[Tee]

I'll keep my response brief and in question form as invited:

1) The timings presented are for a short interval of time (25s) at a time of high server load (45 players). Have timings been recorded over longer periods (1h / 24h) to establish whether this high server load is transient or sustained?

2) If the timings presented are indicative of peak conditions, why does an 11% capacity overload under peak conditions justify a 90% reduction in hostile entity limits and 65% reduction in overall entity limits?

3) Why was no forewarning given to players to allow them to relocate valuable mobs prior to implementation of this update?

4) Was any consideration given to the major effect this has on gameplay mechanics, and the way in which it renders many functional builds and grinders obsolete?

5) Will community feedback be taken into consideration, or is this updated entity management system here to stay regardless?

Thanks
Tee

[aefferding]

Pretty sure the TPS dropped at the same time iron transit tubes appeared...

I would like to raise a 3rd question which I feel as important, why cut back the mobs rather than de-activating the iron tube transportation system for a while and allowing for a discussion on the subject of server performance, the various things that may be causing the impact, and the various solutions?

I agree with what KingSpartacus said about the tube transit system due to the fact that it was the main cause of the tps drastic drop.

If you look at the linked timings report, you can see the exact percentage of the load caused by transit tubes: 0.03%. Transit tubes have no impact on server performance.

Entities, on the other hand, were causing between 70%-90% of the server load. There is no doubt that the issue was with entities.

Specifically, mega-farms, and the implementation of the following suggestion, which escalated the issue: http://minerealm.com/community/viewtopi ... 10&t=15544

Even if we were to increase the amount to like 50(private) and 10(public) that would help most of us who lost so much without a warning or time to save our animals/villagers

[Intelli]

These changes have been a long time coming, as evidenced by the thread linked to by AlexaSConrad.

If I had known the number of players with cherished "unlimited paper villagers", then advance warning may have been given. However, at this point, there's nothing that can be done about already despawned entities.

If the timings presented are indicative of peak conditions, why does an 11% capacity overload under peak conditions justify a 90% reduction in hostile entity limits and 65% reduction in overall entity limits?

Your claim seems to imply that there's been a massive reduction in mobs, when in reality, only mega-farms have been impacted. There has been a reduction in the overall mobs on the server, as evidenced by the "/serverhealth" command, but the reduction has been to reasonable levels, and the overall entity levels haven't been reduced by more than was necessary.

Having 100+ hostile mobs on a plot has never been intended gameplay on MineRealm, and old mob limits were 5 mobs in a 6x6 area.

To the people arguing that there were no issues with the servers performance / TPS, you're denying the facts. The server perfomance was monitored over a number of days, and was consistently dropping below 20TPS, with multiple timing reports showing the same cause.

Was any consideration given to the major effect this has on gameplay mechanics, and the way in which it renders many functional builds and grinders obsolete?

Yes. As well, as far as I'm aware, 1.8 breaks a number of builds/grinders anyways, which is why I chose to implement these changes right before the release of 1.8.

[Intelli]

The list of exceptions has been updated

Exceptions to limits:

• The number of entities in a plot may exceed the "guaranteed entities" threshold if there are less than 100 entities in approximately a 500 block radius.
• The limit for creatures in a private (owned) plot will increase from 20 to 50 if the combined total of creatures in directly adjacent plots is equal to or less than 20 creatures.

Private (Owned) Plots:

• 5x Boats/Minecarts (combined)
• x10 Monsters
• x20 Creatures (x50 if <=20 creatures in adjacent plots)

[Intelli]

I could additionally make the monster limit in private plots increase from x10 to x20 if there are <= 5 creatures in the plot.

Let me know if you guys want this added as an exception - if so, I'll add it to the code.

[Tee]

Yes. As well, as far as I'm aware, 1.8 breaks a number of builds/grinders anyways, which is why I chose to implement these changes right before the release of 1.8.

Not at all. Mojang did briefly change pigman and iron golem behaviour such that gold nuggets and iron bars were 'rare' loot requiring player involvement in the entity death to obtain the loot, however that change was reversed in the very next snapshot.

The only 'nerfing' changes to farms in 1.8 are the revised village door mechanics which will render most redstone-powered village concentrating mechanisms (eg Iron Trench) obsolete, and the onerous new villager breeding system which will make filling iron farm modules with villagers tiresome.

[Intelli]

Not at all. Mojang did briefly change pigman and iron golem behaviour such that gold nuggets and iron bars were 'rare' loot requiring player involvement in the entity death to obtain the loot, however that change was reversed in the very next snapshot.

The only 'nerfing' changes to farms in 1.8 are the revised village door mechanics which will render most redstone-powered village concentrating mechanisms (eg Iron Trench) obsolete, and the onerous new villager breeding system which will make filling iron farm modules with villagers tiresome.

That's unfortunate.

[falareborn]

Your claim seems to imply that there's been a massive reduction in mobs, when in reality, only mega-farms have been impacted.

That's not true. I will take my farm for example. It is a small farm with 36 villagers, divided over 3 layers. Iron Golems that spawn, get automatically killed. With the limit of 20, the number of layers is lowered from 3 to 1. Making the farm way to slow to be usefull.

The list of exceptions has been updated

Exceptions to limits:

[*]The limit for creatures in a private (owned) plot will increase from 20 to 50 if the combined total of creatures in directly adjacent plots is equal to or less than 20 creatures.[/list]

This should fix that for the smaller farms, cheers!

[Tee]

only mega-farms have been impacted

Two non mega-farm issues that will impact gameplay for many players:

1) Anyone with ocean or lake on their plots risks a pack of squid spawning (up to 7 per chunk per successful spawn attempt) giving an effective 'safe' creature limit of only 13 mobs per ocean / lake plot.

2) Anyone with a grassed surface on their plots at light level >9 risks natural creature spawns occurring (up to 4 per chunk per successful spawn attempt) giving an effective 'safe' creature limit of only 16 mobs per plot, and possibly less if spawns occur on several chunks within the same plot.

These are pretty big impacts. They were unnoticeable with a mob cap of 100, but a cap of 20 creatures per plot is already tight and the uncertainty regarding natural spawns and their effect on stored creatures reduces confidence in that limit significantly.

The new entity rules are also going to be crazily difficult to explain to new players.

If the timings presented are indicative of peak conditions, why does an 11% capacity overload under peak conditions justify a 90% reduction in hostile entity limits and 65% reduction in overall entity limits?

Your claim seems to imply that there's been a massive reduction in mobs

No such implication was intended - I was clearly referring to the reduction in entity limits, not entity numbers. And this was not a "claim" but rather a query as to why it was deemed necessary that the entity limit be reduced by 65% overall (35 per plot, down from 100) and 90% for hostile mobs (10 per plot, down from 100) when the shortfall in server capacity was only in the order of 10-15% under peak load.

A simple reduction of the original combined entity cap to say 50 mobs per plot overall would have been a far more reasonable solution. It would still have curbed mega-farm mob numbers and eased server load significantly, but would also have provided limited capacity for grinders, wool farms, iron farms, gold farms, string farms and the like to operate at a reduced rate.

[FinalFouad]

If I had known the number of players with cherished "unlimited paper villagers", then advance warning may have been given. However, at this point, there's nothing that can be done about already despawned entities.

I signed on today just to check things out, and saw that my villies have despawned. It's not the infinite paper villies that matter, those aren't too difficult to get in my opinion.
It's the hours and resources I've put into my villager collection to obtain top-tier items.
Eff 3/Silk 1/Infinity 1 books, Unb3Eff3 Axes/Pickaxes, and many more. I believe in 1.8, villies will be reset (I'm not 100% sure on this, just assuming), but I did plan to stock up on more items before the reset.
Currently I did not want to visit my other villie storage area to see what else has despawned, hoping their chunks haven't been loaded and they're still good.

I can't even imagine those who've spent longer hours setting up intricate iron farms to see their villagers have despawned.

I know what's done is done and cannot be reversed, but no fore-warning on such a HUGE change is something I would have never expected.

I also know these similar statements have probably been said throughout this thread. But if many others don't post what they've lost, then it'll be assumed that only a few selected players were affected.