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Mob spawning needs to be more balanced on Minecraft

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Here are some of the community comments and observations made regarding mob spawning in Minecraft. 

A balanced mob spawning system is needed with consistent spawning rules. This would mean that during regular gameplay mob spawning is challenging, but not overwhelming. 

Additionally, with balanced and consistent spawning rules, players should be able to pinpoint where mobs will spawn, and utilise that information so that effective spawning platforms and farms can be made.

  • Slimes should spawn frequently in swamps and slime chunks.
  • Endermen should spawn readily on spawning platforms built in the end.
  • Wither skeletons should be regularly spawning in Fortresses.
  • There should be a steady supply of hostile mobs spawning in caves around the player, making the game more interesting and challenging as they explore.
  • Mobs should despawn when out of range of the player, so they don’t hog the mob cap unnecessarily. (Currently they only despawn if they are within a narrow band at a certain distance from the player.)
  • Hostile mobs should despawn unless they have had significant interaction with the player (not just because the mob has looked at the player, for example).
  • Drowned mob spawning should be balanced, as they spawn too often, hindering the spawning of other mobs.
  • Passive mobs should spawn steadily around the player, so that resources can be gathered as needed.
  • Mobs should not spawn if they are beyond a certain distance vertically from the player (The current behaviour effectively breaks traditional mob spawning platforms built in the sky, or in slime chunks)
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  • 2
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    I had tried to make my own post with this suggestion, but was told to leave it as a comment here instead.

    So, this isn't a balancing issue, but I'd like it if mobs could spawn in 1 block high areas of water (source or running). This would make building mob farms much easier, and not require high amounts of laggy redstone or pistons or tripwires. And if made so that they only spawn in spaces of 1 block high water, this wouldn't significantly alter the balancing as it is, because they still wouldn't be spawning in rivers and oceans; only at the very edges, in spots one block of water deep. It would add very minimal extra spawn locations, because it would be a narrow edge case, but allow for much better ease of building mob farms, by recreating elements of the efficiency of spawner style farms, by being able to use such an edge case. It's more of a quality of life tweak to spawning behaviour, specifically for building mob farms with reduced lag and resource requirements.

  • 3
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    Yes fix spawning I’ve noticed that old mob grinder designs haven’t been working and recently I’ve build my first slime farm and cleared out an area from level 30 to level 6 within a slime chunk and the only slimes that ever spawned were during the mining process I have also added to plat forms on 3 1/2 blocks away from each other (vertically) and still haven’t gotten any spawns

  • 2
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    @EndStrangergame Not for passive mobs

  • 1
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    Personally, I see slime way too often. I mostly play in creative, but keep it on easy so I can spawn mobs for builds. Whenever I’m building, slimes spawn right next to my builds. The thing with slimes is that they split. I have to kill many slimes in comparison to one. I feel that this should be toned back, especially in creative

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Wow, this would be huge for older and newer players. 

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I agree with basically every bullet point above. Especially the one about the despawning and slime spawn. I don't mind that spawning is different btw @PianoWater12891, I just want it to function. Honestly what has annoyed most is that these problems seem intentional. In fact one source said it WAS intentional to prevent mob farms. Although I don't always agree when they do some things, I'd like to be able to play the game and have fun. Here's my idea, similar to the slider idea, the amount of mobs spawned on a single chunk should be dictated by a slider; similar to the render distance. However, this is only controlled by the host, which means that if someone on xbox is hosting they can turn the spawning down to play with mobile users. In addition mobs should always despawn a certain distance away from the player's X and Y coordinates, and a similar thing with Z. Perhaps even prioritizing that mobs, whenever able, should spawn at the same Z coordinate as the player, (or close to it). This would definitely solve the mobs spawning underground thing. 

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    And maybe make it where certain hard-to-beat hostile mobs (like Endermen, Drowned, Zombie Pigmen, etc.) drop more experience orbs like in the Java Edition. I'm sick and tired of almost dying from attacking a group of Endermen only for my "reward" for successfully slaying them to be 3 measly little experience orbs per every Enderman kill!

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    I find that because of the fact mobs Don't despawn in the distance, my sfarms and other farms relying on natural spawning are completely broken, and I mean completely I haven't been able to get a single hostile mob to spawn in any of my farms. And don't think I didn't make sure to prepare the area around the mob farms, I have completely lit up the surrounding area (including caves) and still no mobs spawn.

  • 1
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    I'd really like to see a player based mobcap in the game for servers. Surviving with other players is a huge part of the game, but right now when someone is AFK and mobs spawn around the player in caves, the other players will get way less mob spawns than they should because the mobcap is filled up by that one AFK player. This could easily be solved by implementing a per player mobcap instead of a server wide mobcap. 

  • 1
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    Take the phantom out the game and make drowned spawning less frequent, problem solved

  • 1
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    Guardians should spawn in bubbles from soul sand and magma blocks. All other underwater mobs (drowned, squid, fish, dolphins) can spawn in these bubbles, and guardians can even spawn in these bubbles on java edition, but on bedrock they are the only underwater mob to be unable to.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Match the Java version's despawn arguments, having hostile mobs only despawn at a light level they actively avoid isn't ideal.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Mob despawning at distances just outside your normal playing area does not happen. Regularly and frequently resulting in massive build up of mobs just on the edge of your loaded area. I'm constantly coming across groups of dozens of mobs when I explore new areas just outside my explored and normal playing area. As far as I can tell this seems to happen with every single type of mob be it water or land. This has to impact use of any mob farm. I have not been able to successfully farm any mobs even, with a superflat world , lighting huge surrounding areas 200+ blocks, or preventing spawning with other methods like half slabs/buttons; without the aid of a spawner. I am a long time player and this use to not be such a bad issue back when it was just Minecraft 360 or Xbox one edition something was changed when it was altered for bedrock edition.

  • 1
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    I agree spawning could be tweaked however I disagree with the passive mob spawning you talked about. I think passive mob spawning is already to OP. I know some people will disagree with this but I think possibly having animals rarely breeding in the wild which would have the same effect as increased spawning and would prevent players from simply killing everything and waiting for more animals to appear. Just a thought....

  • 1
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    I’m sure someone has mentioned this already, but the mobs in bedrock don’t despawn unless they are in a certain light value. This causes a lot of lag in realms because of how many mobs there are that don’t despawn. Very often, there is a decrease in mob spawning in important areas such as nether fortresses and ocean monuments, making resource collection extremely difficult. They should be able to despawn no matter the light level. Another note would be the possibility of having mobs automatically despawn beyond a certain distance, perhaps 1000 blocks, unless of course they’ve had notable interaction with a player. This would help worlds run so much smoother (especially if someone traveled 4 million blocks away, spawning hundreds of mobs along the way)

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Utterly amazed at how long this spawning/despawning problem has persisted now that I've delved into it after beginning play on Xbox in a realm I started so that I could play with my children. 

    I suspect it is a result of a few factors, the first of which is most Devs probably don't play in Bedrock primarily in their own downtime.

    Bedrock players probably skew younger (children), are less technical in their play, are more casual and less vocal on platforms like these (if they even know they exist).

    Add to that the pressures of making this version work across a range of platforms, using a different code than Java edition, with more technical constraints and complexity, you have this:

    Relative Dev indifference+Technical difficulty+Low User pressure+Little Financial Incentive that has led to a problem that has now persisted for years.

    None of this is an excuse for this poor support though.  No matter how tricky this spawning/despawning issue is, I refuse to believe it is so intractable that it could not have been solved by now.   

    Plenty of development time is clearly being spent creating new cute mobs and window dressing to the game.  Maybe foxes and their berry eating mechanics and whatnot can wait a while so that the nuts and bolts functionality can be fixed once and for all.  Just a thought.

  • 1
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    Not bad

  • 1
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    “Drowned mob spawning should be balanced, as they spawn too often, hindering the spawning of other mobs.” I second this idea. Drowned spawn way too often, especially if the player mainly resides near large bodies of water.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Spawning and despawning should be differentiated based on not just light level but the location.

    There should be separate spawn caps for:
    1. Surface dwelling creatures (cows, chickens, endermen, etc).
    2. Water dwellers (cod, squid, drowned).
    3. Underground creatures (those that spawn in the dark on purpose, including bats).
    4. Creatures that fly, just because there just aren't enough birds.
    (A mob can also belong to more than one of these categories, e.g. creepers can be encountered on the surface or underground.)

    So even if water creatures cap out because the player has been exploring in the water, this isn't going to impact the number of hostile mobs they might run into.

    Right now, these four "mob biomes" are having to share the same resource (spawn ability) and whenever one biome gets an advantage in spawn opportunities all the others suffer.

    Now depending on player location the game can intelligently choose to ignore certain mob classes on the fly (for example, no surface mobs need to be checked for spawning while the player is below a given depth underground. This might be a per-biome value but it could also be given a "fudge factor" to discourage player metagaming.)

  • 0
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    Despawn checks might work similarly, giving preference to mob categories that the player is less likely to interact with in the short term, with immediate horizontal distance and depth, time of day, and "awayness" (distance x time elapsed since LOS was broken) also being considered. It would be a strange event for a player to make a quick trip from the surface to the bottom layers via the staircase they cut for that purpose, leaving a busy scene and coming back to see it nearly empty because the game immediately despawned it all.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Every time a new mob is added, the areas where passive mobs spawn for a given seed are changed. I'm not sure if this is a bug, but it needs to be made so that the passive mob spawn areas are consistent as future updates come down the pipeline.

     

    Edit: Since most comments here are about Bedrock edition, I must point out that this happens to me on Java Edition.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    What one person thinks is OP another person might think is not OP enough.

    Why not give options so both parties can be satisfied? Be able to make a custom difficulty with sliders for mob spawning frequency. chance of mobs spawning with armor.

    customize hostile mob and passive mob spawning rates. customize whether you starve to death or not as another custom option. so you could have a custom tailored experience just the way you like it.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I like this mostly for the wither skeletons

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I love how all they need to do is mimic java mechanics but there incapable of even that...

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I definitely agree with the drowned spawn rate. Whenever I check on my lake that I live by, there is usually around five drowneds  

  • 1
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    "Mobs should despawn when out of range of the player, so they don’t hog the mob cap unnecessarily. (Currently they only despawn if they are within a narrow band at a certain distance from the player.)"

    I can now say that me and my friends have heavily been affected by this, specifically. A lot of projects I have in mind need the current bad mob spawning system replaced to work. I built half a mob farm, only to realize it wouldn't work on Bedrock due to the mob cap being filled all the time. I want to build a unique flying machine based sorting system, but I need slime for that, which no longer spawns on my world. My friend needs large amounts of white dye, but how is he going to get that when skeletons on the surface are a rarity?

    I'm glad that there's a "partial fix", but It's been over a year since this was requested. I hope to see this implemented very soon, and I'm happy to hear that this is announced (albeit I don't know what of the list of requests will be added to the game.) Anyways, thank you for listening to the community, Mojang!

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Wait, this would suck for phantom mechanics and mob farms. This would change mob farming negatively, I agree with some consistencies however some of this is too extreme. 

  • 0
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    Can we also lower the spawning of cats. I know in bedrock there can be a lot if a player makes their own village, which is weird cause if you find a naturally occurring village it isn't that bad.

  • 0
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    The drown spawning is Waaaaay out of hand we need this

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Add a way to Force Despwn any specific mobs without needing to turn on cheats in bedrock... please... my stray cats are far too many without a way to kill them off...