Combat has always been clunky in MC in my opinion and the changes they made in the later versions like adding shields, offhand and weapon cooldowns made it worse.
I usually play on Normal but I also am usually in 1.8, I think because that’s what the modpacks I like are for.
Y’know, I was half-expecting to be completely blasted about how much of a big deal I made about getting killed by a witch, but judging by the responses here, I gotta wonder…is Survival even a thing? Going by the old discussions, this was Creeper Hell: The Game, and they became so infamous that eventually there were freaking plushies. So obviously there were plenty of players who at least dabbled in Survival. But now that I look back on it, I don’t recall anything about an effective strategy for fighting or dealing with these nuisances. It was always “Sssssshame if you were to lossssssse it” and “They’re so annoying!” and “If you see a Creeper in your home, it’s the Creeper’s home!”, nothing but defeatism and submission and capitulation. Heck, there was more talk about fighting Endermen than I ever remember seeing for Creepers. The last books I remember seeing which covered surviving The Nether and The End predate the PS3 version. It’s like Minecraft followed the natural progression of a portion of the game that had a fairly reasonable level of challenge becoming 500 times harder for no good reason, and the community doesn’t even want to acknowledge that it even happened.
And make no mistake, that’s the big one for me. I could deal with all the annoying time-wasting crap I endured on Peaceful, but the instant it turned into Constant Deathfest 2018, camel, back, straw. And if it turns out that Mojang went mega-ultra-hardcore in order to appease a faction that, from all appearances, doesn’t even exist…well, I can think of no greater example of how completely messed up the video game industry is as a whole today.
Dang. This went on far longer than I ever expected it to. I doubt that anyone will ever see any closure, so I’m willing to let it rest if you all are.
Once I had gotten into the game a while And had a couple bases I would treat creeper holes as basically unfixable. My old bases basically became ruins with random holes (usually near the doors or outside paths with blind corners).
Different updates do seem to tweak the difficulty with the witch being particularly hard. I always play on Survival Easy (with a few trips into the next level). Ps4 version does seem to be a little harder although nothing inpossible as it would seem here. I agree there is room for an easy difficulty and harder modes, it is easy to go up a level but peaceful is just too boring. I think Easy could be a little easier and let people self select a harder version.
That said it is neat in a long game to stroll out of my skyscraper thru the original lands about the zero spawn point. The half hollowed out mountain with shattered staircases, or looting abandoned chests with supplies I was too frustrated to return for after being blown up twice in a row in a badly situated house. I even destroyed a base or teo myself (play with the kids a versus match and let them build as many defenses as they can for an hour and then smash your way in to rack up kills).
So Minecraft is an excellent game in it can be played so many different ways and for so long. I agree the diffculty for sake of difficulty does get a little tiring (for instance in Fallout 4 I wanted survival mode but got ultra instant death mode where I kept gettig oneshot when all I wanted was diseases and hunger systems in my game).
Only played the ps3 version, but also only on Survival - Normal. And got a world with no villagers, and no Stronghold, but didn’t even know those were much of a thing until I had sunk hours into mining the world.
But screw building outside homes, go dwarf-style and find a nearby mountain/hill and dig in! Keep the place well-lit, no more than 2 blocks high, give yourself a bit of front hall to go with your door. Never had any issue with mobs getting in, or creepers blowing up my walls or doors. But maybe they didn’t like taking the stairs up to my house. Making an outside house really seems quite troublesome, but I can understand the desire to build a normal house rather than a glorified hobbit hole, even if said hobbit hole was dry, warm, had a greenhouse, and connected to my underground rail system to go straight to wherever I was mining at the time.
Hearing about the tougher combat makes me… still consider getting it for PS4, right after I finish the other twenty games my toddler doesn’t want me to play.
To make mine craft easier like the op wants you have to look into the user mods …
Mojang’s original attitude (before Microsoft spent 2 billion dollars buying it) was if you cant to something just make your own mod to get around it we give you the tools its up to you to figure it out
well like I said earlier … I didn’t know there was a combat mode because everyone just uses mods and makes their own thing … in fact, it’s how DanTDM became famous because he was one of the first people that took time to use the mods and show that others made for it on youtube
I take it the op won’t be trying the “hardcore mode” that youtubes nuts over atm …
They have several already … there’s mineplex and several others where people can create games for others so its not entirely a new idea …
nightshadea - My problem with Minecraft modding is my problem with any other type of freely moldable game (Stepmania comes to mind). Because it’s completely decentralized, you have to look hard to find good stuff, or in some cases even non-harmful stuff. The reason I sunk so much money into various Codebreakers, Gamesharks, and the like is that everything was THERE. I wanted infinite health, or infinite ammo, or a certain item, or a certain level, or access, anything, all I had to do was look it up and punch in a code. Where do I get the mod for, say, infinitely lasting tools? Or automatically-regenerating health? Or infinite items? Or any tool or weapon on demand? Do any of them even exist? Of course you don’t have the answers, and neither can I.
There was a time, when I was really passionate about video games, where I’d gladly scour site after site, chasing down any lead with even a glimmer of hope, and try all kinds of combinations of things to find something fun. No more. I want what I need THERE; otherwise it’s not worth the effort. I have books, I have YouTube videos, I have television, I have mobile devices. I don’t want or need to work for my entertainment.
Here, since this is kind of the crux of the matter, let me tell you why making Survival Not-Peaceful bearable is so important. Creative is a static world where not only does nothing you accomplish really matters, there are serious limits to what you can even do. This was always true even in the old days, but now it’s more stark than ever. You can’t go to The End, Beacons don’t do anything, and it’s completely impossible to summon the Wither (the Wiki even says this point-blank). Every block is destroyed with a single hit, meaning there’s no point to tools, and since it’s impossible to die at all it won’t prepare you for fighting anything. Unless you’re an artist (I’m not), the only real point to Creative is to find out where stuff is in the seed to better prepare you for it for Survival. Thus, in order to get any value out of a modded game…and, in turn, the computer version of Minecraft…I need things that will help me survive, find things, and kick colossal butt in Survival, and I need those mods, right THERE, before I even consider diving back into this. Sorry, but a Luck Block ain’t gonna cut it.
I’m kinda flattered that you bumped this, though. Never saw that coming! 
nightshadea didn’t see it coming, either. The actual bump was by a spammer. When a spammer bumps a zombie (or creeper) thread, we try to delete the spam post (thus un-bumping it) before it gains any further replies, but we’re not always quick enough.
I play Minecraft on a multiplayer server called World of Apollo. It is set for hard survival mode. Everyone starts with crappy gear (or with nothing if they choose), deals with the mobs, and mines for resources. It is a semi-vanilla server, meaning we use very few mods to change the way the game works. The main upgrade over the base game is “grief protection”, which lets you mark the area around your builds so other players can’t mess with your stuff. Playing in a multiplayer world lets you team up to do something like kill a Wither or the Ender Dragon, so it’s kind of like the other players are your mods to make the game more survivable. You don’t all have to build your own iron farm, or your own skeleton grinder. I can build something useful, you can build something useful, and we can choose to share access if we want. Every so often we retire the map we have been playing on, and totally start over. We are getting ready to do that again on May 23, with everyone running around in crap armor building bases and trying to construct society again. Players range from 18 to their 60’s (you can curse and swear as necessary when murdered by mobs) and from all over the world. We have players from the US, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Romania, Australia, and many other countries I cannot think of off the top of my head. We are always open for new players, if you want to try multiplayer instead of single-player. https://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...bby-mini-games
If you have cheats on, then as an example:
/give DKW diamond_pickaxe{Unbreakable:1} 1
when entered in the chat would give you a diamond pickaxe that won’t break. Easily updateable to give yourself a range of unbreaking tools. You can give yourself longlasting buffs, remove debuffs, generate any item or a stack of it and so on. The /give command is quite powerful.