Minecraft Wiki talk:Issues/1.2.3

Headlines
Why all headlines where not added? This probably will result improper categories. 194.137.243.226 15:15, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

High enchanting levels hard to obtain compared to benefit
a! The enchanting system has always, and continues to be frustratingly unfair. sometimes producing Efficiency III when a level 50 enchant is used. Considering you need to kill NINE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE zombies/creepers etc, to get to Level 50, users are naturally in consensus that, to quote Yahtzee Croshaw, the ratio of difficulty to find versus actual usefulness is completely arbitrary. While we respect the mystique Mojang have tried to create about enchanting, the numbers need serious review. Kizzycocoa

Previous conversation is located here


 * I always thought the current experice/level-system was kind of a placeholder for an upcomming rpg-like skill-system. The current form seems to be very odd to me. The random-enchantings are annoying and the XP-costs seem to be unbalanced. I do love Minecraft but the experience-system is - sorry - nonsense. --Deep Thought 42 10:22, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Concur; enchanting itself is fun, but the current system has no sense of scale and effectively requires exploits (XP farms) to be remotely useful. Lower the random factor and let players decide what they're spending hard-earned levels on; save the current mechanic for those random loot drops that just got implemented.  Furthermore, the distribution of levels is obnoxious and adds nothing to the game.  Just let the player pick the level of the enchantment out of the possible range afforded by surrounding bookcases instead of making them mash the item slot over and over for random level rolls (but not too quickly or they'll pass up the level they're looking for). Blahpers 21:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't mind the randomness at all, but the scaling bothers me. I've run some numbers (so far I've only done this for the bow, which is the first item I've started with—it's ultimately a lot of data entry), and ultimately what the numbers show is that return-on-investment (in terms of XP) gets worse the higher level you go, even assuming that you're using all levels any time you enchant something.  Some specifics:  At level 1, bows gain an average of ~14% improvement (over an unenchanted bow) per XP spent enchanting.  At level 5, this drops to ~1.5%/XP (simply because the XP cost goes up, but no benefits increase).  At level 10, it's ~0.7%/XP, and at level 20 it's ~0.3%/XP.  The 'improvement' here represents the aggregate of all improvements (in terms of the % likelihood of getting something better) gained each level over the previous level.  That said, this is primarily all caused by the algorithmic nature of levelling.  If each level cost the exact same amount of experience to reach, this problem would mostly resolve itself (as the average gain between levels 11-20, 21-30, and 31-40, for example, are not different by orders of magnitude).  So, my ultimate recommendation?  Easy fix:  Make all levels cost the same XP.  Jade Knight 01:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * By way of note, the average total improvement per level (excluding level 1, where it is 100%) is 8%. Jade Knight 03:00, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Enchanting in its current state is abominable. It is (for now) a complete crapshoot. A level one enchant may give you a sword of Fire Aspect I and Sharpness III, or a sword of Bane of Arthropods I. There's no telling what you're getting, there's no reward for enchanting items more often, there's no way to make the enchants more predictable, and high-level enchants are a terrible idea due to the diminishing returns. These problems, added up, make enchanting more trouble than it's worth. Anything past a one-level enchant on an item is just wasting your effort, and a large portion of those will give you miserably useless enchantments that don't improve the item's value very much. At the very least, enchants should be reworked to remove the majority of randomness -- perhaps new structures like libraries with enchantment books in them which allow you to guarantee a certain type of enchantment -- and the xp/level function should be linearized to remove the penalty of having a high level. --Chromium 20:17, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Randomness kills game balance. We should be able to choose what enchantments we should have. Also, levels should be made linear (every level would require 18 XP, = one bar section) and XP drops balanced (zombies 6, skeletons 9, spiders 8, creepers 10 as examples). C ali nou - talk × contribs » 20:28, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * For me, it's kind of hard to decide. Current enchantment system is definietly underpowered, if you are enchanting with 25+ levels. However, on the levels 1-7 or so in my opinion it's perfect. You get useful improvements for fairly low prize, allowing to have a little more powerful equipmnet all time. Making each level cost same number of XP/ adding really powerful enchntments for top levels (fortune/looting 5, for getting 6 items at once? making weapons hit, and propably kill, more enemies at once?) will make it perfect for me, as it's already not that crappy. Oh, one thing that truly makes no sense: if somebody put the effort into decoding Standard Galactic Alphabet, why not reward him with knowing what enchantment he will get? ~Raymaniak
 * a note: you can likely find a texturepack to turn it to english. --Kizzycocoa 23:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Texture packs merely make the font english without giving the name of the enchantment to be gained.


 * While the enchantment system is definitely badly designed, it should not be made too easy. Later levels should be slightly harder to get, but either mobs should drop more exp or levels should require fewer points. Some randomness is good, but the amount of randomness that goes into the current system means that you can get multiple very good enchantments for 30 or so levels but then get low level efficiency or another very common enchantment for many more levels. Either the enchantments should be visible or the randomness should be way lower. Probability of gaining multiple enchantments or gaining a specific enchantment should also be balanced, with higher levels of multiple enchantments (there's only a 50% of multiple enchantments when spending 50 levels) and the rarer enchantments being easier to get.
 * It seems to me that the situation could be totally fixed by: returning any xp value left over after applying enchantments, and allowing enchanted items to be enchanted again to add additional effects. So when you spend 50 levels on an enchantment, and somehow only get Efficiency I, you would get 49 levels back, and be able to spend them to add more to the same tool. This way, enchanting results are still random, but they aren't frustratingly unfair. 108.85.91.228 16:23, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I like this idea. Experience should never be wasted. 90.210.171.134 16:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Drowning

 * Damage from drowning currently pushes the player down. This means that if you are swimming for the surface of the ocean, then take one point of drowning damage, you'll never make it to the top.  EDIT: for SMP only.
 * Did not happen to me (ssp). 194.137.243.226 16:20, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Slightly happened in smp. 194.137.243.226 16:22, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This is actually reported on the main known bugs discussion . If the blocks you are swimming in are downward flowing, then reaching the surface is impossible. Chezzik 19:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

something wrong with labeling of lang-files
Its actually the first time i look into these things, but i saw that the file "en_CA" contains UK-English although "CA" means Canadian, right? And the "en_UK" contains the Canadian-English stuff. So, am i wrong or is it actually some kind of fail. Please respond, thanks.

dir path is => ".minecraft/bin/minecraft.jar/lang"

[2012-03-02,21:33]

EDIT: Still some minor confusions but in fact it seems just the lang-code thing is wrong. Actually it seems quite stupid to have 3 different english dialects like US, UK and Canadian. I think they should make one and thats all and just calling it english or norm english or whatsoever, because as is noticed its about the same stuff written in it - couldnt find differences. So in fact its 3 different files with about the same content.


 * en_US -> everythings fine
 * en_GB -> name=Canadian english, region=CA, lang-code=en_GB
 * en_CA -> name=English, region=UK, lang-code=en_CA

I know that a "bug" in common refers to program algorithm faults instead of such labeling mistakes, but its bugging me and that makes it a bug to me xD

Minor Bugs/Annoyances
I've been playing on a server and I've notices a couple of irritating things:

1)Tree leaves do not decay (not that i've noticed)

2)Sugar cane, for whatever reason, doesn't grow (or it doesn's grow underground anymore, it was working just fine before the upddate)

3) the hunger bar will be full for all of about ten minutes, without going down, and then suddenly you're starving and taking damage for no reason.

A couple other people on the server i play on have noticed the same thing. KitKatarine 20:50, 2 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I've also seen these problems, but only on bukkit servers. I do not notice these problems on vanilla servers. What type of server are you playing on? CaMoreno3 23:27, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

We just recently switched to a bukkit server, because it was a little better than the other thing we had. 199.126.61.30 15:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

These problems are likely due to major lag. Swampert rox 21:36, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

That happens because of a known bug with Bukkit/Craftbukkit Each time your hunger meter tries to update it will instead drop to 0.

No sound
a! After downloading update 1.2.3 and 1.2.2, my game plays no sounds until hours of gameplay. Not sure if it's everyone or just my system. Please tell me if I should change the tag too.

-anything special about your system/computer installation? Maybe updating java game lib (lwjgl), dont know if this would help or if mojang already updated it, but could be a try.

Anvil won't convert world
I tried to convert my flatgrass map to Anvil but it just blinks to the convert screen then shows an empty dirt background. After that it kicks me out of fullscreen and shows a black screen. Any ideas? Also I successfully converted all my other super-flat and normal worlds in about ten seconds. This is 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 with no mods and the map's files look identical to the other before conversion, right down to the individual files in each folder. EX: data has the maps and idcounts.dat etc. --Droid1134 00:22, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Were you running any mods in your old world? Even if you deleted your mods in order to update fresh, the blocks or items from them may have remained in your world. The updater doesn't know what to do with these blocks/items, so the client crashes. If this is the case, then this is not a bug. However, if you have never used any mods, then this may be a serious bug. CaMoreno3 03:41, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I have the same problem (stated on the main page). I don't know about User:Droid1134, but I've never used a mod on this world. So my only conclusion is that this is a major bug that needs to be fixed pronto! 75.106.37.15 06:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Major Annoyance
Items pushed by water are unable to be picked-up (on OS X, SMP)
 * Could not reproduce. Are you playing on a Bukkit or Vanilla server? Does the server you are playing on have any mods installed? CaMoreno3 03:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Planting seeds
I'm trying to plant 4 seeds on 4 blocks but the ones I have placed are disappearing when I place next ones. I'm doing it in a small space without water, that may be the cause but I don't remember this happening before. MaxKing 10:34, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Plants (including wheat) require light to survive and grow (if they are exposed to moonlight at night, they will stay planted but will not grow). Place a torch near the crops. ;) C ali nou - talk × contribs » 20:32, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Wolf Behavior
I got attacked by a mob, so my sitting wolves got up and attacked it. When the mob was dead, they sat back down, except for one about 10 blocks away. When I got closer, I couldn't get him to sit back down again, but it appeared that he thought he was anyway. He wasn't following me or moving at all, but his appearance made him look standing. Now I cannot make him stand or sit, but he is stuck in this position. 24.223.204.60 16:19, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Dumping water on it should make it able to be controlled again. C ali nou - talk × contribs » 20:34, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Superflat spawning issue
? Superflat hardcore with no structures is rather a hair-shirt playing style, but it used to be playable, both pre-Anvil and in the early Anvil days when the mob spawn rate was half what it was intended to be. But since the spawning rate for slimes and other mobs has been fixed, which apparently roughly doubles their spawn rate, I have walked for days (on several different map seeds) and not seen one single passive mob.

The sole exception was one game where some sheep spawned close to my starting point, presumably before too many slimes had appeared. But after that, nothing for about 6-8 game days until I starved.

It appears that the higher numbers of slimes (and at night, all the other critters) 'floods out' the mob spawn quota, and passive mobs never get a chance to appear. Does anyone else see this effect (no passive mobs for days and days on end), and if so, is this intentional? 82.69.54.207 03:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

This bug tracking system is crazy. Can we please just have a single page for all bugs?
Making a new page for each Minecraft version makes no sense to me. Bugs that don't get fixed immediately either end up lost in the older pages or duplicated across pages. This creates a ton of needless work copying bugs forward and generally creates a big mess. I don't understand how Mojang is getting much value from this. I want to contribute my ~24 years of software development experience to make the developers of my favorite game's jobs easier, but I find this system very discouraging.

Why not have a single page called "Open Bugs" containing all open issues? Bugs are reported there, and when they are fixed or rejected, they are removed from the page. They could also be moved to a "Closed Bugs" page, or to seperate "Fixed Bugs" and "Rejected Bugs" pages.

If desired, static snapshots of the "Open Bugs" page can be saved for each Minecraft version, to keep track of what was fixed in what version.

If the "Open Bugs" page gets too noisy, it can be split into "Reported Bugs" and "Accepted Bugs". Reports would start on the former page and, if they are legitimate, reproducible, and not duplicates, moved to the latter page by a frontline of more experienced community members. Then the busy developers at Mojang would only have to look at the useful reports.

In lieu of using an actual bug tracker, the system described above would emulate one much better than what we have now, and it would make it much easier for me and the rest of the community to help deal with bug tracking and take work off the developers' shoulders. Last username 09:34, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * What was the reason for not using an actual bug tracker in the first place? --Zaz 10:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the intention was to have a record of bugs in each version, and to have 'clean' pages without old, fixed bugs on them. In practice, however, people just copy bug reports from one page to the next, so it doesn't work so well. I like the idea of reported/accepted bug pages. Giving the "Accepted Bugs" page sysop-level protection could ensure that it contains only well-described, reproducible bugs. Makes more work for the admins, but letting any autoconfirmed user edit it would defeat the purpose; it would be nice if there was a trust level available between admins and autoconfirmed. -- Orthotope 06:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Texture folder not opening on Mac OS X
I am a Mac OS X Snow Leopard user, and it seems that if you press "open texture pack folder" on texture packs main menù, it does not open texture pack folder. is this happening to anyone else? i think it is because the button has featured folder path only for windows--82.88.58.26 14:08, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

No, not me either. I'd assumed it was because I hadn't installed any extras though. Mac OS 10.5.8. 82.69.54.207 15:37, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Rare drops: Too rare?
After playing Skyblock for a solid two straight hours, I had finally gotten my mob grinder working. I have a total of 5 stacks of rotten flesh from zombies. but no iron, 6 stacks of arrows, no bows, and as a side note, no spider eyes (7 stacks of string). Are the rare drops just rare or are they completely gone? --Plet53 15:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I believe rare drops don't drop at all unless you personally kiill the mob yourself. So if you want iron ingots, for example, the only way to do it is to grind golems. Didn't know spider eyes counted as 'rare' though, I admit. So to collect rares, use a grinder that drops the mob to 1/2 heart oif health, then finish them off manually. 82.69.54.207 15:34, 5 March 2012 (UTC)


 * According to the source (see Talk:Rare Drops), rare items only have a chance to drop if the mob was recently (within the last 60 ticks) hit by a player or tamed wolf. So you can still get rare drops if the mob dies from a fire enchantment or from being knocked off a cliff, but not from a completely automated mob grinder. Chance of a rare is 2.5%, increased negligibly by the Looting enchantment. There's a 20% chance of getting an enchanted weapon from skeletons or zombie pigmen, otherwise all rare drops have equal probability.


 * Spiders don't technically use the rare drop function, but the result is the same: there's a 1/3 chance of getting an eye only if killed by the player. Looting gives a separate 1/2, 2/3, or 3/4 chance, but you can never get more than one eye. -- Orthotope 06:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Villager Children Height
It seems villager children have the same height as adult villagers even though they appear to be one block in height.(comfirmed or already been reported?)Sickma 19:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Gravel that drops flint doesn't drop gravel block
Playing SSP, when a broken gravel block drops flint, the actual piece of gravel isn't dropped.

Also flint only seems to be obtainable using a shovel (gravel falling onto torch, half slabs etc don't drop fint) - although this may be intended.


 * This is feature, not bug. It prevent infinity flint from one gravel.