Before the Halloween patch, furnaces in SMP worked, mostly. That is, you couldn't see what as happening in the UI for the furnace, but if you left and came back, the furnace would have smelted what you put in it. Now the furnace just eats anything you put in it and nothing's left.
I would be surprised if most of what I'm posting here is new, but I haven't found anything that pulls it coherently together.
Artifacts
The idea behind artifacts is that there exists somewhere in the world items that can do things for you that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. At this point, I am not that concerned with what the artifacts might be themselves, or what they might do, but let me just give two examples.
- Wings would be an item that would allow you (perhaps by equipping in the suggested cloak equipment slot) to fly, but only for a limited time before you'd have to touch the ground again.
- Respawn Totem would be an item that you could place somewhere, and then you'd always respawn there, instead of at the original respawn point.
Please remember, these items are not the point of the post, just examples of items that might provide unique effects.
Challenges
So, an artifact challenge would be what you would have to do to acquire these powerful items. This is the main point of the post: to suggest this idea in general, and then to give some specific examples. Although I like the idea of these challenges providing you with artifacts, there's nothing to stop them from providing you with other unique benefits or abilities. These challenges would provide optional late-game goals (both in terms of beating the challenges, and finding them in the first place) as well as perhaps provide tools for "beating the game" once Notch provides something like that to do.
Here are the examples:
Caste in the Sky
Whenever a block of the map is generated, it has a chance of generating the Castle in the Sky. It's a floating castle filled with traps and badguys. Perhaps a special kind of badguy that focuses on pushing you off of the castle or making holes underneath your feet for you to fall through. The initial "challenge" would be just getting to the castle, although it wouldn't be that hard at this point. Maybe the castle could be protected by flying enemies, making getting up to it a little harder. Make your way to the heart of the castle, and you'd find the Wings or another appropriately themed artifact.
Temple of the Cursed Artifact
Like the Castle in the Sky, the Temple of Doom would have a chance of being generated when new land is discovered. It could be filled with traps and/or monsters, but this idea does not require it. That is because, the item in the center of the temple would be a deactivated artifact, meaning you could take it, but it doesn't do anything... yet. Another optional element would be to have monsters spawn or traps activate only after you take the artifact. Anyhow, the night following your pilfering of the artifact, a special horde of monsters would spawn and attack you with unusual singlemindedness. Perhaps there would even be monsters specially designed to break through or move past/through your defenses (like, say, giant rock-smashing trolls or ghosts that can pass through walls). This would repeat for the two following nights, but each time the assault would get harder. If you should die at any point during this time, the artifact you stole would teleport back to the Temple, and the assaults would stop, and you'd have to start the whole process over again. If you manage to survive all three night without dying once, the artifact would activate and become functional, and you would get to keep it.
Fortress in Hell
This would just be a fortress in the Hell world, filled with nasty monsters, somewhere in the fortress would be an artifact that you could steal.
Other Obvious Challenges
Obviously, there would have to be some artifact deep underwater, and deep underground.
Puzzle Challenges
Some artifacts could be acquired by solving some sort of puzzle or riddle in a ruin. Perhaps you find an old mansion where half of it has been destroyed. If you rebuild that half symmetrically to the other half, an artifact appears.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Links to other threads where this idea has already been better explained?
So, I have heard different answers on whether magic is going to be in Minecraft, and if so, what type. Personally, I don't like the idea that much, at least, I don't want to see "mages" running around throwing fireballs, teleporting, and healing stuff or whatever. However, if magic is implemented, this is the kind of magic I most want to see:
Terraforming Magic
What this means is magic for doing massive environmental changes. Think . (Also, while I like the idea of this being done by magic, it could alternatively be done by some strange Minecrafty "technology".)
All of these spells should require enough rare reagents that even casting them once would require careful consideration. Obviously, they would be massive griefing tools, so they shouldn't be on by default in multiplayer environments.
- Spring (Would cause a water source to be created.)
- Volcano (No explanation needed.)
- Earthquake (Would causing poorly supported objects to fall to the ground, underground caverns to collapse (and new ones to form, maybe), building and trees to fall over, and crevices to open. Maybe would cause tidal waves.
- Crevice (Could be it's own spell, maybe make a massive one like a large canyon.)
- Tidal Wave (haven't really though about this one)
You get the basic idea. I am sure you could think up many more: glacier, inferno, create life, create floating island, dry up lake, part water.
Expanding the early game: excellent idea. Your idea for expanding the early game: poor idea.
In short (as has already been mentioned) your solution is basically to make the early game very drawn out and tedious without really making it more complex or fun.
Here's some brainstorming on how really to expand the early gameplay
- Start the game with some dangerous mobs around, like wolfpacks--stuff that won't actively hunt you, but that you'll have to survive or maybe run away from. This will provide a challenge for getting ready for the night.
- Provide alternate routes to safety. Right now, the only thing that's even slightly rare and necessary to survive the night is coal. But what if coal were harder to find on the surface, and you had other options for survival, like climbing into a large tree. I don't know if that's currently a way that you can survive (the first) night, but it should be. This would make the early game more about identifying how you can survive rather than just running through the same 5 easy 5-minute routine. Here are a few more ways you should be able to survive the first night
* Camp out on a small island in a large body of water.
* Build a large fire.
* Find a friendly group of native life that you can hang out with through the night.
* Somehow hide yourself, maybe with camo and sneaking.
* Find something of value to the local life so that they'll befriend you and protect you for the night.
* Protect yourself with traps. (Maybe that's too advanced for the early game.)
The point is, each of these options should be rare enough that you have to look for a solution, or maybe combine multiple ones, rather than just making your self an invinci-house in five minutes without sweating.
OP, excellent job identifying a real problem. However, I don't think hand tools are the real solution. Either they would be good enough that they would really reduce the usefulness of a crafting table, or they would be nerfed enough that nobody would bother making them, considering how easy crafting tables are to make. Your other ideas seem okay. I definitely agree that there need to be more things that can be made in your inventory (and with items that don't have to be mined).
I agree that hunger would be very good in this game, if kept very weak. Like someone said, once or twice a game-week or something. As it is, once you've got a safe room with torches, that's it, you've won--no chance of dying unless you risk your life. And there's no reason to risk your life because you've already won. Hopefully this will change, but that's the way it is right now, and hunger seems like a very reasonable, very thematic solution.
Quote from JWill »
The difference is, in survival there's a reason for building things.
Yes! Exactly! That is the key difference between creative mode and survival mode. This is why there needs to be hunger. Because right now there's no reason to build anything if you've got a sealed room. "farms, mines, minecart causeways (powered by huge hills at the moment), treefarms, mines, storage areas" don't do anything once you've got a sealed room. None of them help you survive any better. None of them help you achieve any objective other than building them just for their own sake, for which creative mode is fine. The NEED to eat, even if just occasionally, would provide motivation for building all sorts of new buildings and devices: stall and traps for animals, protected farmland, protected passages to farmland. The more distinct motivations, objectives, and problems you have in survival mode, the more interesting, compelling, and deep it will be.
Yes, survival mode is about building, but it's about building things for a REASON (that is, to survive).
OP, please manage to get to the edge of the world before you start suggesting features that most of us would never ever experience, and probably wouldn't notice even if we did experience it. The world is so freaking huge.
I really like the idea of getting dirty while mining. I don't know if I like it enough that it should be implemented, simply because I prefer ideas that have some gameplay effect.
If shovels and axes break too fast, and I kind of feel like they do too, then the very simple solution is just to make using them reduce their durability less. It's simple and solves the problem without doing something drastic like making it so you can't mine without tools.
I think this is a really good idea. However, it seems like potentially a lot of work and confusion simply to get wood that looks a little different. Therefore I would suggest these additional facets of the feature:
First, in addition to producing different looking wood, different species should should have different algorithms for generating their tree shapes and different rarities. So, for example, Giant Redwood would produce huge trees that grow almost straight up, but finding a grove of them would be pretty rare--you probably wouldn't find such a grove in most games, unless you did a lot of exploring. Another tree species might produce a large tree with a thick trunk, but that grows wide rather than tall, with branches spreading pretty far.
Second, all wood, when chopped, should produce identical boards, IMO, just to avoid added complexity when trying to get boards or sticks, but the pieces of wood themselves could have some varying properties: hardness (amount of time it takes to chop), flammability (how easily fire spreads to it), and (maybe) amount of board produced from each unit of wood.
This is a programming problem, but by no means insurmountable. I won't go into ways of getting around it here, because this isn't the forum. However, I definitely think this idea should be implemented. I think the best resources shouldn't all be near the new bedrock--their current level is fine, but they should continue to show up as you get deeper.
I like this idea. However, instead of placing torches where you fire, which doesn't make sense, it should just stick into the wall and burn for a while. Not quite as long as torches (when they have a time limit)--maybe 5 minutes.
Although now I'm having trouble with the idea of an arrow sticking into stone... So maybe it should just stick into dirt/sand/gravel/wood/bushes, etc. If it hits stone it just falls to the ground and burns on the ground.
I think setting baddies on fire makes sense, but seems overpowered. So I would say the arrows should stick into the enemies, and do a little damage over time, as well, with say a 20% chance of lighting zombies or creepers on fire, and a 10% chance or lower of lighting other things on fire.
I think this is a good idea. It really puts the survival in survival. However, I think having both hunger and thirst is somewhat redundant. I think just hunger would be fine, and I would want it understated, so you don't have to go hunting for food every 15 minutes. It should be balanced so that you have to think about food every once in a while, but not most of the time. If you get lost in a deep cavern without any food, you're in danger of dying, but if you take some food with you down into the mines for an extended mining session, that should be enough to last you many real-time hours of gameplay.
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Artifacts
The idea behind artifacts is that there exists somewhere in the world items that can do things for you that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. At this point, I am not that concerned with what the artifacts might be themselves, or what they might do, but let me just give two examples.
- Wings would be an item that would allow you (perhaps by equipping in the suggested cloak equipment slot) to fly, but only for a limited time before you'd have to touch the ground again.
- Respawn Totem would be an item that you could place somewhere, and then you'd always respawn there, instead of at the original respawn point.
Please remember, these items are not the point of the post, just examples of items that might provide unique effects.
Challenges
So, an artifact challenge would be what you would have to do to acquire these powerful items. This is the main point of the post: to suggest this idea in general, and then to give some specific examples. Although I like the idea of these challenges providing you with artifacts, there's nothing to stop them from providing you with other unique benefits or abilities. These challenges would provide optional late-game goals (both in terms of beating the challenges, and finding them in the first place) as well as perhaps provide tools for "beating the game" once Notch provides something like that to do.
Here are the examples:
Caste in the Sky
Whenever a block of the map is generated, it has a chance of generating the Castle in the Sky. It's a floating castle filled with traps and badguys. Perhaps a special kind of badguy that focuses on pushing you off of the castle or making holes underneath your feet for you to fall through. The initial "challenge" would be just getting to the castle, although it wouldn't be that hard at this point. Maybe the castle could be protected by flying enemies, making getting up to it a little harder. Make your way to the heart of the castle, and you'd find the Wings or another appropriately themed artifact.
Temple of the Cursed Artifact
Like the Castle in the Sky, the Temple of Doom would have a chance of being generated when new land is discovered. It could be filled with traps and/or monsters, but this idea does not require it. That is because, the item in the center of the temple would be a deactivated artifact, meaning you could take it, but it doesn't do anything... yet. Another optional element would be to have monsters spawn or traps activate only after you take the artifact. Anyhow, the night following your pilfering of the artifact, a special horde of monsters would spawn and attack you with unusual singlemindedness. Perhaps there would even be monsters specially designed to break through or move past/through your defenses (like, say, giant rock-smashing trolls or ghosts that can pass through walls). This would repeat for the two following nights, but each time the assault would get harder. If you should die at any point during this time, the artifact you stole would teleport back to the Temple, and the assaults would stop, and you'd have to start the whole process over again. If you manage to survive all three night without dying once, the artifact would activate and become functional, and you would get to keep it.
Fortress in Hell
This would just be a fortress in the Hell world, filled with nasty monsters, somewhere in the fortress would be an artifact that you could steal.
Other Obvious Challenges
Obviously, there would have to be some artifact deep underwater, and deep underground.
Puzzle Challenges
Some artifacts could be acquired by solving some sort of puzzle or riddle in a ruin. Perhaps you find an old mansion where half of it has been destroyed. If you rebuild that half symmetrically to the other half, an artifact appears.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Links to other threads where this idea has already been better explained?
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Terraforming Magic
What this means is magic for doing massive environmental changes. Think . (Also, while I like the idea of this being done by magic, it could alternatively be done by some strange Minecrafty "technology".)
All of these spells should require enough rare reagents that even casting them once would require careful consideration. Obviously, they would be massive griefing tools, so they shouldn't be on by default in multiplayer environments.
- Spring (Would cause a water source to be created.)
- Volcano (No explanation needed.)
- Earthquake (Would causing poorly supported objects to fall to the ground, underground caverns to collapse (and new ones to form, maybe), building and trees to fall over, and crevices to open. Maybe would cause tidal waves.
- Crevice (Could be it's own spell, maybe make a massive one like a large canyon.)
- Tidal Wave (haven't really though about this one)
You get the basic idea. I am sure you could think up many more: glacier, inferno, create life, create floating island, dry up lake, part water.
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In short (as has already been mentioned) your solution is basically to make the early game very drawn out and tedious without really making it more complex or fun.
Here's some brainstorming on how really to expand the early gameplay
- Start the game with some dangerous mobs around, like wolfpacks--stuff that won't actively hunt you, but that you'll have to survive or maybe run away from. This will provide a challenge for getting ready for the night.
- Provide alternate routes to safety. Right now, the only thing that's even slightly rare and necessary to survive the night is coal. But what if coal were harder to find on the surface, and you had other options for survival, like climbing into a large tree. I don't know if that's currently a way that you can survive (the first) night, but it should be. This would make the early game more about identifying how you can survive rather than just running through the same 5 easy 5-minute routine. Here are a few more ways you should be able to survive the first night
* Camp out on a small island in a large body of water.
* Build a large fire.
* Find a friendly group of native life that you can hang out with through the night.
* Somehow hide yourself, maybe with camo and sneaking.
* Find something of value to the local life so that they'll befriend you and protect you for the night.
* Protect yourself with traps. (Maybe that's too advanced for the early game.)
The point is, each of these options should be rare enough that you have to look for a solution, or maybe combine multiple ones, rather than just making your self an invinci-house in five minutes without sweating.
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Yes! Exactly! That is the key difference between creative mode and survival mode. This is why there needs to be hunger. Because right now there's no reason to build anything if you've got a sealed room. "farms, mines, minecart causeways (powered by huge hills at the moment), treefarms, mines, storage areas" don't do anything once you've got a sealed room. None of them help you survive any better. None of them help you achieve any objective other than building them just for their own sake, for which creative mode is fine. The NEED to eat, even if just occasionally, would provide motivation for building all sorts of new buildings and devices: stall and traps for animals, protected farmland, protected passages to farmland. The more distinct motivations, objectives, and problems you have in survival mode, the more interesting, compelling, and deep it will be.
Yes, survival mode is about building, but it's about building things for a REASON (that is, to survive).
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First, in addition to producing different looking wood, different species should should have different algorithms for generating their tree shapes and different rarities. So, for example, Giant Redwood would produce huge trees that grow almost straight up, but finding a grove of them would be pretty rare--you probably wouldn't find such a grove in most games, unless you did a lot of exploring. Another tree species might produce a large tree with a thick trunk, but that grows wide rather than tall, with branches spreading pretty far.
Second, all wood, when chopped, should produce identical boards, IMO, just to avoid added complexity when trying to get boards or sticks, but the pieces of wood themselves could have some varying properties: hardness (amount of time it takes to chop), flammability (how easily fire spreads to it), and (maybe) amount of board produced from each unit of wood.
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Difficult? Maybe... Impossible? Are you kidding?
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Although now I'm having trouble with the idea of an arrow sticking into stone... So maybe it should just stick into dirt/sand/gravel/wood/bushes, etc. If it hits stone it just falls to the ground and burns on the ground.
I think setting baddies on fire makes sense, but seems overpowered. So I would say the arrows should stick into the enemies, and do a little damage over time, as well, with say a 20% chance of lighting zombies or creepers on fire, and a 10% chance or lower of lighting other things on fire.
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