Notch Tweaking Minecraft's Endermen

[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...

 

[BayouStalker]

I find the lava incident to be hilarious. Honestly though, even creepers can catch you by surprise at times and wreck things. Sure they only do it when you are around but it can happen. I found the Endermen to be extremely underpowered, even as the damn thing removed a block when I wasn't paying attention and unleashed a flood that knocked me off a cliff into a group of zombies. They are, in my opinion the weakest enemy in the game at the moment. Sure they do decent damage and can teleport, but if you keep eyesight on them you just bombard them with arrows or just guide them to their death.

Personally I think make them immune to environmental damage outside of sunlight which just makes them disappear(No enderpearl given), or make only specific materials hurt them. I've had them cause extreme damage to my things by sheer accident of letting monsters in(My luck tends to spawn an overabundance of creepers when I play.). The moving blocks thing was adorable to me. It was the cute part of them.

As it stands, they need to do more with making them frightening. They should find a way to make you want to face a group of creepers without a bow in a small room rather than looking at them directly. Just make it possible to have some defenses against him in a home. Maybe make a very expensive block or torch that he won't come near. Or just put a mote around what you don't want him near.

 

[The Lugz]

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...

seems to be the opinion, easy enough to make an ender-man ward i suggested it myself just have it repel or damage ender-man in the area
easy fix

Aww what? i liked these guys making holes in everything.. cant we just have a craftable enderman ward to go over our door or something? red-stone around an enderpearl perhaps? just stop them coming near things you build

perhaps a better ( but harder ) approach would to be to have an ender-man biome and have them build a monolith and have a boss fight event there to reclaim the nearby normal biomes from ender-man control
and just have it respawn every 20 minecraft days, or so

also people need to bare in mind, this is 'survival mode' if the game cant kill or harass you then it's just creative with things to kill.

 

[kouriichi]

I dont see anything wrong with their ability to move blocks.

HEAVEN FORBID you have to replace a pair of cobblestone missing from your wall.....
Besides, anyone intelligent sleeps through the night if they can. Stops creepers from spawning around your house.

I say, if people dont like a feature, have them use a mod to change it.

 

[ShadowKatt]

This is stupid. If you take away their ability to destroy your house, then what is left to make them a threatening mob? They're not hostile, even at night, if you don't look at them, and they're weaker than a kid with progeria. If you nerf their ability to come at you in your home, even in a completely NON-THREATENING WAY so long as you don't watch them do it, what's left? You may as well just take them out of the game.

However, I should note that(and I tested this) they can do more than just close the distance with their teleport. They can bypass your doors, walls, and even traps if you look at them and run back inside to what you thought was safety. maybe if they were just plain hostile at night like all the other mobs it might be a different story.

 

[Roamin11]

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.

They did make it a pretty trippy place to be though, its like giving minecraft to some sort of abstract painter and letting him design the level.

 

[WarKirby]

I only encountered one enderman, ever. It was early morning and it was on fire.

I looked at it. It looked at me. I looked to the side. It teleported up to my face then it fell over and died from its burns.

not the scariest of experiences

 

[WarKirby]

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.

this is pretty interesting. It shows more than anything that the ability is just plain buggy.

Water doesn't seem to react properly when they move stuff around, creating hard-edged pieces of it not flowing like it should. all the blocks floating in mid air were weird too, and they must be designed to deliberately put sand into water considering the amounts of it.

fixing these would go a long way towards making it work better. beyond that, making them unable to move cobblestone and tree pieces would be good too i think. if they couldn't move your stone walls you'd have an incentive to build a house out of something besides dirt.

 

[sean360h]

The enderman needs to be creepier, faster, attack, the character after five second of eye contact and drop the light level to zero and increase mob spawns around it
imagine if all the lights in your house started going out and zombies spiders and skeletons started spawning it would be as creepy as fuck also the Ender Perl could be used to repel creatures spawns around you or crafted into a torch or something
Notch dont nerf them please make them worse

 

[McGuinty1]

So far, everytime I've heard journalists talk about Endermen, they have never mentioned Slenderman, which obviosly is the insipiration for this. I find this odd, since Slendy is a pretty big guy on the internetz. Oh well. I find this beyond cool.

Holy shit, almost 2 full pages before somebody mentioned the obvious Slenderman connection. You nerds disappoint me, although if you don't frequent the SA forums I guess I can see how you would be less likely to know about it.

For those not in the know, here is a link to the original thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=5

Ground zero is page 5, about a quarter of the way down the page (7th post).

Here is the SAclopedia entry with some background: http://forums.somethingawful.com/dictionary.php?act=3&topicid=2255

Pay special attention to the final post on the SAclopedia page. This shit was cool for about a week or two in '09, but like all other cool things on the internet, got ruined by asshats and dipshits. Coincidentally, those same people are the only ones who still bring it up, aside from the occasional low-effort reference. You know something is played out when even FYAD is sick and tired of making fun of people for bringing it up.

 

[sean360h]

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.

They should Build a super fortress on the map that has huge monster spawns in it but say a chest full of diamond blocks as a reward for getting through it
Imagine seeing this super structure next to your base come into existence
and to make it creepy have skeletons guard it and have the light for 100 blocks around it at zero and lightning

 

[Sylocat]

I thought the original idea was for them to only move naturally-placed blocks, rather than player-placed blocks. Perhaps by "nerfing," he means that they will go back to that idea?

Also that they'll no longer be able to move Bedrock? Please?

 

[tehweave]

Whaaaat? Really? That's the one thing that makes them a formidable opponent! I may be angry that they stole my workbench, but I can MAKE ANOTHER. Otherwise, they're just a walking creepy monster. What's next? Taking away creepers ability to explode?

 

[Beryl77]

Good, I don't really care much about that ability but it did start to get a bit annoying because I'm currently building a huge castle (omg so creative) but it doesn't have proper lighting yet, which means that a lot of mobs spawn inside and also Enderman. Recently I saw that there were a lot of holes in the walls of my castle, made by the Enderman who have spawned inside the castle. But I wouldn't mind if they let them keep that ability.
What I want though, is that they make the Enderman stronger. They're way to easy to defeat. Sure they can teleport but still aren't much more of a threat than Zombies.