The Aftermath of the Minecraft 1.9 Combat Update (Java Edition)

The 1.9 update to the Java Edition of Minecraft completely split the community in half, one side believing in the 1.8 mechanics – the other confident that the attack cooldown was an improvement. Right? Today, I will be voicing my opinions on the 1.9 update, and explaining what Mojang needs to do to heal the Java Edition community.

Minecraft Java Edition 1.9 Combat Update (The Aftermath)

First, let’s look at a modern-day example of Minecraft 1.8 PvP, which can easily be found by simply going to the very popular server for Java Edition: Hypixel (mc.hypixel.net). Here, you can play minigames such as BedWars and SkyWars. But here’s the catch. No matter what version you are playing on, from 1.8 to 1.13+, the PvP aspect of the gameplay is purely 1.8 mechanics. Absolutely no attack cooldown between swings of your sword, nor is there any dual-wielding. All the 1.9+ blocks, such as Purpur or Glazed Terracotta go unused, since they simply are not supported on a network that allows players on a different client (1.8). Mojang does absolutely nothing to stop this, just like they do nothing to stop “mods” to be installed into the launcher, like Optifine for example. Modern 1.9+ PvP-based servers do exist, such as CubeCraft Games (play.cubecraft.net), but they are far more uncommon or do not have nearly as much of a player base of Hypixel.

This seems all very well, but at the time of the change (1.9), many players were split into between three groups.

1) The players who wanted no attack cooldown.

 2) The players who really wanted the attack cooldown to stay.

3) The players who thought the attack cooldown was a step in the right direction, but needed tweaks.

These divisions of players each wanted their own way. To appeal to the majority of PvP players who were already used to “jitterclicking”, Hypixel, Badlion, and many more popular PvP or Faction servers kept the 1.8-style of combat, and like stated before, Mojang did no action to stop this. That may be one of my favorite decisions ever made by the company behind Minecraft.

But how can we cure the “rift” in the players? How can we make servers with the current updates popular again? Well, there is a very intelligent idea created by the community to solve this problem. And it’s only two commands Mojang would have to add. /attackcooldownfalse and /attackcooldowntrue. These two commands would allow the owners of the world/server have the option to choose whether or not they want the attack cooldown. /attackcooldownfalse (similar to /keepinventoryfalse) would disable the changes made in 1.9 to the combat. /attackcooldowntrue would enable it. So simple!

The greatest part of this is that this would allow for all the epic features in Minecraft from 1.9 Elytra and Dual-Wielding, 1.12 Concrete and Glazed Terracotta, 1.13 swimming and Tridents, all to be united in one place with no questions asked about the combat changes. This honestly seems like the best solution to the problem.

Thank you for reading this post, what do you think of these issues and solutions? Please leave a comment down below with your own opinions on the topic! See you all next time, bye!