Yesterday, Notch posted an image of a massive mountain on his Twitter feed. But that's not all. Look closely at said image. See the bar that looks a bit like an XP bar? It is an XP bar, but it also brings something extra – permadeath. In a forthcoming update to Minecraft, not only will you be able to gain levels. You'll lose your levelling progress if you die.
“I'm a big roguelike fan,” explains Notch. “It's really fun. The idea is that you level up really, really fast. You can grind away and level up fast if you want to, or you can just play as normal and level up that way. The longer you play, the bigger the risk of dying becomes. It's the part that really works. If it feels like it's too harsh, we might make it half or something like that. But the fact that you lose everything – you lose all your inventory anyways.”
The Minecraft developer is still figuring out how players will level. “I'm not entirely sure on how the levelling is going to work, because that part isn't as fun. We're trying to figure out something that is fun, and kinda lightweight. We're thinking of getting an automated XP system. It's not implemented in any way that makes any kind of sense at the moment.”
Adding progression and permadeath could be a risky move for Minecraft’s vast playerbase. I asked Notch whether he's concerned about ruining the purity of the game he's created.
“It's the biggest risk,” he acknowledges. “We have to make sure that it's fun, and as streamlined as possible. I kind of figured out that a really good test of what works or not is when I go back to 1.7.3 – the previous version. If it feels like it's lacking that feature, if it feels like it should be in there.
“But it's what I like about roguelikes, like Nethack. Everything is dangerous.”
I've just noticed. Coudl they simply not just remove the feature if it's not wokring well with the fans?
and i really need to slow typing.. I'm getting letters all over the place!
Another thing to keep people addicted to Minecraft?
But seriously, would these new features be optional though? If they aren't, there's probably less incentive to play the game IMO
Aye. Make it optional. Yes it means you split the community, but you also keep that other chunk you'd lose. It saves you a load of whining from people who aren't that good at playing or who had a dumb mistake happen to them.
Ya i think you sould make it optional those creepers are hard to deal with as it is but its always fun to have a challenge once in a wile. there sould be a custom difficuly option to enable XP level up and The food bar and any other addons you plan to make to have the feel of the game be varied among the player
he posted that on 19th...
what can I say? I post it when I see it. and I didn't see this until linked to it.
I think it's awesome, too easy if you can just die and go get your stuff back and start off where you left. This will not be in all gamemodes after all, only in adventure I guess. People will just have to be more careful.
Edit: Sorry, didn't mean to post this as a reply to you.
I do hope it's toggleable, otherwise It'd be annoying for all the builders...
I think this if for adventure mode only
I think its for realistic mode. :D
If you don't care about the XP and Leveling up, it wont matter to you if you loose it after you die. Simple as that :D
That depends on what levels gives you and what you going to loose after death.
So will the levels add anything to the gameplay beyond just a title?
Maybe I'm wrong but I think some where I heard that you can get more life and jump another block etc. I'm sure they're not going to make it where you have to lvl up to build certain things but instead change the speeds you do it at.
It'd be nice to have commands for servers that allow admins to always stay at the maximum level at all times, or the ability to set their level.
well that would b completely unfair wouldn't it? Admins are there to keep the game fair and do administrative stuff:) not be gods
Heres what I'm thinking. Have pre-set difficulty system (Easy means you lose a few levels of exp, Medium is half and hard is all of it, or maybe even a custom one) That should help with the whole thing. I like the idea but sometimes starting from the start can get a bit 'annoying'. But the whole things seems pretty good. Would be pretty good for special level system for different types of things like mining (With mini leveling system for different blocks ;) ) Attacking (Mini leveling for different weapons and creatures) ect ect....
I know, leveling in leveling is hard to do... But seems cool.
I really hope that is a option because I prefer Minecraft the way it is already.
making this a lvl growth game.. hmm i might just get now.
Hey, it's finally becoming a game! Yay!
So Terraria copied Minecraft, and Minecraft now copies Terraria?.... I don't even...
No idea is truly original. they say every game descends from one of three games
I think one of them was Doom, which we can all agree is basically Call of Duty, modern warfare etc. etc.
I'd imagine the other two are a board game and a sandbox game.
I very much would like to see a 100% original game, but add a gun, and you're ripping off the most ancient game of all time. that alone takes 90% of games as ripoffs. including portal, and even Minecraft, in the case of a bow and arrow.
no game is 100% unique or original. all games are influenced.
I would say Doom, but since you perfer FPS's, it would be Doom>Quake>Counter-Strike. I mean CoD is something a lot of devs want to stray away from nowadays. Anyways true that all games are influenced but they still can be original. I remember hearing about one game where you used sound waves to travel around the game and play. That is more original than anything I could think of lol.
Wait Terraria has levels? I guess they added it after I stopped playing.
Minecraft Hardcore! permadeath. :D
Guys also have to remember creative mode, that may make it so you don't level up or anything. That or he can just make a option
I seriously hope these are all optional when you start a new game...
"When you die you lose all levels" This is (not) cool. Notch stop this, or I will start a revolution to stop you from ruining this epic game!
I'm all for leveling if it means that you can break blocks faster, move faster, or get more things out of crafting recipes.
As to losing all the levels, this is what the entire workgroup here had to say:
'You gotta be f*cking kidding me.'
I'd like to share that sentiment, including 'Are you freakin' nuts?'
Haha, wow, the players here are really starting to get riled up and ****** off about this.
Here's a good comment: "Why not make it so you lose your game while you die? That is hardcore, f*ck that newbie stuff.'
And various comments about 'this is what happens when game developers actually start seeing cashflow, they become incompetent and stop giving a damn.'
Pff...
Hmm? To me your comment is not making much sense to be honest.
you want the game to destroy your world, rather than allow you to continue un-leveled?
just how drunk are you? O.o
wow, sarcasm recognition fail
OH. I see! another user said that. my bad. sorry! ^^;
I think this is awesome, but I hope it will be toggleable or minecraft might lose a large portion of it's playerbase.
Why the hell is notch trying to make this game something it isn't?
It has basically no rpg elements whatsoever aside from killing mobs.
I think a full restart will be too harsh for minecraft, instead it should be like an xp restart exp:
level 2: need 1000 xp to level, you get 1000 xp and level up.
level 3: need 2000 xp to level, you die so xp counter is reset, your still at level 2 but xp is at 0 now and you need to get to 2000 from 0
This way the higher your level is, the more annoying it will be to die, and if you die you wont lose all your work only part of it
What you said there, reminds me of the punishment on Diablo II, when you die in Nightmare or Hell difficulties you lose a portion of your experience. Something like that would be great. A full restart for experience would suck, but you know, it depends on how they're going to go about the experience gain. Who knows though, we could end up getting experience from every block placed/mined, crops harvested/replanted, etc.
This sounds pretty cool but they should make it so that its like a difficulty setting like hardcore mode or something. That way u can picck wether or not u want to use the leveling system.
The Aether Mod just came out and blows away anything Mojang came up with in 2011 thus far.
Couldn't agree more! I think it's really raised the bar on what minecraft should be.
With that said, it'll be nice to see what notch does to his sky dimension!
They should just make an option to be able to remove this feature. Then there is no risk at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of minecraft and I love to see my games get updated. But if a system like this gets implemented and can't be deactivated then I'm probably just going to halt updating and stick with my 1.73 and aether mod.