The state of 1.14

[Zedwick]

Firstly, I'm sorry I've left it so long without an official topic on the matter here on the forums. I've been casually updating you during the meetings on both Zz and LVS, but it's always best to have somewhere you can go to check for up to date information.

1.14, much like 1.13, has been released with some major issues which prevented us from safely updating both LVS and Zz in a timely manner. I'm sure we're all very disappointed in Mojang for making not one but two big feature releases in this kind of state, but I would like to say that I have been very impressed with their commitment to resolve the issues with 1.14 before making major announcements of future feature releases to come. I'm sure some of the devs at Mojang are working on the next release already, but they've already resolved 175 bugs since 1.14's release including both some major bugs introduced by 1.14 and some much older issues I am glad to see resolved. Their fixes may not excuse the mess of the original release, but I am at-least optimistic that we can be excited about the next update when it comes around

1.14.3 release yesterday, but unfortunately there are still some potentially world-destroying issues remaining.

The two major issues I can see at the moment, both of which Mojang have marked as "very important":

• A bug which causes villagers to disappear without a trace. They do not appear to die, and will leave beds and workstations locked preventing other villagers from breeding or making use of them. Apparently entire village populations can vanish. I don't think many would be happy to have that happen.
• Chunks of the world will sometimes be copied over other (nearby?) chunks, overwriting that part of the world and making a mess. This one is potentially catastrophic and practically irreversible.

It is yet unclear why these two issues occur, and so I am unable to verify they will or will not happen to us in our worlds. I am therefore remaining cautious until either a fix is released (Mojang have promised a 1.14.4), or more information comes to light which reassures me our worlds would be safe.

There are still performance issues which Mojang are continuing to work on, as well as various other AI issues and gameplay revisions, but those won't be holding us back from updating.

In the mean time, ZestyLand is still running and has been updated to 1.14.3. If you are a Zesty and would like to play with the new stuff, ZestyLand is there for you ^_^ viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3109

How's everyone feeling? Vent your frustrations with Zed and/or Mojang below! Please keep it relatively civil, though. Remember Zeds and developers are people too

[BengalBoi]

I am so livid with Mojang. I am so tired of this happening and it gets worse and worse each update.

It has been 2 months since this version was released and still they haven't got it stable.

I struggle to do anything on the server at the moment cause my mind is racing with all the builds I wanna do in 1.14, to the point I am purposely avoiding playing on the server.

I have stopped watching Youtubers who are on 1.14 cause I don't want to watch content I can't do or get inspired by on the server.

Been playing this game since Beta 1.4 and I have never been so agitated and p*ssed off by the games buggy-ness in all these years.

[Forseth]

Keep up the good work Zedwick. It's not your fault the versions released by Mojang are buggy. Just keep us informed and I will be looking forward for the new update, whenever it arrives.

Mojang should probably test this stuff before releasing a new update but... since when does a semi-big company ever do things the right way the first, second or third time.

I will keep supporting the server, even though I'm not currently very active, simply because it's worth waiting for. I'll keep watch on the forums and wait for when LVS updates and then I'll be back with my full passion.

Stay strong Zedwork (and Zedwick).

[KarlenWyl]

Agreed, 1.14 is just awful, hopefully latest updates will fix some of the problems, like chunk loading etc...

[Zedwick]

1.14.4 has been released, and the two issues I listed above remain unfixed. Mojang have stated the following:

Today we're releasing 1.14.4, a release that addresses left over issues from 1.14. We plan on this being the final release for 1.14 and we'll continue our efforts on 1.15. Aside from new features, 1.15 will also focus on quality and performance improvements.

Which means we will likely have to wait many more months for these two issues to be fixed in 1.15, as 1.14 will (likely) not receive further updates.

So we need to decide if we want to wait, or update and hope for the best. Let's go over the issues in a little more detail.

Villagers disappearing

This issue would be extremely frustrating to be hit by for anyone wanting to play with villagers. (But who'd want to do that in 1.14, the Villager & Pillager update..??) Whilst frustrating, it may not be a permanent issue. Anyone hit by this could repopulate, and replace all the workstations and beds in their village to return it to normal. Not easy at all, but supposing this gets fixed in a later version we won't be feeling the effects of this for the lifetime of the current world if we do get hit by it.

Chunks overwriting other chunks

This issue would be devastating, as it would permanently destroy natural and player constructed areas of the world. In theory affected areas could be replaced/fixed, but practically I can't commit to making that happen. However, it does not appear to be a widespread issue. It has half the amount of interest as the villager issue above, and 1/14 the interest of the previously fixed light bug which would disable block light from torches etc within some chunks. It is possible we might not encounter this issue, but I do feel the age of our world (first generated in 1.7.2) makes it much more likely.

Other issues

I can see a few newer issues have been reported also, but they are not issues which would hold me back from updating. For example:

Lowered mob spawn rate in the overworld in 1.14.3/1.14.4 (but may be left over from another resolved bug which allowed mobs to "aggregate in non-ticking chunks", preventing them from despawning. If so, we would not encounter this problem as we did not update to a version of 1.14.X with this problem).

So now what?

Let's talk. Should Latest Version Server live a lie and remain on the old 1.13.2 version? Does Zurvival want to see 1.14 before we skip over to 1.15? Perhaps Mojang is right and these issues are not worth waiting for, and we should just get on with it. Or maybe it's just not worth risking damage to our world, and it's better to be patient and wait for some theoretical fixes (or at-least more information which helps us avoid these issues or know that we can update without worry).

What do you think?

[Memery]

For me I would like to see a large in game discussion around this (as well as forum discussion) to make sure as many people are involved as possible.

I am of the mindset of listening to everyone else before concluding my stance

I know people will be against this but that's how I want to approach this

[ABParadigm]

Personally, I believe that the long wait for 1.14 has driven off almost all of the hype I had for it, but that doesn't mean I don't want it in the slightest. Despite that, I would still love to get on to 1.14 because of all the new blocks and farms that are possible, but I am fully aware of the risks involved.

With all of the above in mind, I believe we should update, but I believe that it should be noted (possibly in a listnotice?) that if we run into these issues that we may eventually need to revert, much like the time warp back in 1.13. I think we might, in all actuality, may not have these issues occur at all, and unless we update, we won't really know.

[Mellorian]

With all of the above in mind, I believe we should update, but I believe that it should be noted (possibly in a listnotice?) that if we run into these issues that we may eventually need to revert, much like the time warp back in 1.13. I think we might, in all actuality, may not have these issues occur at all, and unless we update, we won't really know.

I agree mostly with Ab here. I would be happier to update, and then sacrifice any progress should we need to revert, than to not update and never know.

Though Mem is right in that we should discuss this at meetings and in game.

[Forseth]

Hmm.. difficult decision.

I'd say try the update (after tripplechecking the backups) and give it a month or so for everyone to work the world. Should the game ending bugs occur, we can use the backups and revert. (assuming that's still possible). As long as everyone is made aware that the period after the update is possibly temporary, I'm sure people would accept it.

An alternative is to make a copy of the world and, while offline from the public, update the world. Then you can check for yourself If any immediate concerns occur (like in the spawn town or such). However testing in single player might not be accurate as the connection and upload might interfere with the world as well.

Another alternative is an expensive one. We could set up a secondary server/world that we, while playing on Zedwork LVS or ZZ, can go to. Keeping inventories between worlds. Then we could treat this new world as a testing world and resource world. (and reset it every once in a while). But that would require Zedwork to run an additional world and thus probably a better server (just guessing here).

[SwayLight]

My only objection to what ABP and Mell have said is, If we end up reverting back into 1.13 and then have no intention of going forward, LVS is no longer LVS. Zed would need to go through all the sites the server is advertised on and change them to state we're no longer a LVS server. Personally, while I do want a lot of what 1.14 offers, if it's still borked, what can we do? waiting for 1.15 will be a good year and a half away I'd assume and you end up conflicted because a lot of new players won't care for our reasoning on why we're not in 1.14 if that's what they wanted to play.

It's an extremely difficult choice to make but I think now more than ever, we need to entertain the idea or either a reset or a new world server. Which I think either have negatives.