I know you've seen them.
You've probably commented on them.
You almost for sure have your own thoughts on it. "Minecraft is too easy." "We need to make it harder." "It gets boring."
And the inevitable replies. "What about the noobs?" "How will your survive the first day?" "Thats way too much."
See, the issue is that in the beginning, zombies and skeletons and such are an actual credible threat. You can die from them, whether you are a noob or a pro. (Though the chances of a pro falling prey to a zombie is smaller)
But then, in the endgame, when you have enchanted diamond armor and legendary weapons and potions and, hay, maybe even a flight suit... A zombie is literally nothing. No problem. Who cares? An undead monster just punched me in the back? Really? I barely even felt it. Lets see what he thinks of my sword... that is literally made of diamonds and filled with magic enough to one shot the poor lifeless creature.
There is a RADICAL change between the endgame and the beginning. And everyone either wants to fix it or keep it the same. The problem is that when you increase how strong the monsters are, it affects the whole game, both the beginning and then end, so it could make it almost impossible to survive in the beginning.
Sooooo.
The Solution should be fairly obvious. The mobs should change strength depending on how strong you are.
It will not be based on how long you have been playing. What do you do when you die, and you are left playing against a ton of uber-strong monsters? Punch them?
It is not based on the amount of diamond you have mined. Again, what do you do when you die, leaving chests full of diamonds to cause those strong monsters to spawn?
It will not be based on your achievements. Those are too easily avoided or forgotten, making the world much to easy for your level.
It will be based on Experience. Not just your current level, but how much you are wearing on your body in enchanted armor, how much you are holding in bows and swords.
Enchantments have a specific level of EXP that they are recorded as.
Enchantment Levels: Protection: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up. (Protection II is recorded as 15 levels, for example)
Fire Protection: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Feather Falling: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Blast Protection: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Projectile Protection: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Respiration: 5 levels. 3 more for each level up.
Aqua Affinity: 5 levels.
Thorns: 12 levels. 7 more for each level up.
Depth Strider: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Frost Walker: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Sharpness: 15 levels. 7 more for each level up.
Smite: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Bane of Arthropods: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Knockback: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Fire Aspect: 12 levels. 7 more for each level up.
Looting: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Efficiency: 5 levels. 2 more for each level up.
Silk Touch: 7 levels.
Unbreaking: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Fortune: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Power: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Punch: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Flame: 12 levels.
Infinity: 12 levels.
Luck of the Sea: 3 levels. 3 more for each level up.
Lure: 3 levels. 3 more for each level up.
Mending: 12 levels.
Monster Levels: Let me explain how the mobs will become harder.
Most mobs will not become physically stronger. Instead, they will have a larger change of spawning with special armor, weapons and enchants.
It randomly selects an armor piece to start with, then tries to enchant that armor. It randomly selects an enchantment. If it fails, it moves on to a lower version of the same enchantment. After it succeeds, it tries to see if it can have another enchantment. After it finishes with that armor, it moves on to the next piece of armor.
After it finishes calculating armor and enchants, it moves on to weapons.
Mutually exclusive Enchants remain mutually exclusive.
When the armor, weapons and enchantments start spawning, they have a 5% chance of happening.
Every level increases the chance by 1%, capping at 80%
Having one object or enchant reduces the chance of getting another by 10%.
There will always be a 5% chance of the object or enchant spawning, leaving a small chance of an incredibly overpowered mob.
Extra levels of enchants will reduce the chance of another object or enchant by 20% instead of 10%.
Zombies have a chance to get a Bow at level 50. This chance caps at 25%
Extra stuff will start spawning at EXP level 5.
Level 5 Leather Boots, Leather Hats.
Level 7 Leather Tunic, Leather Pants, Feather Falling I
Level 10 Gold Boots, Gold Hats. Projectile Protection I
Level 13 Gold Leggings, Gold Chestplates, Wooden Swords.
Level 15 Power I, Knockback I
Level 18 Feather Falling II, Fire Protection I, Projectile Protection II
Level 20 Chain Boots, Chain Helmets, Golden Swords. Two Enchantments.
Level 25 Chain Chestplates, Chain Leggings, Protection I, Punch I
Level 30 Iron Swords, Blast Protection I, Projectile Protection III, Power II
Level 35 Fire Protection II, Feather Falling, III Sharpness I,
Level 40 Iron Boots, Iron Chestplates, Protection II, Knockback II
Level 50 Iron Leggings, Iron Chestplates, Fire Protection II, 3 Enchantments
Level 60 Blast Protection II, Projectile Protection IV, Punch II
Level 70 Blast Protection III, Sharpness II, Power III
Level 80 Protection III, Fire Protection III, Fire Aspect I
Level 100 Fire Protection IV Blast Protection IV, 4 Enchantments.
Level 120 Protection IV, Thorns I, Sharpness III
Level 140 Diamond Boots, Diamond Helmets, Diamond Leggings, Power IV
Level 160 Diamond Chestplates, Thorns II, Sharpness IV
Level 180 Diamond Swords, Fire Aspect II, Flame I
Level 200 Thorns III, Sharpness V, Power V
Level 250 5 Enchantments.
So let me give you an example:
You are level 30. A zombie spawns.
First, it calculates the armor. It has a 10% chance to have a Chain Chestplate. It fails. There is a 21% chance to get a Gold chestplate. This time it succeeds. Now it tries to enchant that armor. It selects Projectile Protection. It has a 5% chance to get Projectile Protection III. It fails. It moves on to Projectile Protection II.
And so on.
It ends up with a Gold Chestplate, a Leather Hat, and a Wooden Sword enchanted with Knockback.
Tada!
Tell me if you followed that :/
Ask questions if you are confused! I tried to make it understandable, but sometimes it needs a little clarification. This is the first time I have ever tried to make such a detailed game mechanic, and I hope I did the math right.
Thank you for reading! Tell me what you think and what might make it better!
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Ooh thats a good point.
Well, I'm assuming that mobs spawn near (but not too near!) players automatically, almost like a zombie siege. I think thats how it already is, somewhat. The Mobs that spawn close to a player spawn according to that nearest players EXP.
Or we could do the average of all the players in the world, but that ones seems a bit rough around the edges.
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Ooh thats a good point.
Well, I'm assuming that mobs spawn near (but not too near!) players automatically, almost like a zombie siege. I think thats how it already is, somewhat. The Mobs that spawn close to a player spawn according to that nearest players EXP.
Or we could do the average of all the players in the world, but that ones seems a bit rough around the edges.
You are correct how it works, that mobs spawn within a certain area around the player. That would be fine if the players are far away from each other, in their own chunks. But when their loaded chunks overlap it is an issue.
What it could do is do like a gradient between two players in the same area. If player X (level 50) is at 0,0 and player Y (level 0) is at 0, 100, mobs close to the players are near their respective levels, but ones between the players (like at 0,50) would average the levels based on where they are between the two players (from weaker player to stronger player.
So 0,50 is 50% between the two players, and their level difference is 50, so you take the level difference times the percent. So 50*.5=25. So the mobs at 0,50 would be at level 25. If the mobs appeared at 0,25 they are 75% of the way from the weak player to the strong player, so 50*.75= level 37.5 mobs at that location.
The idea has some promise but needs tweaking. I kind of want to make a mob level "heat map" for the idea. If I remember when I get home I will.
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I wear armor to get an edge over mobs, increasing my chances of surviving combat. I enchant armor to further increase that edge.
If wearing enchanted armor increases mob difficulty then why would I wear that armor in the first place? In that case it almost seems better to stick without it such armor and only use armor with certain utility enchantments (like depth strider) when necessary. But if I'm only wearing enchanted armor temporarily then I may as well forgo the enchantments most of the time and just stick with potions.
The only remaining issue I have to deal with then is the general accumulation of xp, making it necessary for me to spend that xp on garbage enchantments on a regular basis to keep mob difficulty down. XP becomes a negative. Managing xp levels through enchanting becomes a chore not unlike dealing with hunger.
Then there's the positive feedback of monster drops to consider. This would be especially problematic in with xp farms. More mobs spawning with armor and weapons increases the chance of obtaining some of those items via drops. As a player's xp level racks up mobs give better and better drops, eventually a fully deckout out player an afk and rake in multiple full sets of enchanted diamond armor.
Naturally this is all affected by balance. Maybe there is a way to effectively balance the benefits curve of enchantments vs the costs curve. I don't know. I just don't know if xp is the proper thing to base this dynamic difficulty off of.
Maybe the difficulty should be based instead more on a comparison of damage taken vs damage dealt over time.
In this way armor is just as important as player skill. An armorless pro might even face tougher mobs then a fully armored noob.
The game also would have a "heart" in a sense. It can see if a player has been dying an awful lot lately and only spawn armorless monsters when in their range, conversely if the player has managed to avoid being damaged by any mob in several game days while also managing to kill hundreds of mobs the game will know that it's dealing with a pro player who can handle the worst mobs it can send at them.
You are correct how it works, that mobs spawn within a certain area around the player. That would be fine if the players are far away from each other, in their own chunks. But when their loaded chunks overlap it is an issue.
What it could do is do like a gradient between two players in the same area. If player X (level 50) is at 0,0 and player Y (level 0) is at 0, 100, mobs close to the players are near their respective levels, but ones between the players (like at 0,50) would average the levels based on where they are between the two players (from weaker player to stronger player.
So 0,50 is 50% between the two players, and their level difference is 50, so you take the level difference times the percent. So 50*.5=25. So the mobs at 0,50 would be at level 25. If the mobs appeared at 0,25 they are 75% of the way from the weak player to the strong player, so 50*.75= level 37.5 mobs at that location.
The idea has some promise but needs tweaking. I kind of want to make a mob level "heat map" for the idea. If I remember when I get home I will.
That seems about right (Though the math takes a little work to understand) I don't want one player to be flooding the other player with overpowered mobs.
I wear armor to get an edge over mobs, increasing my chances of surviving combat. I enchant armor to further increase that edge.
If wearing enchanted armor increases mob difficulty then why would I wear that armor in the first place? In that case it almost seems better to stick without it such armor and only use armor with certain utility enchantments (like depth strider) when necessary. But if I'm only wearing enchanted armor temporarily then I may as well forgo the enchantments most of the time and just stick with potions.
I guess my reply to this is that, once you have full enchanted diamond armor, are any of the mobs actually a challenge anymore? Is the game really "Survival Mode" once nothing can kill you? I suppose you could stay at a lower level if you really wanted to keep the mobs sorta manageable, but it seems rather... unfulfilling. I thought the goal was to grow and gain and overcome new challenges. :/
Besides, the highest you can get is if you have fully enchanted all tools, weapons, and sword and bow is around 350. (Disclaimer: educated guess) If you remove four of those objects, (tools) it cuts it down about 1/3 of the way.
And since every time you get another piece of armor or an Enchant, it cuts down the chances to get another one, so Full Diamond will be incredibly rare, even with the other enchanted tools in your inventory.
The only remaining issue I have to deal with then is the general accumulation of xp, making it necessary for me to spend that xp on garbage enchantments on a regular basis to keep mob difficulty down. XP becomes a negative. Managing xp levels through enchanting becomes a chore not unlike dealing with hunger. Well the enchantments count as XP too. But the only thing that counts is the enchants in your inventory. So you can leave all your awesome, extra bows at home.
Then there's the positive feedback of monster drops to consider. This would be especially problematic in with xp farms. More mobs spawning with armor and weapons increases the chance of obtaining some of those items via drops. As a player's xp level racks up mobs give better and better drops, eventually a fully deckout out player an afk and rake in multiple full sets of enchanted diamond armor. Hmmm...
This could be fixed by making Mobs only drop armor when killed by a player (which they might already do). That way, grinding like that could be deadly, so you gotta be careful.
Naturally this is all affected by balance. Maybe there is a way to effectively balance the benefits curve of enchantments vs the costs curve. I don't know. I just don't know if xp is the proper thing to base this dynamic difficulty off of. What else? It just seems like the perfect thing. Its even CALLED experience!
Maybe the difficulty should be based instead more on a comparison of damage taken vs damage dealt over time.
That would be interesting. It would have to reset on death though. And if you fell often it might skew it a little.
In this way armor is just as important as player skill. An armorless pro might even face tougher mobs then a fully armored noob.
Works with XP too. Mining gives EXP as well, so if thats all you do, you will have enough EXP to spawn some bad baddies.
The game also would have a "heart" in a sense. It can see if a player has been dying an awful lot lately and only spawn armorless monsters when in their range, conversely if the player has managed to avoid being damaged by any mob in several game days while also managing to kill hundreds of mobs the game will know that it's dealing with a pro player who can handle the worst mobs it can send at them. That kinda makes sense. I just think EXP works in a lot of the same way :/
I also like the idea of make difficulty more big with more advance in the game, but this increase should be little and external (ie, should not affect to damage or hunger of player).
This need a little more processing and improvement...
For example:
Mobs could suffer a more slow difficulty increase between the player is more advanced (ie, the difficult increase by xp level could be more little to more level), in other mode obtain "more strong enchanted things" is useless.
The problem of multiplayer is present yet...
Hmm. Interesting. This is a pretty slow system, in my mind, at least. More armor chances still means there is only a small chance.
I hope that tags all you... I had to copy/paste some stuff
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Very counterintuitive; enchanting anything will drastically increase the levels of mobs. Enchanting much more than a single item will result in vastly increased power for mobs, which will offset the gains from enchanting items.
Take, for example, a player with a full set of Protection IV Unbreaking III armor and a Sharpness V Unbreaking III sword. We're looking at 223 levels here, meaning players will be primarily fighting mobs with top-notch gear that might possibly be able to counter the player's absurd gear. And, if you're carrying over 27 levels (which you probably will be) you
end up fighting the absolute strongest mobs the system can offer. Meanwhile, if you remove all the enchantments, the player just has to fight common, ineffective trash mobs.
Even then this isn't very effective in increasing difficulty; players are still dealing with standard mobs, just with ludicrously high stats. There's nothing different in fighting them, unless you get a bow-zombie (which, assuming you give them the ability to shoot arrows as well, is basically a skeleton with worse AI). Anyone with a modicum of experience will experience little additional difficulty in fighting mobs, they'll just find minimal differences between diamond and enchanted diamond.
Not to mention that this causes issues with multiplayer; even with a gradient as Badprenup suggests, it's very easy for a newbie to accidentally wander into an area where uber-mobs have already spawned and get murdered by a mob with godly gear (OR, if they cheese the mobs, manage to loot some godly gear from those mobs and skip a good portion of the game's progression).
Don't make a mob's power relative to the player's power. This just makes the game's progression arbitrary, as no matter what you do mobs will match your power. You could play through the game with unenchanted gear (aside from enchanted tools which if carried sparingly would provide benefit without doing anything noticeable to difficulty) just as easily as if you did it while going for enchants; needless to say it's not a good thing.
If you want to address the game's difficulty, don't try to put a band-aid on the problem like this; actually address the specific causes of the game's low difficulty. You have it correct that much of the game's difficulty stems from a lack of progression from mobs; specifically, there are no midgame or endgame threats. So, instead of trying to rubberband some clearly early-game mobs to fit every niche of difficulty (while failing to fill all of them)... just implement midgame and endgame threats to midgame and endgame areas? It's fine for the surface to be a cakewalk, but caves and especially the Nether and the End have no excuse for being easier than the starting area.
Emphasis on the rubberbanding of early-game mobs. What we have right now are decently-designed earlygame threats but they have nowhere near the complexity or variety to fill the roles of anything but earlygame threats. Don't try to force them to be something they aren't.
Very counterintuitive; enchanting anything will drastically increase the levels of mobs. Enchanting much more than a single item will result in vastly increased power for mobs, which will offset the gains from enchanting items. Just so you know, in case you didn't happen to see it, the mobs aren't all guaranteed wearing all these epic armors with enchantments. All of them start at a 5% chance, and then each piece of armor or enchantment reduces the chance of another. So they will almost never spawn as "god mobs"
Take, for example, a player with a full set of Protection IV Unbreaking III armor and a Sharpness V Unbreaking III sword. We're looking at 223 levels here, meaning players will be primarily fighting mobs with top-notch gear that might possibly be able to counter the player's absurd gear. And, if you're carrying over 27 levels (which you probably will be) you
end up fighting the absolute strongest mobs the system can offer. Meanwhile, if you remove all the enchantments, the player just has to fight common, ineffective trash mobs. Well, 223 levels should give you a mob with something like... Diamond leggings, Iron boots, and a Chain chestplate (though thats random) And then each piece of armor should have about two enchantments, and not the best enchantments either.
I do kinda see what you mean though.
Even then this isn't very effective in increasing difficulty; players are still dealing with standard mobs, just with ludicrously high stats. There's nothing different in fighting them, unless you get a bow-zombie (which, assuming you give them the ability to shoot arrows as well, is basically a skeleton with worse AI). Anyone with a modicum of experience will experience little additional difficulty in fighting mobs, they'll just find minimal differences between diamond and enchanted diamond.
Not to mention that this causes issues with multiplayer; even with a gradient as Badprenup suggests, it's very easy for a newbie to accidentally wander into an area where uber-mobs have already spawned and get murdered by a mob with godly gear (OR, if they cheese the mobs, manage to loot some godly gear from those mobs and skip a good portion of the game's progression).
Don't make a mob's power relative to the player's power. This just makes the game's progression arbitrary, as no matter what you do mobs will match your power. You could play through the game with unenchanted gear (aside from enchanted tools which if carried sparingly would provide benefit without doing anything noticeable to difficulty) just as easily as if you did it while going for enchants; needless to say it's not a good thing.
If you want to address the game's difficulty, don't try to put a band-aid on the problem like this; actually address the specific causes of the game's low difficulty. You have it correct that much of the game's difficulty stems from a lack of progression from mobs; specifically, there are no midgame or endgame threats. So, instead of trying to rubberband some clearly early-game mobs to fit every niche of difficulty (while failing to fill all of them)... just implement midgame and endgame threats to midgame and endgame areas? It's fine for the surface to be a cakewalk, but caves and especially the Nether and the End have no excuse for being easier than the starting area. That makes a lot of sense. It just seems that everyone stays at the beginning even once they have all that stuff. I like the idea of having to learn a couple more strategies than just "hit hit hit." I considered making it so that the Mobs AI changed a little, allowing them to do more, but a couple recent posts saying something sorta like that were pushed down cause "Mob AI is way too hard to change."
I might change that up instead.
Emphasis on the rubberbanding of early-game mobs. What we have right now are decently-designed earlygame threats but they have nowhere near the complexity or variety to fill the roles of anything but earlygame threats. Don't try to force them to be something they aren't. Would it work if they WERE given the complexity? Or maybe instead of changing their AI's creating totally new mobs that only spawn later..... Hmmm...
Overall, the main point, I suppose, was that the Overworld doesn't provide challenges after you've gotten strong enough. Although I liked the idea of special Armored mobs spawning more often, that part can get changed. And it probably IS a better idea to create 'new' mobs (say a zombie that spawns with an axe and can break certain wooden blocks) so instead of the mobs increasing in strength, they increase in intelligence, so you have to learn new strategies.
Is the problem with EXP? A couple people have brought up points where you can simply forgo them and do something else (even though that doesn't seem like the point...). Perhaps a different way of determining how strong the player has become? Or even just over time, so people can be ready for these new mobs that spawn. Hm.
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If you want more challenge, then just use shovels for weapons, wear no armor, drink poison, something anything, it's not like the game forces you to be strong.
Overall, the main point, I suppose, was that the Overworld doesn't provide challenges after you've gotten strong enough. Although I liked the idea of special Armored mobs spawning more often, that part can get changed. And it probably IS a better idea to create 'new' mobs (say a zombie that spawns with an axe and can break certain wooden blocks) so instead of the mobs increasing in strength, they increase in intelligence, so you have to learn new strategies.
Is the problem with EXP? A couple people have brought up points where you can simply forgo them and do something else (even though that doesn't seem like the point...). Perhaps a different way of determining how strong the player has become? Or even just over time, so people can be ready for these new mobs that spawn. Hm.
The Overworld (or rather, its surface) shouldn't be providing any significant, prolonged challenges towards the player; by the endgame it's a mostly-safe area for the player to live in and build stuff in. It should only be threatening on Hard at that stage, and even then not to a significant degree. Structures are exempt from this of course.
The problem is more that everything is balanced like this, including places like caves, the Nether, and the End which should always provide a challenge (moreso the other dimensions than caves). They're not early-game areas, so why do they have the difficulty of one?
The problem with your specific idea is that it's reliant on EXP. Ignoring enchantments will only have you at level 30 or so which poses little threat, but when you do enchant things it shoots up to 200+ and you get powerful mobs which negates the bonuses of combat-related enchants. Of course, trying to adjust the game to the player is a bad idea in and of itself; no matter what you do you tend to break something. As you've seen, adjusting difficulty based on equipment defeats the point of upgrading equipment at all; your relative power will always stay the same so you never feel like you get stronger. Meanwhile, if you try to base it off of time played in a world, you wreck SMP as some people will have equipment far below what the game expects you to have. Et cetera. I'll tell you now: the only way I've seen seen that doesn't break something is by having completely new, more difficult mobs spawn in later-game areas. Like in... pretty much every game in existence but Minecraft for some reason.
Would it work if they WERE given the complexity?[/b]
No. At that point they stop being well-balanced early-game mobs, even if they are then able to fulfill the role of a midgame/endgame mob. Either that, or the midgame mob/endgame mob with the stats of an earlygame mob (i.e. annoying as heck).
If you want more challenge, then just use shovels for weapons, wear no armor, drink poison, something anything, it's not like the game forces you to be strong.
Covering up the game's problems doesn't solve them. The game shouldn't be so poorly designed that you effortlessly outclass 99% of the game if you follow progression for a few minutes (and the remaining 1% is kind enough to sit in its own little isolated corner of the game and wait until your equipment would make a god jealous... and then you still have to go to it. And even then, it's not capable of handling the god-equipment you can get).
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No no, I meant like, they gained complexity over time or however it was determined.
Maybe not even changing the mobs, but simple making new mobs that look like the other mobs but do different things. So after a certain amount of time or whatever, a new type of zombie would be able to press buttons or something. So a little more strategy is used.
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I give this full support; it seems very balanced, and arguements about it then making everything annoying are null, for this reason. It's ridiculously simple to not let anything spawn. Most players torch up everything near their base in a 100-block radius. They won't be fighting mobs anyway unless they want to. This makes it so that when they do want to go toe-to-toe with some zombies, they get a good fight, rather than a slaughter-fest (tho those are fun too.) With 1.9 shields and such, this makes the game's fighting mechanics a LOT more interesting, and you no longer need to do PvP for a good challenging battle. And again, it's not like players even have to deal with mobs when they don't want to 95% of the time.
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I know you've seen them.
You've probably commented on them.
You almost for sure have your own thoughts on it.
"Minecraft is too easy."
"We need to make it harder."
"It gets boring."
And the inevitable replies.
"What about the noobs?"
"How will your survive the first day?"
"Thats way too much."
See, the issue is that in the beginning, zombies and skeletons and such are an actual credible threat. You can die from them, whether you are a noob or a pro. (Though the chances of a pro falling prey to a zombie is smaller)
But then, in the endgame, when you have enchanted diamond armor and legendary weapons and potions and, hay, maybe even a flight suit... A zombie is literally nothing. No problem. Who cares? An undead monster just punched me in the back? Really? I barely even felt it. Lets see what he thinks of my sword... that is literally made of diamonds and filled with magic enough to one shot the poor lifeless creature.
There is a RADICAL change between the endgame and the beginning. And everyone either wants to fix it or keep it the same. The problem is that when you increase how strong the monsters are, it affects the whole game, both the beginning and then end, so it could make it almost impossible to survive in the beginning.
Sooooo.
The Solution should be fairly obvious. The mobs should change strength depending on how strong you are.
It will not be based on how long you have been playing. What do you do when you die, and you are left playing against a ton of uber-strong monsters? Punch them?
It is not based on the amount of diamond you have mined. Again, what do you do when you die, leaving chests full of diamonds to cause those strong monsters to spawn?
It will not be based on your achievements. Those are too easily avoided or forgotten, making the world much to easy for your level.
It will be based on Experience. Not just your current level, but how much you are wearing on your body in enchanted armor, how much you are holding in bows and swords.
Enchantments have a specific level of EXP that they are recorded as.
Enchantment Levels:
Protection: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up. (Protection II is recorded as 15 levels, for example)
Fire Protection: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Feather Falling: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Blast Protection: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Projectile Protection: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Respiration: 5 levels. 3 more for each level up.
Aqua Affinity: 5 levels.
Thorns: 12 levels. 7 more for each level up.
Depth Strider: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Frost Walker: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Sharpness: 15 levels. 7 more for each level up.
Smite: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Bane of Arthropods: 7 levels. 4 more for each level up.
Knockback: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Fire Aspect: 12 levels. 7 more for each level up.
Looting: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Efficiency: 5 levels. 2 more for each level up.
Silk Touch: 7 levels.
Unbreaking: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Fortune: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Power: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Punch: 10 levels. 5 more for each level up.
Flame: 12 levels.
Infinity: 12 levels.
Luck of the Sea: 3 levels. 3 more for each level up.
Lure: 3 levels. 3 more for each level up.
Mending: 12 levels.
Monster Levels:
Let me explain how the mobs will become harder.
Most mobs will not become physically stronger. Instead, they will have a larger change of spawning with special armor, weapons and enchants.
It randomly selects an armor piece to start with, then tries to enchant that armor. It randomly selects an enchantment. If it fails, it moves on to a lower version of the same enchantment. After it succeeds, it tries to see if it can have another enchantment. After it finishes with that armor, it moves on to the next piece of armor.
After it finishes calculating armor and enchants, it moves on to weapons.
Mutually exclusive Enchants remain mutually exclusive.
When the armor, weapons and enchantments start spawning, they have a 5% chance of happening.
Every level increases the chance by 1%, capping at 80%
Having one object or enchant reduces the chance of getting another by 10%.
There will always be a 5% chance of the object or enchant spawning, leaving a small chance of an incredibly overpowered mob.
Extra levels of enchants will reduce the chance of another object or enchant by 20% instead of 10%.
Zombies have a chance to get a Bow at level 50. This chance caps at 25%
Extra stuff will start spawning at EXP level 5.
Level 5 Leather Boots, Leather Hats.
Level 7 Leather Tunic, Leather Pants, Feather Falling I
Level 10 Gold Boots, Gold Hats. Projectile Protection I
Level 13 Gold Leggings, Gold Chestplates, Wooden Swords.
Level 15 Power I, Knockback I
Level 18 Feather Falling II, Fire Protection I, Projectile Protection II
Level 20 Chain Boots, Chain Helmets, Golden Swords. Two Enchantments.
Level 25 Chain Chestplates, Chain Leggings, Protection I, Punch I
Level 30 Iron Swords, Blast Protection I, Projectile Protection III, Power II
Level 35 Fire Protection II, Feather Falling, III Sharpness I,
Level 40 Iron Boots, Iron Chestplates, Protection II, Knockback II
Level 50 Iron Leggings, Iron Chestplates, Fire Protection II, 3 Enchantments
Level 60 Blast Protection II, Projectile Protection IV, Punch II
Level 70 Blast Protection III, Sharpness II, Power III
Level 80 Protection III, Fire Protection III, Fire Aspect I
Level 100 Fire Protection IV Blast Protection IV, 4 Enchantments.
Level 120 Protection IV, Thorns I, Sharpness III
Level 140 Diamond Boots, Diamond Helmets, Diamond Leggings, Power IV
Level 160 Diamond Chestplates, Thorns II, Sharpness IV
Level 180 Diamond Swords, Fire Aspect II, Flame I
Level 200 Thorns III, Sharpness V, Power V
Level 250 5 Enchantments.
So let me give you an example:
You are level 30. A zombie spawns.
First, it calculates the armor. It has a 10% chance to have a Chain Chestplate. It fails. There is a 21% chance to get a Gold chestplate. This time it succeeds. Now it tries to enchant that armor. It selects Projectile Protection. It has a 5% chance to get Projectile Protection III. It fails. It moves on to Projectile Protection II.
And so on.
It ends up with a Gold Chestplate, a Leather Hat, and a Wooden Sword enchanted with Knockback.
Tada!
Tell me if you followed that :/
Ask questions if you are confused! I tried to make it understandable, but sometimes it needs a little clarification. This is the first time I have ever tried to make such a detailed game mechanic, and I hope I did the math right.
Thank you for reading! Tell me what you think and what might make it better!
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Ooh thats a good point.
Well, I'm assuming that mobs spawn near (but not too near!) players automatically, almost like a zombie siege. I think thats how it already is, somewhat. The Mobs that spawn close to a player spawn according to that nearest players EXP.
Or we could do the average of all the players in the world, but that ones seems a bit rough around the edges.
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You are correct how it works, that mobs spawn within a certain area around the player. That would be fine if the players are far away from each other, in their own chunks. But when their loaded chunks overlap it is an issue.
What it could do is do like a gradient between two players in the same area. If player X (level 50) is at 0,0 and player Y (level 0) is at 0, 100, mobs close to the players are near their respective levels, but ones between the players (like at 0,50) would average the levels based on where they are between the two players (from weaker player to stronger player.
So 0,50 is 50% between the two players, and their level difference is 50, so you take the level difference times the percent. So 50*.5=25. So the mobs at 0,50 would be at level 25. If the mobs appeared at 0,25 they are 75% of the way from the weak player to the strong player, so 50*.75= level 37.5 mobs at that location.
The idea has some promise but needs tweaking. I kind of want to make a mob level "heat map" for the idea. If I remember when I get home I will.
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I'm not really sure about this one.
I wear armor to get an edge over mobs, increasing my chances of surviving combat. I enchant armor to further increase that edge.
If wearing enchanted armor increases mob difficulty then why would I wear that armor in the first place? In that case it almost seems better to stick without it such armor and only use armor with certain utility enchantments (like depth strider) when necessary. But if I'm only wearing enchanted armor temporarily then I may as well forgo the enchantments most of the time and just stick with potions.
The only remaining issue I have to deal with then is the general accumulation of xp, making it necessary for me to spend that xp on garbage enchantments on a regular basis to keep mob difficulty down. XP becomes a negative. Managing xp levels through enchanting becomes a chore not unlike dealing with hunger.
Then there's the positive feedback of monster drops to consider. This would be especially problematic in with xp farms. More mobs spawning with armor and weapons increases the chance of obtaining some of those items via drops. As a player's xp level racks up mobs give better and better drops, eventually a fully deckout out player an afk and rake in multiple full sets of enchanted diamond armor.
Naturally this is all affected by balance. Maybe there is a way to effectively balance the benefits curve of enchantments vs the costs curve. I don't know. I just don't know if xp is the proper thing to base this dynamic difficulty off of.
Maybe the difficulty should be based instead more on a comparison of damage taken vs damage dealt over time.
In this way armor is just as important as player skill. An armorless pro might even face tougher mobs then a fully armored noob.
The game also would have a "heart" in a sense. It can see if a player has been dying an awful lot lately and only spawn armorless monsters when in their range, conversely if the player has managed to avoid being damaged by any mob in several game days while also managing to kill hundreds of mobs the game will know that it's dealing with a pro player who can handle the worst mobs it can send at them.
Quote from Badprenupnext
You are correct how it works, that mobs spawn within a certain area around the player. That would be fine if the players are far away from each other, in their own chunks. But when their loaded chunks overlap it is an issue.
What it could do is do like a gradient between two players in the same area. If player X (level 50) is at 0,0 and player Y (level 0) is at 0, 100, mobs close to the players are near their respective levels, but ones between the players (like at 0,50) would average the levels based on where they are between the two players (from weaker player to stronger player.
So 0,50 is 50% between the two players, and their level difference is 50, so you take the level difference times the percent. So 50*.5=25. So the mobs at 0,50 would be at level 25. If the mobs appeared at 0,25 they are 75% of the way from the weak player to the strong player, so 50*.75= level 37.5 mobs at that location.
The idea has some promise but needs tweaking. I kind of want to make a mob level "heat map" for the idea. If I remember when I get home I will.
That seems about right (Though the math takes a little work to understand) I don't want one player to be flooding the other player with overpowered mobs.
Quote from Unclevertitlenext
I'm not really sure about this one.
I wear armor to get an edge over mobs, increasing my chances of surviving combat. I enchant armor to further increase that edge.
If wearing enchanted armor increases mob difficulty then why would I wear that armor in the first place? In that case it almost seems better to stick without it such armor and only use armor with certain utility enchantments (like depth strider) when necessary. But if I'm only wearing enchanted armor temporarily then I may as well forgo the enchantments most of the time and just stick with potions.
I guess my reply to this is that, once you have full enchanted diamond armor, are any of the mobs actually a challenge anymore? Is the game really "Survival Mode" once nothing can kill you? I suppose you could stay at a lower level if you really wanted to keep the mobs sorta manageable, but it seems rather... unfulfilling. I thought the goal was to grow and gain and overcome new challenges. :/
Besides, the highest you can get is if you have fully enchanted all tools, weapons, and sword and bow is around 350. (Disclaimer: educated guess) If you remove four of those objects, (tools) it cuts it down about 1/3 of the way.
And since every time you get another piece of armor or an Enchant, it cuts down the chances to get another one, so Full Diamond will be incredibly rare, even with the other enchanted tools in your inventory.
The only remaining issue I have to deal with then is the general accumulation of xp, making it necessary for me to spend that xp on garbage enchantments on a regular basis to keep mob difficulty down. XP becomes a negative. Managing xp levels through enchanting becomes a chore not unlike dealing with hunger.
Well the enchantments count as XP too. But the only thing that counts is the enchants in your inventory. So you can leave all your awesome, extra bows at home.
Then there's the positive feedback of monster drops to consider. This would be especially problematic in with xp farms. More mobs spawning with armor and weapons increases the chance of obtaining some of those items via drops. As a player's xp level racks up mobs give better and better drops, eventually a fully deckout out player an afk and rake in multiple full sets of enchanted diamond armor.
Hmmm...
This could be fixed by making Mobs only drop armor when killed by a player (which they might already do). That way, grinding like that could be deadly, so you gotta be careful.
Naturally this is all affected by balance. Maybe there is a way to effectively balance the benefits curve of enchantments vs the costs curve. I don't know. I just don't know if xp is the proper thing to base this dynamic difficulty off of.
What else? It just seems like the perfect thing. Its even CALLED experience!
Maybe the difficulty should be based instead more on a comparison of damage taken vs damage dealt over time.
That would be interesting. It would have to reset on death though. And if you fell often it might skew it a little.
In this way armor is just as important as player skill. An armorless pro might even face tougher mobs then a fully armored noob.
Works with XP too. Mining gives EXP as well, so if thats all you do, you will have enough EXP to spawn some bad baddies.
The game also would have a "heart" in a sense. It can see if a player has been dying an awful lot lately and only spawn armorless monsters when in their range, conversely if the player has managed to avoid being damaged by any mob in several game days while also managing to kill hundreds of mobs the game will know that it's dealing with a pro player who can handle the worst mobs it can send at them.
That kinda makes sense. I just think EXP works in a lot of the same way :/
Quote from Angeltxilon >>
I also like the idea of make difficulty more big with more advance in the game, but this increase should be little and external (ie, should not affect to damage or hunger of player).
This need a little more processing and improvement...
For example:
Mobs could suffer a more slow difficulty increase between the player is more advanced (ie, the difficult increase by xp level could be more little to more level), in other mode obtain "more strong enchanted things" is useless.
The problem of multiplayer is present yet...
Hmm. Interesting. This is a pretty slow system, in my mind, at least. More armor chances still means there is only a small chance.
I hope that tags all you... I had to copy/paste some stuff
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Very counterintuitive; enchanting anything will drastically increase the levels of mobs. Enchanting much more than a single item will result in vastly increased power for mobs, which will offset the gains from enchanting items.
Take, for example, a player with a full set of Protection IV Unbreaking III armor and a Sharpness V Unbreaking III sword. We're looking at 223 levels here, meaning players will be primarily fighting mobs with top-notch gear that might possibly be able to counter the player's absurd gear. And, if you're carrying over 27 levels (which you probably will be) you
end up fighting the absolute strongest mobs the system can offer. Meanwhile, if you remove all the enchantments, the player just has to fight common, ineffective trash mobs.
Even then this isn't very effective in increasing difficulty; players are still dealing with standard mobs, just with ludicrously high stats. There's nothing different in fighting them, unless you get a bow-zombie (which, assuming you give them the ability to shoot arrows as well, is basically a skeleton with worse AI). Anyone with a modicum of experience will experience little additional difficulty in fighting mobs, they'll just find minimal differences between diamond and enchanted diamond.
Not to mention that this causes issues with multiplayer; even with a gradient as Badprenup suggests, it's very easy for a newbie to accidentally wander into an area where uber-mobs have already spawned and get murdered by a mob with godly gear (OR, if they cheese the mobs, manage to loot some godly gear from those mobs and skip a good portion of the game's progression).
Don't make a mob's power relative to the player's power. This just makes the game's progression arbitrary, as no matter what you do mobs will match your power. You could play through the game with unenchanted gear (aside from enchanted tools which if carried sparingly would provide benefit without doing anything noticeable to difficulty) just as easily as if you did it while going for enchants; needless to say it's not a good thing.
If you want to address the game's difficulty, don't try to put a band-aid on the problem like this; actually address the specific causes of the game's low difficulty. You have it correct that much of the game's difficulty stems from a lack of progression from mobs; specifically, there are no midgame or endgame threats. So, instead of trying to rubberband some clearly early-game mobs to fit every niche of difficulty (while failing to fill all of them)... just implement midgame and endgame threats to midgame and endgame areas? It's fine for the surface to be a cakewalk, but caves and especially the Nether and the End have no excuse for being easier than the starting area.
Emphasis on the rubberbanding of early-game mobs. What we have right now are decently-designed earlygame threats but they have nowhere near the complexity or variety to fill the roles of anything but earlygame threats. Don't try to force them to be something they aren't.
Overall, the main point, I suppose, was that the Overworld doesn't provide challenges after you've gotten strong enough. Although I liked the idea of special Armored mobs spawning more often, that part can get changed. And it probably IS a better idea to create 'new' mobs (say a zombie that spawns with an axe and can break certain wooden blocks) so instead of the mobs increasing in strength, they increase in intelligence, so you have to learn new strategies.
Is the problem with EXP? A couple people have brought up points where you can simply forgo them and do something else (even though that doesn't seem like the point...). Perhaps a different way of determining how strong the player has become? Or even just over time, so people can be ready for these new mobs that spawn. Hm.
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If you want more challenge, then just use shovels for weapons, wear no armor, drink poison, something anything, it's not like the game forces you to be strong.
The Overworld (or rather, its surface) shouldn't be providing any significant, prolonged challenges towards the player; by the endgame it's a mostly-safe area for the player to live in and build stuff in. It should only be threatening on Hard at that stage, and even then not to a significant degree. Structures are exempt from this of course.
The problem is more that everything is balanced like this, including places like caves, the Nether, and the End which should always provide a challenge (moreso the other dimensions than caves). They're not early-game areas, so why do they have the difficulty of one?
The problem with your specific idea is that it's reliant on EXP. Ignoring enchantments will only have you at level 30 or so which poses little threat, but when you do enchant things it shoots up to 200+ and you get powerful mobs which negates the bonuses of combat-related enchants. Of course, trying to adjust the game to the player is a bad idea in and of itself; no matter what you do you tend to break something. As you've seen, adjusting difficulty based on equipment defeats the point of upgrading equipment at all; your relative power will always stay the same so you never feel like you get stronger. Meanwhile, if you try to base it off of time played in a world, you wreck SMP as some people will have equipment far below what the game expects you to have. Et cetera. I'll tell you now: the only way I've seen seen that doesn't break something is by having completely new, more difficult mobs spawn in later-game areas. Like in... pretty much every game in existence but Minecraft for some reason.
No. At that point they stop being well-balanced early-game mobs, even if they are then able to fulfill the role of a midgame/endgame mob. Either that, or the midgame mob/endgame mob with the stats of an earlygame mob (i.e. annoying as heck).
Covering up the game's problems doesn't solve them. The game shouldn't be so poorly designed that you effortlessly outclass 99% of the game if you follow progression for a few minutes (and the remaining 1% is kind enough to sit in its own little isolated corner of the game and wait until your equipment would make a god jealous... and then you still have to go to it. And even then, it's not capable of handling the god-equipment you can get).
No no, I meant like, they gained complexity over time or however it was determined.
Maybe not even changing the mobs, but simple making new mobs that look like the other mobs but do different things. So after a certain amount of time or whatever, a new type of zombie would be able to press buttons or something. So a little more strategy is used.
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Awesome
I give this full support; it seems very balanced, and arguements about it then making everything annoying are null, for this reason. It's ridiculously simple to not let anything spawn. Most players torch up everything near their base in a 100-block radius. They won't be fighting mobs anyway unless they want to. This makes it so that when they do want to go toe-to-toe with some zombies, they get a good fight, rather than a slaughter-fest (tho those are fun too.) With 1.9 shields and such, this makes the game's fighting mechanics a LOT more interesting, and you no longer need to do PvP for a good challenging battle. And again, it's not like players even have to deal with mobs when they don't want to 95% of the time.
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This already happens, though it's based on time and isn't quite as extreme.
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Difficulty
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