The bug
Mobs can spawn on scaffolding. As the top face of scaffolding is not necessarily solid (you can go through it), it is questionable whether this is intended.
Also, this is inconvenient if you need to take care of your scaffolding being spawn-proof when you want to focus on building your build.
To reproduce
Create a new superflat world with the preset
minecraft:bedrock,minecraft:scaffolding;minecraft:plains;Run
/time set midnight❌ Mobs will spawn
Linked issues
is duplicated by 1
relates to 3
Attachments
Comments 12
Note: this behavior is currently (ab)used in several mob farms, such as the popular scaffolding farm by ianxofour (which is built by Xisuma in Hermitcraft Season 9). Scaffolding at one point (1.16?) even allowed surface spawns in multiple layers, although this might be outdated.
Is there a way to revisit whether this "fix" should be implemented? The illumination of surfaces to prevent spawning is widely considered to be normal and expected, not just for scaffolding. As others have pointed out, implementing this change will break many mob farms, but most importantly, it completely changes the use of the block in the game. As opposed to scaffolding being used as a spawning surface, scaffolding will instead become perhaps the cheapest and most convenient way to spawnproof an area, literally making the utility of the block become the exact opposite of its original behavior.
I have to side with ianxofour below and want to add that if players can walk/spawn (after sleeping/login) on a block then so should mobs be able to as a general rule.
As pointed out, many farms already rely on the mechanic and it appears to me that mobs spawning on scaffolding was intended behavior when the scaffolding block was originally added to the game.
I can see why people dislike mobs spawning on their scaffolding when e.g. building at night high up in the sky but I'm also wondering how they're building in the dark. The problem is easily avoidable by either sleeping through the night or by placing torches instead of completely changing the game mechanics of a block in the game.
Also, what about phantoms in the same scenario? We don't remove them from the game either just because they are annoying to some players during sleepless nights.
Mobs showing up out of nowhere (i.e. spawn within the area and then walk towards the player)... I guess that's just the nature of mobs and one of the challenges that a player has to face playing minecraft. There's mechanics (lighting an area up) and game modes (peaceful/creative) where players don't have to fear the few challenges the game has to offer and I'm concerned about the further development of the game if we remove mechanics because they offer a challenge to the player.
As an alternative to disabling mob spawning on scaffolding altogether I'd like to suggest to still have it enabled on hard difficulty to further differentiate hard from the more laid back/beginners peaceful, easy and normal difficulties.
Can confirm in 20w51a.