Play your own way - Die hard or live in relative peace!

Are you ready? Have you been waiting? Do you have any idea what you are in for?

With the 'play your way' difficulty update testing nearly complete, I feel there has not been a central place to find information on what to expect. Staff has been given some better info, but unless you are a diehard follower of the forums, you may have missed many of the details of how this system is going to work.

Well, the code is written and tested and solid answers are available to most of your questions. Before I open the discussion to all of you, I have compiled a rather long review of the teasers and staff updates put out since the beginning of this year. I have heavily edited peoples statements and wording to try to make things as clear and accurate as possible. I will update this information if mistakes or last minute changes require.

From Aikar's origonal announcement:

Based on the feedback thread we did recently, we decided it would be good to further extend the "play your way" idea, and introduce a player controlled difficulty level, allowing players to opt in/out of the custom monster experience. This change essentially re-designs the entire Minecraft Survival Experience (for those who opt-in!, 5 will be the same as today, and 1 will be easier and pretty much vanilla "Easy mode" experience)

Topic- Loot/drops:

Higher difficulty will increase rates, quantity and even add potential to get more than one rare item in a kill. All loot tables were rebalanced so easier will get less and some items require a minimum difficulty to even get a chance at it. All custom item drops require 3 minimum with some 4,and more useful require 5. So, every damage done affects a monsters "Difficulty Score" which is used to calculate drops, and the score is modified based on what did the damage.

IF 4 players on difficulty 10 hit a mob, its difficulty score is 10. If 2 difficulty 10 players hit it and 2 difficulty 1 players hit it, its score is 5.5... Now if that 4th hit kills the monster, that monster only drops loot as if it was difficulty 5.5. Non player damage will drop the monsters effective loot score, but that monster is still going to hit the player based on their current difficulty setting, not 5.5.

Q: If you are in the wild with someone else on a different difficulty level, how will that work?

Essentially, someone on level 10 beside you is not going to impact you at all. You will not take any extra damage etc. The settings don't only affect mobs, but rather the player's interaction with those mobs. It doesn't just make mobs that spawn near you have more strength. For example if you are on difficulty 10, and friend is on 1, you could get hit by that mob for more damage, while the friend will get hit for much less by the same mob. Also, the mob will be much more likely to attack the player with the higher difficulty setting.

There is the issue with speed boosts for high level mob spawns. If a level 10 player logs off, the faster mobs will still be fast, and they will most likely attack whoever is closest. If your setting is under level 3, enraged will ignore you, but standard mobs will be quicker, logging out and back in will purge them if necessary.

Q: Should level 10 be easier so that a single player can survive set to 10?

The point of the scale was to nerf the concept of "god armor", and for difficulty 10 to require grouping. Armor is reduced by 75% on 10. I would view it as if your able to solo 10, its not hard enough. Having this concept of "impossible to die" we have today in Minecraft is the issue, and these changes remove that, so you will need more skill (and item use) to survive rather than simply tanking the swarm.

Q: How large of a group should we need to use the highest setting?

We need to get a group of 3 on tonight and run it on level 10 and try that. People watching each others back, and getting damage done faster to the mobs is what we need to look for in order to survive 10. If we can't survive with 3 people, then yes we have to dial it down. I would say difficulty 10 mini bosses we should aim for 5 minimum. (3 on adds, 2 on boss, potions required)

Q: I hear that mobs will teleport to players to attack now? How is it going to work?
Q: What about AFK farming?

I was thinking location checks for sure. longer you're in the same location, higher chance of teleport. Longer mob goes w/o attacking a player, higher chance of teleport. That seems like a fair way to do it, so if a mob is trapped in a hole, it'll teleport out pretty quick. I say we apply this to 6+, with each level over that giving a bonus to chance to teleport, so that nerfs farming on any improved difficulty level.

Q: Are you sure you won't make any last minute changes to anything?

This update is going to be considered "BETA" for a while and subject to more changes, Players abusing entities that cant reach the player back (ie risk free killing) will be in for surprises. 8+ difficulty teleports entity to player, 5-7 will nerf the difficulty level of the mob.

Arrows knockback is now scaled to the difficulty, skeletons at 10 now get punch 2... and players arrows are nerfed for knockback on 10.

Please limit your comments to questions about the update. I will remove just about everything else. Enjoy!

Will you be able to change difficulty mid-fight?
If you are on level 10 and are running low on health, you could switch to level 1 and maybe regain health faster?

how do you change the setting?

Yes, but there is some type of time delay for the change to take. Aikar will need to clarify this answer because I only talked with him about it for a moment while testing other things.

It will be in the player settings menu, so you will use /ps and then click on the difficulty option. This option is not available until Aikar makes the formal announcement planned for tomorrow.

So when we're fighting in a group the mobs drops difficulty requirments would be the mean of all the players difficulty settings?

eta on deployment?

Only of the players who hit the mob for loot. For spawning/fighting, it goes back to the fact that players interaction is based on individual setting.

Looking like later today.

Great work!
I am going to go and try solo difficulty 10 just to see what it's like. Armor being reduced by 75% on 10 is interesting, does it nerf the armor point value given or the actual damage reduction? If myself and a few friends are on level 10 and we kill a marlix would multiple of the same item drop or would it be a few different items?

I believe I heard him say 5 minutes. Here is the post.

Current difficulty will remain the same(ish) as level 5

Will a boss mob at higher levels spawn more enraged, or will it be the same number on any difficulty, they are just harder?

Thx just_5_fun and all developers for the upgrade and making the empire better

And for boss drops will there be a chance to receive multiple of one drop (ie 2 momentus toothpicks) or are your chances just better of getting more of each rare drop?

Does this affect PVP in any way? (On smp6, or in group pvp.)