Blake Miner

@ColorFusion pointed out that there are certain mechanics that work on mobs but not players (i.e. you can push mobs, but you cannot push players). This is all well and good; however, there are certain game mechanics that a player would expect to work on other players and mobs alike. This is what people should be talking about. "Should snowballs cause knockback on both mobs and other players?" If so, is it a reasonable expectation of the game? And if so, does it appear buggy that the functionality is missing? This is akin to asking, "What types of blocks should Endermen be allowed to pick up?" Should they be able to pick up blocks that destroy structures? Of course not... the blocks they can pick up should be restricted... maybe they can pick up dirt and other certain types of blocks. In my opinion, it would be a bug if Endermen could destroy players' structures.

In other words, I think that players expect snowballs to cause knockback to both players and mobs. Just ask around - this is what we should be talking about here. The fact that many believe that it was once a feature of vanilla Minecraft (whether true or not) simply proves that this missing functionality feels awkward at best and buggy at worst.

That said, this issue also addresses Enderpearls, Fishing Rods, and Eggs... all of which should probably affect players, as well. However, admittedly, fishing rods are a bit of a stretch. It would be cool if fishing rods could leash players and pull them around, but it also might be annoying. So, I could see how one could argue that as being a feature request and not a bug. As @ColorFusion mentioned, would you really want to allow a player to use a fishing rod to grab a player and drop them several times until death? Maybe... maybe not.

Thoughts on this?

@ColorFusion - Again, no one really cares if snowballs, eggs, etc. ever caused player knockback in previous versions of vanilla Minecraft or not. It's a moot point. I still think that the general consensus is that there is a bug in the game. If possible, can we start talking about how we could fix it?... or at the very least... whether or not it should be fixed?

To many people, it seems awfully strange (even buggy) that knockback (especially by thrown snowballs and eggs) only applies to mobs and not players.

Thoughts? Suggestions on how to fix? Concerns?

@ColorFusion - You're right. I stand corrected – I didn't mean to suggest that we should be posting new features here... although that's exactly what I did, out of frustration, of course. As with @Carvalho, I think this is a bug because snowballs and other items already cause knockback to mobs. It seems buggy (or at the very least silly or unexpected) that the behavior would not apply to players, as well.

Whether or not it was a previous feature is another debate, which I think is rather irrelevant. The fact still stands... it seems awfully strange that knockback only applies to mobs and not players.

Just figured I would chime in...

There is a lot of talk here about whether or not snowballs ever knocked back players in previous versions of MC. I can understand that might help the developer re-implement the feature, but in the grand scheme of things... does it really matter?

Does it really matter whether or not snowballs actually knocked back players in previous versions? What seems clear to me is that THEY SHOULD CAUSE KNOCKBACK. They already cause knockback against mobs.

Without much knowledge of the inner-workings of the game, this feature/bug should be relatively trivial to implement/fix. Am I wrong? Can we start worrying about how to close the issue instead of trying to prove whether or not the feature existed in previous versions? ... because from what I can tell... the answer isn't all that clear. We're talking about a version of MC released 3 years ago.

Just my $0.02. Thoughts?