Hey, need an update: Have the zombie spawn rates gone down, or am I still stuck on 1.5? Before anyone decides to tell me how "fun" the hordes are, they're not. If they are fun for you, great, but they're just a giant annoyance to me. Yes, I play zombie games, like running hardcore on ZombieU, the Dead Rising games, and Project Zomboid. The zombie apocalypse is not what I play Minecraft for, and it is not fun for me to have it forced on me, hence the regression to 1.5.
Stained glass in the new update is awesome, but not if it means dealing with the zombie mod that has taken over the game.
I'm a bit surprised by this thread. I play MineCraft since 1.6.4 and I'm now on 1.7.2 and I never found zombies to be hard at all. In fact my children also play this (we have a local LAN where we play on a single server) and they also don't have a problem. In fact we're much more scared of creepers and skeletons. Creepers because they can wreck your buildings and don't burn in daylight and skeletons because they can shoot you from a distance and if you're on open grounds they are hard to reach if you're out of arrows. But zombies are rarely a problem.
Greetings,
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Author of RFTools, RFTools Control, RFTools Dimensions, Deep Resonance, Immersive Craft, CombatHelp, NICE, Aqua Munda, Ariente, XNet, Interaction Wheel, The Lost Cities, Lost Souls, Need To Breathe, EFab, The One Probe and co-author of Not Enough Wands and RF Lux.
My problem with the swarming zombies is not so much the difficulty of fighting them, its that it creates insane lag for me, meaning that anything other than peaceful is pretty much unplayable for me. I have an old crappy PC and get around 30 FPS with optifine, on peaceful. In easy or above, that drops to 5 or less. It seems to be worse when in or near a village.
I would greatly appreciate a mod that made zombies spawn as they did in 1.5.
Forge actually (mostly) fixed server lag caused by zombies in 1.6.x (in my case I only noticed server lag, probably because you have a single core CPU so something that overloads the server takes away CPU cycles from the client), as noted in their change-log (first item); I no longer notice block lag/jittery mobs during zombie swarms, aside from a glitch or two, although the server still puts out "can't keep up" warnings, especially when I'm at my base (with a village inside a wall so zombies can't get in; I've killed as many as 50 in one night just standing by a door in the wall). Also, 1.7 reduces lag caused by zombies, if not completely, as noted in the official bug report.
Even if you don't use mods (besides Optifine), you can try installing Forge and see if it helps (Forge by itself may add overhead; note also that recent versions of Optifine can be installed like normal a Forge mod by placing it into the mods folder)
You can thank all the people that wanted Minecraft to be "harder"...
Zombies are crazy now.
Still way too easy for me. I could use creepers with 4-times the explosion radius, zombies with tripled damage and spiders with higher speed. Only thing that is annoying (IMO) are skeletons, but they are no problem either.
But like i said: This is what I think. I know that others have a bit more problems than i do.
Agreed. If I may also add, creating mods that give players a counterbalance to the zombie problem ends up creating mods that make the game really boring really fast. For example, I recently made a weapon mod to deal with zombies, however this mod also removes any real challenge the other mobs provided; forcing me to now have to make mobs specifically to balance my weapons. Although I now find this fun and educational, it still is a lot of work and not many people have the time to have to counterbalance broken game play and then create counter balances to their counter balances; at that point you may as well just create your own game. So, I think many can agree that modding isn't a solution due to the unfortunate slippery slope created by dinnerbones. He's going to turn the community into one of programmers and developers that in turn kick Mojang out of the club house for bullying the community (10 years later Mojang is hanging out in crack gangs with EA and friends, shunned and forgotten for the treasure they once created).
This has got so bad that it is actually much, much better to have Smite than Sharpness now. Yes, Sharpness hurts ALL mobs for +1.25 damage (per enchantment rank), while Smite hurts for double that (+2.5 damage per enchant rank), but "only" undead mobs.
Previously that "more damage for Smite" thing make sense: zombies and skeletons had about the same frequency as spiders and creepers, and you got the occasionnal Enderman too, so basically by going from Sharness to Smite you traded "hit everything for this damage" for "hit a bit less than half the things for double this damage". (talking only when in Overworld here, and only about the mobs that can spawn anywhere i.e. those you will usually see when trying to explore or build at night).
But in Vanilla 1.6.3 the "weight" of zombies has been jacked up through the roof, and, combined with skeletons this means about 90% of the mobs you attack will be undead. So you can "hit everything for this damage" or you can "hit 90% of things four double this damage", which is a no-brainer really.
In 1.6.4 Vanilla, this is a nightmarish problem of bad game balance. Sure, *once* you got a Smite IV Diamond Sword (ideally also with Knockback II) then things get pretty peachy easy, yet still stay quite dangerous occasionnally at times, which is of course a better game that if it wasn't challenging at all.
But that still leaves MOST of the game tiers, from wood to the beginning of diamond included, with this "problem". Until you got the right enchant.
Even if we had ZERO challenge, that doesn't seem to change one simple fact: the ever constant annoyance. I don't have a problem with an entire night of zombie apocalypse with a new zombie coming ever 5 seconds. Let me get this clearer: I don't have a problem with an entire night of zombie apocalypse with a new zombie coming ever 5 seconds when this kind of night occurs relatively rarely. I have a problem with this occurring regularly. And a big problem when it happens each and every single night.
I think the current game design concept of "Day is to make stuff on the surface, but night is too dangerous, so stay indoors" is a very bad decision, especially when combined with "Day-Night cycle is only 20 minutes long". First off, what does "stay indoors" means exactly? Stay in your nice little finished house twiddling your thumbs, in short stop playing altogether? Everybody knows this would make a bad game design. So "stay indoors" actually means "do stuff but not building or exploring". In short, go mining. This is both relatively limited in scope (after a while, all mining looks the same), but also doesn't mix well with the very short day-night cycles we currently have. Just the time to go from your daylight building spot, to your mine, usually takes a minute. When you go mining, usually a one hour session of mining is in order, i.e. getting at least one full inventory. Otherwise it is not "going mining", it is "taking a little mining dip". So you're asking the player to constantly do these back and forth, wasting 10% of his game time EVEN if he does it perfectly (say he set up a daylight detector to make an alarm ring whenever day arrives - even though he'd wish to be warned BEFORE so he has time to come back up just as day arrives, not a couple minutes afterwards. Even then, redstone stuff is pretty much "later in the game" and also definitely not at all to the tastes of all players. EVEN if it worked easy, you still end up niot being able to spend more than less than half your game time on the activity you wanted to do.
This is hard enough for builders, but for explorers it sucks big time. You are exploring and making a maximum Zoom map item hundreds of blocks from your home, which we all know requires several real time hours of traveling. And then, EVERY dang 10 minutes of traveling, you'd have to stop and "go mining down" for the next 10 minutes. That sucks big time. Again, while the "forced activity switch" is limiting in itself, otherwise, it is the CONSTANT high frequency of this occuring that is the most annoying.
The mobs at night should be there for keeping you on your toes, not to completely force you to stop building or exploring and instead enter in "massive battle mode"... or fleeling to the underground. We have other dimensions that have higher challenges. So maybe the Overwolrd concept of "day = safe to work, night = danger to be avoided" (which isn't even true at all, now that mobs spawn in storms, survive in shadow and water or if they wear helmets, the actual "safe and without mob worries" moments are mostly only in the SECOND half of the day, after most mobs despawned). Thing is, drastically limiting the player's playstyle options (fighting, mining, building, exploring) is okay, but only as long as the total % of game time when this happens is only a smallish minority of the time. Before 1.6, it was about 50%. Already bad enough! But now it is more like 75% of the time (remember we have now a LOT more mobs in the first half of the day!). It just becomes too annoying for it's own good. It should be no higher than 25%! INLUDING the time it takes to switch from one activity to the next (time spent traveling between mine and building site, or time to return from faraway exploration trip).
Proposed fixes:
- Make the minecraft day-night cycle last 2 hours instead of 20 minutes. That way, you CAN accomplish some proper "reasonable chunk of work" in the day befor nigth finally catches up to you. 10 minutes is too short to build anything but the smallest aspect of a single build, so you end up feeling constantly interrupted in your work. 1 hour at least allows you to do a small builds in one single shot. Let's say "Ok I'm going to make a 8x6 chicken coop building here" (which is a small build) vs "okay I'm going to make two walls of my small chicken coop". sure, some players build very fast, and are brainiacs or lots of building experience so they have zero hesitation, zero second s"lost" designing their build or determining how good it looks. But usually from what I have seen of cooperative builds from say 2 or 3 players working together, they spend several minutes talking about the build they are making before doing anything. If just trying to decide on only ONE aspect of a build, then night ALREADY arrives, then it sucks big time. Same way for the opposite: if you are forced to stop building, and go mining, at least you don't feel you are going mining for nothing because the night is so short you'll waste half the time simply TRAVELING to thre end of your mine and back. With 20 minutes day-night cycles you are constantly keeping two sets of tasks in mind" what you really wanted to do, still "warm" in your mind, and that you want to keep warm as you know you'll get back to that in a few minutes, and what you are doing now. Or what you want to do and are doing, plus worrying about the coming of the night which you know is going to occur in a few minutes so you have to hurry. With a 2 hours cycle while not long enough for a complete build, at least you would be able to concentrate fully on what you are doing for a sufficient stretch of time, while still keeping the feeling of nights and days in the game
- Surface world danger limited to how it was in 1.5. You can go exploring for hours at a time, walking say in day out, without feeling like you have to stop constantly. Same for building. You just have to be a bit more careful is all, keep up on your toes so to speak. Instead, the danger would increase the DEEPER YOU GO. Ores would have even more value because getting those.
For this to work, huge OPEN cave systems shouldn't be inherently scores of timres more dangerous than a single 1x2xsuper long mining tunnel. The "deeper danger" extra spawning would have to work differently than just taking a spot at random and checking if it is "free". Also, maybe new stronger mobs should exist only in the depths. Maybe a nob than can move THROUGH stone, that occurs frequently when thre is lots of stone around (branch mining!), but rarely in open caves networks . These mob spawning rules would thus be fine tuned so that it is a BIT better to mine for ores in a cave network, than simply going with the very obvious and quite dumb really "branch mining" technique. Of a technique allows you to get MORE ores per hour than otherwise, then that should also be the most dangerous way to collect ores, no? If you disagree then according to that logic diamonds should be found on the surface and harvestable by hand? If the most productive way to mine s through cave systems then we'd be HAPPY to see new cave systems, instead of "Oh dangit not yet another swiss cheese full of holes in my perfect branch mine!"
- Zombies that appear EITHER within 24 blocks of the player OR within 1 block of the blocks covered by the "line of effect" of the player (note: line of sight is what the player can see. Thus it is limited to what is in front of the player. Line of effect however is what the player COULD if he was looking in that direction. It goes 360 degrees and also above and bottom.), do not simply "pop into" spawned existence. Instead, they appear as particles on the ground making them look as if the zombies are "coming out of" the ground (king of like the particles when you break a block except there are more and the block doesn't break). Otherwise the zombie can't spawn. in shor,t the zombie appear with it's head inside the ground and "lifts itself up" with an animation until it is out of the block, then normal solidity rules and mob movement would apply. Zombies could even spawn from a 1-thick floor, provided there is not another player underground to see their "zombie feet" popping into existence.
In any case, version 1.7.2 tunes down SOME of the zombie apocalypse and partially fixes some problems (baby zombies, that means you!) But not the most annoying parts (zombies appearing right behind you, for example) are still there and still no good.
Increasing the day/night cycle to handle zombies infestations, is not my cup of tea. I think its better to just, you know, concentrate on fixing the actual problem and not trying to go around it.
I personally don't consider the zombie infestation thing the proudest moment of Minecraft development history. It always seemed to me it was made to cater for a tight and well identified part of the player base and leave everyone else with an annoyance they didn't ask. It also seems a rather lackluster and artificial way to jack up the game challenge. It's essentially about making the game harder by increasing the number of enemies; as far as game design is concerned this is just bad design.
Zombies with armor, zombies with swords, now that's the right idea. That's how you do it. Unfortunately the game fighting mechanism is too simplistic for these to have a visible effect on the game difficulty. But Mojang could always have thought of other ways. For instance, make zombies have a chance of coming back to life, or make different kinds of zombies with different kinds of HP and damage values.
Bad or good as these ideas may be, the point is that essentially we would have a game that made tweaks to the difficulty setting by introducing actual new game design concepts.
Sure we have new mobs. Witches are cool. But why couldn't they be paired with zombies (say witches used zombies as pets) so those potions they throw against us would suddenly become a whole lot more dangerous? The sight of a witch paired with 2 or 3 pet zombies would make you want to hug a creeper instead. And that's too game design.
But increasing the game difficulty by increasing the number of zombies is... [put your expletive here]
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I was trying to think of a signature and this is what came up.
Increasing the day/night cycle to handle zombies infestations, is not my cup of tea. I think its better to just, you know, concentrate on fixing the actual problem and not trying to go around it.
I agree wholeheartedly.
However, there are many other reason to make the day night cycle longer, the major one being that it is a very annoying "time limit" put on everything in and of itself, meaning that after a while this being forced to constantly be switching from one type of game activity (let's say building) to another (let's say mining) every few minutes, or not being a be to effectively do your preferred activity at all (let's say exploring the world without being forced to fully stop in a dirt hole half of the time spent in the game) ultimately only serves to turn the game into a series of annoying interruptions. But that is not really what this topic here is about, so I'll gladly concede that point.
It always seemed to me it was made to cater for a tight and well identified part of the player base and leave everyone else with an annoyance they didn't ask
Exactly, and more so because the SMALL MINORITY of Mojang employees which ARE working on Minecraft (Mojang makes lots of other stuff than MC after all), only 2 or 3 of which have a "big decisional weight" (i.e. not merely coders but also take the bug design decisions on the development direction the game is taking), means that even if only ONE of these guys being of the "love lots of battle" mentality is enough to screw things up for the rest of us. Which is exactly what occured.
Turning the game into a diablo-like hack n slash festival, in a game with such a crappy combat system (for one), and in a game which it's outspokenly intended target playstyle is sandbox building and exploring, not combat (for two), and also going contrary to what 95%+ of it's intended players base want (for three), was an EXCEEDINGLY DUMB NEARSIGHTED AND SELFISH idea.
You are so right that if instead of "constant hordes of mobs" we could have most of our usual "peace and quiet, night mobs just there to keep you on your toes ocasionnally, not actually represent so many interruptions that they actually prevent you from doing stuff altogether", with the OCCASIONNAL (i.e. not every night!) really though mobs, would be ideal.
Example of an easy way to do this:
Reintroduce the Giant. Name it Giant or Juggernaut or Invulnerable or whatever. Reskin it to make it look less like a giant zombie but an actual giant with skin that looks REALLY though (maybe a Stone Giant?)stone. Give it it's own stats of course, it's not an undead at all after all. Let's say like this: It would appear maybe once every 16 Minecraft nights (more often if you go fullly exploring), always solitary. A mob boss that is for sure. Moves a bit faster than you yet clearly less than when you are sprinting). 40 Hit Points (Hearts) with natural armor 2. Slow to attack (leaves you time to try to flee between attacks), but lots of reach + area damage (if you hide behind a tree, you'for example, you'll still feel a kind of shockwave effect). Able to 3-hit-kill you in diamond armor with enough damage that even if the hits aren't that close together, you won't have regenerated enough yet to avoid dying. Without zero armor, definitely a hit hit kill. 20 damage seem ok in that regard: you need iron armor to survive 3 hits. But you ALWAYS definitely kow it's coming: ground thumpings and rumbling the closer it gets, etc. Given it's area attack, 2 players can attack it but over 3 is a diminishing returns proposition because he can damage several players at once. Also, it can regenerate even faster than the player, and arrows deal no damage too. Meaning you can't use guerillera tactics against it. Well, you can set up TNT explosions that would work. Finally, it can climb cliffs really well and even attack while climbing. Also, immune to knockback and usually lands the fist hit before you do (well, you'll be able to stuck more than once before his second hit, but that is not a very good tactic).
A new enchantment: Giant Slayer. Works on any weapon inclusing tools and bows. No extra damage, but Giants cannot regenerate from Slayer wounds. The only situation where you wouldn't be afraid of it would be when you are wearing enchanted diamond armor and using a Giant slayer weapon.
Another easy way:
Every once in a blue moon, there is a RED MOON. Totally black wolves roam the countriside. Exact same stats as tamed wolf, except those black wolves are hostile and definitely not tamable. Their skins do not show a collar too. On those nights, they are a common mob that moves in large packs (up to 8 wolves). Surprisingly, giving them rotten flesh to eat will make them fall into love mode. They won't breed then, but will follow your around instead, yapping angrily as if they insisted on you giving them more to eat. And as soon as they fall out of lovemode, or if you strike at any member of their pack, then they become hostile again. When a member of the pack dies, the survivors have a chance to stop sit down and howl (all foing it at once), giving you a small time to move away, but thid howl will call all other packs in the area. They move just as fast a baby zombies and for that reason will kill and attack all baby zombies they see, mainly because all players hate baby zombies and the black wolves must have SOME use after all lol. Okay, maybe not that last part lol.
In short, eiother a rare mob that you hear coming far in advance, or a very common mob but one that would appear only rarely, in a previsible way (oh no a red moon night!), but when it does, while you can win against some of them, tit definitely is much better to stay inside (i.e. go mining).
Example of an easy way to do this:
[...]
Another easy way:
And the point -- I believe you agree -- is not whether these are good or bad ideas. There could be other better ideas. It doesn't matter. These are simply placeholder suggestions that indicate a desire to add to the game design while not breaking with the game legacy of being a sandbox game with a modest level of challenge.
Well, unless we are all mistaken and the idea was always to make an action-fighting game with a sandbox design. But we all know that isn't true. You wouldn't make such a game with this shallow and unfledged combat system. Besides a lot of the reviews and a lot of the game accolades for these past 4 years would suddenly stop making sense.
Although it makes the game harder, you have to remember that the intent of a "constant onslaught of zombies" is an attempt to try prevent the player from staying in an area for too long. The same applies for when the spawn with armour/weapons and even when they spawn into two. This makes it harder to build at night especially on servers when not everyone can sleep to day.
I would also like to say this is Mojang trying to make the game harder. Zombie spawns are crazy, Skeletons have the annoying shooting.Whats next for spiders, creepers and the rest of the hostile mobs?
I agree with this topic (is it the right word?). The new zombie mechanics that Mojang added in the 1.6 update are really lame, and are not the way to increase the difficulty of the game. They don't make the game harder, just annoying. And the fact that they also increased the aggro range of them sounds like a way to cause more lag in slow machines.
By the way, Ouatcheur, you talk a lot about increasing the lenght of the day and night cycle, because the existing one is "too short" and it forces you to change your activities excessively fast. But you seem to forget that you can use beds to sleep in the night, or that you can't just light the surrounding area to make it free of monsters and keep doing your work. You give some suggestions to solve the problem too, but wouldn't be easier to just remove the zombie hordes and improve the zombie AI or something?
I agree with this topic (is it the right word?). The new zombie mechanics that Mojang added in the 1.6 update are really lame, and are not the way to increase the difficulty of the game. They don't make the game harder, just annoying. And the fact that they also increased the aggro range of them sounds like a way to cause more lag in slow machines.
By the way, Ouatcheur, you talk a lot about increasing the lenght of the day and night cycle, because the existing one is "too short" and it forces you to change your activities excessively fast. But you seem to forget that you can use beds to sleep in the night, or that you can't just light the surrounding area to make it free of monsters and keep doing your work. You give some suggestions to solve the problem too, but wouldn't be easier to just remove the zombie hordes and improve the zombie AI or something?
Put some blocks in front of the doors and you are done.
Nope, they can spawn inside the houses if you hit one.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Github ด้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้дด็็็็็้้้้้็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้
Quite a range of ideas and opinions. If I want battles, I fire up the Hexxit modpack. Sometimes I run high-tech modpacks instead and have fun building industry. I trust the master modders to deliver a different experience every time. The game engine can do all those things, it's solid. But the core game itself seems to have no direction at all. I haven't touched vanilla in ages, but I guess I'd be tempted to just set it to Peaceful when building, run a few nights on Normal to get my aggression out, and then shut down the lame mobs again. I can somehow track what's going on in a half dozen huge modpacks, but can't make any sense out of what's happening to the core game.
I would vote for making the length of day a config option. I've always wanted to tweak that and see how it changes the flavor of the game.
Although it makes the game harder, you have to remember that the intent of a "constant onslaught of zombies" is an attempt to try prevent the player from staying in an area for too long.
That's more from the regional difficulty; the constant zombie swarm starts with night 1. But aside from that, I'd say driving players away from areas they've stayed in a lot runs against the goals of the game. When people build nice houses, shouldn't they get to live in them?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
That's more from the regional difficulty; the constant zombie swarm starts with night 1. But aside from that, I'd say driving players away from areas they've stayed in a lot runs against the goals of the game. When people build nice houses, shouldn't they get to live in them?
I have played for some time on normal difficulty and I really don't get what the problem is. I never had any trouble surviving the first night and making a nice shelter. I now have a big base, several monster spawners (blaze, enderman, zombie, iron golem, ...). I made my first village by curing zombies and so on. And all this on 1.6.4 and now on 1.7.2 (but most on 1.6.4).
It wasn't hard at all and I never noticed anything annoying or special about zombies appearing.
Author of RFTools, RFTools Control, RFTools Dimensions, Deep Resonance, Immersive Craft, CombatHelp, NICE, Aqua Munda, Ariente, XNet, Interaction Wheel, The Lost Cities, Lost Souls, Need To Breathe, EFab, The One Probe and co-author of Not Enough Wands and RF Lux.
By the way, Ouatcheur, you talk a lot about increasing the lenght of the day and night cycle, because the existing one is "too short" and it forces you to change your activities excessively fast. But you seem to forget that you can use beds to sleep in the night, or that you can't just light the surrounding area to make it free of monsters and keep doing your work. You give some suggestions to solve the problem too, but wouldn't be easier to just remove the zombie hordes and improve the zombie AI or something?
I agree with you about that making the day/night cycle is not an option. In the thread he made in suggestions about some mob spawning changes he suggested to make the cicle last 2 hours... can you imagine? 1 hour of daylight and 1 hour of nighttime would be, at least for me, everlasting.
Id say if mojang changes the lenght of the cicle (hope they wont but you never know) they let us use the beds also to wait for the night (skip the day) cuz otherwise it would be too much... In fact sometimes id like that with the current cycle lenght they add that so i dont have to wait for the night.
Stained glass in the new update is awesome, but not if it means dealing with the zombie mod that has taken over the game.
Greetings,
Author of RFTools, RFTools Control, RFTools Dimensions, Deep Resonance, Immersive Craft, CombatHelp, NICE, Aqua Munda, Ariente, XNet, Interaction Wheel, The Lost Cities, Lost Souls, Need To Breathe, EFab, The One Probe and co-author of Not Enough Wands and RF Lux.
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMg1JQw3syJBgPeW6m68lA?view_as=subscriber
Support me at my Patreon page (http://www.patreon.com/McJty) or directly on my Paypal account ([email protected]). Thanks
Forge actually (mostly) fixed server lag caused by zombies in 1.6.x (in my case I only noticed server lag, probably because you have a single core CPU so something that overloads the server takes away CPU cycles from the client), as noted in their change-log (first item); I no longer notice block lag/jittery mobs during zombie swarms, aside from a glitch or two, although the server still puts out "can't keep up" warnings, especially when I'm at my base (with a village inside a wall so zombies can't get in; I've killed as many as 50 in one night just standing by a door in the wall). Also, 1.7 reduces lag caused by zombies, if not completely, as noted in the official bug report.
Even if you don't use mods (besides Optifine), you can try installing Forge and see if it helps (Forge by itself may add overhead; note also that recent versions of Optifine can be installed like normal a Forge mod by placing it into the mods folder)
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?
Still way too easy for me. I could use creepers with 4-times the explosion radius, zombies with tripled damage and spiders with higher speed. Only thing that is annoying (IMO) are skeletons, but they are no problem either.
But like i said: This is what I think. I know that others have a bit more problems than i do.
This has got so bad that it is actually much, much better to have Smite than Sharpness now. Yes, Sharpness hurts ALL mobs for +1.25 damage (per enchantment rank), while Smite hurts for double that (+2.5 damage per enchant rank), but "only" undead mobs.
Previously that "more damage for Smite" thing make sense: zombies and skeletons had about the same frequency as spiders and creepers, and you got the occasionnal Enderman too, so basically by going from Sharness to Smite you traded "hit everything for this damage" for "hit a bit less than half the things for double this damage". (talking only when in Overworld here, and only about the mobs that can spawn anywhere i.e. those you will usually see when trying to explore or build at night).
But in Vanilla 1.6.3 the "weight" of zombies has been jacked up through the roof, and, combined with skeletons this means about 90% of the mobs you attack will be undead. So you can "hit everything for this damage" or you can "hit 90% of things four double this damage", which is a no-brainer really.
In 1.6.4 Vanilla, this is a nightmarish problem of bad game balance. Sure, *once* you got a Smite IV Diamond Sword (ideally also with Knockback II) then things get pretty peachy easy, yet still stay quite dangerous occasionnally at times, which is of course a better game that if it wasn't challenging at all.
But that still leaves MOST of the game tiers, from wood to the beginning of diamond included, with this "problem". Until you got the right enchant.
Even if we had ZERO challenge, that doesn't seem to change one simple fact: the ever constant annoyance. I don't have a problem with an entire night of zombie apocalypse with a new zombie coming ever 5 seconds. Let me get this clearer: I don't have a problem with an entire night of zombie apocalypse with a new zombie coming ever 5 seconds when this kind of night occurs relatively rarely. I have a problem with this occurring regularly. And a big problem when it happens each and every single night.
I think the current game design concept of "Day is to make stuff on the surface, but night is too dangerous, so stay indoors" is a very bad decision, especially when combined with "Day-Night cycle is only 20 minutes long". First off, what does "stay indoors" means exactly? Stay in your nice little finished house twiddling your thumbs, in short stop playing altogether? Everybody knows this would make a bad game design. So "stay indoors" actually means "do stuff but not building or exploring". In short, go mining. This is both relatively limited in scope (after a while, all mining looks the same), but also doesn't mix well with the very short day-night cycles we currently have. Just the time to go from your daylight building spot, to your mine, usually takes a minute. When you go mining, usually a one hour session of mining is in order, i.e. getting at least one full inventory. Otherwise it is not "going mining", it is "taking a little mining dip". So you're asking the player to constantly do these back and forth, wasting 10% of his game time EVEN if he does it perfectly (say he set up a daylight detector to make an alarm ring whenever day arrives - even though he'd wish to be warned BEFORE so he has time to come back up just as day arrives, not a couple minutes afterwards. Even then, redstone stuff is pretty much "later in the game" and also definitely not at all to the tastes of all players. EVEN if it worked easy, you still end up niot being able to spend more than less than half your game time on the activity you wanted to do.
This is hard enough for builders, but for explorers it sucks big time. You are exploring and making a maximum Zoom map item hundreds of blocks from your home, which we all know requires several real time hours of traveling. And then, EVERY dang 10 minutes of traveling, you'd have to stop and "go mining down" for the next 10 minutes. That sucks big time. Again, while the "forced activity switch" is limiting in itself, otherwise, it is the CONSTANT high frequency of this occuring that is the most annoying.
The mobs at night should be there for keeping you on your toes, not to completely force you to stop building or exploring and instead enter in "massive battle mode"... or fleeling to the underground. We have other dimensions that have higher challenges. So maybe the Overwolrd concept of "day = safe to work, night = danger to be avoided" (which isn't even true at all, now that mobs spawn in storms, survive in shadow and water or if they wear helmets, the actual "safe and without mob worries" moments are mostly only in the SECOND half of the day, after most mobs despawned). Thing is, drastically limiting the player's playstyle options (fighting, mining, building, exploring) is okay, but only as long as the total % of game time when this happens is only a smallish minority of the time. Before 1.6, it was about 50%. Already bad enough! But now it is more like 75% of the time (remember we have now a LOT more mobs in the first half of the day!). It just becomes too annoying for it's own good. It should be no higher than 25%! INLUDING the time it takes to switch from one activity to the next (time spent traveling between mine and building site, or time to return from faraway exploration trip).
Proposed fixes:
- Make the minecraft day-night cycle last 2 hours instead of 20 minutes. That way, you CAN accomplish some proper "reasonable chunk of work" in the day befor nigth finally catches up to you. 10 minutes is too short to build anything but the smallest aspect of a single build, so you end up feeling constantly interrupted in your work. 1 hour at least allows you to do a small builds in one single shot. Let's say "Ok I'm going to make a 8x6 chicken coop building here" (which is a small build) vs "okay I'm going to make two walls of my small chicken coop". sure, some players build very fast, and are brainiacs or lots of building experience so they have zero hesitation, zero second s"lost" designing their build or determining how good it looks. But usually from what I have seen of cooperative builds from say 2 or 3 players working together, they spend several minutes talking about the build they are making before doing anything. If just trying to decide on only ONE aspect of a build, then night ALREADY arrives, then it sucks big time. Same way for the opposite: if you are forced to stop building, and go mining, at least you don't feel you are going mining for nothing because the night is so short you'll waste half the time simply TRAVELING to thre end of your mine and back. With 20 minutes day-night cycles you are constantly keeping two sets of tasks in mind" what you really wanted to do, still "warm" in your mind, and that you want to keep warm as you know you'll get back to that in a few minutes, and what you are doing now. Or what you want to do and are doing, plus worrying about the coming of the night which you know is going to occur in a few minutes so you have to hurry. With a 2 hours cycle while not long enough for a complete build, at least you would be able to concentrate fully on what you are doing for a sufficient stretch of time, while still keeping the feeling of nights and days in the game
- Surface world danger limited to how it was in 1.5. You can go exploring for hours at a time, walking say in day out, without feeling like you have to stop constantly. Same for building. You just have to be a bit more careful is all, keep up on your toes so to speak. Instead, the danger would increase the DEEPER YOU GO. Ores would have even more value because getting those.
For this to work, huge OPEN cave systems shouldn't be inherently scores of timres more dangerous than a single 1x2xsuper long mining tunnel. The "deeper danger" extra spawning would have to work differently than just taking a spot at random and checking if it is "free". Also, maybe new stronger mobs should exist only in the depths. Maybe a nob than can move THROUGH stone, that occurs frequently when thre is lots of stone around (branch mining!), but rarely in open caves networks . These mob spawning rules would thus be fine tuned so that it is a BIT better to mine for ores in a cave network, than simply going with the very obvious and quite dumb really "branch mining" technique. Of a technique allows you to get MORE ores per hour than otherwise, then that should also be the most dangerous way to collect ores, no? If you disagree then according to that logic diamonds should be found on the surface and harvestable by hand? If the most productive way to mine s through cave systems then we'd be HAPPY to see new cave systems, instead of "Oh dangit not yet another swiss cheese full of holes in my perfect branch mine!"
- Zombies that appear EITHER within 24 blocks of the player OR within 1 block of the blocks covered by the "line of effect" of the player (note: line of sight is what the player can see. Thus it is limited to what is in front of the player. Line of effect however is what the player COULD if he was looking in that direction. It goes 360 degrees and also above and bottom.), do not simply "pop into" spawned existence. Instead, they appear as particles on the ground making them look as if the zombies are "coming out of" the ground (king of like the particles when you break a block except there are more and the block doesn't break). Otherwise the zombie can't spawn. in shor,t the zombie appear with it's head inside the ground and "lifts itself up" with an animation until it is out of the block, then normal solidity rules and mob movement would apply. Zombies could even spawn from a 1-thick floor, provided there is not another player underground to see their "zombie feet" popping into existence.
In any case, version 1.7.2 tunes down SOME of the zombie apocalypse and partially fixes some problems (baby zombies, that means you!) But not the most annoying parts (zombies appearing right behind you, for example) are still there and still no good.
I personally don't consider the zombie infestation thing the proudest moment of Minecraft development history. It always seemed to me it was made to cater for a tight and well identified part of the player base and leave everyone else with an annoyance they didn't ask. It also seems a rather lackluster and artificial way to jack up the game challenge. It's essentially about making the game harder by increasing the number of enemies; as far as game design is concerned this is just bad design.
Zombies with armor, zombies with swords, now that's the right idea. That's how you do it. Unfortunately the game fighting mechanism is too simplistic for these to have a visible effect on the game difficulty. But Mojang could always have thought of other ways. For instance, make zombies have a chance of coming back to life, or make different kinds of zombies with different kinds of HP and damage values.
Bad or good as these ideas may be, the point is that essentially we would have a game that made tweaks to the difficulty setting by introducing actual new game design concepts.
Sure we have new mobs. Witches are cool. But why couldn't they be paired with zombies (say witches used zombies as pets) so those potions they throw against us would suddenly become a whole lot more dangerous? The sight of a witch paired with 2 or 3 pet zombies would make you want to hug a creeper instead. And that's too game design.
But increasing the game difficulty by increasing the number of zombies is... [put your expletive here]
I agree wholeheartedly.
However, there are many other reason to make the day night cycle longer, the major one being that it is a very annoying "time limit" put on everything in and of itself, meaning that after a while this being forced to constantly be switching from one type of game activity (let's say building) to another (let's say mining) every few minutes, or not being a be to effectively do your preferred activity at all (let's say exploring the world without being forced to fully stop in a dirt hole half of the time spent in the game) ultimately only serves to turn the game into a series of annoying interruptions. But that is not really what this topic here is about, so I'll gladly concede that point.
Exactly, and more so because the SMALL MINORITY of Mojang employees which ARE working on Minecraft (Mojang makes lots of other stuff than MC after all), only 2 or 3 of which have a "big decisional weight" (i.e. not merely coders but also take the bug design decisions on the development direction the game is taking), means that even if only ONE of these guys being of the "love lots of battle" mentality is enough to screw things up for the rest of us. Which is exactly what occured.
Turning the game into a diablo-like hack n slash festival, in a game with such a crappy combat system (for one), and in a game which it's outspokenly intended target playstyle is sandbox building and exploring, not combat (for two), and also going contrary to what 95%+ of it's intended players base want (for three), was an EXCEEDINGLY DUMB NEARSIGHTED AND SELFISH idea.
You are so right that if instead of "constant hordes of mobs" we could have most of our usual "peace and quiet, night mobs just there to keep you on your toes ocasionnally, not actually represent so many interruptions that they actually prevent you from doing stuff altogether", with the OCCASIONNAL (i.e. not every night!) really though mobs, would be ideal.
Example of an easy way to do this:
Reintroduce the Giant. Name it Giant or Juggernaut or Invulnerable or whatever. Reskin it to make it look less like a giant zombie but an actual giant with skin that looks REALLY though (maybe a Stone Giant?)stone. Give it it's own stats of course, it's not an undead at all after all. Let's say like this: It would appear maybe once every 16 Minecraft nights (more often if you go fullly exploring), always solitary. A mob boss that is for sure. Moves a bit faster than you yet clearly less than when you are sprinting). 40 Hit Points (Hearts) with natural armor 2. Slow to attack (leaves you time to try to flee between attacks), but lots of reach + area damage (if you hide behind a tree, you'for example, you'll still feel a kind of shockwave effect). Able to 3-hit-kill you in diamond armor with enough damage that even if the hits aren't that close together, you won't have regenerated enough yet to avoid dying. Without zero armor, definitely a hit hit kill. 20 damage seem ok in that regard: you need iron armor to survive 3 hits. But you ALWAYS definitely kow it's coming: ground thumpings and rumbling the closer it gets, etc. Given it's area attack, 2 players can attack it but over 3 is a diminishing returns proposition because he can damage several players at once. Also, it can regenerate even faster than the player, and arrows deal no damage too. Meaning you can't use guerillera tactics against it. Well, you can set up TNT explosions that would work. Finally, it can climb cliffs really well and even attack while climbing. Also, immune to knockback and usually lands the fist hit before you do (well, you'll be able to stuck more than once before his second hit, but that is not a very good tactic).
A new enchantment: Giant Slayer. Works on any weapon inclusing tools and bows. No extra damage, but Giants cannot regenerate from Slayer wounds. The only situation where you wouldn't be afraid of it would be when you are wearing enchanted diamond armor and using a Giant slayer weapon.
Another easy way:
Every once in a blue moon, there is a RED MOON. Totally black wolves roam the countriside. Exact same stats as tamed wolf, except those black wolves are hostile and definitely not tamable. Their skins do not show a collar too. On those nights, they are a common mob that moves in large packs (up to 8 wolves). Surprisingly, giving them rotten flesh to eat will make them fall into love mode. They won't breed then, but will follow your around instead, yapping angrily as if they insisted on you giving them more to eat. And as soon as they fall out of lovemode, or if you strike at any member of their pack, then they become hostile again. When a member of the pack dies, the survivors have a chance to stop sit down and howl (all foing it at once), giving you a small time to move away, but thid howl will call all other packs in the area. They move just as fast a baby zombies and for that reason will kill and attack all baby zombies they see, mainly because all players hate baby zombies and the black wolves must have SOME use after all lol. Okay, maybe not that last part lol.
In short, eiother a rare mob that you hear coming far in advance, or a very common mob but one that would appear only rarely, in a previsible way (oh no a red moon night!), but when it does, while you can win against some of them, tit definitely is much better to stay inside (i.e. go mining).
And the point -- I believe you agree -- is not whether these are good or bad ideas. There could be other better ideas. It doesn't matter. These are simply placeholder suggestions that indicate a desire to add to the game design while not breaking with the game legacy of being a sandbox game with a modest level of challenge.
Well, unless we are all mistaken and the idea was always to make an action-fighting game with a sandbox design. But we all know that isn't true. You wouldn't make such a game with this shallow and unfledged combat system. Besides a lot of the reviews and a lot of the game accolades for these past 4 years would suddenly stop making sense.
To be fair it has been toned down a bit. It's not as bad as it once was. But we aren't exactly discussing the severity of it.
I would also like to say this is Mojang trying to make the game harder. Zombie spawns are crazy, Skeletons have the annoying shooting.Whats next for spiders, creepers and the rest of the hostile mobs?
By the way, Ouatcheur, you talk a lot about increasing the lenght of the day and night cycle, because the existing one is "too short" and it forces you to change your activities excessively fast. But you seem to forget that you can use beds to sleep in the night, or that you can't just light the surrounding area to make it free of monsters and keep doing your work. You give some suggestions to solve the problem too, but wouldn't be easier to just remove the zombie hordes and improve the zombie AI or something?
Put some blocks in front of the doors and you are done.
Nope, they can spawn inside the houses if you hit one.
My Github ด้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้дด็็็็็้้้้้็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้็็็็็้้้้้
Then don't hit the zombies?
I would vote for making the length of day a config option. I've always wanted to tweak that and see how it changes the flavor of the game.
My new modpack: Overgrowth
Classic modpack Let's Plays: scottV8 On Youtube
That's more from the regional difficulty; the constant zombie swarm starts with night 1. But aside from that, I'd say driving players away from areas they've stayed in a lot runs against the goals of the game. When people build nice houses, shouldn't they get to live in them?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I have played for some time on normal difficulty and I really don't get what the problem is. I never had any trouble surviving the first night and making a nice shelter. I now have a big base, several monster spawners (blaze, enderman, zombie, iron golem, ...). I made my first village by curing zombies and so on. And all this on 1.6.4 and now on 1.7.2 (but most on 1.6.4).
It wasn't hard at all and I never noticed anything annoying or special about zombies appearing.
I'm fine with the way it is right now.
Greetings,
Author of RFTools, RFTools Control, RFTools Dimensions, Deep Resonance, Immersive Craft, CombatHelp, NICE, Aqua Munda, Ariente, XNet, Interaction Wheel, The Lost Cities, Lost Souls, Need To Breathe, EFab, The One Probe and co-author of Not Enough Wands and RF Lux.
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYMg1JQw3syJBgPeW6m68lA?view_as=subscriber
Support me at my Patreon page (http://www.patreon.com/McJty) or directly on my Paypal account ([email protected]). Thanks
I agree with you about that making the day/night cycle is not an option. In the thread he made in suggestions about some mob spawning changes he suggested to make the cicle last 2 hours... can you imagine? 1 hour of daylight and 1 hour of nighttime would be, at least for me, everlasting.
Id say if mojang changes the lenght of the cicle (hope they wont but you never know) they let us use the beds also to wait for the night (skip the day) cuz otherwise it would be too much... In fact sometimes id like that with the current cycle lenght they add that so i dont have to wait for the night.