If you hate all the durabillity lost and don't want to repair it yourself or just don't have time for it there are repairing shops all around the server that will do it for you. Such as mine and you can check out its thread through the link in my signature.
My opinion is that, (IN MINECRAFT'S CASE), the difficulty should only affect the enemy. You see, the difficulty 8, 9 and 10 is just a cluster of enemies teleporting to your face wile you have been debuffed and your enemies have been buffed. Pretty much you are trying to defeat a dragon with a stick of wood and wearing nothing but comfy underwear. IF Minecraft's combat system wasn't a such a simple cluster of mashing buttons and repetitive combat, we could add the other elements of the higher difficulties. So yeah, thanks to the simple combat system the difficulty system just doesn't work for me. But hey, that's just my opinion.
I personally have not tried those higher levels probably for the reason I would rather not lose a good piece of armor. I also am not fond of group battles because those can incite jealousy over what drops one person may get versus another. In reading over the thread though, I saw the options presented, and wondered why there could not just be a "Group Effect" that would come into play when players are indeed in a group. Have the difficulty tier up as normal for the single player, and then add the durability loss, and other aspects of the suggested 8-10 range on those who are in parties / groups. Level 8 could be for say a group of 2 -3 people, level 9 for 4-6, and level 10 for anything larger than 6. With this, you could also maybe adjust the drops accordingly to the groups so that the rewards would be more reflective to the number of participants in the group and thereby curb the frustration that so-and-so got the only Toothpick.
I would like to implement mabey a trade of syatem where you could set up a higher difficulty without the stress of loosing more durability. Mabey have a trade off aystem where it says, "You set yourself at 8 where you loose more durability. You can have that off but loose chances on drops." [Turn on Durability loss] [Turn offf durability loss] Something like that
I would respectfully disagree, why would you punish people for grouping up? The idea as I understand it is that the durability hit impacts people trying to solo the big bad mobs on their own....because they are alone they will take a hit. If your grouped, you take much less a hit with everyone involved versus just one. If you now make it so solo take no hit, and groups take one, thats counter to the design by emc (as I understood it and agree with ). No one forces a player to group, nor do they force players to go above 7 difficulty, people can solo 7 all day and they will still get the rare drops...its just RNG, in a larger group at higher difficulty the RNG increases, but as you pointed out, so does the number of people going for the gear, so it adds no advantage other than the difficulty ensures more basic loot drops and token rewards. Seems pretty balanced as-is
I was not trying to suggest a punishment for grouping up. And durability may not have been the best example of what I was suggesting, but was the only attribute I was sure was in the mix at those levels. I think the solo player should still take a hit in durability, but I guess the degree to which the mobs form and co-ordinate their attacks could be influenced based on group size. I mean what commander would send in an entire battalion of soldiers to slay just one guy. Hmm... I guess there was Rambo, but that is a rarity. That thought has just given me another idea. Why not make some mobs as different ranks, and have Zombie Captains, and Skeleton Sergeants, and such which could diversify the drops. Could be a whole new range of custom mobs. I think the point I was trying to make was that with a "Group Effect" there could be technically more levels of difficulty that would be reflective to the number in the group. Not essentially to get rid of 8-10, but by adding a group setting it could effectively give you even more levels. To have the setting behind the scenes for group play as opposed to being an option one selects on a difficulty range. This could in turn give those who would like a level 8 solo experience an option. And for those who look at it and say, Hey there is another level, and then find it frustrating when trying to do it alone. It is common practice in many games that if you get the best gear, and you are strong enough, then you can solo even bosses that are normally viewed as group endeavors. Also while I am thinking about this, I do have a full set of voter's gear, and I personally play on level 1, as I do not care for mob hunting. If there were a level 0, I would go for that so I could ignore the mobs all together. I spend most of my time building in the frontier.
Did you read my whole thing? I said I killed almost everything in dif 7 in full iron with ease, I put on my diamond armour for dif 8.
Beezart do have a point. Difficulty 7 is easy. And the mini-bosses are easy too (if you know the strategies to kill 'em)
