.
The fact is, if you think that the game needs to be more difficult food-wise, then this change is pointless on its own. Bonemeal isn't relevant to adequate long term food acquisition.
If there is no point to the change as it stands, then it shouldn't be made. It does not set a good precedent and fosters an attitude that could open the door to all manner of random and needless game changes.
It's not really the change I object to. It's the arbitrary and undisciplined way that it has been applied, without consideration for its full impact and/or lack of impact on the various parts of the existing game and gameplay.
Food is only a significant mechanic early game, and I mean VERY early game. Beyond the first couple days, if you suffer from starvation it was your own fault for not bringing enough food with you.
To be honest, I think we need a huge overhaul on food as a mechanic. Right now it is nothing more than an annoyance. All it takes is a couple days and you can have a fully functional wheat farm and a pen of animals that get more action than porn stars. On my 2-player server I've been doing with my uncle, we've got chests FULL of food scattered everywhere. One harvest is enough to fill half a chest; and we don't even go near our animal farm without muting our sound. The thing is, we've spent a vast majority of that time mining and building - it only took us the first day we were playing to set everything up, including (what was then) a makeshift shelter.
We're playing on Hard, and we had 1 death to starvation - only caused by the fact that I went out exploring and misjudged how far I intended to go (and brought no food with me).
I want to see hunger removed, or food potency and/or supply drastically nerfed. The problem with Minecraft has always been how fast supplies skyrocket. Renewable resource count rises exponentially, and the time it takes to actually mature and harvest them is a bit of a joke. Also keep in mind that your hunger does not deplete when you are idle. If you were desperate to prevent dying, it would take nothing more than a few minutes to find a couple seeds, plant your wheat, walk into your dirt shelter and afk while the crops grow. The only issue then is having the patience to do something else while you wait.
In my opinion, the issue is less that bone meal is OP, and more that food is not an interesting mechanic. A bonemeal nerf is only going to have any effect extremely early-game (which, is unlikely you will find bones that early on anyway unless you go hunting after the sun comes out), and the people who are incredibly bad at planning and preparation and forget to bring a stack of food with them.
As for the 'reasonable members' of the community you refer to. Most of them couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag. All I've seen from the majority on that side is subjective statements with nothing to back them up.
That's partly because 90% of the Minecraft community isn't even old enough to drive.
The fact is, if you think that the game needs to be more difficult food-wise, then this change is pointless on its own. Bonemeal isn't relevant to adequate long term food acquisition.
If there is no point to the change as it stands, then it shouldn't be made. It does not set a good precedent and fosters an attitude that could open the door to all manner of random and needless game changes.
It's not really the change I object to. It's the arbitrary and undisciplined way that it has been applied, without consideration for its full impact and/or lack of impact on the various parts of the existing game and gameplay.
It's funny, in two weeks nobody will care about the nerf as they'll be used to it.
No, they will have accepted it. There's a difference.
For example, I still hate the void fog. Hate. It. So every update I have to wait for Optifine, this mod, or something to be updated so I can play my world without having to deal with it. Same thing with endermen moving blocks around. I mod it out, and will refuse to update my game until the mods to correct these design flaws are updated.
Both of those were incredibly stupid design decisions (in my opinion) that many, many other people also hated, and still do. It's not that we "don't care" anymore, it's that we've accepted that it isn't going to change, and that it's just "one more thing" that we will have to mod out in order to continue to enjoy the game.
Granted, this bonemeal nerf isn't nearly as awful as my above examples, and (as the people I quoted earlier so eloquently stated) it's something that really has zero effect on anything other than the first 10 minutes of gameplay in a new world. But to me, that just makes it even more stupid a thing for the devs to be screwing with.
No, I absolutely won! The whole community did! The nerf to bonemeal was greatly needed. No more can you make yourself a lifetimes supply of food in a matter of minutes. I'm very happy with the change and the slight increase in difficulty. The bonemal nerf combined with the buff to skeletons is a nice adjustment.
No, I absolutely won! The whole community did! The nerf to bonemeal was greatly needed. No more can you make yourself a lifetimes supply of food in a matter of minutes. I'm very happy with the change and the slight increase in difficulty. The bonemal nerf combined with the buff to skeletons is a nice adjustment.
Yes. It will now take about 10 minutes, instead of 5 minutes, to make a lifetime's supply of food. Congrats on your glorious achievement. This is a monumental day in the development of Minecraft.
Yes. It will now take about 10 minutes, instead of 5 minutes, to make a lifetime's supply of food. Congrats on your glorious achievement. This is a monumental day in the development of Minecraft.
What ultimately finds its way into the 1.5 release and what is actually a good gameplay mechanic isn’t necessarily the same thing.
Think what you want about the change, but your argument will never hold any water. Gathering mountains of food never needed bonemeal and unless fundamental changes are made to the base food system, it never will.
Fiddling about with bonemeal was never going to be the solution to this problem you perceive (although just reducing the bonemeal yield from bones would have been a much more elegant way of reducing bonemeal's power).
I think I now understand why you think the way you do though. It's because you are greedy and impatient and value the speed of delivery over everything else. That's why you are obsessed with how long it takes for the food to grow, regardless of how easy it is to grow ample food if you just let it grow on its own.
You have gotten it into your mind that speedy food creation and ridiculous levels of food stockpiling means power and that anything that helps food production is making the attainment of power too easy. You fear your own lack of willpower to not take what you think is the easy option and therefore you felt that bonemeal was spoiling your game.
The fact that it is just as easy to create food without bonemeal has escaped you, because you have fixated on this one thing.
I have news for you pal, in the grand scheme of things this food power you are so terrified of has little relevance to a survival game.
As I’ve said before, the hunger bar wasn’t added to the game to persecute players. It exists so that variety is injected into the game. It motivates players into trying to build farms in addition to the other things they have thought of to do. It is not meant to be the centre of the player's focus. Mining and crafting is that.
I think the bonemeal change is pretty nice; Now that skeletons are a little stronger, and bonemeal is a little less effective, people will be more inclined to just wait for their crops to grow, and can spend more time doing other things, like mining and exploring. This may also affect anyone who has complaints about the experience system; People will get more experience because they'll have to kill more skeletons, mine more, and/or breed more for easier food.
I think the bonemeal change is pretty nice; Now that skeletons are a little stronger, and bonemeal is a little less effective, people will be more inclined to just wait for their crops to grow, and can spend more time doing other things, like mining and exploring. This may also affect anyone who has complaints about the experience system; People will get more experience because they'll have to kill more skeletons, mine more, and/or breed more for easier food.
We're definitely same page on this one. I couldn't agree more. I'm glad that bonemeal will never be what it originally was after the 1.5 release. Mojang needs to continue making little tweaks such as this. Individually these things do not have a huge impact on difficulty, but cumulatively, these sort of changes can be quite significant.
What ultimately finds its way into the 1.5 release and what is actually a good gameplay mechanic isn’t necessarily the same thing.
Think what you want about the change, but your argument will never hold any water.
You need to let this go. The change has been made and it has been balanced. Mojang decided that it was necessary to nerf bonemeal. Enjoy the old bonemeal while you can.
I think the bonemeal change is pretty nice; Now that skeletons are a little stronger, and bonemeal is a little less effective, people will be more inclined to just wait for their crops to grow, and can spend more time doing other things, like mining and exploring. This may also affect anyone who has complaints about the experience system; People will get more experience because they'll have to kill more skeletons, mine more, and/or breed more for easier food.
I don't quite see how making bonemeal useless equates to more mining/exploring.
I don't quite see how making bonemeal useless equates to more mining/exploring.
Before a mod closes this board I would like to ask a very important question. On SSP and SMP, do crops only grow when a player is near it or in it's chunk OR does it grow on it's own even in unloaded chunks?
Before a mod closes this board I would like to ask a very important question. On SSP and SMP, do crops only grow when a player is near it or in it's chunk OR does it grow on it's own even in unloaded chunks?
I don't quite see how making bonemeal useless equates to more mining/exploring.
Then you don't understand cause and effect. Firstly, bonemeal is not useless. Just less efficient. Less efficiency means players won't sit and spend as much time spraying their crops with bonemeal. They'll be encouraged to let their crops just grow, since the bonemeal is now a luxury, rather than something incredibly common. It follows a chain of events, let me explain:
Pre 1.5 bonemeal:
Player kills a single skeleton easily, gets a bunch of bonemeal for it. Player gets a tiny bit of experience.
Player goes and grows crops, makes bread.
Player has plenty of bread now. Player doesn't need more wheat, so they aren't likely to want more bonemeal yet.
Post 1.5 bonemeal:
Player kills a few skeletons, which are now tougher. Player gets a little more experience because they killed more skeletons.
Player goes and encourages crop growth, makes a little less bread than before.
Player needs more wheat. Player goes and repeats the process. Player gets more experience, because player needs to kill more skeletons than they did before. Or, player decides bonemeal isn't worth the time, so player goes and does something else while their crops grow.
I have deduced both chains from personal experience.
Then you don't understand cause and effect. Firstly, bonemeal is not useless. Just less efficient. Less efficiency means players won't sit and spend as much time spraying their crops with bonemeal. They'll be encouraged to let their crops just grow, since the bonemeal is now a luxury, rather than something incredibly common. It follows a chain of events, let me explain:
Pre 1.5 bonemeal:
Player kills a single skeleton easily, gets a bunch of bonemeal for it. Player gets a tiny bit of experience.
Player goes and grows crops, makes bread.
Player has plenty of bread now. Player doesn't need more wheat, so they aren't likely to want more bonemeal yet.
Post 1.5 bonemeal:
Player kills a few skeletons, which are now tougher. Player gets a little more experience because they killed more skeletons.
Player goes and encourages crop growth, makes a little less bread than before.
Player needs more wheat. Player goes and repeats the process. Player gets more experience, because player needs to kill more skeletons than they did before. Or, player decides bonemeal isn't worth the time, so player goes and does something else while their crops grow.
I have deduced both chains from personal experience.
Those chain of events certainly don't appear common at least for me( in SMP, I don't play SSP so I wouldn't know) Especially if you have a mob grinder/xp farm. That doesn't really justify- blah blah blah well like I said, A mod should lock this board please.
This will be problematic on smp..... at least with sugar cane
Those chain of events certainly don't appear common at least for me( in SMP, I don't play SSP so I wouldn't know) Especially if you have a mob grinder/xp farm. That doesn't really justify- blah blah blah well like I said, A mod should lock this board please.
This is in SSP for me, and this is not assuming a player has a mob grinder/xp farm, because that's not really playing the game normally, but rather exploiting game mechanics. If a player has a mob grinder/xp farm, any change made (excluding nerfing xp farms) won't affect them anyways. Does that make sense?
And if you want the thread closed, report it to a mod.
Top reasons why bonemeal was NOT OP:
1. It does not give you anything new. It only speeds up a process that would occur naturally anyways. (The exceptions are giant mushrooms and grass/flowers, but these weren't affected by the nerf)
2. To collect it, you have to fight Skeletons, one of the hardest mobs in the Overworld. Consider their recent buff, also. This is a daunting task in a newly created world.
Most common pro-nerf arguments and rebuttals
1. "I support anything that makes the game more difficult."
--You could choose to never use bonemeal if you think it makes the game to easy. There is no reason to punish player who don't want this added difficulty.
2. "But then people who do use it will have an advantage in PVP."
--Not starving to death is as much of an advantage as not being on fire. You can't kill someone with bread.
3. "I have chests full of bonemeal. It's way too common and needs a nerf."
--Bonemeal is much harder to gather for players who are just starting out. I could use a similar arguement to say that, "I have chests full of cobblestone. Therefore, cobblestone is OP and it should take 3 times as much to do anything with it."
4. "This is more realistic."
--This is laughable. Minecraft is NOT realistic and will never be. If it was, then I couldn't chop down a tree with my bare hands, skeletons and zombies wouldn't walk the earth, and the alternate dimensions wouldn't even exist.
Tl;dr-
I can quote myself specifically if needed to counter your arguements.
On topic, I find it doesn't really matter to me. I usually plant a ton of wheat and eat apples (from farming wood early on) or animals until it grows. Then use the wheat for cows. Cows make one of the top foods, early armor and later in the game are needed for enchanting(books).
You didn't win anything. The people who understand about the need for good ergonomics in user interfaces lost a streamlined mechanism.
Mojang aren't always that great with their first (and sometime their final) attempts at game adjustments. The fact that you side with this change isn't necessarily to your credit.
As for the 'reasonable members' of the community you refer to. Most of them couldn't reason their way out of a paper bag. All I've seen from the majority on that side is subjective statements with nothing to back them up.
Usually important factors are missing from their considerations leading to a less than holistic conclusion. What grates the most is that after you point out the important factors they missed, they still fail to recognise, or for some reason deny their existence.
The fact is, if you think that the game needs to be more difficult food-wise, then this change is pointless on its own. Bonemeal isn't relevant to adequate long term food acquisition.
If there is no point to the change as it stands, then it shouldn't be made. It does not set a good precedent and fosters an attitude that could open the door to all manner of random and needless game changes.
It's not really the change I object to. It's the arbitrary and undisciplined way that it has been applied, without consideration for its full impact and/or lack of impact on the various parts of the existing game and gameplay.
^^ Best post in thread.
That's partly because 90% of the Minecraft community isn't even old enough to drive.
Also, very close second for best post in thread.
No, they will have accepted it. There's a difference.
For example, I still hate the void fog. Hate. It. So every update I have to wait for Optifine, this mod, or something to be updated so I can play my world without having to deal with it. Same thing with endermen moving blocks around. I mod it out, and will refuse to update my game until the mods to correct these design flaws are updated.
Both of those were incredibly stupid design decisions (in my opinion) that many, many other people also hated, and still do. It's not that we "don't care" anymore, it's that we've accepted that it isn't going to change, and that it's just "one more thing" that we will have to mod out in order to continue to enjoy the game.
Granted, this bonemeal nerf isn't nearly as awful as my above examples, and (as the people I quoted earlier so eloquently stated) it's something that really has zero effect on anything other than the first 10 minutes of gameplay in a new world. But to me, that just makes it even more stupid a thing for the devs to be screwing with.
No, I absolutely won! The whole community did! The nerf to bonemeal was greatly needed. No more can you make yourself a lifetimes supply of food in a matter of minutes. I'm very happy with the change and the slight increase in difficulty. The bonemal nerf combined with the buff to skeletons is a nice adjustment.
</sarcasm>
I totally agree.
XD
What ultimately finds its way into the 1.5 release and what is actually a good gameplay mechanic isn’t necessarily the same thing.
Think what you want about the change, but your argument will never hold any water. Gathering mountains of food never needed bonemeal and unless fundamental changes are made to the base food system, it never will.
Fiddling about with bonemeal was never going to be the solution to this problem you perceive (although just reducing the bonemeal yield from bones would have been a much more elegant way of reducing bonemeal's power).
I think I now understand why you think the way you do though. It's because you are greedy and impatient and value the speed of delivery over everything else. That's why you are obsessed with how long it takes for the food to grow, regardless of how easy it is to grow ample food if you just let it grow on its own.
You have gotten it into your mind that speedy food creation and ridiculous levels of food stockpiling means power and that anything that helps food production is making the attainment of power too easy. You fear your own lack of willpower to not take what you think is the easy option and therefore you felt that bonemeal was spoiling your game.
The fact that it is just as easy to create food without bonemeal has escaped you, because you have fixated on this one thing.
I have news for you pal, in the grand scheme of things this food power you are so terrified of has little relevance to a survival game.
As I’ve said before, the hunger bar wasn’t added to the game to persecute players. It exists so that variety is injected into the game. It motivates players into trying to build farms in addition to the other things they have thought of to do. It is not meant to be the centre of the player's focus. Mining and crafting is that.
...but that's just like, my opinion, man.
We're definitely same page on this one. I couldn't agree more. I'm glad that bonemeal will never be what it originally was after the 1.5 release. Mojang needs to continue making little tweaks such as this. Individually these things do not have a huge impact on difficulty, but cumulatively, these sort of changes can be quite significant.
You need to let this go. The change has been made and it has been balanced. Mojang decided that it was necessary to nerf bonemeal. Enjoy the old bonemeal while you can.
It's time to move forward.
I don't quite see how making bonemeal useless equates to more mining/exploring.
Besides there are only 5 more about the same topic. (Face palm)
Before a mod closes this board I would like to ask a very important question. On SSP and SMP, do crops only grow when a player is near it or in it's chunk OR does it grow on it's own even in unloaded chunks?
The chunk must be loaded for crops to grow.
Then you don't understand cause and effect. Firstly, bonemeal is not useless. Just less efficient. Less efficiency means players won't sit and spend as much time spraying their crops with bonemeal. They'll be encouraged to let their crops just grow, since the bonemeal is now a luxury, rather than something incredibly common. It follows a chain of events, let me explain:
Pre 1.5 bonemeal:
Player kills a single skeleton easily, gets a bunch of bonemeal for it. Player gets a tiny bit of experience.
Player goes and grows crops, makes bread.
Player has plenty of bread now. Player doesn't need more wheat, so they aren't likely to want more bonemeal yet.
Post 1.5 bonemeal:
Player kills a few skeletons, which are now tougher. Player gets a little more experience because they killed more skeletons.
Player goes and encourages crop growth, makes a little less bread than before.
Player needs more wheat. Player goes and repeats the process. Player gets more experience, because player needs to kill more skeletons than they did before. Or, player decides bonemeal isn't worth the time, so player goes and does something else while their crops grow.
I have deduced both chains from personal experience.
...but that's just like, my opinion, man.
This will be problematic on smp..... at least with sugar cane
Those chain of events certainly don't appear common at least for me( in SMP, I don't play SSP so I wouldn't know) Especially if you have a mob grinder/xp farm. That doesn't really justify- blah blah blah well like I said, A mod should lock this board please.
This is in SSP for me, and this is not assuming a player has a mob grinder/xp farm, because that's not really playing the game normally, but rather exploiting game mechanics. If a player has a mob grinder/xp farm, any change made (excluding nerfing xp farms) won't affect them anyways. Does that make sense?
And if you want the thread closed, report it to a mod.
...but that's just like, my opinion, man.