Enchantments themselves aren't the problem. Here's what is

[morl0ck]

I never was a fan of the /world to begin with, but its current state is pretty bad.

1. All battles are low-stakes. No good gear from combat = little motivation to fight.
2. Invisibility/ strength/ etc are now disproportionately powerful. Regular unenchanted diamond stands no chance against an invis guy with a few harming pots or iron sword with strength II.
3. Unenchanted bows are next to useless, except to reveal invisible people. Doesn't matter much since you won't last long against one.
4. There doesn't seem to be a significant increase in pvp activity, maybe a little. Probably due to reason #1.
5. Enchantments being banned in /world negatively affects the economic value of enchanted items. Who wants to buy enchanted gear if it's only being used against mobs?
6. There's nothing wrong with low-level enchantments, but those are banned too.

The problem that the ban attempted to solve, I think, was misunderstood. I no longer think that enchantments themselves are the problem. The complaint was that the valuable gear was being taken away too easily. But isn't Prot IV, Sharp V extremely easy to get, thanks to grinders? Yes, but I don't think the real fear was losing the actual equipment. The fear was having to go back to the grinder.

So what's the root problem? Grinders. Yep, I pondered this question a while, as I sat at my grinder no less. I have a pretty good grinder, so I am almost beating myself up for saying this.
The problem is that grinding is the only feasible way to be "rich" and successful on a multiplayer server. And it's fucking boring.

So the only way to have good gear is to go out, far, far away, set up the most badass grinder you can, and let minecraft run while you watch TV. Basically, not playing the game. Whereas grinders were used pre-enchantment era only for items, the addition of enchantments made them *essential*: effectively breaking the entire game, at least multiplayer-wise. You can get xp the way the game makers intended, but you'll be at a huge disadvantage against people with grinders. It would be stupid and inefficient to play that way.

1. Your #1 option for being "rich" is to find someplace far, far away and setup the most badass grinder you can. The "end-game" in minecraft is basically to have a main account at your grinder with one or more "traveling" alts near spawn.
2. People who choose to explore, and kill monsters/ mine for xp instead are at a huge disadvantage. Playing the game as it was intended is a stupid, inefficient way to gain xp.
3. Grinders make certain enchantments near-useless (smite, bane of arth, projectile prot). Who needs them when you won't be fighting mobs in any significant way?
4. Grinders diminish the economic value of enchantments. Why would they be worth anything when you can easily get chestfulls of enchanted gear risk-free?

My proposal: Nerf grinders.

We don't have to completely disable grinders. People worked hard on them, and good grinders will still be "good" grinders, relatively speaking. We shouldn't take it away from them. I propose cutting down the spawn rate of grinders significantly- enough so that the manual killing of mobs in the wild is a more profitable, and faster, way of gaining xp. The amount of mobs that can exist in a single chunk should also be capped. So someone may still afk farm at their grinder overnight, but may come back and get 15 levels instead of 150, since they'll stop spawning after a while. Only someone who is actively killing the mobs will be able to grind effectively.

I think a nerf on grinders would have a few positive effects:

1. People will be more likely to play the game as it was intended- much less time at the grinder.
2. The economic value of grinder-based items and enchantments will improve. Top-tier items and enchantments will be rare and expensive, as intended. Potions will also be more expensive to make, as any potion with a grinder-based item (blaze rods, spider eyes) will be more scarce.
3. It will actually be exciting to get good gear.
4. People will fight with a wider variation of gear. Less opportunity to enchant means you have to fight with whatever you can get your hands on.
5. People won't be as pressured to stay in a single area- wherever their badass grinder is located. Will reduce "isolationist" tendencies. People may even move nearer to spawn.
5. Less server lag due to people grinding.

People with their huge grinders will chew me out, I know. I can hear it now: "Well YOU don't have to grind if you don't want- you have the choice". They miss the point completely. It's an issue that affects the whole game at its core depth, not just at an individual level.

[FoSchnizzle]

I see no problem with nerfing grinders. How many times have we heard players say that grinding is destroying MC? How many conversations have we had on the server about how the experience system could be reworked into something much better than it is now? I think that this addresses the main problems that we've been having, and I'm surprised it hasn't been significantly mentioned. The only "argument" against it is that people have worked to make these grinders, and that they'd hate to see their precious way of getting overpowered gear disappear. I'm in full support.

[FoSchnizzle]

Edit: Double post for some reason.

[mitte90]

its hurts to say but im in favor

edit but will not enchantment need lapiz in the next update?

[morl0ck]

People can get more lapis than diamond. It won't be any sort of limit on enchanting, no more than diamonds are. If anything, the situation will be worse because of all the cost reductions of enchantment.

I feel like Mojang is making lapis an ingredient because they randomly decided that it needs to be used for something. Not out of a need for a more balanced enchanting system.

[LoneSoldier55]

The point was that if you wanted a full fledged fight and not get anally avasted by someone who sits infront of their grinders all day you could always just tell someone to meet somewhere in the overworld.

the other problem is that you guys all live too far away.

[A. Pippenger]

This would be painful to implement, but I can definitely see how it would help. I don't like how sometimes online play feels like a rat race of people building giant confusing machines to become "wealthier" while really just avoiding actually playing the game and interacting with people.

One thing I dislike about this is that it would make it harder to get enchanted tools, meaning it would be harder to collect resources, meaning our server would have less large and impressive builds. We've had a lot of good builds lately, if you look at the "show off your creations" thread, there's a cool pyramid by Ultra, Dakka's future city, and the big circle platform recently posted by Fo and the old timer team. I'd like to see this trend continue, and less enchantments would slow it down. I also build a lot and I rely on enchanted tools, so I wouldn't entirely like to see grinders nerfed.

I think maybe it would make sense to make /world slightly smaller again, and bring back random spawning. I know I argued in favor of most of the changes at the time, but looking back, /world was overall better with the previous setup. The main reason for the lack of pvp is that nobody wants to leave spawn, as far as I can tell. It seems that most people on the forums agree with the general philosophy of trying less extreme changes before more extreme changes, and switching /world back to an earlier state is a very moderate change that might fix the problem just as well. So I'd like to try that first.

I don't hate this idea, but the decision mainly comes down to builds. Impairing grinders might improve pvp and general player interaction, and maybe even get people to move closer to spawn, but I think there is a very good chance it would make building more difficult, and I don't want that. If it slowed down grinders to the point that people couldn't enchant level 30 picks and repair them as needed, I think it wouldn't be worth it. As long as people can still do that though, I guess this idea is worth trying.

[RevStoningpot]

first off i don't see why this 'nerf grinders' is posed as a fix for the pvp world. /world should just go back to the old way it was to be made better. But as for grinders, people making piles of hundreds of mobs has been a problem for a long time and no fix has been implimented yet. For me and my grinding a cap wouldn't even effect me since usually 5-10 minutes (when spawn rate isn't slowed to a crawl from others' hoards) is all i need to get 30 levels so i don't see the need to watch tv or take a nap for hours. I think it's a rather dumb reasoning to say all that stuff about people not playing or being solo and shit. Many people build a team when they build a grinder, so i don't see how grinders keep people from playing together and having fun. People stay in a single area cuz it's where their team and base and everything they've worked towards happens to be. As for playing 'as intended'? there is nothing un-vanilla about grinders. Killing the spawn rate making the game, at times, feel like the server is on peaceful, however, is a good reason to cut down mob hoarding. But this has been mentioned many times before and, as far as i know, noe fix has been made. So go ahead and cap the mobs per chunk (if possible) but don't make such shitty reasons for doing so.

[mitte90]

first off i don't see why this 'nerf grinders' is posed as a fix for the pvp world. /world should just go back to the old way it was to be made better. But as for grinders, people making piles of hundreds of mobs has been a problem for a long time and no fix has been implimented yet. For me and my grinding a cap wouldn't even effect me since usually 5-10 minutes (when spawn rate isn't slowed to a crawl from others' hoards) is all i need to get 30 levels so i don't see the need to watch tv or take a nap for hours. I think it's a rather dumb reasoning to say all that stuff about people not playing or being solo and shit. Many people build a team when they build a grinder, so i don't see how grinders keep people from playing together and having fun. People stay in a single area cuz it's where their team and base and everything they've worked towards happens to be. As for playing 'as intended'? there is nothing un-vanilla about grinders. Killing the spawn rate making the game, at times, feel like the server is on peaceful, however, is a good reason to cut down mob hoarding. But this has been mentioned many times before and, as far as i know, noe fix has been made. So go ahead and cap the mobs per chunk (if possible) but don't make such shitty reasons for doing so.

i think nerfing spawners is all thats needed by setting a limit per chunk would as u say bring the server to a easyer gamemode

[LoneSoldier55]

first off i don't see why this 'nerf grinders' is posed as a fix for the pvp world. /world should just go back to the old way it was to be made better. But as for grinders, people making piles of hundreds of mobs has been a problem for a long time and no fix has been implimented yet. For me and my grinding a cap wouldn't even effect me since usually 5-10 minutes (when spawn rate isn't slowed to a crawl from others' hoards) is all i need to get 30 levels so i don't see the need to watch tv or take a nap for hours. I think it's a rather dumb reasoning to say all that stuff about people not playing or being solo and shit. Many people build a team when they build a grinder, so i don't see how grinders keep people from playing together and having fun. People stay in a single area cuz it's where their team and base and everything they've worked towards happens to be. As for playing 'as intended'? there is nothing un-vanilla about grinders. Killing the spawn rate making the game, at times, feel like the server is on peaceful, however, is a good reason to cut down mob hoarding. But this has been mentioned many times before and, as far as i know, noe fix has been made. So go ahead and cap the mobs per chunk (if possible) but don't make such shitty reasons for doing so.

It certainly wasn't intended to allow players to abuse the increased mob spawn code of grinders to create a machine to harvest drops from them. Neither is it intended for people to be able to abuse mobspawn rules by fabricating an environment in which mobs are spawned at a high rate and funneled for harvesting. However, due to the way these things are implemented (badly), and due to Mojang being composed of a bunch of half rate jewish bastard who could give a damn less now that their game has already had its golden age, these things will never, ever be fixed or addressed.

I should add that mob spawners were meant to be an obstacle to getting the chested loot inside the dungeons that it occupies. It was, "Oh shit how am I going to kill all these mobs fuck I have to break it quick so I can have my free loot". Instead, now it's "Plop a torch down and call in the engineers because this is going to be a slaughterhouse."