Notch Tweaking Minecraft's Endermen

[karloss01]

block removal wasn't a bad idea, just an under-developed idea. i mean, they grab a block and do what? put it somewhere else. a bit simple really, how about they eat blocks and then you have to kill it to get it back.

or maybe even have them build a totem and then move one to build another one somewhere else, that would give them some character to them.

EDIT:

I'd rather he fix the bug that allows monsters to spawn on top of me when I try to sleep first.

But I gotta say I didn't really mind them, brought an extra sense of danger to the game.

This has probably been addressed, but monsters spawn on you if there is some vulnerability in your house, or if a torch is right above your bed, or something.

it hasn't been addressed. the reason it happens is that the if the bed is placed where there is no light in the radius of two blocks then monsters will spawn.

for example if you build you home but then place you bed against the wall and the wall is one block thick and the block outside is dark/empty then it means that the bed is vulnerable dispite the player having four solid walls made of glowstone.

 

[Doubler]

Endermen are only really a threat if you built a really shoddy home for yourself. They don't move enough blocks for that ability to be dangerous right now.

What it is, though, is really bloody annoying to come out in the morning and see tree trunks and leaf blocks strewn around and the lakebed collapsed because an enderman took a block of sand. You end up spending half the day fixing random stuff if you care what your world looks like.
If their ability had to remain I'd make it so they could only move player-placed blocks.

 

[minimacker]

Never, ever had a problem with the 'Entlemen. I have never seen them pick up anything from my houses and they're so laughably easy to kill.

 

[Quantupus]

Having the ability to move blocks was a shit idea from the start. Creepers can destroy your home, but only if you lead them to it and let them get close enough to explode. You don't come home to find a huge hole in your wall left by a creeper. Endermen though, they break your home when you aren't even there. You have no control over it, which discourages you from building anything that you don't want wrecked.

 

[Misterian]

Those things look like Father/Benedict Uno from Codename: Kids Next Door.

hey! there's an idea, how would it sound if the Endermen had the power to burst into flames?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

The people crying need to use moats. Water kills endermen.

 

[Abengoshis]

Gah! They don't need NERFING they need BUFFING! I can take them out easily by either drawing them into water, shooting them with about 2 arrows, or just whacking them a bit with an iron or better sword. Maybe they should PLACE blocks, like enderblocks, or make blocks they touch have a coating which hurts you instead of picking those blocks up and basically being uncontrollable griefers. They need to have a lot more health though.

 

[GeorgW]

But that's what makes them fun! It's not hard to combat, just add a moat of a few layers of wall. It's no fun if it's too easy!

 

[LordOmnit]

The only problem with the Endermen is that they don't drop the block on death. How hard could it be to fix that?

Captcha: Name= yeticat

P.S.- Yeticat? Is that a pet for a yeti or is it a different species of yeti?

 

[Funcakes]

Is the damage they do really that extensive? I didn't play much, but, they seemed pretty benign. If anything I felt they were underpowered.

 

[XMark]

I've been playing 1.8 single player for about 15 hours so far, and have only seen one block taken out of my house by endermen. Other than that I've just seen the occasional tree missing a block. I don't think it was much of an issue. I had far more of my structures damaged by creepers than by endermen in that time.

 

[MattyDienhoff]

It frustrates me to see people trivializing this issue by saying things like "Why don't you play on peaceful!". That's missing the point, because this isn't a difficulty issue, it's an aesthetics one. The mechanic doesn't effectively work as intended to increase difficulty.

The idea of an Enderman breaching the wall of your sanctuary to let hostile mobs in is nice and all, but how often does that actually happen? That implies they have the intelligence to actually make a hole that something can get through. They don't. The reality is that they can only achieve this through dumb luck. They don't actively make an accessible hole, they just break random shit. Typically, this is annoying and unsightly, but rarely dangerous.

Does having to make daily repairs to patch up such ugly but otherwise inconsequential vandalism make the game harder? No, just more frustrating. And no, Creepers can not be compared. When a Creeper explodes, it does so in your presence, because you failed to prevent that (therein lies the challenge), and you can repair the damage because you know what was damaged, you saw it take place. Endermen are far more annoying because they vandalize things even when you're not around to know about it. They could only be compared to Creepers if Creepers exploded randomly when they're nowhere near you, leaving the landscape looking like it'd been hit by an artillery barrage by morning.

And it's not just my stuff I'm concerned about. Endermen's destructiveness extends to the natural world. They spoil the unspoilt wilderness. Plains look like a pack of prairie dogs got to them (holes everywhere), and forests look like some idiot came through who couldn't be bothered to cut down trees properly.

 

[Pirate Brahm]

I picked the worst update to start building a minecart railroad. Every morning there are holes in my tracks and ender pearls laying around. Mmm hmm.

 

[Lilani]

I actually didn't mind that ability, it just added to their creepiness, say after a long expedition, you return to find your home open to the elements, forcing you to rebuild it, lest you be at the mercy of monsters. It would be like nerfing the creepers ability to explode, because, hey, it does a hell of a lot more damage then the removal of one freaking block.

I think the main problem with the endermen is they completely undermine the point of the game in a way the player can't control. With creepers, they only do things when you're there and interacting with them. And you can build the walls to put distance between you and them. With endermen, they can wreck your stuff while you are not there and not doing anything at all to them. You have no control over what they wreck, in a game where the goal is absolute player control and manipulation of the land. It would be like playing Legos with a guy who will randomly kick whatever you're working on across the room. You can't lock him out or tell him to stop like all the other assholes in the world.

I think this nerf will simply mean they can only move natural blocks, not player-placed blocks. Honestly that's sort of how I expected them to function when the endermen were first announced. It surprised me that Notch did what he did and actually stuck with it through the release of 1.8.

 

[Ickabod]

Endermen are weak, if you have a bow they don't even move when you shoot them. Their block taking ability made them at least interesting, don't like it, just add a moat.

Make Endermen teleport the player to them instead of teleporting to the player, THAT would be scary as hell.

 

[Harry Mason]

I love Minecraft too, guys. But is this really news? Like, I'm sure SOMETHING else other than "that one thing in that one game is changing" could make the front page.

On topic, without random block moving the inherent creepiness of the Ederman is gone. It's too bad, really.

 

[Zeekar]

Actually, the tree thing bugs me to the point that I was hoping he'd change this. I guess it could be OCD, but going through the forest and seeing so many trees with one block taken out of them irks me. It'd be nicer if they could only pull up dirt blocks.

I just hope he continues with his idea of them arranging blocks into complex geometric patterns. That was an amazingly creepy idea. I hope he didn't just outright forget about it.

For the record though, I've yet to have an enderman take away anything from my house. I mean, the chance of that happening is pretty slim, right? They can only hold one block at a time and they don't put their blocks down too often. Your house is essentially enderman-proof if you just make your walls two blocks thick.

 

[grimgor42]

This should explain why, over a long enough period of time, endermen as they are don't work out. This is minecraft 200 minecraft years in the future, a dark, strange future ruled by the endermen. If Notch does nothing then their victory will be absolute.

 

[Hungry Donner]

Oh and creepers don't tear down your house.... so much more?
Notch has his priority's wrong! He should be adding more ways to defend your house! Rather than worrying about the enemy's! Add barbed wire or something!

This, exactly. Building things is a central aspect of Minecraft, having monsters that take things apart makes sense. The alternative shouldn't be removing that ability from Endemen, but letting us build defenses.

 

[Hartmansgrad]

I love waking up after a night huddled in my new mushroom house only to find that the surrounding landscape has little chunks pulled away and moved elsewhere by unseen hands.
My structures are almost always too well lit to have endermen mess with them, perhaps the occasional wood block from the very outskirts.

New sounds for the endermen would be excelent, an unearthly rumble to accompany their inhuman shuddering when they are cornered though I seem to remember that this was already in the works.
Maybe having them stockpile all their captured blocks in a single place or teleporting to an endermen spesific biome when the night is done, taking their treasures with them to build monoliths of their own or simply to hoard?


The idea of an enderpearl ward would be awesome too...sort of like a horseshoe above the door to keep away the interfering monsters. That or the spike blocks that were mentioned in previous blog posts.
I have a feeling, having seen video's of how dangerous they are, that Silverfish were the scary new mob that was mentioned by Notch when 1.8 was young...