As of 1.14.3 the gossip in villagers manages to decay over time, and it was not mentioned in the changelogs, and therefore must be a bug. This ruins many designs for things that the tech community has speant literal months designing. However, the intended behaviour is very OP so I came up with a solution. Villagers who have been cured by a zombie villager cannot spread gossip. Sort of like they are in "panic" mode, like they do when next to zombies, and they are panicked by the zombie they once were. This would solve a lot of problems and make trading much less op. This would mean they would not be able to spawn iron golems either which makes iron farms slightly harder to build. They should however, be able to breed as on big servers the only way to get 2 villagers so you can make a breeder are curing a zombie villager or travelling 10k blocks to try and find a village (the latter is very bad for new players). Another way to balance this, is that villagers that were cured have locked trades (cannot change profession or change the trades of said villager). Villagers should be changed to have an indicator to show how long it has been since they have worked so players would be able to tell if they have a work station much more easily. This is very balanced, and even though you still have dynamic prices (not really as you would have a massive discount), it still gives a reward for players who are willing to put in the effort, which is good as setting this up would require a ton of effort. NOTE: This should not change normal villagers in any way, they are already balanced.
Linked issues
is duplicated by 16
MC-154955
villager trades reset on single player after logging out and back in
Resolved
MC-155408
Cured Zombie Villagers Provide No Trade Discounts
Resolved
MC-155415
Villagers rapidly losing discounts
Resolved
MC-155543
Villagers discounts are gradually disappearing
Resolved
MC-155704
Villagers "Forget" Discounts
Resolved
Comments 11
I would like to add a more concise description of this issue and how it affects villager trading halls specifically. Villagers seem to loose their Gossips, including the major_positive gained from being cured, over the course of at most 4 hours. I observed this issue in my trading hall where all villagers where cured by myself and stored so that they may see and pathfind towards each other. I did not interact with these villagers during that time, but they remained loaded. After that timespan they had completely lost all their Gossips (i.e. Gossips was []) and their prices had returned to their default values.
During my creative testing I have not been able to observe the value of the major_positive changing while cycling through day, noon, night using /time set. It is unclear if there is a gradual decay or if gossips simply vanish at some point. I have not attempted to reproduce this issue by letting time advance naturally, since I suspect that would take a long time.
This bug essentially nullifies the long-term benefit of curing zombie villagers (at the cost of 8 gold ingots and considerable time investment) which has been an important step towards getting good trades throughout 1.14. If this was a change to balance the fun, but kinda OP trades, it should have been mentioned in the patch notes. I would be disappointed if my effort to find cheap trades for enchantments was wasted.
Iron golems attack you if you have too low reputation with villagers nearby and will continue to be aggressive until the reputation goes up again or the reputation goes up after a time since villagers are not keeping a grudge forever.
Based on this quote from Maria Lemón in MC-153921, "decaying" gossip is intended.
It would be helpful if we could get an official stance from a developer, as it seems like this bug is a very clear regression of 1.14 mechanics to have positive gossips decay.
This was stated as a feature for grudges and negative gossip to decay, but it wasn't explicitly stated to be intentional the other way around even though that would be intuitive. I think this is just for balance reasons so that overpowered trading doesn't last forever (even though some of the trades at their default value are already overpowered). Discounts for cured zombie villagers should now last forever in 1.14.4 Pre-Release 2, and if they don't then that's a bug.
At the current stage curing zombie villagers — or the spreading reputation system as a whole — is just useless.
I cured four zombie villagers to get my old discount back and they already lost their discounts before they could spread the reputation to more than 2 other villagers who then also lost it already one minecraft day later.
And as said before, it wasn't mentioned in the changelog, so i assume that's a bug and not the intended behaviour. If it is intended, then i would love to have someone officially confirming that, so that i can adjust my trading routines.
Being left in the unknown, not knowing if its a Bug that will get fixed or a feature, sucks.
I think it is deeper rooted than just gossip decaying, as normal trade discounts all vanish too.
Both of these behaviours are new to 1.14.3 and do not appear in the change log... had they, I wouldn't have wasted hours breeding, trading and curing!
Same, I spent grueling amount of time, curing villagers, trapping zombies, acquiring gold for golden apples and weakness potions.
I'm really disappointed that the cured zombie villager discount is broken
This has not actually been removed in 1.14.4. It's just much slower (on the order of decaying once about every 10 minecraft days versus 1 minecraft day in 1.14.3)
@little billy, no but a cured villager will always remember you cured it, and their price reduction doesn't fully decay (the part they can share with other villagers decays tho so after some time the cured villager won't spread good gossip about u to other villagers, and as this starts higher than the permanent reduction the overall reputation appears to drop once)
I can confirm villager gossip decays over time. Iron Golem spawning is no longer handled through Gossips and this may have occurred because of that change.
I don't mind the suggestions personally, but suggestions should really be posted through the feedback site here https://feedback.minecraft.net and not the bug tracker. (not trying to be rude, just thought I'd mention it).
If I would make my own recommendation, if the villager is able to sleep, negative gossip would decay but not positive (you can spend a lot of time trading with a villager to get good discounts just to have it go away. But also have it reversed if a villager can't sleep (positive gossips decay and negative gossips persist if they can't sleep). It would allow for a bit more player control.