Raising P difficulty

[Sapphric]

I've seen it proposed a few times in game, and TheRandomnatrix tried to bring it up near the end of the staff meeting, but people have often wondered if the difficulty level on P could be raised to hard. It is, after all, player VERSUS environment, so it would be nice if it were a bit more difficult to survive. Figured we could have a discussion about this here.

[Trooprm32]

Honestly, the only thing that makes P not hard, is the latency by a low tick rate. At 20 tps, monsters are generally frightening, especially when your arent wearing a set of armour. For us now established players, in towns, and with a lot of resources on hand, there won't be much you can do in vanilla MC to make it "harder"

 

This is atleast my opnion in regards to your statement.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Trooprm32

[ne0codex]

I agree with Troop's sentiments, also, raising the difficulty is regressive, independent builders will see more the effects of a harder difficulty than those who are part of big cities, which in a way seems unfair from that perspective.

Edited June 15, 2013 by ne0codex

[Diznatch52]

I personally feel this is unnecessary. In my opinion PvE, while techincally labelled as "Players vs Environment," is really more about players coming together in a great community to create truly beautiful projects. I've never felt in my approximately a year playing as a regular on P that the server was truly about fighting against the environment, things like rev 9 spawn notwithstanding.

[tobylane]

No, purely due to the death from hunger.

[schererererer]

I was a strong proponent of raising the difficulty when I was a P admin, for reasons stated above to fulfill the proper role of the server in the context of C and S. Since then my position has switched as I've come to accept PvE as being a laid-back community, and also agree with ne0codex's remark that this would be a regressive policy change to make. It's not a necessary change, but it wouldn't be a horrible change either.

[totemo]

I'm personally in favour of increased difficulty.  I think an element of risk makes the game more engaging.  Actually dying once in a while and having to do a corpse run adds some drama to an otherwise uneventful game.  Even then it's nowhere near as hard as S because we allow beds on P.

 

I don't think the threat of starvation is particularly applicable after the first few days of a revision.  There's free food everywhere.  People light up their towns so mobs aren't even that common in built up areas.

 

I'd like to see a change whereby the difficulty of mobs increases beyond a certain distance from spawn, to reward exploration.  I know of a quite simple plugin used on another server where mobs spawn with potion buffs to increase their difficulty.  It would be a simple change to have that only happen when, say, more than 1800 blocks from spawn.

[Tharine]

One thing that you might like to keep in mind is that in the 1.6 update they should be bringing in Attributes: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Attribute which add a bit more flexibility to changing the difficulty of things outside of the strict peaceful/easy/normal/hard options.

[teddylover]

I think the hard difficulty will drive away more players. This will affect towns/cities and FISA as there will be less people. We're already having problems with low amount of players on S and C. Let's not do it to P.

[WickedCoolSteve]

One of P's greatest strengths is its accessibility to new players. This is in part due to the way the way the community has organized itself with things like the UMC and cities that provide large quantities of free resources to new people. However, the server difficulty also plays a large part, and in particular I'm talking about not being able to starve to death. When someone new joins and is overwhelmed by the server and doesn't know what to do (or is perhaps too shy at first to ask for help), at least they don't have to worry about their hunger meter killing them. They can take their time to learn the ropes. 

 

Personally, I think it would be great if mobs were harder because lag essentially neuters them. However, if increasing difficulty enables starving to death, then I feel it would be a bad move for the health of the server. From a quick glance at the attributes wiki page that Tharine posted, it doesn't look like there's anything to deal with hunger in there. However, maybe we could look into a solution from the tech side to remove the starving and yet increase the rest of the difficulty? 

[Trooprm32]

While I agree with Steve, I think we would need a boost to something other than just HP or Damage from mobs. Maybe larger explosion radius of a creeper, skeletons shoot faster/more arrows. ect.

[Denevien]

Troop, I like that idea the most. I'll try to check on that possibility

[c45y]

One idea discussed in irc today is allowing creepers to do block damage when they are targeting someone with edit rights to the region they are in.

 

Thoughts?

[Trooprm32]

One idea discussed in irc today is allowing creepers to do block damage when they are targeting someone with edit rights to the region they are in.

 

Thoughts?

 

Personally not something I would agree with, endermen block nabbing is pesky enough as is. I would find it hard to see this as a "difficulty" change, but rather an annoyance change.

As an example; think of towns as big as Seneca, or Pico. They have a lot of members, and any one of them could drag, intentionally or not, a creeper, to blow up someones house. I can imagine it would be untracable, and you will have a LOT more modreq's on your hands.

 

Edit: And now that I thought more about this... it could be an open invitation for griefers to grief unprotected builds in a free-edit zone (unprotected) and get away with it.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Trooprm32

[CROCKODUCK]

There are multiple plugins such as "mobrage" (or something similar to this) which causes mobs to travel and spawn together and can make them much more interesting to fight! As far as your idea c45y that was discussed in irc, did you consider what would happen if I had perms in Seneca but then blew up some random citizens house with a creeper by accident?

[tobylane]

That is more of a surprise to newcomers than the change in difficulty level.

If you want something obvious and vanilla you could increase the rate of enchantments on mobs, and maybe a few creepers spawn electrified. I don't like these ideas, but they sound better than a non vanilla change.

[teddylover]

I dont think mods would like it if most modreqs were about creeper block damage to builds. I think it's best if we don't add creeper damage.

 

Also raising the difficulty to hard and making mobs harder will probably make some players ragequit.

[Jalamookoofoo]

Totemo has some cool ideas. I (like most, it seems) dislike the idea of having new players die from hunger (because really, nobody else is ever without tons of food), and the idea of activating creepers in certain areas is absolutely ludicrous. It would have disasterous results for cities that like to accept lots of players - I myself would probably start screening new citizens to make sure they are familiar enough with the game that they won't cause damage to the city.

Now, the idea of having mobs get harder the further away from spawn you are is quite interesting, and the attributes feature that Tharine linked seems like it could be used to affect this. We would need to expand the map overall, I think, to provide more liveable space. But think of how cool it would be to have a harrowing adventure out in the wilderness, where the mobs are brutally tough and come in packs - maybe we could even do it Runescape style and have a constant PvP zone in the far far reaches of the map.

[WickedCoolSteve]

Creeper damage to blocks (even with limited targeting) would radically change gameplay on the server for the worse. I would personally oppose it in the strongest terms. 

[tobylane]

I haven't met an electrified creeper on multiplayer. I assume that with the settings we have and always will have, the creeper will simply hurt me more, or at longer range.

I don't understand where the suggestion that electrified creepers will do block damage came from.