Second Combat Update

Minecraft's combat pre-1.9 isn't very deep, just two people flailing with swords meters from each other until one falls over.

While the combat changes in 1.9 allowed some more variety in fighting styles, its attack cooldown system slowed battles to a halt.

Neither of these solutions are ideal. Therefore, I've come up with a "Combat Update 2" that strives to expand on 1.9's variety while bringing back some of the fast pace of pre-1.9.

## Melee combat (and movement)

When people think of Minecraft combat, they usually think of getting up and personal with one's foe, so let's start there.

### Stamina

An important component of the new melee battles is one that merges the attack cooldown, the underwater air meter and the 30-second sprint limit: the stamina meter.

The player's stamina is represented by a row of 10 bubble-like icons over the hunger bar. The player has 70 stamina points, shown as sevenths of whole bubbles.

The following actions consume stamina:

- Sprinting (4 points per meter). Sprinting is now 50% faster than walking.

- Sprint jumping, sidestepping and backpedaling (5 points+ 0.5s stamina regen delay. New moves, see below).

- Being underwater without Water Breathing (70 points over [15 \* (RespirationLevel + 1) seconds).

- Attacking (see below).

- Blocking (3 points per meter of knockback the attack deals).

Unless stamina regeneration is delayed or the player is underwater without Water Breathing or is suffocating, the player will regenerate stamina at a rate of 2.5 bubbles per second.

If the stamina meter hits zero, the player becomes exhausted, reducing movement speed by 25%, attack damage/knockback by 75% and disabling sprinting, sidestepping, backpedaling and shield blocking. The player stops being exhausted when the stamina meter is completely filled.

If the player has zero stamina and can't refill it due to being unable to breathe, this is considered drowning and deals 1 heart of damage per second.

Haste increases stamina regen rate by 10% per level and decreases the duration of regen delay by the same amount, while Mining Fatigue does the opposite.

### Sidestepping and backpedaling

These are two new moves that can be used to dodge attacks. Sidestepping is done by double-tapping [strafe left] or [strafe right], and makes the player jump in that direction with the horizontal speed of a sprint jump, but half the height. Backpedaling is done by double-tapping [move backwards], and does the same thing, but backwards. Both of these moves make the player intangible to attacks for 1/10 of a second when used.

### Weapon weight

Weapon weight is the replacement for 1.9's attack speed attribute. Basically, what the Minecraft Wiki lists as a weapon or tool's "recovery time" is its weapon weight.

Attacking with a weapon takes 20 stamina points multiplied by weapon weight, and delays stamina regen by 1 second multiplied by weapon weight. For example, a sword takes 12 stamina points and delays regen by 0.6 seconds. Starting with a full meter, a sword can be swung 5 times in rapid succession before the player needs to wait to not get exhausted.

### Sword and axe tweaks

Here are some changes to the two current melee weapons to acommodate for the stamina system.

#### Swords

Swords retain their role as simple to use weapons with average stats. The sweep attack is no longer automatic, but avtivated by holding [attack] for at least 0.75 seconds and releasing. Holding the button for at least 2 seconds upgrades the sweep attack into a spin attack, which is mostly the same but has a 360-degree range.

#### Axes

Axes are still advanced weapons that are heavier, but stronger than swords. They no longer have a chance of disabling shields on normal strikes, but if the player holds [attack] for at least two seconds and release, they can unleash a "shield buster" attack, which disables the opponent's shield for 5 seconds if are blocking with it, and otherwise ignores up to 10 armor points.

### New melee weapons

Adding new weapons is a great way to increase variety in the combat system. Weapons shouldn't be added arbitrarily to pad out the creative inventory, each new weapon should be distinct and acommodating different fighting styles. One such weapon could be a hammer or mace that's heavier than an axe and can be charged to deal lots of knockback.

### Horseback fighting

While riding a horse, the player's attack (and block interaction) range is increased by one meter. However, dealing knockback to a horse rider will knock them off the horse, and attacking a horse will cause it to throw its rider off.

And that's about all I have about melee combat!

## Ranged combat

The ranged side of Minecraft combat is even more lacking than the melee side. There's only one weapon available unless you count eggs and snowballs, and this weapon has only four exclusive enchantments. In short, ranged combat has a long ways to go.

### Changed arrow mechanics

Many think the bow is overpowered, and want it to be nerfed by simply reducing its damage. I suggest changing a few other mechanics instead.

The calculation of an arrow's damage output is no longer calculated based on how charged the bow was, but on how fast it's moving when it hits the target. The initial velocity of a fully charged bow deals 9 damage, and a barely moving arrow deals 1 damage. An arrow moving faster than the initial full charge speed gets the "critical" particle trail.

When an arrow hits an entity, it has a chance to overpenetrate the target, dealing half the normal damage and passing through the target with its velocity halved. The chance of overpenetration is 5  percent for every point of damage, taking armor, potion effects, etc. into account.

With the addition of spectral and tipped arrows, it seems strange that the Infinity enchantment chooses to only duplicate regular arrows and doesn't let you pick them up, even if it makes sense for gameplay balance. Therefore, Infinity should be changed to only activate when there are no arrows in the inventory, and it should spend 4 experience points to shoot a semi-transparent arrow that glows blue (or the wielder's team color) and disappears when it hits something without overpenetrating. With this, the combo of Infinity and Mending could be enabled again as it's not infinitely sustainable.

### A new ranged weapon

The bow being the only available ranged weapon greatly limits variety. This is why I think several new ranged weapons should be added. People at r/MCAbnormalities (especially redditor objectiveinsight) have suggested different kinds of antiquated firearms such as flintlock pistols, arquebuses and muskets and even some magical variants, but here I'll just suggest one ranged weapon - crossbows.

Crossbows derive most of their functionality from bows, including enchantments. They are held horizontally in front of the wielder. They take 1.2 seconds to fully charge, but become "loaded" upon doing so, meaning they can be held without slowing the wielder down. A loaded crossbow can be fired instantly by pressing "use".

I was planning on having crossbows use bolts instead of arrows and for there to be several special bolt types in place of tipped arrows, but I came to the conclusion that this was unnecessarily complicated and that crossbows should just use normal arrows. This is a game where papyrus is the same as sugar cane and spider silk is the same as wool, after all.

### New arrow types

A good way to get more variety out of a ranged weapon is to give it a wider selection of ammunition. Spectral and tipped arrows were a start, but the concept can be expanded further. Some new arrow types could include:

Obsidian arrows, crafted with obsidian instead of flint and ignores up to 10 defense points.

Prismarine arrows, crafted with prismarine shards instead of flint and moves through water as easily as through air.

Arrows with different fletchings. The new parrots could drop or shed differently colored feathers that can replace white feathers in the arrow recipe to modify the arrow's properties. Some feathers could make arrows lighter or heavier, more or less aerodynamic or more or less accurate.

### Quivers

Quivers can be found in loot chests, as fishing treasure or bought from fletchers as a tier 3 trade for 4-12 emeralds. They could possibly be craftable, but they feel more like a treasure item like saddles and horse armor.

When equipped in the chestplate slot, a quiver's eight arrow slots appear at the top of the inventory. One quiver can store up to 512 arrows.

While charging a bow (or crossbow), an alternate crossbar is displayed where the leftmost eight are the slots of the equpped quiver and the one on the left shows the slot that would normally be selected.

Quivers can also be dyed like leather armor. This can be used for personalization or to color-code different quivers based on what kinds of arrows they contain.

## Stealth

The idea here is to make it possible for players to sneak up on mobs like they can players, by giving mobs distinct senses that they operate on rather than having what seems like a sphere of omniscience.

### Sight

Mobs now see in a cone in front of them, usually blocked by opaque blocks. The range and peripheral vision (cone width) depends on the mob. Range also decreases when trying to detect players in lower light levels (this effect is lower in the Nether and End due to low light levels looking brighter) or invisible players. The Wither has 360 degree vision due to its three heads, and spiders have the second best peripheral vision due to their many eyes.

Players with the Glowing effect are treated as fully visible and can be seen through opaque blocks. Certain mobs may also be able to always see players through opaque blocks (like spiders), or to see in the dark. In the future, there may be mobs with no vision who instead rely on other senses.

### Sound

When certain sounds are made, such as footsteps, attack sounds and explosions, a "sound radius" (depending on the sound's loudness) is briefly emitted by the source. If a mob's "hearing radius" (again depending on the mob) collides with the sound radius, the mob will turn its head towards the source and walk towards it for a while. Sneaking reduces the volume of sounds caused by the player's feet.

### Other

When mobs are hit, they instantly turn around to the source of the attack.

Some mobs can have unique senses. For examples, spiders and cave spiders can sense players touching the same group of cobweb blocks as themselves.

## Shields

I feel like shields in Minecraft really don't live up to their potential. They only come in one shape and material, and they have no unique enchantments. I don't know excactly what to do with them, but adding some more different-looking shields with special abilities will probably help. I know shields already can have heraldic patterns, but they end up botched due to the low resolution.

And to make fighting shielded foes in PvP more intuitive, the shield should always visuallty face the same direction it does mechanically as opposed to just moving with the torso.

## Armor

I don't think armor is in need of a large technical rework. However, the textures of iron, gold and diamond armor look very simplistic and outdated compared to the relatively detailed art style of modern Minecraft. Even horse armor is more detailed than human armor.

Therefore, iron, gold and diamond armor, both their worn and item forms, should be retextured to look more detailed. Iron and gold armor should look like plate armor (with gold possibly being more ornate), while diamond could possibly look like a type of scale armor.

## Loot

The rigid system of five craftable tiers of gear is somewhat limiting for the future of Minecraft combat, but changing the craftable tier system this late would feel strange. Therefore, there should be new types of tools, weapons armor and shields that can only be found as loot, mob drops, fishing treasure, etc. These loot items should have special abilities that can't be gotten with enchantment. For example, there could be something like a "Barbarian Armor" set that increases various stats when at low health.

And that's about it. Whew, this took a long time to write and illustrate.