I just had some villagers disappear/despawn on me in the 1.16.0.59 Beta from my iron farm (which is chunk aligned in a single chunk). The villagers were brought in using a spawn egg. After doing hours of testing, unloading the area, and then loading it back up, they were gone.
I do not believe that this is a Duplicate of MCPE-47922, or MCPE-21416 as this happened while being chunk aligned and is happening in the Beta.
Below is a link to the Iron Farm video that I made, you can see in the beginning that the villagers were there and spawning in Golems. After if flew almost 1k blocks away and then back the villagers were gone. https://youtu.be/yfqTRRu3K6w
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XtremeGhosty
Hostile mobs might be killing them.
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not likely, the villagers are suspended in the air, and encased in glass. Even if it were possible that they got attacked by a zombie, there were no zombie villagers. Since they came from a spawn egg they shouldn't despawn either.
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On Windows 10 Bedrock v. 1.16.0.61 Beta, zombie villagers are de-spawning 52 blocks away from the player. The Simulation distance is set at 12. I captured a zombie villager, and I went to get the potion which is 52 blocks away from the zombie villager's capture area. When I returned, the zombie villager de-spawned. This happened multiple times, so I moved the potions to capture area. The next time I caught a zombie villager, I splashed him with the potion. This time everything worked like previous versions.
GoldenHelmet
The idea that mobs randomly disappear on chunk borders is just one theory trying to explain MCPE-21416. Based on numerous comments and reports, it is clear that chunk borders are not the only factor in random disappearances. What you've described in this report is not really distinct from MCPE-21416 so I will have it resolved as a duplicate.
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@GoldenHelmet Is MCPE-21416 then a report for two different issues?
Its a known issue that mobs are disappearing on chunk boarders. Which is because the game dosent know which chunk to save the information in and just deletes the mob, and the Dev's dont know of a way to fix it. which is the report MCPE-21416
However as I have stated the mobs are well within a single chunk vertically and horizontally and still have disappeared. Thus this being a separate issue and I would believe to be a separate report.
I would think that there are may different ways a "MOB" could disappear in game. maybe this is an issue with the new Despawing mechanics, or even with the way a mob is labeled in game, or possibly an issue with just villagers.
GoldenHelmet
@unknown I appreciate your interest in the despawning issue, so hear me out. I can assure you that I've read all of the comments on MCPE-21416 multiple times, and chunk borders can't be the only factor. There are both strong arguments against it (such as this comment), and there is evidence against it (such as this comment and mine describing tests). Does that mean MCPE-21416 covers two different issues? Maybe, but unfortunately, since no one can give reliable steps to reproduce or a world save that reliably reproduces, we just don't know. So, as it stands, all reports of random unexpected despawns get resolved as duplicates of MCPE-21416. The explanation you've suggested to be well-known
the game dosent know which chunk to save the information in and just deletes the mob, and the Dev's dont know of a way to fix it
is still just speculation at this point.
If you'd like an example of what would need to be done with the chunk border theory to separate it out from other random despawns, take a look at what I did with ridden entities in MCPE-51837. If a reproducible test like that could be made for chunk border despawning, then we could separate that as a specific issue. It can be said for sure that chunk borders are a factor in some other bugs, such as MCPE-31389, MCPE-47212, MCPE-48054, MCPE-67479, and MCPE-74333. But we haven't nailed it down for the random despawns yet.
I'd actually be interested to get the coordinates of the chunk where your villagers disappeared. My present hypothesis on random despawns is that it could have something to do with the actual coordinates or chunk that the entity is in. I recently determined that the "stuck at loading screen" issue (MCPE-44815) is triggered by specific coordinates regardless of what else is around the area. I'd like to explore if this could be the case for entities getting accidently deleted.