Nether Brick slabs occupy already existing Damage Value ID

I am also experiencing this issue.

While technically never craftable in the game, seamless stone slab blocks are used widely in adventure maps, it would be a shame to see them loose support.

I would suggest incorporating these blocks into the game in a clearer way, like how there are chiselled and decorative versions of sandstone, slabs could be 'chiselled stone'.

Sorry, but this is a invalid issue. 44:6 was never a official block, and could be considered a bug. And you can still get them, using different ID. Until Mojang adds a new slab anyway.

Regardless of if it's an official block the way it was used by users should make it official, there are thousands people out there who used these blocks and no they're just supposed to kiss their builds good bye? I feel like Mojang should take that into consideration when they add a block ID.

It has been used and loved by users for quite some time, and similarly to how wooden slabs used to burn and people made builds around "unburnable wood" the new burnable wooden slab got a new ID instead. I don't see why this shouldn't be a case like that.

I agree with Oliver's statement. The Minecraft development team has made concessions in the past, I'm just not sure they're aware that 44:6 and 43:6 were ever items.

FYI: 44:7 and 43:7 are now the seamless slabs.

I don't care what the new ID is. It's still breaking millions of worlds and builds. It might as well be nuclear meteor showers; it's just as destructive.

Reopening for Mojang to decide.

It's not quite on the level as destruction you suggest. You can use MCEdit to update all the blocks from 44:6 to 44:7 and 43:6 to 43:7.

When implementing bugs as part of a build, it should be understood that the bug can be fixed at any given moment. Maybe it looks aesthetically ugly, but that can be fixed with MCEdit. If you say 'I don't care...', why should Mojang care about you? This doesn't break any mechanisms like redstone at all.

For a short time these blocks were available in survival by exploiting a block transmutation bug. Mojang quickly fixed this bug, but did not turn the blocks into double half slabs as they easily could have.

I am sure that Mojang were aware of the block's existence through LPers, for example Etho (who Dinnerbone watches) used these in a recent episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Io668pODsEA#t=271s

And if Mojang was aware of this block and its aesthetic uses (very likely) and they did not add it into the game officially, that would suggest they do not want to include it in the game or that they are still thinking about adding them.
This ticket is very borderline feature request, as it is basically suggesting:
1. Add the smooth stone slab (back?) into the game
2. Change the ID of Nether Brick slabs to metadata 7, hence 'breaking' any snapshot builds utilizing this block. Very hypocritical, as the main argument here was that the nether brick slabs 'broke' builds that use smooth stone slabs.

There's quite a difference between a recent snapshot (without which this can't even be discussed) and the many updates of it existing beforehand. This isn't hypocritical in the least, on the contrary it needs to be brought up and come to a final conclusion at quickly as possible for that reason.

I don't see any reason in why Mojang didn't add the new slabs as 43/44:7 instead.
Mojang has never done this before (replace block IDs and break existing builds) - I don't understand why they did this time.

When flammable wooden slabs were added, the pre-12w17a slabs were still kept as they were and the new slabs were instead given a different ID.
Why not the same with Netherbrick Half Slabs?

This is something I would like to see changed/fixed. Or having the smooth stone slabs created into an official (but uncraftable) block for the next releases as 43:7 and 44:7 so that such additions will no longer affect it.

This change also affected many other things than just worlds, but plugins like dynmap which a lot of servers use. While dynmap is upgradeable, as well as worlds, it really is a lot of effort for the Minecraft community to do so, when Mojang barely has to do anything to change this.

I made an account just to tell you how much this effected my server. This change was not only unnecessary, but was easily avoidable by making the Nether Brick ID 43:7 and 44:7 respectively. This also broke a lot of the map rendering software that I use for my server as well. Many players have dedicated a lot of their time to create beautiful projects and were horrified when they logged on and found that their creations are now all Nether Brick.

Can at least someone from Mojang explain the reason behind the change? Ignoring this issue won't help us at all; and if they don't revert the ID value, that's fine. At least tell us why you did it, though.

To say this is frustrating is an understatement.

Because double netherbrick half slabs are officially part of the game in a full release it is too late to simply change the data value without breaking people's legit builds. Pre 1.4.6 maps can only be fixed by mapmakers by changing 43:6 and 44:6 blocks to 43:7 and 44:7 blocks.

However, unless Mojang address this issue and guarantee that 43:7 and 44:7 will not be overwritten in a future update, this issue will most likely happen again.

It is a shame that this issue which had an incredibly simple fix, and has disfigured scores of maps, has been completely ignored by Mojang despite being on the bug tracker.

Metadata is precious. There are only 4 bits per block, and thus 16 possible values. For slabs, the most significant bit is used for orientation (1 == upside-down, occupies the top half of the block instead of the bottom half). That only leaves 8 possible varieties/textures, of which they've now used 7, including the unburnable "wooden" slab that was kept as a concession to existing maps.

What people are suggesting is that they reserve the last available value for a block they never intended to exist, and you've never been able to get legitimately? It's one thing to expect them to never break legitimately built maps with an update, and another entirely for them to never break unintended things created through unsupported methods. You had to do something outside the norm to create it in the first place, so you should expect to do something equally outside the norm for it to survive an update. The game as intended should not be harmed or limited by the developers bending over backwards to support things they never intended.

I agree with your point that as there is a limited amount of metadata, and that not fully supported blocks should be first to be replaced when the limit is reached.

However, the limit still has two more metadata spaces before seamless blocks would have to be removed. The developers would not have to bend over backwards at all, and the game would be harmed in absolutely no way if netherbrick half slabs had been made at metadata 7 instead of 6.

The Seamless stone slabs are attractive, a lot of people like to use them. There's no reason why they couldn't make them obtainable. 2 Stone Slabs crafted side by side (shaped recipe) turns into 2 seamless stone slabs. 2 Seamless Stone Slabs crafted side by side turns them back into regular Stone Slabs.

Mods have been created that allow you to obtain them, they're included in Feed the Beast and other mod packs, a large number of people are putting these into their maps and they should be supported at this point.

And now, in the new snapshot, quartz slabs have been added that use 43:7. When will the War on Concrete end?

"Affects Version/s" needs to be updated.

Why can't mojang replace wood textured stone slabs(43:2) instead of these slabs? This slab has been used as many builds and the wood textured slab has been obsolete since actual wood slabs were added to the game, while this has been used in many builds.

Sure, this has a lot of aesthetic use in-game, but you simply cannot treat a bug as a feature of the game and expect it to work forever. Even piston quasiconnectivity can be fixed in any future version, possibly even 1.5. You may argue it is a widely used "unintended feature", but in the end, that's what it is; unintended, no matter how popular it was. Map makers should also have expected this metadata change and at least use the last available metadata instead of using a slot likely to be taken up in the future. Using 43:15 would have future-proofed it much better than 43:6 did.
As for the "should be supported" arguments, that would be a feature request, not a bug report.

Please do not mark unreleased versions as affected. You do not have access to this yet.

Mojang likely won't use the old "stone" wood data value because there are still a lot of people with builds using them from before the change.

The unsupported block in question doesn't look like a double slab. If it is officially added, perhaps it would be better as a variant of another block, such as block 1.