Summary
The global mob cap, while adequate for a singleplayer world, is limiting when it comes to running community BDS servers.
Steps to reproduce...
Start a BDS server
Have a number of players online and creating pens of chickens, cows etc
Note that as players make bases for themselves, mob spawns reduce significantly
What I expected to happen...
Larger servers should be possible without mob spawns being crippled
What actually happened...
On a server with 10 people, that averages about 20 mobs per player, a small base with only a few animals in pens will consume a good portion of that cap. It leaves larger servers devoid of hostile spawns.
Notes...
On Java the global cap scales with the number of loaded chunks. This means the more players online, the higher the cap.
While mob farms (eg chicken cookers) with tens/hundreds of mobs could be considered overkill they are also part of the sandbox. With no indication you've gone over this invisible cap many don't understand why nothing is spawning for them.
On larger servers there's very little admins can do to prevent hitting the cap. Just general play by everyone online, without massive farms, will fill the cap.
Linked issues
is duplicated by 11
BDS-7969
Mobs Not Spawning
Resolved
BDS-8685
Mobs not spawning
Resolved
BDS-13243
sometimes when on hard dificuty no mobs will spawn
Resolved
BDS-16092
No Mobs generate after unknown amount of server uptime
Resolved
BDS-16759
Hostile mobs stop spawning
Resolved
BDS-19230
Mobs (passive and hostile) stop spawning for players
Resolved
MCPE-178217
Inconsistent mob spawn in BEdrock Multiplayer- only at host player
Resolved
MCPE-178663
Bred animals count towards global mob cap
Resolved
MCPE-184920
Multiplayer Mode Impacting New Spawns - As in , they're not spawning at all anymore
Resolved
MCPE-187847
Mob Spawn Issue
Resolved
MCPE-189460
Hostile and underwater mobs don't spam(No adventure or Pacific enabled) when playing multiplayer in Bedrock (PS5)
Resolved
Comments 16
Hi IonicEcko,
I'm not sure my problem falls in to the category you're speaking of. We have well below 200 mobs in all chunks, no custom ticking areas. I've ensured there are no mobs whatsoever in the permanently loaded spawn chunk, yet little to no mobs spawn, still.
How do you know you have less thank 200 mobs in all ticking chunks?
If your ticking distance is set to 12 thats a 192 block radius around every player that's loaded and any mobs within those chunks are part of the cap. An iron farm takes a minimum of 30-40 entities so one or two of those alone is 25-50% of your cap consumed.
With the current version mob despawning is also broken meaning any cave underground could be amassing mobs without your knowledge.
Doing /kill @e[type=!player] only killed around 130 entities. That's with 29 of us on, on an established server.
What's the ideal settings you'd recommend to increase the mob capacity to it's maximum potential? Set ticking distance to a lower value, say 2 perhaps?
Also yes, I am aware of that, thus the attempt to kill all via the corresponding command to hopefully fix things. Unfortunately that didn't fix much for long, mobs spawned in a single batch around me, and then there were no more to be seen.
Unfortunately, with that many players I can't think of anything that would help. On average that means each player can only have 10 entities around them. That's not sustainable no matter what you do.
I'll raise this internally and see if Mojang is happy tracking this as a bug.
(For the record, I agree its hugely detrimental to BDS. The mob cap is one of my biggest personal pet peeves because it means I have to micromanage my players and no one likes that).
Thank you for the help IonicEcko, it is much appreciated.
I know for a fact there are many other BDS server owners out there alike the two of us also facing this issue. In some form, it makes for a less than desirable gameplay experience when you can't even find any form of food. (primarily effecting newer players). Sure there is seeds, and alike items to make food, but the focus here is regarding mobs.
Again, thank you for your time.
Hi IO,
Have you noticed any improvement in 1.16?
While the global mob cap and its implications still exist, the despawn system as well as a number of tweaks to the global cap (armour stands no longer count, neither do Villagers) appear to have improved the situation on my server.
Curious how they have impacted a larger server like yours.
Ionic
Could we get a server.properties setting to alter the cap? It seems unreasonable that a few small animal farms breaks hostile mob spawning.
I've updated the description to follow our standard report template, let me know if you think anything is missing.
This issue is still very much alive and well in 1.17.30.
I was playing with literally 1 other person on a healthy dedicated server on hard and the nether was completely barren. Not a single mob in the nether at all! Meanwhile the other player was next to tons of sheep and chickens.
Makes no sense why the mob cap for 1 player is altering the cap for everyone else to 0 who aren't even remotely near each other. This is a game breaking bug making there be almost no point to having a dedicated server or realm at all if we can't play with friends without micro managing people. This should be a top priority bug to fix.
Most apparent still in 1.18.33 BDS. This is game breaking for survival servers.
What is the status on this bug?
We are still receiving issues with no mobs spawning and want to know what the resolution will be
still effective on 1.20.81 bds server
Looking into this
To be clear, this is not just a BDS issue as it affects local worlds and Realms, too.
Thank you for your report!
However, this issue is Working as Intended.
Please note, that mechanics of the game may change between updates.
Things such as graphics, sounds, world creation, biomes, redstone, villagers, and animals may not work the same in current versions.
Full Version History -- Snapshot Version History -- Feature Requests and Suggestions
Quick Links:
📓 Bug Tracker Guidelines -- 💬 Community Support -- 📧 Mojang Support (Technical Issues) -- 📧 Microsoft Support (Account Issues) -- ✍️ Feedback and Suggestions -- 📖 Game Wiki
Hi IO,
This is actually working as currently designed, as such this likely falls more into a "feature request" than a bug report.
Mob spawning on Bedrock conforms to a 200 entity cap for ticking areas. Exactly what entities fill this cap I can't say for sure but most passive and hostile mobs seem to. Once that 200 entity limit is reached mobs no longer spawn (outside of some specific exceptions). There is a feedback post requesting it be increased (here) and also a bug report that tracks low or no spawning monsters (MCPE-21856) however the latter is considered resolved with the changes to mob despawning happening in 1.16.
In the meantime you can only manage the cap.
For example on my server I have a command block setup that shows everyone how many entities they have loaded in their ticking area (set to 8 chunks, reduced from 12 when we started having issues). I also have a mob despawn system set up (silentwisperer design) which has helped. We also follow a general rule that mob heavy farms (like cow crammers etc) cannot be built in an area that is always loaded (like peoples bases). They are built at least 8 chunks away from heavily used areas and only used in low periods. We've seen an improvement, Its not perfect, but its an improvement.
Ionic