Stress Test Survey Results

This is a summary of the results from the Stress Test Survey, and our responses to them. 54 of you responded and your feedback is valued. Sadly 7 players started but didn't complete the survey before the deadline, these results have not been included to ensure consistency.

While we have not followed all your preferences to the letter, we are nonetheless making some changes to the stress test server based on your feedback.

The results will be presented question by question, in the order those questions appeared in the survey. We will also include some of the more noteworthy comments received in the survey, and our responses to them. Following this we will detail what changes we intend to make, if any.

Difficulty

Difficulty has been a subject of sometimes heated debate since the stress test server opened, and was one of the reasons why the survey was created. We have previously heard strong views from parts of the community regarding the choice of hard difficulty, and felt it was necessary to get a broader selection of opinions before deciding what to do.

Overall Enjoyment

These results are rather encouraging, with a much higher number of players happy with hard mode, than unhappy with it. A large number of players are also in the middle, with no strong feelings either way. This is perhaps the opposite of what we expected after the negative feedback we received before the survey, which now appears to be from a vocal minority. 

In the end we are happy to see a surprisingly positive reception here.

Difficulty Elements

Increased Mob Damage

Hard difficulty increases mob damage, with the exact differences varying per mob. Full details can be found on the wiki.

The results are close here but do show slightly more players dislike the increase in mob damage that hard mode brings. Not a huge difference, but it is an area we would like to make changes in regardless.

Spider potion effects

Regular spiders have a chance of spawning with a potion effect on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

A more positive result for spider potion effects, with more positive than negative responses. In addition, a large neutral response suggests this isn't a setting we need to tweak.

Zombie Reinforcements

Zombies have a chance of spawning reinforcements, when attacked on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

For zombie reinforcements, the results are almost exactly split, with a single vote pushing it into negative territory. This tiny margin. the large neutral response, and the fact another mechanic unique to hard mode zombies (door breaking) was already removed, mean we will be leaving this setting intact for now.

Increased chance of mobs spawning with armour/weapons

Mobs are more likely to spawn with armour on hard difficulty. Zombies are also more likely to spawn with weapons. Full details can be found on the wiki.

Pretty clear result here, with a majority of players happy with the change, and most of the rest being neutral. We will leave this setting as it is.

Increased chance of mobs picking up dropped items

Skeletons and Zombies are more likely to be able to pick up dropped items on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

Another positive outcome here, with slightly more players supporting the change to mobs picking up dropped items. The positive responses also appear to hold stronger feelings than the negative ones, with more opting for love over like vs hate over dislike. We will be leaving this setting as it is.

Increased effect durations

Cave Spiders, The Wither and bees inflict status effects which last longer on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

Effect durations are another area we intend to make changes in, after the responses here show many players are unhappy with the current state of things.

Starvation

Damage caused by an empty food meter is capable of killing players on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

A majority of players remained neutral regarding starvation, with slightly more of those remaining responding positively. We will therefore be leaving this unchanged.

Increased Raid Waves

Raids are longer on hard difficulty, with an increased number of waves. Full details can be found on the wiki.

Raid changes also attracted a large neutral response, with a significant majority of non-neutral players being happy with them. No raid changes are planned as a result.

Desired Changes

Perhaps the most important question is what players would like to see done with the difficulty overall, and the results here show that over 2/3 of players would like something at least based on hard difficulty. Some of those players would like some tweaks, which we are happy to provide in consideration of the results for the individual elements above. Many however are also happy with the way things are right now, more-so than any other answer for this question.

The results shown here certainly demonstrate that there is clear support for hard mode, either unchanged or with tweaks. It also demonstrates that the loudest feedback we previously received was not at all representative of the overall community's view on difficulty. I hope the above results are sufficient to show members of this group that you do not speak for the entire community, and you should not act like you do.

Comments

Unsurprisingly, there are people on both sides of the topic, here are some highlights:

As of now I'm fine with a majority of changes that hard mode has to offer and got pretty used to it, The only con of it is the early game or starting out which is primarily influenced by mob damage [...] which has led to me despising specific mobs most definitely the skeleton [...] with their extreme range and chance of having enchanted bows make them a killing machine and pain to deal with.

How[sic] it's no longer relaxing, frustrations around numerous deaths, distractions from building goals, unfair to those who just join the server.

The only feature from Hard difficulty that I would personally tweak is the potion duration effects as I've had multiple occurrences in and outside of the test server where I've been brought down from 10 hearts to 1/2 a heart from a single mob like a witch, just because they threw a poison potion. [...] Having [witches] apply a poison debuff of higher potency for a much shorter time would keep their deadly nature while removing the agonizing time to wait or get milk.

It feels more alive, a challenge, more enjoyable, can provide more growth, more fun, still relatively easy when you have good armour, made me enjoy the game once more.

I'm perfectly fine with hard difficulty, but it would be nice if some more annoying aspects of it were tweaked like starvation taking longer or zombies picking up armor more often. [...] I don't want them 100% gone just tweaked.

Overall I'm loving hard mode as most of my deaths are due to my pure stupidity [...] it makes the world feel more alive in a weird sense as it now forces you to adapt to the fact you cant have it straight of the bat the fact zombies call reinforcements and spiders spawn with effects I adore as like before it makes the world feel more alive.

I prefer the shift in tone and have found it more enjoyable 

Negative effect durations should be shorter and/or rarer to get. There is no fun in having half of your inventory filled with Milk just in case you get poisoned.

In general there were significantly more positive comments than negative ones, with many of the negative ones bringing up issues with specific mechanics or mobs, some of which we will address.

There are a few comments we would like to address individual however:

I don't like the ability of zombies to break wooden doors, otherwise everything can stay the way hard mode is configured.

This mechanic was always intended to be disabled, particularly in claimed areas, and any ability for Zombies to break doors is considered a bug. Please report this if it continues.

Made my point many times before so yea

Whilst this may very well turn out to be true, it is nonetheless a thoroughly unhelpful and unconstructive comment. By creating this survey, we offered a place where you should share your thoughts for us to consider, but you decided not to due to already doing it elsewhere. It is quite likely we haven't seen these previous occasions you have "made your point", and thus your opinion may not be visible to us. 

We want to take this moment to remind people that we can only act on things that you tell us about. We cannot read minds, so assuming we already know something will only ensure nothing will change.

Changes we will be making

With the overall opinion of difficulty appearing positive, the difficulty will remain at hard. However the above results show there are 2 areas that could see some improvement: mob damage and effect duration.

We consider mob damage to be an important part of the overall challenge brought by hard difficulty, so we won't be making sweeping changes to reduce it. However it has become clear that some aspects of the damage changes may need to be toned down a bit. Skeletons in particular have been named as an annoyance by many players in-game and in the survey comments, as hard difficulty increases their damage, but also increases their accuracy and firing speed. We aim to address this by removing one of these changes, while keeping the others intact.

Our current plan is to reduce the accuracy of Skeletons back to it's normal difficulty setting, whilst retaining the firing speed and damage increases hard mode brings. This will allow arrows to be dodged more effectively, whilst retaining greater punishment for failing to dodge, hopefully making Skeletons easier to deal with. Further changes can be considered if this proves insufficient, but this is where we would like to start.

We will not be making damage changes to other mobs at this time, as we feel the game already offers ways to deal with them. Shields can be used to absorb all damage in the direction you are facing, even a charged creeper explosion, and can be equipped in the off-hand for quick use. In addition, a majority of mobs are limited to melee damage, which is easily avoided by keeping your distance. Placing torches and building a wall around your in-progress build are also simple ways of avoiding mobs spawning near you entirely. The night can also be sped up and skipped by players sleeping, allowing the most dangerous part of the Minecraft day to be ignored if desired by those online at the time.

For effect durations, we agree that some of them are rather excessive. There will inevitably be other mobs close by if you have encountered one that has poisoned you for example, and their increased damage will already provide additional challenge, without needing to increase the effect duration too. We will therefore be reducing effects durations to their normal difficulty levels. This will affect Cave Spiders, The Wither and Bees.

Witches are not affected by the above change, as the duration of the effects they inflict are the same as the durations of player-crafted potions. We will be making changes here however, as Witches are another mob that has drawn the ire of players in the survey comments. Our plan is to replace the Poison I potion that witches throw, with Poison II. Poison II inflicts roughly the same damage as Poison I (19 hearts vs 18), but it does so over a much shorter period of time (21 seconds vs 45 seconds). As a result it deals its damage faster, prompting players to run away to heal, without forcing them to wait almost a minute for the effect to subside.

As mentioned above, we will not be making any changes to Zombie reinforcements at this time. Zombies have already lost one of their unique hard mode mechanics, door breaking, and their other mechanic of picking up items is shared with the Skeleton. As a result we are reluctant to remove their one remaining unique mechanic, especially with such a tiny margin in the results. This can always be revisited at a later date.

The final change we will be making is an attempt to reduce the perceived "grind" required for players to reach where they were before dying. We have already significantly increased the lifetime of dropped items, which allows easier recovery, and we would like to make another quality of life change to XP drops. Currently when a player dies, the game drops 7 XP per player XP level up to a maximum of 100 points. This results in dying at level 30 only dropping 100 XP, or just over 7 levels, which is quite an extreme punishment.

We will be changing this behaviour to drop 50% of the total XP a player had, which for a level 30 player would equate to just over 22 levels. Some work will still be necessary to reach level 30 again, but hopefully with less of a feeling that the game has taken all of your XP away. The exact percentage can be tweaked in future, if necessary. The arena XP drop rate will remain unchanged.

These are the changes we will be starting with. We are happy to revisit this in future if further changes become necessary.

In summary

• Skeleton accuracy will be reduced to its normal difficulty level.
• Effect durations will be reduced to their normal difficulty levels.
• Witches will now throw Poison II potions for similar damage over less time.
• Players will drop 50% of their XP on death.

Mob Settings

We have experimented with a few mob related changes during the stress test, with 2 in particular receiving some criticism. We therefore wanted to see the opinion of the overall community before making any changes.

Increased Mob Cap

The hostile mob cap has been doubled compared to 1.15 survival (from 12 to 24). The passive mob cap was increased from 9 to 12.

The results show a clear majority are happy with the increased mob cap, with few unhappy players. We will therefore keep the mob cap as it is, if performance allows.

Additional natural spawns

• The following mobs now have a small chance of spawning naturally:
  • Zombie horses: 0.05% chance of spawning instead of a regular horse
  • Elder guardians: 0.01% chance of spawning instead of a regular guardian
  • Killer bunny: 0.0000001% chance of spawning instead of a regular rabbit
  • Toast: 0.01% chance of spawning instead of a regular rabbit.

Adding additional mob types has also received a positive reception, with another clear majority. We will be tweaking some of the spawn chances however, due to some issues we have experienced, which were also mentioned in the comments.

Chicken hostility

Chickens will retaliate if attacked.

Chicken hostility was a silly change, which was introduced purely because the new server software we use offered it as an option. We may not necessarily keep this, but the results do at least show a majority would be fine if we did so.

Phantoms ignoring players with torches

Phantoms will no longer attack insomniac players, if they are holding a torch.

The most positive response in this section of the survey goes to the Phantom changes, so we will be keeping this setting in place.

Lowered guardian farm rewards

Farmed guardians drop half the normal XP and a single item, to balance the relative ease in gaining the XP, and to help prevent massive overabundance of the items they drop

Things are less positive when looking at the responses to guardian farm changes, with far more unhappy than happy players. We will be making some changes in this area.

No mid-air spawner spawns

Spawners no longer spawn mobs in mid-air, making them consistent with all other forms of spawning, and discouraging low-effort farms that simply remove the ground below a spawner.

The reaction to disabling mid-air spawners is mixed. Whilst more players are unhappy, those who are happy hold stronger views. Almost half of players are also neutral on the matter. The comments list some issues with the current implementation of this change, which prevents some mobs spawning entirely and will be fixed. If this fix isn't sufficient to change the above results, then we are open to making additional changes in the future.

No overworld withers

Withers can no longer spawn in the overworld, to reduce the damage of escaped withers, and to discourage trapping withers for name-tagging areas or for low-effort farming, which has implications for server performance.

With a slight lead in positive responses, and many players without an opinion, we will be leaving Wither spawns disabled in the overworld.

Comments

Unsurprisingly many of the comments mention the guardian farm changes, generally being happier with the item changes than the XP changes. Some comments call for the XP change to be undone, others say they are happy with it. Aside from guardians, many comments were happy with the Phantom, additional mobs and chicken hostility changes.

Here are some highlights:

Guardians dropping a single item is a change I would love to see kept as it allows for storage systems to be kept small, not overload, and as a result cuts down on the amount of hoppers required. However, the halving of XP per Guardian can cause issues such as congestion as statistically it takes a person twice as long to achieve the desired XP level.

Renewable elder guardians are epic. though I would personally like to see their chances lowered a bit more

I love love LOVE the fact phantoms ignore torches as I'm usually stupid enough not to sleep before the 3 days are up. [...] I haven't really noticed a change with the guardian rewards XP wise as I usually just repair my items and be done with it [...]

The change to guardians dropping one item is in my opinion great. Last server the chests were constantly overflowing or people threw away stacks and stacks of fish and shards. Having this slightly nerfed will help slow that down a bit.

Yes, the guardian farm changes hurt but I love how it encourages farm diversity. I've only used 'gfarms on the previous server.

I'm still sceptical about the mob spawner block changes, specially for Blazes BUT other designs can always be made instead of sticking it to the old floating ones.

I really like the elder guardian spawns due to renewable sponge but the spawn locations still seem a bit bugged.

No overworld withers is also good because loud noises just to nametag your base on 1.15 was very obnoxious.

Lowered guardian farm rewards wasn't noticeable considering how abysmal the guardian farm on 1.15 was,

Personally I'd like if Guardians dropped full xp but just dropped the half items but if those two are connected together as one thing it doesn't bother me

Changes we will be making

Most of the mob focused changes have been well received and will be left as they are. The guardian farm and spawner changes however require some attention.

The change in Guardian Farm rewards has attracted criticism ever since it was added, with many complaints cantering around the increased time required to gain XP when using the farm, and the performance implications that has.

We currently have no concerns about the Guardian Farm affecting server performance, so this will not factor into our decisions. We also encourage players to consider other means of gathering XP if they are dissatisfied with the Guardian Farm. Minecraft provides plenty of ways of gathering XP, and we now also have a mob arena which can be used for that purpose.

That aside we have since learned that using the Guardian Farm isn't as straightforward as it appears, with players sometimes dying due to the higher damage the Guardians can inflict. This also causes mending to "eat" more of the XP gained from farming, particular with the mending changes discussed later. We will therefore be increasing farmed Guardian XP drops to 75% of their normal value, to try and offset this. 100% can always be considered if this proves insufficient, but since this farm has a significantly better design than the 1.15 server, we would rather not jump straight to a potentially unbalanced level of XP gains.

The limits to Guardian item drops will remain unchanged, as the sorting system overflowing was a common problem on the 1.15 server, and the amount of items generated is simply too high for the player base to conceivably have a use for. This opinion is shared by some of the players who helped build the farm.

Elder guardians will remain a rare spawn, however their chance of spawning will be reduced as they are simply too common currently. Some players have also noticed that they often spawn outside of water. This was not intended, and we will try to fix this if it is possible to do so.

As for spawners, we will be removing the mid-air change from blaze spawners in particular, as this essentially leaves them unable to spawn. The change will remain for all other spawners, to prevent low effort floating spawner farms being created en-masse, with their associated performance cost.

In summary:

• Guardians will drop 75% XP when farmed, up from 50%
• Blaze spawners will no longer be affected by the mid-air changes
• Elder guardian spawn chances will be reduced, and they will only spawn in water if possible

Server Settings

Some server settings have also been tweaked during the stress test, particularly after we switched our server software in the first week, which offered many more settings for us to experiment with. We added these to the survey to see how well received they were.

Mending changes

Mending now always repairs the most damaged equipped item, rather than randomly selecting one.

It's no contest for the Mending changes, which see broad support in the survey results. We will be leaving this setting enabled.

Editable Signs

Signs can now be edited by right clicking them with another sign.

Editable signs have also been well received, with no players having a negative opinion of the feature, which we will leave enabled.

Sign colours

Signs can now use colour codes, just like in chat.

The ability to use colour codes on signs has similarly strong support, so we will keep this enabled too.

Dropped items lasting longer

Most dropped items now last 24 hours instead of 5 minutes, with a selection of "junk" items lasting 15 minutes before despawning.

Another significant majority in support of longer dropped item despawn times. We will therefore be keeping this setting unchanged as it has caused no performance issues at all so far.

Nether border removal

The nether no longer has a world border, and can be explored infinitely.

Finally we see no players against the removal of the Nether border, so the Nether will remain infinite as long as performance and storage space allow.

Junk Items

After the 24 hour item despawn change was made, it quickly became apparent that some items would quickly pile up and start to litter the world, particularly drops from mobs or trees. To mitigate this we introduce the "junk" list, which consists of items of little value, which despawn in 15 minutes rather than 24 hours.

The list currently consists of: Cobblestone, Netherrack, Eggs, Rotten Flesh, Spider Eyes, Sweet Berries, Kelp, Bones, Cod, Feathers, Wheat Seeds, Arrows, Saplings, Flint, Sticks, Pumpkins, Melon Slices, Sugarcane, Bamboo, Cacti.

We asked for additional suggestions of junk items in the survey, and got plenty of responses:

As shown above, common responses included blocks frequently encountered while mining, fighting mobs, or general exploration. We agree with many of these suggestions and they will be added to the junk list.

Comments

 

Changes we will be making

Villager Settings

Overall Enjoyment

Elements

Non-renewable items in trades

Diamonds in trades

Higher trade prices

Desired Changes

Comments

Changes we will be making

Plugins

Train Carts

Big Doors

Armor Stand Editor

Vanilla Tweaks

Mob Heads

Wandering Trades

Better End

 

Better End Returning

Bugs and Reporting

Bugs encountered

Bugs reported

Aware of how to report

 

Aware of Kanboard