Empire Minecraft is still 1.8 - 1.9.4 is near!

I have never even played on 1.9

I haven't played on 1.9 yet either, it's going to be a bit of a shock to the system when it does come out and I'll have to adapt!

For those of you who haven't played 1.9 yet, you're in for a rude awakening

If I don't like change, will I not like it? (all I know about 1.9 is by reading the EMC forums)

Terrible. Absolutely horrible. Garbage. Complete trash. Does Mojang even play their game?

Instead of being mad about 1.9 ...

Yep, that's it! That's all I had to add lol

I tried playing 1.9 together with my gf last week, also because you can use boats together. It wasn't bad but we both still enjoy 1.8 a whole lot more. The main problem is that the game feels unbalanced. It's not impossible that you can get attacked by multiple mobs together, where some (spiders) attack much quicker than others (zombies). Yet your weapons all have this stupid delay, so sometimes you see an enemy but you can't really damage it as much as you want to. Also selecting a new weapon (like a shovel) starts with a delay.

Which makes no sense to me; if you hit something with a sharp object you'll do damage to it. And the more you hit the more damage you do, yet with 1.9 this gets reversed. Good luck if you're up against a few spiders, a skeleton and a creeper (from behind)

Like you guys I'll also adapt when 1.9 eventually hits EMC, but as of now I have no intention to upgrade my singleplayer maps nor my private server.

Shell, i can't seem to directly respond to on mobile so I hope you read this.

I love the new system because you can keep multiple zombies away since they can spawn others nearby. This will be super useful for the enraged protectors of the Momentus. I never used the blocking feature as I had no idea how it worked.

And I think witht he more hit = more damage aspect you poonted out, you are slightly wrong. If you took several weak hits with a sword at me vs one hit using all of your muscles and the 6 pack abs which I am sure you possess, I'd get more hurt from the big hit. I cant explain it that well, but it is about the recovery you take to regain your strength or balance.

Yeah, the forum is a bit b0rked right now. But I see ya

I don't quite follow you here. How can you keep them away if they spawn others nearby? Doesn't that imply that you'll get even more zombies to cope with than before?

True; you'd get more hurt from the big hit. But you wouldn't get less hurt from a hit which was done slightly faster after the other. For exampe: a sword has 2 sharp edges so I could swing back and forth and you'd get hurt with both attacks (provided they hit you).

I think that's a huge problem with some games (and movies alike): try to add too much realism and you'll risk making things even less believable than before.

I love the 2 edges theory. This will sound weird but I used to be swordsman for a medieval entertainment company. The very first hit is almost all the time the only one with all your momentum unless you add in acrobatics (thought it's real fun to do the later)

You either got to fake the first strike to put your force into the next or got to combo your strikes with a full spin to keep some of the original momentum. Looks flashier than efficient (and rather dangerous too)

A reverse swing after a full one can't contain the same strenght into it. You got to recover and reposition yourself to gather more momentum.

Back to minecraft: you can still swing fast with the sword but you will simply deter the mobs for a solit second. In a hurry to get away, it does what a hurried attack does, give you some more room.

If you want full attack with a short delay, try enchanting a hoe with sharpness V. You'll get weaker hits, but almost no delay. And quite alot better than just the weak sword hits.. Fun fun!

I think they do if they fix bugs. undefined

I LOVE 1.9!!! HYPE!!! Better comabat!!!

Yes but what do you not like about it? Sure the new attack system is garbage because you can not just spam attack's. How ever you can now hold a shield that will block attack. In fact it can reflect projectiles and cause them to hit the enemies. Out side that the patch is pretty cool. Like with the way glass panes works looking like a fence post instead of how ugly they look now when you place them. Not to mention the trap doors now basically become ladders when you open them. Over all one horrible aspect about something does not make it garbage.

So, does anyone know of any 1.9 servers that are running on 1.9, not 1.9 compatible but running 1.8? I myself isn't really a combat fan, and any time when I see a mob just sitting there, I usually leave it alone,so I don't know that much about 1.9 combat. But for the other new aspects of 1.9, I love it, especially how end rods provide an alternate source of lighting to torches, and the awesome new boats.

Still can't quote so @ChaosMadis

The attack system is a vital part of the whole game. Even if you are not PvPing, it changes how you fight mobs, it even changes how you place blocks. The shield, when in offhand, is buggy. Say, I'm placing a block with the shield in my offhand, every so often it will pop up and block an attack that's not there instead of placing blocks. PvP is for PvPers, 97% of PvPers do NOT like this update. Instead of asking Mindcrackers about things they are relatively unfamiliar with, ask the people who it directly affects. That's like Aikar removing the town world because people who only live in the Frontier asked him to. Yes, one aspect shouldn't make it horrible, but when it changes the whole game, for the worse, that makes it a bad update.

While it's much less trouble to update a server to 1.9 than 1.8, most servers ignored doing it at first, because 1.9 was an unstable release, like 1.8. But this time, rather than framerate inconsistency, the problem came in the form of chunk loading and server resources. Most of these issues have been fixed in 1.9.2 and the 1.9.3 snapshots.

Minecraft 1.9 is called the Combat Update for obviously being an update to combat. The combat has been redesigned to be more interesting than before. As opposed to simply attacking rapidly (spam-clicking/button mashing) without much thought, the new combat system prefers carefully and thoughtfully performed attacks.

Attacking or switching melee weapons triggers a cool-down that indicates the attack strength of the next attack, depending on the weapon. Attacking before this cool-down passes will result in reduced damage. Bare fist and hoes have the shortest cool-down time, but have minimal base damage. Axes have the highest base damage and can disable shields, but they take longer than swords to recharge. Swords have the highest damage-per-second and can swipe packed up groups of enemies when fully charged, if the user is on the ground and not sprinting.

Shields are the replacement for sword blocking. Raising a shield will block attacks in front and close to the front of the shield. It blocks 66.6% of damage taken from most sources and 100% of damage from most projectiles. Shields are crafted from 6 wooden planks and 1 iron ingot. Thanks to the addition of dual-wielding in 1.9, a shield and sword can be held at the same time. However, only one of them can be used at a time. The player can't attack while blocking. Shields can also be disabled for 5 seconds if it blocks an axe swing.

Other aspects of combat have been rebalanced as well, including armor, strength and weakness potions, and the enchantments Sharpness and Protection.

In the end, 1.9 was arguably the most controversial update in Minecraft's history, over Beta 1.8. Some players, like myself, embrace the changes made to combat; others think they should have never happened because it ruined the game.

How I see this multi-month long black-and-white, yin-and-yang period, is that it at all started after version 1.8's release. Hate towards Mojang was already building up after the announcement of their acquisition by Microsoft in September 2014. The next phase was on April Fools Day, 2015, when 1.9 was found to be The Combat Update. Phase 3 was when the combat changes started to be released in August. While Minecraft's developers were making changes to combat quickly, in response to their community, the haters didn't stop their offense. Phase number 4 would be when 1.9 was officially released, and a fifth phase by additional combat changes in 1.9.1 pre-releases that were reverted before official release.

At this point, after 5 phases of unpleasant emotional build-up, these haters will eventually defuse their anger or other negative feelings after enough time has passed since the combat changes from Minecraft 1.9. I assume this is what's bound to happen because this description is similar to what happened after Beta 1.8 and other significant Minecraft updates in the past.

When I first looked into why 1.9 had a considerable negative reception, I thought it was the combat changes. I compared the Minecraft community's response to the players of other games that had updates that altered their combat systems: "Ruinscape" and the South Korean-native MMO RPG "Mabinogi". I thought that many gamers of any popular, online-multiplayer, video game would respond with pessimism towards any combat changes, while they were fine with the current system. But thanks to some wise anonymous people online, I concluded that it's the simple fact of change happening.

Rejection of change is a norm of human nature and mankind. People like to have consistency and a connecting history for nostalgia. This can further be amplified if a person happens to be autistic; over the past decades, autism has become increasingly more common throughout the world. In the United States alone, more than 1% of newly born children have autism of some degree on the trait's variable spectrum. It is no surprise to find many autistic people playing Minecraft and being apart of the rejection towards changes.

To finalize, change has to happen in every life. It is the bang to avoid a boring and non-meaningful life. However, not everyone will accept it. For content creators, like Mojang with their Minecraft updates, we have to understand that there'll always be a light and dark side, no matter how hard we try to seal one of them away. Don't let the dark side paralyze you.

"Do not let fear rule you" (Anonymous).

^^
You should write more often

Well, I have to agree that change is part of the problem (the ever ongoing battle between homeostasis & transistasis) but I still can't help think that there's more to it in this case. My personal gripe with the whole 1.9 thing is that although Mojang claims to have added changes to balance the game there are still plenty of inconsistencies to be found.

Although blocking using a sword wasn't the best it was still a way to defend yourself, even open to players who didn't have any luck with finding iron yet. In the current system those new players are pretty much out of luck: either you find iron or you have no good way to defend yourself anymore. I don't think that's really fair, especially considering the fact that your offensive options against a multiple of mobs have also been drastically reduced without iron.

After all: delay time is based on weapon type, and not so much the material its made from. A wooden sword has the same delay time as an iron or diamond sword (recover speed is always 0.625, source of my info here). Even though I could easily argue that a wooden sword is lighter than a stone or diamond sword, so ... yeah. No defense and lesser offense for the new players.

I can understand the logic. I mean: if you have no iron available then you also can't make armor. But that's exactly why sword blocking was a good thing: it wasn't perfect, but players could still somewhat defend themselves when getting overrun.

It would have made more sense to me if shields could also have been made with only wood.

Or what about true dual wielding? You can hold and fire a bow in your off hand while also wielding a sword, but you can't swing an axe?

Now, I guess the opinions about the combat system as a whole are also something heavily influenced by personal preferences.

So let me add another (more obvious) example: brewing.

You can only make a brewing stand using a blaze rod. I guess because of its special capabilities. But nowadays you also need blaze powder before you can brew. From the image I guess the water gets "filtered" through the blaze powder.

So why is it still mandatory to make a brewing stand using a blaze rod? Why can't we simply make one using a stick these days, also considering that the "brewing" is now depending on the powder? It simply doesn't add up anymore. They made brewing more difficult (it's hard enough to find a nether fortress to get a blaze rod) yet without giving any specific benefits in return. "change because of the change" in my opinion.

I also didn't like the 'new' enchantment system in 1.8 (using lapis) but at least they balanced it out by reducing the required amount of XP levels. The lapis was more or less a substitute for the XP. There was some logic behind it.

So I think it's fair to say that 1.9 is filled with several of those small yet illogical changes. And as you know: many small things can make one bigger thing. So many small annoyances can easily form a larger one.

Still... Haters will always hate, no arguments there.

But yeah, I have to admit that I also don't think too much of 1.9. Also because most of the additions will only become available to players after they finished the game.

@Dr_Chocolate

Alright, come on, it can't be as bad as you keep saying. You're just used to combat the way it is, and need time to get adjusted to the new system. After all, they've only made combat more sophisticated, and therefore better... right?

*actually tries it*

Damnit, okay, it's pretty garbage.

Okay, here's the thing: the idea to make combat more cerebral, rather than having people "just spam-clicking", sounds good in general, but that does not mean they've made it good yet. They've limited people's attack speed, but movement is unchanged. People still run around each other quickly and sporadically, trying to land as many hits as possible from all angles, only now they have to deliberately slow down their swing rate.

The reason people instinctively spam-click is not because they're hitting their opponent a bunch of times in a row, but because they're flailing at a wildly-moving target and the only way to land any hits is to swing a bunch of times and hope a few land. Factor in a slow framerate and it's even harder to land hits. Factor in server lag and it's even harder. Forcing yourself to click at a slower rate only prevents you from landing hits, and it just feels so unsatisfying.

Your opponent is zipping all over the place; that's how it is in Minecraft. It's not like the two of you are standing, facing each other, telegraphing your attacks, looking for openings in each other's defense. No, for that to happen, much more fundamental stuff would have to be changed. Maybe if I had bullet time I'd be able to actually think and aim properly. What I could really use is something like Z-targeting, i.e. a way to lock on to an enemy in some way. Point is, they've changed part of the system, but not the other, and now it feels like two puzzle pieces that don't fit together.

I'm prepping the "I told you so" memes for when you guys start complaining about 1.9.