Minecraft 1.9 – What Went Wrong?

Over the course of nearly 12 years minecraft has received countless updates that have shaped the game from a basic building sandbox to the complex yet seemingly simplistic game we have today when you ask avid minecraft players about some of the biggest changes to the game there are a wide selection of versions

That come to mind for the newer players that might be the 1.16 nether update completely revamping minecraft’s second dimension with new blocks items structures mobs mechanics and more veterans might cite an update such as the beta 1.8 adventure update which brought new food mobs biomes experience flying sprinting charged bows

Sword blocking hunger status effects and so much more but if you were to ask the pvp community about the most important update to the game the answer would be unanimous minecraft 1.9 the combat update an update so large that it completely revamped one of the most basic

Elements of the game as well as an entire dimension an update so controversial that millions of players would hang back on older versions of the game for years solely to avoid the new pvp mechanics introduced within it minecraft 1.9 was and is the most widely hated update to minecraft of all time

But why what about this update was so detrimental to pvp combat that it caused the majority of the community to hold it in such disdain in today’s episode of aiden relays is clearly biased thoughts about a trivial issue with a children’s video game we’ll be taking a look at the

Shortcomings of the updated combat system and how mojing can fix it before we dive into what 1.9 did wrong let’s figure out what 1.8 in the versions before it did right what made this old system better than the new one well there are quite a few reasons and i

Can’t really touch on them all but i will mention just a few of the most important ones obviously not every 1.8 pvper is going to agree that these are good and not every 1.9 pvper will think they’re bad but this does generally seem to be the most desirable

Features gained by staying on the older versions of minecraft for pvp firstly the attack cooldown or rather the lack thereof in old versions of minecraft pvp you can send attacks very quickly in fact there aren’t any restrictions on the speed you use to swing your weapon players have what’s known as an

Invincibility frame of just half a second meaning you can attack players twice a second assuming you click fast enough or at the right times this is one of the cores on which this older style of pvp is based the lack of speed restrictions allows for crazy combos

Projectile tricks and so much more in fact these have become so well liked that they’ve been taken to the extreme in game modes like combo duels which completely removes those invincibility frames mentioned earlier to allow players to deal incredible amounts of damage and knockback in a very small amount of time moving on

1.8 and earlier versions have a somewhat balanced system for tool damage it’s structured very logically with swords dealing the most damage due to their status as the only tool specifically designed for melee combat axes follow them since axes would logically double as a good weapon aside from their intended use of woodcutting

Then pickaxes shovels and hoes dropping one level of damage for each step down and lastly the overpowered enchantments and healing in legacy pvp have become adored by the pvp community disregarding the negative connotation that might come with calling a certain item or mechanic overpowered the enchantments and healing actually

Aren’t all that bad and players have come to really like these features the enchantments are particularly important in game modes like factions which often add custom enchantments or custom levels for enchantments such as in op faction servers that often include armor pieces enchanted with protection 100 swords enchanted with fire and sharpness

50 and so on the healing is even more important with items like enchanted golden apples becoming vital to player combat in factions hcf kit pvp ultra hardcore and essentially any other longer term pvp mini games or game modes as i said earlier there’s a lot more to the 1.8 experience that’s alluring

Compared to the newer versions but these are just three of the most important features not everyone enjoyed them but as a majority most players were somewhat pleased with the basics of combat of course many were hoping for new mechanics or items in some form dual wielding shield crossbows and so on but

With the exciting 1.9 combat update just around the corner players were optimistic and excited to see mojang deliver Unfortunately the update was not what players expected at all but before we diss it too much let’s start with the positives because minecraft 1.9 wasn’t all bad firstly the end updates i don’t think very many people took issue with these and after having played them myself for my evolution of the end video

I honestly think it gave the dimension a much needed glow up though i’m still hoping for another revamp at some point in the future the outer islands featuring new end cities and ships provided an incentive to visit the end outside of completing the game or in some cases just the novelty of

Spending some time there and of course these would sometimes contain the new elytra item which allowed players to soar through the air for fast and exhilarating travel in all dimensions as for combat lingering potions to affect multiple players on the ground were relatively harmless and i haven’t seen much complaint about them

Spectral arrows allowed you to keep a visual on players in combat even through various walls and obstacles essentially meaning that anyone shot with one could run but not hide if anything these arrows discouraged camping and hiding and encourage players to actually engage in combat so i don’t see a way this could

Be viewed as anything but positive tipped arrows were added to the game as well allowing you to shoot teammates with healing arrows attack enemies with poisoned arrows or even use them on yourself to inject potions of speed jump boost and so on and finally the much requested dual wielding system was

Added and it was surprisingly fine in fact it’s incredibly useful even outside of combat for example to hold torches in one hand while you build with the other but that’s where the praise comes to a screeching halt while 1.9 wasn’t all bad it was overwhelmingly disliked for its sudden and

Unneeded revisions to the combat system so let’s begin with the most despised changes the first of these is the dreaded attack cooldown and when i say dreaded i mean it for those that have little to no knowledge of 1.9 pvp spam clicking is no longer effective because a complex system will now weaken

Your damage if you attack too early the time needed for a full attack with each tool is also quite varied for no apparent reason swords take 0.6 seconds pickaxes take point 85 seconds and shovels take one full second even attacks with your fist or normal items have a cooldown though it’s only a

Quarter of a second and axes and hoes are far more complicated for example a diamond or gold axe takes one full second but wooden and stone axes take one and a quarter and iron axes take one and a tenth hoes are even more spread out but it at least

Progresses logically with attack speed increasing as the crafting materials improve and not only that but enchantments like sharpness are also nerfed separately meaning there’s even more damage lost for those that don’t wait the proper time it’s essentially the same as the rules for normal damage but the reduction is slightly less extreme

Along with the new attack cooldown system was a revamped attack strength system which again makes no sense swords and pickaxes stay the same as before hoes are now all restricted to just one heart of damage no matter what the material is shovels have been increased to be ever

So slightly more effective than pickaxes for no apparent reason and of course the worst offender is the axe with even just a wooden axe which can be acquired within 10 seconds of creating a world being equally as powerful as a diamond sword previously considered the pinnacle of minecraft weaponry

Oddly enough the damage then skips by an entire heart with stone iron and diamond axes all doing the same amount of damage which is four and a half hearts granted they did try to balance these by changing the attack speed on each tool but it’s still a confusing and completely illogical system

Now while these are the most disliked changes they’re far from the only ones i’m going to breeze through the rest of these for the sake of brevity but if you have any more questions about them feel free to ask in the comments and i’ll do my best to address them

First shields completely replace sword blocking the addition of shields isn’t a bad thing and they would have been mentioned earlier if it weren’t for the unnecessary removal of the blocking mechanic which is a lot more useful than shields in a multitude of situations for example block hitting is a form of

Quick sprint reset which is a very well known pvp strategy and you can’t exactly pull out a shield in what’s colloquially been called a crit box essentially a small enclosed space in which maximizing damage is your only worry without having to deal with optimized movement or aim secondly sweep attacks these just don’t

Make much sense you can only do these large attacks while standing still or sneaking but wouldn’t that be the opposite of how it works since momentum can allow you to put more force behind the attack this is pretty minor but even still and then there’s the nerfs to sharpness and protection

Granted these aren’t completely god-awful but the nerfs weren’t particularly necessary enchanted golden apples were nerfed as well and they were completely removed from the crafting interface and not only that but just eating normal food now provides a pretty overpowered quick health boost meaning that they made the healing items

Heal less and the non-healing items heal more generally this new combat system was just a nonsensical disaster mixing in actually desirable and highly requested new mechanics with ones that seem unnecessary illogical and poorly fleshed out these mechanics have stayed largely the same since their introduction over five years ago now in minecraft’s

Official release and as such there’s been a large division in the pvp community between fans of legacy combat and those that prefer the revamped system in short 1.9 combat was just about everything you don’t want in a video game update but recently a new system has been proposed that

Could provide a solution to our long-standing problem though much of the pvp community either doesn’t know or denies it mojang is very aware of the negative reception of the new combat system it’s the reason they’ve changed certain aspects it’s the reason they’ve abstained from adding it to bedrock edition

And it’s the reason why they’re creating a brand new system for nearly two years now the team have been working on and off on unofficial combat tests all of which have been released through reddit or the minecraft website rather than the official launcher they’ve gone through many iterations but

The current version combat test 8c will be the last one until in jeb’s words something dramatic happens as such i’m only going to be looking at the most recent version of these combat changes since that’s the most finalized version we have at the moment so let’s go through some of the most

Eye-catching additions and revisions brought by the combat tests first off a brand new attribute added to weapons that modifies their reach this also reduces the default reach to two and a half blocks from the three that it currently has swords remain at a reach of three blocks

And hoes and tridents have had the reach increase to three and a half but all other weapons have been nerfed to the 2.5 block default now this is certainly an interesting solution to the issue of balancing weapons but i’ve got to say i really really don’t like it reach is often

Considered the most annoying hack and for good reason anyone halfway decent at pvp with a longer reach can absolutely dominate other players that’s why hackers on practice servers often boost their reach by as little as a tenth of a block with decent aim that’s enough to significantly weigh the odds in their favor

With the drastic changes added in this update if a good player uses a trident against players with literally anything else it’s all over on paper this does absolutely sound like a good idea except for increasing the reach of hoes cause that’s completely pointless there’s such a meme for combat that i

Literally made an entire video using them as a joke tridents are longer than swords swords are longer than tools so they would naturally have the changed reach as a result but i really don’t think this will work out the way it should next up is the cleaving enchant which i don’t really

Take issue with i think it’s a bit unnecessary since sharpness already can be used and this is basically just a replacement for that but i wouldn’t consider it harmful just needlessly complicated continuing on attack speed and projectile accuracy have both been increased the speed change was very needed the

Aero accuracy not as much but i think it will cut back on some of those how did that miss i fired it directly at him no seriously watch this replay my aim was actually perfect moments but then they sort of counter this by intentionally screwing with the accuracy of both shots after they’ve

Been drawn longer than three seconds just why it’s not like that’s how bows work in real life you don’t just start quivering out of anticipation for the shot like what is that i’m guessing this is another thing meant to discourage camping with bows which i absolutely respect

But campers aren’t the only ones that draw back bows for a decently long period of time this would also screw up you know anyone that takes the time to set up a long shot or a trick shot or both additionally and this only applies to those campers this can really easily be

Bypassed by just switching slots and then drawing the bow again which takes a second at most i don’t think this is going to destroy pvp but i don’t like it at all personally next up thank god axe power has been nerfed except oh wait it’s still higher than swords which they also nerfed

Granted the reduced axe reach does sort of balance this but that automatically deters anyone decent at pvp from using axes and battles longer than maybe five hits they’ve also added an automatic attack system and no god please no they try to somewhat nerf this as well by adding a penalty

Making automatic attacking slower but the penalty is only 50 milliseconds meaning that if you don’t click a consistent 20 times per second or time each one of your hits within a single tick of the cooldown finishing you aren’t going to receive a significant benefit from clicking fortunately the rest of these

Improvements are actually pretty positive low damage knockback has been returned which was actually removed in 1.13 i think it wasn’t 1.9 but that’s about all i know but that alone ruined modes like skywars and uhc by making snowballs eggs fishing rods etc essentially useless for pvp they added a

New charged attack which is honestly pretty cool even with the added reach it would be an issue if you could do a lot of these in a row but they take a while to prepare which makes it alright they removed the quick saturation healing good not sure why it existed in the

First place but at least figured out the problem and the sweep attack has been nerfed to only weapons with sweeping edge i think that works much better as an enchantment thing even excluding the whole logically that doesn’t make sense without the aid of literal magic they also nerfed the attack damage which

I don’t really think was necessary but it’s not a huge deal and that’s just about it the vast majority of negative changes in 1.9 have been addressed and mostly for the better in my opinion i think the reach attribute could you know destroy pvp entirely but outside of that

I think this is a much improved combat system that many players and servers alike would at least consider switching over to it’s not perfect and i don’t think it ever will be but it’s very good progress hope you all enjoyed the video apologies it ended up being so long because i was

Really not expecting it to be but uh here we are 3000 words later so yeah i don’t have much to say other than follow my twitch if you’d be so inclined and subscribe if you want to see more videos like this with that being said i have a jersey mic

Sandwich sitting on my desk and a technician video on my monitor waiting to be watched very important business as i’m sure you can guess so have a good one guys peace You