1
Game difficulty really impacting the game
Ouatcheur
IDKCharlie
Ok, 1st off, I must say this is NOT a wishlist: each of these ideas fall under a COMMON theme: things DIRECTLY affected by the game difficulty.
For the purpose of this topic, I consider only Easy, Normal and Hard. Hardcore is actually playing on HARD but with only 1 life.
COMBAT
#1 - Mob damage
We already have this in the game. In fact, as far a Game Difficulty go, we MOSTLY ONLY have this.
Fact: Damage is internally kept as floating point values. Say, from full health of 20.0 health points, you take 0.25 damage, then you drop to 19.75 health, and you will have 9.5 hearts displayed on your screen. You take 0.25 damage another three times, going to 19.5, 19.25 and then 19.0 health points left, but you will still have the same 9.5 hearts displayed. This is how vanila currently works.
For mob damage, instead of having a separate listing for each Game Difficulty setting, I'd simply go with a more harmonious way :
Each mob would list it's damage for Normal difficulty only.
On Easy difficulty, mobs would deal half damage.
On Normal difficulty, mobs would deal their normal damage (duh).
And on Hard difficulty, mobs would deal double damage.
Simple to understand and remember !
Yes, for the Easy line above, this would make Easy difficulty easier than it is now. After seeing several noobs struggle so much with fighting off against solitary zombies, to the point of dying over, and over, and over, and over, to the point of sticking to Peaceful for a LONG time, I think Easy fights could stand to be actually easier, so that even without armor and a crappy wooden sword, a 5 years old kid that is half-incompetent can still hope to easily win those "easiest" fights. Maybe not 4 zombies at once, but a single zombie ? Definitely and nearly always.
And yes, for the Hard line above, this would make Hard difficulty harder than it is now. Well, most (if not almost all) players than like to play on Hard find that Hard is super easy anyway. So I think upping the ante a bit so that unless you have good (iron or more) armor and weapon, you will just have a HARD time against mobs, and that going all berserk "ME whole plan is charge entire horde of tem munsters!" is going to end pretty badly for the player, that goes with the territory for 'Hard'.
If you do not agree with either of those "rationales", then it would be like this instead:
On Easy difficulty, mobs would deal 1/3 less damage.
On Hard difficulty, mobs would deal 50% more damage.
This is about what we already have now, only it would be a single 'seamless' rule instead of a "define damage per mob per difficulty". It would just be that more internally consistent.
#2 - Player attack speed
Easy : As currrent vanilla, you can "spam" with your sword.
Normal : A fraction-of-a-second "cooldown" would be added. No more spamming mindlessly.
Hard: A bit longer cooldown AND a "warmup" (a slight delay between clicking and the actual strike) Thus, you can't directly go from parrying to striking and vice-versa.
#3 - Amount of hostiles
Currently, when the game spawns hostile mobs, it actually "tries" to spawn a whole group of mobs. There is also some kind of special limit: the Mob Cap, defining how many mobs total will exist in loaded chunks around the player.
Currently, these things are the same wether you play on Easy, Normal or Hard. but I found out tta players that like "Easy" don't want to have constant interruptions from hostiles, and have much trouble dealing with the largest groups of hostiles, while players that like Hard expect more to see enemies everwhere and in bigger numbers too.
So, it would become:
On Easy, the Hostile Mobs Cap would be 2/3 of normal, and they would spawn in groups of 1-3 instead of 1-4 (but unchanged for wolves and ghasts and rare mobs like Endermen and Witches).
On Hard, the Hostile Mobs Cap would be 3/2 of normal, and they would spawn in groups of 1-6 instead of 1-4 (but unchanged for wolves and ghasts and rare mobs).
#4 - Mob capabilities
The mobs themselves would fight better or worse depending on the difficulty setting.
We already have a bit of this with Zombies bashing down doors only on Hard. We would just add something for every mob so that each mod is easier or harder in a unique way depending on difficulty.
- Zombies:
On Easy: Zombies would not strike harder and harder as they get more and more damaged. Much reduced chance of a burning zombie to make anything catch on fire.
On Hard: Zombies can attack diagonally upwards (say you are on a 2 high pillar) or downwards (you are standing in a kneecapping area). In both cases the player still gets a cover bonus (upgraded to total cover for all damage and knockback when he is also parrying). In fact that should go true for any melee mob. No more kneecapping forever from a safe spot unless you're a pro at parrying !
- Skeletons
On Easy, Skeletons would not shoot faster-and-faster-aka-gatling-gun as you move nearer them. They'd stay at the slower rate of fire all the time. Reduced chance for burninbg skeleton to make stuff catch on fire.
On Hard: Currently, when a skeleton has to come at you and turn a corner to get at you, it just then "stays there" giving you ample time to finish it off before it is able to shoot a single arrow. Instead, unless the skeleton just fired too recently, it would be ready to shoot the moment it turned the corner. You'd have to really time your strike to hit it WHILE it turns the corner. Also, a skeleton hitting you from "point blank range" would deal critical damage.
- Spiders :
On Easy: Spiders would jump a LOT less, and they could still be struck even when they are "dangling from their 'invisible spiderweb-string' and seemingly moving quickly up and down in thin air" (currently you can only strike them when they are at the top of that movement, if you stand VERY close).
On Hard: Spiders can move along ceilings (they should however be able to leave a ceiling surface and move to a wall ONLY if that wal is lower than the celing, otherwise they would ignore all classical "anti-spider walls", and they can litteraly JUMP from a ceiling or from any wall or higher location to try to "drop" onto the player from above, dealing critical strike damage if they land directly on top of him. About 25% of spiders will also, once they do jump attack from high above, will immediately jump away in order to climb back high again, getting ready to make another "jump from above" attack.
- Creepers
On Easy: Approaching Creepers would make some 'steps' noises. Also, if you strike at a creeper, that resets it's explosion timer, so yeah the biggest threat monster in the game, would become pitifully weak on Easy. Given how noobs get all excited about the mere IDEA of getting blown up, even if there is 1% chance of this ocucring, I'd say making the deadly creeper strongly reduced in danger level for noobs is a good idea.
On Hard: Even while starting to explode, Creepers are still able to continue moving towards the player at 30% their normal speed (kind of like a player holding a charged bow can still move, just not at max speed), thus making sure the player can't escape all that easily.
- Endermen
On Easy, an Enderman takes 1 second longer before "becoming angry" when you look at it. That is more than long enough for a player who was just looking around to avoid "random error" enderman fights they don't want until they're ready. In short, on Easy, unless the layer purposefully screws up or wants it, he won't get an Enderman angry at him.
On Hard: If an Enderman is near a player (16 blocks), after about say 30 seconds it will become way more active with it's "block moving". More specifically blocks amongst those it is allowed to move that are between the player and OTHER mobs. Thus, on Hard, a Dirt house (or hole in the ground) is NO protection from night mobs: the first enderman around will create a nice breach and then you just die.
- Witches
On Easy: Witches throw potions 30% slower.
On Hard: I really had to rack my brain a bit here to try to find something appropriate. Not quite satisfied with the result but here goes 2 ideas...
Witches can use the Evil Eye attack. This is merely their eyes blinkind red for a fraction of a second, a very quick attack that the witch will definitely use at least once. This "diasbles" a player's magic items. Any enchanted armor worn, or all tools or weapons that are in direct inventory slots, will simply fall off to the ground (stuff in rest of inventory is unaffected). The notable exception are all items made out of gold. Witches are nasty !
Witches have small (but not too small let's say 20%) odds to curse the player when they die (only the last player that recently damaged the witch). 'Cursed' is a permanent status effect which makes exactly half of all of the player actions in the environment will fail. Make an attack ? 50% miss chance. Try to break a block ? 50% chance that the block simply won't break at all when the cracks animation completes (and goes away). Try to eat steak ? Well, that is an inventory action, not an environment action, so that one is ok.
Being cursed is thus very penalizing and extremely annoying. Getting rid of the curse is not as easy as simply drinking milk, tough. There are two ways:
. The "Might take a while before I can do that anticurse ritual" way: Drink milk at (or very near) midnight while under the sky and under a full moon.
. The "I'm rich and in a hurry" way: Drink milk while under a Regeneration effect (Golden Apple, enchanted Golden Apple, or Beacon).
- Wolves
On Easy: Hostile Wolves turn back to Wild Wolves again if you feed them bone or meat. As for Tamed Wolves they never become aggravated.
On Hard: Wild Wolves ALL become Hostile as soon as a single one of them is attacked, and then they attack as a pack. A single Wild Wolf might also become hostile to you if you stay close to it and do not get it tamed. the loner you staqy besides it the more chances it will turn hostile. Usually a few seconds is enough.
- Slime
On Easy: It is really hard to make the slimes any easier than they already are lol. Hmmm, slimes would only split 2-ways, and never 3-ways or 4-ways ?
On Normal: I added this here because frankly otherwise slimes are to much of a joke. Slimes would have 2 movement upgrades:
"Sliding": slower than a jump, but that would actually add to their total speed as they would slide a bit in between each jump they make. They would also jump a bit less and something just slide around wobbingly.
"Rebounding": Presently slimes "hit" everything in their way as if it was a hard-and-fast obstacle. Seeing them desparately and almost futilely try to move around in cramped quarters is very laughable and totally ridiculous. Instead, slimes should "bounce off" obstacles, at an angle (not a mirror-perfect bouncing angle), thus would still be able to mostly move closer to were they are trying to go. This would boost their mobility to a reasonable level.
On Hard: Small and Large slimes (not Tiny slimes) would have longer and higher jumps, and deal critical damage when then fall "right on top of" you. Large Slimes would also be able to "Engulf" : basically anytime they move "over" you, you get stuck inside the middle of the mob, taking constant damage until you kill the slime or die. a large slime could engulf only 1 player at a time. Finally, arrows would deal only half damage to slimes.
- Zombie Pigmen
On Easy: When they go aggro, instead of the entire group going aggro, there is only a 25% chance that a single second zombie pigmen also will go aggro in addition to the first zombie. Such pigmen are considered to have "split off from the rest of the group" and thus "another pigman also goes aggro" is a one-time chance only on the first time that you hit a zombie pigman, not on every hit. Yeah, the Nether should be harsh. But the overall game difficulty should trump that.
On Hard: Zombie Pigmen are always hostile (and attack as a group too). They chase players through nether portals if they can. Also, Zombie Pigmen can strike diagonally, downwards or upwards, 1 block, to reach pillared-up players or reach kneecap-area players (those are treated as if they are with cover, and when the player is also parrying, as if with total cover).
- Blaze
On Easy: Blaze would have less odds of making the player catch on fire, and shoot only one projectile at a time, not a salvo of several projectiles in a quick succession, one right behind the other.
On Hard: Blazes ALWAYS keep their distance, avoiding melee and ground level. Also, their projectile attack deals fire AND normal 'bludgeoning' damage. Also, Fire Resistance potions greatly reduce fire damage (and that stacks with Protection from Fire), but do not provide total immunity to fire anymore.
- Wither Skeleton
On Easy: Wither skeletons cannot sprint, and deal the Wither effect for only 5 seconds instead of 10.
On Hard: Unless already busy with their sword, even while moving Wither Skeletons can swing their sword to deflect incoming arrows (only arrows coming at them from their front half, tough) half the time BACK at the nearest enemy (so yeah, in PVP, you shoot a wither and another player nearer to the undead than you are might very wll get the arrow), the other half in a random direction. Similarly, they also are adept at parrying melee attacks, thus being able to reduce often the damage they will get. Also, the wither effect lasts for a whopping 20 seconds. Carrying Milk becomes vital here !
- Magma Cube
On Easy: Same as Slimes, they would split only 2-ways, never 3 or 4 ways.
On Hard: Critical hit damage when they land on you "just right", and any attack they make especially a crititical might make the player catch on fire. All Magma Cubes can also glide between jumps and overall seem to move faster than normal.
- Silverfish
On Easy: They move slower, and only half the chance of a silverfish "egg" self-opening up from the cries of a nearby other silverfish.
On Hard: Their attacks have 50% odds of applying Slow effect for 5 seconds.
FOOD & FARMING
Most players agree that getting food is extremely easy, and grows very fast. Even noobs ! So for this section I'll make Normal actualy slightly harder.
On Easy: Panicked Animals move a little slower, and mostly are NOT able to "turn on a dime in a single tick", making them much easier to kill in the wild. Also, farm animals naturally spawn in groups of 1-6 instead of 1-4, and their Mob Cap would be 50% higher. The player starts with an Apple, a Melon Slice, and a Cookie, in it's main inventory. If Starting chest is enabled, then that chest, in addition to it's normal content, contains extra random food too, AND a single NPC Village Small House Version 2 structure (the one with a 2x3 interior, the most basic variant only) appears about 6 blocks away from the starting chest. This creates not only a easy shelter for the starting player, but also an "easy to spot from afar" landmark. If a player chooses Easy AND Starting chest, he wants his start to be really really easy.
On Normal: Normal animal mob caps and groups size. But everything grows twice as slow as in the current vanilla game. Trees and other "slow growth" stuff grow 3 times slower instead.
On Hard: Mob cap for animals reduced by half. They spawn in groups of 1-2 instead of 1-4. Anytime an animal panics, all animals within sight of it will also start to panic. Plants grow much slower than current vanilla: most growth speeds are 5 times slower, and things are "slow growth" like trees are 10 times slower than current vanilla instead. When you harvest crops, there is a 50% chance for tilled farmland to immediately turn back to dirt. If a bonus chest is selected at the start, it contains only a small handfull of tiny stacks of the most basic items (about half as many stacks containing less than half as many items), and there are no torches placed around the chest. Animals need "living space": whenever an animal is "pushed against" another entity, it will try to move away to free space (as per normal vanilla), but will be treated as if it's not able to "breathe": so after a while it will start taking asphyxiation damage, and thus will start to panic (which will make them all panic - stampede from overpopulation!). So you can't pack thirty chickens into a 1x1 chicken coop: they'll just nearly all die from asphyxiation.
Even with that, I don't think getting food on Hard would be much hard. I can easily survive only with zombie flesh lol so yeah more "adjustments" would probably be needed here too.
HOSTILE SPAWNING
On Easy: Mobs can only spawn under the surface.
On Normal: Separate Mob Caps for surface hostile mobs, and for underground hostile mobs. Overall in a typical night of wandering around, you would fight *slightly* less mobs on the surface than by going down tunnels. Presently, the difficulty is MUCH higher on the surface than when going into tunnels, which really feels weird. So this is only to "streamline" the difficulty here.
On Hard: All mobs become stronger the deeper underground they are (depending on the Y elevation at spawn time).
Starting at layer 40 and under:
Health: +2% per meter under Y = 41.
Speed: +0.5% per meter under Y = 41.
Attack damage: +1 per meter under Y=41.
Thus, at the lava lake layer (typically Y=11 using the zombie's feet elevation), a zombie would have:
32 Health Points (instead of 20)
+15% walking speed bonus
and would deal 30% extra damage.
MINING & WORKING
I honestly have not much in the way of good ideas here.
On Easy: Double the amount of all of the "valuable" ore veins (gold, lapis, emerald, and diamonds) ?
On Hard: Half as much of the "common" ores (coal, iron, resdtone), and all ore veins that do not have contact with Air have say 80% chance of not spawning at all (forcing tunnel mining which is much more dangerous from branch mining).
Meh.
Note that changing the difficulty would not affect aready spawned chunks, only new loaded chunks will be affected. The only way to make this "worldwide" is with a world created with difficulty locked, or never changing the difficulty.
FALLING
Easy : Fall dmg formula would be [ Height - 5 ] / 2
So falling 5 blocks wouldn't even hurt, and from full health you could fall 44 blocks without dying, which is more than most ravines - after all noobs fall way to easily into ravines right ? Not even counting boots of feather falling here.
Normal : [ Height - 3 ] (same as currently)
Hard : [ Height - 1 ] x 2
So on Hard a fall of a mere 2 blocks will still hurt (albeit only a little bit), and a fall from a mere 11 blocks (11 meters = about 36 feet) will always kill the player - unless he had Feather Falling boots. Even then that wuld boot that to only surviving a 17 blocks fall with any certainty . Overall, this is encouraging the player to always choose his path very carefully.
FIRE
Easy: Fires burn themselves out quicker and spread slower. Your tiny wood house will lose only some of it's blocks, not half it's roof and walls.
Hard: Fires are very dangerous, spreading quicker and burning themselves out only after a longer time, and fire can even burn tall grass (but not to the point of making entire forest or plain all burn away).
NATURAL REGENERATION
Easy: 3 times faster what we already have. Want to go fight right in the middle of 20 mobs ? Go for it ! It's EASY !
Hard: 10 times slower than normal. Yah, don't get hurt too much, be much, much more careful ! Battling constantly ? Forget it uness maybe if you have godly equipment !
And so on...
There are a LOT of potential variants here. Each of the above idea could be swapped for something else entirely, after all.
But the main idea is that the entire game should actually become easier/harder, not just one or two aspects of it !
For the purpose of this topic, I consider only Easy, Normal and Hard. Hardcore is actually playing on HARD but with only 1 life.
COMBAT
#1 - Mob damage
We already have this in the game. In fact, as far a Game Difficulty go, we MOSTLY ONLY have this.
Fact: Damage is internally kept as floating point values. Say, from full health of 20.0 health points, you take 0.25 damage, then you drop to 19.75 health, and you will have 9.5 hearts displayed on your screen. You take 0.25 damage another three times, going to 19.5, 19.25 and then 19.0 health points left, but you will still have the same 9.5 hearts displayed. This is how vanila currently works.
For mob damage, instead of having a separate listing for each Game Difficulty setting, I'd simply go with a more harmonious way :
Each mob would list it's damage for Normal difficulty only.
On Easy difficulty, mobs would deal half damage.
On Normal difficulty, mobs would deal their normal damage (duh).
And on Hard difficulty, mobs would deal double damage.
Simple to understand and remember !
Yes, for the Easy line above, this would make Easy difficulty easier than it is now. After seeing several noobs struggle so much with fighting off against solitary zombies, to the point of dying over, and over, and over, and over, to the point of sticking to Peaceful for a LONG time, I think Easy fights could stand to be actually easier, so that even without armor and a crappy wooden sword, a 5 years old kid that is half-incompetent can still hope to easily win those "easiest" fights. Maybe not 4 zombies at once, but a single zombie ? Definitely and nearly always.
And yes, for the Hard line above, this would make Hard difficulty harder than it is now. Well, most (if not almost all) players than like to play on Hard find that Hard is super easy anyway. So I think upping the ante a bit so that unless you have good (iron or more) armor and weapon, you will just have a HARD time against mobs, and that going all berserk "ME whole plan is charge entire horde of tem munsters!" is going to end pretty badly for the player, that goes with the territory for 'Hard'.
If you do not agree with either of those "rationales", then it would be like this instead:
On Easy difficulty, mobs would deal 1/3 less damage.
On Hard difficulty, mobs would deal 50% more damage.
This is about what we already have now, only it would be a single 'seamless' rule instead of a "define damage per mob per difficulty". It would just be that more internally consistent.
#2 - Player attack speed
Easy : As currrent vanilla, you can "spam" with your sword.
Normal : A fraction-of-a-second "cooldown" would be added. No more spamming mindlessly.
Hard: A bit longer cooldown AND a "warmup" (a slight delay between clicking and the actual strike) Thus, you can't directly go from parrying to striking and vice-versa.
#3 - Amount of hostiles
Currently, when the game spawns hostile mobs, it actually "tries" to spawn a whole group of mobs. There is also some kind of special limit: the Mob Cap, defining how many mobs total will exist in loaded chunks around the player.
Currently, these things are the same wether you play on Easy, Normal or Hard. but I found out tta players that like "Easy" don't want to have constant interruptions from hostiles, and have much trouble dealing with the largest groups of hostiles, while players that like Hard expect more to see enemies everwhere and in bigger numbers too.
So, it would become:
On Easy, the Hostile Mobs Cap would be 2/3 of normal, and they would spawn in groups of 1-3 instead of 1-4 (but unchanged for wolves and ghasts and rare mobs like Endermen and Witches).
On Hard, the Hostile Mobs Cap would be 3/2 of normal, and they would spawn in groups of 1-6 instead of 1-4 (but unchanged for wolves and ghasts and rare mobs).
#4 - Mob capabilities
The mobs themselves would fight better or worse depending on the difficulty setting.
We already have a bit of this with Zombies bashing down doors only on Hard. We would just add something for every mob so that each mod is easier or harder in a unique way depending on difficulty.
- Zombies:
On Easy: Zombies would not strike harder and harder as they get more and more damaged. Much reduced chance of a burning zombie to make anything catch on fire.
On Hard: Zombies can attack diagonally upwards (say you are on a 2 high pillar) or downwards (you are standing in a kneecapping area). In both cases the player still gets a cover bonus (upgraded to total cover for all damage and knockback when he is also parrying). In fact that should go true for any melee mob. No more kneecapping forever from a safe spot unless you're a pro at parrying !
- Skeletons
On Easy, Skeletons would not shoot faster-and-faster-aka-gatling-gun as you move nearer them. They'd stay at the slower rate of fire all the time. Reduced chance for burninbg skeleton to make stuff catch on fire.
On Hard: Currently, when a skeleton has to come at you and turn a corner to get at you, it just then "stays there" giving you ample time to finish it off before it is able to shoot a single arrow. Instead, unless the skeleton just fired too recently, it would be ready to shoot the moment it turned the corner. You'd have to really time your strike to hit it WHILE it turns the corner. Also, a skeleton hitting you from "point blank range" would deal critical damage.
- Spiders :
On Easy: Spiders would jump a LOT less, and they could still be struck even when they are "dangling from their 'invisible spiderweb-string' and seemingly moving quickly up and down in thin air" (currently you can only strike them when they are at the top of that movement, if you stand VERY close).
On Hard: Spiders can move along ceilings (they should however be able to leave a ceiling surface and move to a wall ONLY if that wal is lower than the celing, otherwise they would ignore all classical "anti-spider walls", and they can litteraly JUMP from a ceiling or from any wall or higher location to try to "drop" onto the player from above, dealing critical strike damage if they land directly on top of him. About 25% of spiders will also, once they do jump attack from high above, will immediately jump away in order to climb back high again, getting ready to make another "jump from above" attack.
- Creepers
On Easy: Approaching Creepers would make some 'steps' noises. Also, if you strike at a creeper, that resets it's explosion timer, so yeah the biggest threat monster in the game, would become pitifully weak on Easy. Given how noobs get all excited about the mere IDEA of getting blown up, even if there is 1% chance of this ocucring, I'd say making the deadly creeper strongly reduced in danger level for noobs is a good idea.
On Hard: Even while starting to explode, Creepers are still able to continue moving towards the player at 30% their normal speed (kind of like a player holding a charged bow can still move, just not at max speed), thus making sure the player can't escape all that easily.
- Endermen
On Easy, an Enderman takes 1 second longer before "becoming angry" when you look at it. That is more than long enough for a player who was just looking around to avoid "random error" enderman fights they don't want until they're ready. In short, on Easy, unless the layer purposefully screws up or wants it, he won't get an Enderman angry at him.
On Hard: If an Enderman is near a player (16 blocks), after about say 30 seconds it will become way more active with it's "block moving". More specifically blocks amongst those it is allowed to move that are between the player and OTHER mobs. Thus, on Hard, a Dirt house (or hole in the ground) is NO protection from night mobs: the first enderman around will create a nice breach and then you just die.
- Witches
On Easy: Witches throw potions 30% slower.
On Hard: I really had to rack my brain a bit here to try to find something appropriate. Not quite satisfied with the result but here goes 2 ideas...
Witches can use the Evil Eye attack. This is merely their eyes blinkind red for a fraction of a second, a very quick attack that the witch will definitely use at least once. This "diasbles" a player's magic items. Any enchanted armor worn, or all tools or weapons that are in direct inventory slots, will simply fall off to the ground (stuff in rest of inventory is unaffected). The notable exception are all items made out of gold. Witches are nasty !
Witches have small (but not too small let's say 20%) odds to curse the player when they die (only the last player that recently damaged the witch). 'Cursed' is a permanent status effect which makes exactly half of all of the player actions in the environment will fail. Make an attack ? 50% miss chance. Try to break a block ? 50% chance that the block simply won't break at all when the cracks animation completes (and goes away). Try to eat steak ? Well, that is an inventory action, not an environment action, so that one is ok.
Being cursed is thus very penalizing and extremely annoying. Getting rid of the curse is not as easy as simply drinking milk, tough. There are two ways:
. The "Might take a while before I can do that anticurse ritual" way: Drink milk at (or very near) midnight while under the sky and under a full moon.
. The "I'm rich and in a hurry" way: Drink milk while under a Regeneration effect (Golden Apple, enchanted Golden Apple, or Beacon).
- Wolves
On Easy: Hostile Wolves turn back to Wild Wolves again if you feed them bone or meat. As for Tamed Wolves they never become aggravated.
On Hard: Wild Wolves ALL become Hostile as soon as a single one of them is attacked, and then they attack as a pack. A single Wild Wolf might also become hostile to you if you stay close to it and do not get it tamed. the loner you staqy besides it the more chances it will turn hostile. Usually a few seconds is enough.
- Slime
On Easy: It is really hard to make the slimes any easier than they already are lol. Hmmm, slimes would only split 2-ways, and never 3-ways or 4-ways ?
On Normal: I added this here because frankly otherwise slimes are to much of a joke. Slimes would have 2 movement upgrades:
"Sliding": slower than a jump, but that would actually add to their total speed as they would slide a bit in between each jump they make. They would also jump a bit less and something just slide around wobbingly.
"Rebounding": Presently slimes "hit" everything in their way as if it was a hard-and-fast obstacle. Seeing them desparately and almost futilely try to move around in cramped quarters is very laughable and totally ridiculous. Instead, slimes should "bounce off" obstacles, at an angle (not a mirror-perfect bouncing angle), thus would still be able to mostly move closer to were they are trying to go. This would boost their mobility to a reasonable level.
On Hard: Small and Large slimes (not Tiny slimes) would have longer and higher jumps, and deal critical damage when then fall "right on top of" you. Large Slimes would also be able to "Engulf" : basically anytime they move "over" you, you get stuck inside the middle of the mob, taking constant damage until you kill the slime or die. a large slime could engulf only 1 player at a time. Finally, arrows would deal only half damage to slimes.
- Zombie Pigmen
On Easy: When they go aggro, instead of the entire group going aggro, there is only a 25% chance that a single second zombie pigmen also will go aggro in addition to the first zombie. Such pigmen are considered to have "split off from the rest of the group" and thus "another pigman also goes aggro" is a one-time chance only on the first time that you hit a zombie pigman, not on every hit. Yeah, the Nether should be harsh. But the overall game difficulty should trump that.
On Hard: Zombie Pigmen are always hostile (and attack as a group too). They chase players through nether portals if they can. Also, Zombie Pigmen can strike diagonally, downwards or upwards, 1 block, to reach pillared-up players or reach kneecap-area players (those are treated as if they are with cover, and when the player is also parrying, as if with total cover).
- Blaze
On Easy: Blaze would have less odds of making the player catch on fire, and shoot only one projectile at a time, not a salvo of several projectiles in a quick succession, one right behind the other.
On Hard: Blazes ALWAYS keep their distance, avoiding melee and ground level. Also, their projectile attack deals fire AND normal 'bludgeoning' damage. Also, Fire Resistance potions greatly reduce fire damage (and that stacks with Protection from Fire), but do not provide total immunity to fire anymore.
- Wither Skeleton
On Easy: Wither skeletons cannot sprint, and deal the Wither effect for only 5 seconds instead of 10.
On Hard: Unless already busy with their sword, even while moving Wither Skeletons can swing their sword to deflect incoming arrows (only arrows coming at them from their front half, tough) half the time BACK at the nearest enemy (so yeah, in PVP, you shoot a wither and another player nearer to the undead than you are might very wll get the arrow), the other half in a random direction. Similarly, they also are adept at parrying melee attacks, thus being able to reduce often the damage they will get. Also, the wither effect lasts for a whopping 20 seconds. Carrying Milk becomes vital here !
- Magma Cube
On Easy: Same as Slimes, they would split only 2-ways, never 3 or 4 ways.
On Hard: Critical hit damage when they land on you "just right", and any attack they make especially a crititical might make the player catch on fire. All Magma Cubes can also glide between jumps and overall seem to move faster than normal.
- Silverfish
On Easy: They move slower, and only half the chance of a silverfish "egg" self-opening up from the cries of a nearby other silverfish.
On Hard: Their attacks have 50% odds of applying Slow effect for 5 seconds.
FOOD & FARMING
Most players agree that getting food is extremely easy, and grows very fast. Even noobs ! So for this section I'll make Normal actualy slightly harder.
On Easy: Panicked Animals move a little slower, and mostly are NOT able to "turn on a dime in a single tick", making them much easier to kill in the wild. Also, farm animals naturally spawn in groups of 1-6 instead of 1-4, and their Mob Cap would be 50% higher. The player starts with an Apple, a Melon Slice, and a Cookie, in it's main inventory. If Starting chest is enabled, then that chest, in addition to it's normal content, contains extra random food too, AND a single NPC Village Small House Version 2 structure (the one with a 2x3 interior, the most basic variant only) appears about 6 blocks away from the starting chest. This creates not only a easy shelter for the starting player, but also an "easy to spot from afar" landmark. If a player chooses Easy AND Starting chest, he wants his start to be really really easy.
On Normal: Normal animal mob caps and groups size. But everything grows twice as slow as in the current vanilla game. Trees and other "slow growth" stuff grow 3 times slower instead.
On Hard: Mob cap for animals reduced by half. They spawn in groups of 1-2 instead of 1-4. Anytime an animal panics, all animals within sight of it will also start to panic. Plants grow much slower than current vanilla: most growth speeds are 5 times slower, and things are "slow growth" like trees are 10 times slower than current vanilla instead. When you harvest crops, there is a 50% chance for tilled farmland to immediately turn back to dirt. If a bonus chest is selected at the start, it contains only a small handfull of tiny stacks of the most basic items (about half as many stacks containing less than half as many items), and there are no torches placed around the chest. Animals need "living space": whenever an animal is "pushed against" another entity, it will try to move away to free space (as per normal vanilla), but will be treated as if it's not able to "breathe": so after a while it will start taking asphyxiation damage, and thus will start to panic (which will make them all panic - stampede from overpopulation!). So you can't pack thirty chickens into a 1x1 chicken coop: they'll just nearly all die from asphyxiation.
Even with that, I don't think getting food on Hard would be much hard. I can easily survive only with zombie flesh lol so yeah more "adjustments" would probably be needed here too.
HOSTILE SPAWNING
On Easy: Mobs can only spawn under the surface.
On Normal: Separate Mob Caps for surface hostile mobs, and for underground hostile mobs. Overall in a typical night of wandering around, you would fight *slightly* less mobs on the surface than by going down tunnels. Presently, the difficulty is MUCH higher on the surface than when going into tunnels, which really feels weird. So this is only to "streamline" the difficulty here.
On Hard: All mobs become stronger the deeper underground they are (depending on the Y elevation at spawn time).
Starting at layer 40 and under:
Health: +2% per meter under Y = 41.
Speed: +0.5% per meter under Y = 41.
Attack damage: +1 per meter under Y=41.
Thus, at the lava lake layer (typically Y=11 using the zombie's feet elevation), a zombie would have:
32 Health Points (instead of 20)
+15% walking speed bonus
and would deal 30% extra damage.
MINING & WORKING
I honestly have not much in the way of good ideas here.
On Easy: Double the amount of all of the "valuable" ore veins (gold, lapis, emerald, and diamonds) ?
On Hard: Half as much of the "common" ores (coal, iron, resdtone), and all ore veins that do not have contact with Air have say 80% chance of not spawning at all (forcing tunnel mining which is much more dangerous from branch mining).
Meh.
Note that changing the difficulty would not affect aready spawned chunks, only new loaded chunks will be affected. The only way to make this "worldwide" is with a world created with difficulty locked, or never changing the difficulty.
FALLING
Easy : Fall dmg formula would be [ Height - 5 ] / 2
So falling 5 blocks wouldn't even hurt, and from full health you could fall 44 blocks without dying, which is more than most ravines - after all noobs fall way to easily into ravines right ? Not even counting boots of feather falling here.
Normal : [ Height - 3 ] (same as currently)
Hard : [ Height - 1 ] x 2
So on Hard a fall of a mere 2 blocks will still hurt (albeit only a little bit), and a fall from a mere 11 blocks (11 meters = about 36 feet) will always kill the player - unless he had Feather Falling boots. Even then that wuld boot that to only surviving a 17 blocks fall with any certainty . Overall, this is encouraging the player to always choose his path very carefully.
FIRE
Easy: Fires burn themselves out quicker and spread slower. Your tiny wood house will lose only some of it's blocks, not half it's roof and walls.
Hard: Fires are very dangerous, spreading quicker and burning themselves out only after a longer time, and fire can even burn tall grass (but not to the point of making entire forest or plain all burn away).
NATURAL REGENERATION
Easy: 3 times faster what we already have. Want to go fight right in the middle of 20 mobs ? Go for it ! It's EASY !
Hard: 10 times slower than normal. Yah, don't get hurt too much, be much, much more careful ! Battling constantly ? Forget it uness maybe if you have godly equipment !
And so on...
There are a LOT of potential variants here. Each of the above idea could be swapped for something else entirely, after all.
But the main idea is that the entire game should actually become easier/harder, not just one or two aspects of it !
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I think you should make this a blog...
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dude you have made like three forum posts on minecraft suggestions, minecraft suggestions are suppose to be kept on one forum, Azie even gave you a link, i would link the forum post but i cant fins it XD look at you previous posts and azie put the links there
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TLDR, you made this way too long. Why don't you try to compress them or put them into spoilers at least. I did manage to read your first point and the thing is that is exactly how minecraft works right now.
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My 6yo fights em off darn good on HARD. Then again, he an avid gamer for his age lol
