Aikar why do you break vanilla aspects of the game.

Or how about stop trying to blame when it's been less than 24 hours. Takes time to update things and ultimately forgot it was in this update.

Our focus was on valentine's day.

Yes it was intentionally done. Minecraft has always been "you must hit the mob to get xp".

This pigmen case IS A BUG. I fully understand why, there's a boolean on "has player engaged" and I'm assuming it got reused for aggro instead of making a separate value.

Just because no one knows it's a bug and haven't reported it to mojang to fix it doesn't make it not a bug.

EMC provides a competitive nature for experience points. The concept of full auto AFK collecting experience without ANY interaction (while also collecting items)... is too over powered.

As i've said before, we do not 'support' farms. We rather players do other things than farm. So the argument of "everyone has the potential to do it" is invalid. We do not ever want to encourage players to build a farm to AFK at.

Also, as EMC does not 'support' farms, we do not consider them part of the 'Vanilla experience' we are providing.
Just because one detail of vanilla is impacted that is a fringe use case, does not make EMC "not vanilla".

To the other points:

This is just untrue. I remind you of this post.
1.7 Villagers are still 1.7 Villagers. What you may be referring to is the fact that trades can now lock out. Again, as said in that thread. THAT IS A VANILLA CHANGE. Mojang changed 1.7 villagers to do that.

I, made changes to the server to HELP old 1.7 villager owners, and improve the logic of them to be even better than 1.8 logic, as a kind of middle ground.

If thorns damage on arrows was the core of pvp for you, then may I suggest PvP is not for you.

This is the same as the pigmen and is exactly as a player suggested above.
If player does minimal damage to a monster, XP is reduced.
If player does NO damage, XP is removed.

This is fair because you are still able to earn XP from your farms with minimal effort of killing a monster, with 0 risk.
XP is meant to be a reward for fighting and defeating a monster in survival

Why do you think Mojang, in vanilla, does not reward players XP if the mob takes no player damage? This is the vanilla intention of experience points!

However, being such an open sandbox game, players found loop holes.

For Mojang, it doesn't matter to them. they don't run servers, its not their problem.
It is my problem, and I fix it. I am a game designer. I do not see Mojang as higher than myself.
If it does not fit into how things balance out for EMC, I have the power to fix it.

Do you realize how many game mechanics we COULD balance over XP if it wasn't so broken by farms?
Repair cost? Wouldn't be so high if it wasn't for farms. They screw over all sense of balancing the game, and we have to try our best to keep it under some form of control.

This is my control. I will not give in to farms. I highly suggest that if farms are that important to you, that you understand that they are not supported (and i use the term supported as meaning I will not go out of my way to fix them and compromise on other features just because it breaks farms. If doing something I think is beneficial to EMC ends up breaking a farm, so be it), and to be ready to adapt.

Let's also put it into comparison. If players find a way to duplicate items, and spend LOTS of time and resources to build a massive farm to do it, should we leave it in? In some players argument - that farm took a lot of effort, why shouldn't the player get rewards for the effort?

Don't let your moral compass stop at the line of where it benefits you. There's a clear distinction shown in Vanilla that Mobs should give XP based on combat, and mojang even attempted to nerf items in the past - THIS SHOWS MOJANG DOES NOT WANT VANILLA FARMS EITHER. But due to cries from reddit it was reverted, but doesn't change the fact its not desired/intended for vanilla. That line is just as clear to me as duplication is clear to mostly everyone else.

So to summarize for contrib team, please add:

• Thorns no longer applies to Ranged attacks.
• Monsters that die with no player damage will not drop XP
• Monsters that die with most of their damage being non player damage will drop reduced XP.
• Wither, on difficulty 6+, will teleport occasionally on hit.
• Elder Guardians, when outside of water on difficulty 6+, will take 66% less damage.

And to make it clearer- we do not consider Farms as part the "Vanilla" to compare against.
To me, Vanilla is what one would REASONABLY expect a player who just bought minecraft to do within the first 3 months of playing in single player without watching youtube.
That's enough time to do nearly every main concept in MC, Bosses, Redstone, building, enchanting, etc. Farms, are a power users creation. We do not factor them into what vanilla is.
A farm is whats POSSIBLE in vanilla, but does not DEFINE Vanilla.

Yes, and as I said, what's possible does not define what vanilla is. Mojang has done their own fair share of breaks.

But mojang also doesn't design for multiplayer. they design the game around single player and realms.
those decisions are not good decisions for long term multiplayer with competitive nature to XP and economy.

Economy is competition. XP earning has leaderboards, and then directly relates to enchanting book economy too.

It takes someone to take what mojang decides, and reshape it to balance with long term, larger multiplayer servers, with competition in mind.


This has to be balanced. Players viewpoint is biased in that they want to benefit. I'm the unbiased person who has the experience to make the decisions on how to keep it under control.

Sorry to single you out Skare, but your situation is exactly why it was fixed.

I'm sure other players consider it vastly unfair that Skare has such a strong hold on #1 position for TEXP. It was earned while sitting at a farm that didn't even require the player to kill each of the monsters.

It would be impossible to compete with that without also building a giant AFK XP Farm. So now every player who wants to be #1.... has to not play the game? That doesn't sound right does it?

You know, if we didn't have farms, the XP leaderboards could give prizes. But with farms, we can't do that. We can't reward "who afk's the most".

Then, last nights update also boosted the random lucky drops for stuff like iron and gold ingots. But Farms have also destroyed the economy on those items.

AFK Farms screw this game up. They need to be stopped. So many things could be better about the game if it wasn't for farms. more FUN things, that involve actually playing, and getting rewards for playing, rather than sitting AFK and getting #1 on a leader board that we can't give prizes too because the system is too flawed.

In an ideal world, XP leaderboards would be based on who went out and did normal survival outside of farms. Might just change the leaderboards to only count XP earned that way.

And what do you think would ever cause iron and gold ingots supply to dwindle if nothing was done?
Nothing... When you flood more supply than is ever possible to be matched by demand, that is unhealthy.
I very much understand supply and demand economics, more than most players.

This "interference" you speak of, farms count as an interference. When Villages/Golems and Pigmen were designed, and their spawn rates and item drop rates, the game was not balanced around "what would happen if players greatly increased the flow and automated drops".

Now the original balance has been tampered with, creating an un-intentional level of supply.

So why should some youtubers interference on the economy be ok but not my own? Which, my interference is with the attempt to solve a problem, where as the youtuber with the farm is intent for personal gain.

My interference is unbiased. I'm not "playing", I'm not gaining personal gain from my changes.

Who's do you think is the better influence when looking at it that way?

It's the benefits of an individual vs the benefits of the masses. Sorry, I support the masses.

I can see where it does start to be blurred with the unbiased comment.

I meant in that since I am not a player, and not receiving the benefits of any of my changes, I am not biased into wanting 1 change vs another out of personal gain.

Now if I was a player, and say chose to boost XP gaining to 30x levels in town from furnaces and breeding, because I or staff like to do those things, then that would be a form of bias for personal gain.

I guess it depends on the angle you look at. I guess you could say I do have a bias against farms, but thats not out of my own personal gains - but purely out of it being a bad part of the game that the game needs to be improve.

My bias is not for one specific way. My bias is against the concept of sitting AFK getting rewarded while not playing the game.

And I feel pretty good about having that bias.

If hes hitting the mobs then hes at least following into basic vanilla concepts.

There is no favoritism (And Matthew has had plenty of interaction with us about his farms)

I didn't target you. I was informed players were using a technique to get XP while not having to kill the mobs, so I patched it.

If you know of another technique to get XP w/o hitting the mob that for some reason last nights patch does not cover... then please let me know so I can fix it.