Starr Ship

I feel we need to get a few facts straight. If you feel the need to ban me for this then so be it, because if this doesn't resonate with you then I have no confidence that any details I post to this tracker will be regarded anyway:

#1 - I have not lobbed insults at anyone, and the only complaints I've offered to any users were in the form of pushback to those with "Helper" in their title (and presumably elevated status with Mojang Bedrock) who were, specifically, trying to downplay the severity of the bug. This is, as you say, a bug tracker, which is the last place for PR-style damage control.

#2 - My expressed frustrations with my perception of Mojang Bedrock's workings are a direct result of this specific issue and Mojang Bedrock's lack of response to it. Generally bug trackers are not places to register complaints about company workings, true, but when there is absolutely no other outlet and the issue persists for so long without a peep from the company, what do you expect people to do?

I work with large vendors and bug trackers professionally on a daily basis, and it is my experience that, once you reach a certain point where progress has stalled for too long, wearing your frustrations on your sleeve is the only way to really be heard; squeaky wheel gets the grease (case in point, you are the first Mod to respond to me). I realize that you are not beholden to your customers in the same way you would be if you were a contracted vendor; however, the fact that Mojang Bedrock takes my comments as "insulting to the company" instead of "a concerning sentiment among users to be addressed" really speaks to how little you care for those who contributed to putting you in business. AT NO POINT has anyone from Mojang Bedrock reached out to me to address my concerns, even despite my explicit request for such an outreach on multiple occasions. If you were to scroll up you would find that I was once a helpful and optimistic reporter of bugs, but I upvoted this issue ages ago and have been screaming progressively louder and louder into the void ever since.

#3 - If you scroll up, you will also find that there is all kinds of forum-like back and forth discussion on how to circumvent this bug, with posts by both users and those (again, presumably) with elevated status ("Helpers"), and that is there because there is no other great place for such discussions and we have had little choice. Most bug trackers are not supposed to be forums, but core functionality bugs aren't supposed live this long in the dark either.

#4 - Regarding issue visibility via upvote, I took the 5 seconds to sort ALL of the Bedrock issues by vote count and this issue is the most visible issue on record, and is by far the most visible OPEN issue at 269 votes. The next most visible issue that is open is MCPE-35078, with less than half the votes at 125.

I hope you will take this final commentary to heart because I'm hopelessly in love with what this product should be and I don't want to abandon the world I've been working on for years. Unfortunately, I'm also incredibly frustrated and pretty sure said frustration just cost me my reporting privileges, and if that is the case then I sincerely hope someone else has better luck than I did in motivating Mojang Bedrock into action.

-Starrship

Hey mods/leadership, here's a thought: how about you fix the product to get rid of perfectly legitimate complaints about your consistently faulty product, as opposed to just deleting them???  I PAID for my right to register complaints, as did your other customers, and they deserve to see, transparently, how you handle business (or don't as it were).

I don't care about pandas, I want mobs to work.  I am not alone.

Thank you!

This is an open bug ticket, which by definition means that the game is, in fact, not working as it should be, with regards to this topic.  We can discuss the current mechanics until the cows come home, but it really doesn't matter because they are not correct and we are continually fed releases packed with new (buggy, QA help!) content while this is left unresolved. Let us not forget that Minecraft was already an established game prior to Bedrock's inception, and trying to justify deviation from the established version's game mechanics because it is hard to adapt to the Bedrock architecture is lazy nonsense.  This version is ALREADY a major change from the established version.

Minecraft IS a lot of things to a lot of people, and those like me don't really care about Realms and want to play old-school local survival instances.  Spawning is a core mechanic of the game and right now it is preventing Minecraft from meaning ANYTHING to me.  I loved this game when it was playable, it was my zen garden of sorts, and I want to be able to start playing in truth again.

Also, where are the official mechanics stated?  I'd actually like to peruse that...

Just updated to 1.7 and now spawns seem to have almost entirely disappeared, even in hard mode.  My base is in an ocean biome, and where there used to be drowned to spare I am now seeing almost nothing at all;  I wandered a 256+ block wide square of ocean and only encountered MAYBE 4 drowned and a single zombie villager, and there are not many, if any, caves for spawns to hide in (not that underground spawning works).  On land, I meandered for about 100 blocks into the wilderness at night time and was only attacked a single time by a phantom (so at least phantom attacks work now, I guess); I did not see a single land-based hostile mob spawn.  Still completely silent underground as well.

This issue has been open for over a year, since version 1.0.xxx, and we are now actually taking steps backwards... Again... And not a SINGLE update released in the past months has mentioned any efforts to resolve this issue whatsoever. 

I'd like someone to provide me with a free key for the Java version because this is ridiculous.

At this point I would concur with @Aaon Sikar's observations on despawning; at least where surface mob spawning is concerned.  I believe there is still a separate issue with underground spawning as clearing all mobs in an area still will not result in much, if any, underground spawning (slime chunks at bedrock level included).

On 1.6 and it SEEMS there is some relief with Nether mobs at least.  Was able to find quite a few pre-existing Wither Skeletons and was attacked by a Ghast for the first time in a long while (though I did have to taunt it a bit by getting pretty close and its attack did not seem to destroy any blocks when they landed).  I didn't notice any wither skeletons actually spawn after I cleared those I found, so not sure what to make of that.

I noticed this after applying a texture pack for the first time as well, not sure if that is relevant.

Allen's comment made me think I should double check the wiki and I now see that zombies sink and do not take drowning damage by design.  I had missed that tidbit when Aquatic dropped so there probably aren't any issues here.

I will say that I noticed that a zombie villager appeared to spawn underwater, and not sure if THAT was by design (was in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight), else I'm guessing this can be closed.

1.6 on Win 10 is the same.  Tried to come to its' level to hit it with a sword with Fortune, and I swear it climbed along with me to keep the distance the same.  Going to try again (gave up very quickly and hit it with a bow) to test whether it is pacing me, vertically.

Edit: Confirmed, it is pacing me vertically.  Have to use a bow (or trident, good luck).

I have an old survival world and I observed the same as @Jeffrey.  Only 1 spawn on night 4-5 (assuming death resets the "last slept" time) and the function on number of nights since last slept makes me wonder if the spawn rate may just have been so low for night 3 that it just didn't happen by chance?  Regardless, samesies.

Still not seeing spawns underground and nothing but pigmen and ghasts that won't attack in the nether.  It is definitely broken according to most Survival players.

Just because someone figured out how it works dow not mean it works properly. Minecraft’s rules are already established in the java version of the game, and bedrock absolutely does not adhere to those rules.  This isnt a board to negotiate new rules for a standalone product, it is a ticket system to report bugs.

A lot of space on this thread is dedicated to working around the bugs, but that is only because users have been forced to deal w this mess for over a year and have no other place to discuss it. Get the info u need to get through the game in its current state, but Id appreciate it if we didnt play chearleader for bugs. I (and MANY others) are EXTREMELY frustrated with the bug and lack of progress on a resolution, and cheerleading just sends signals that this bug isnt as big of a deal as it is. 

Spawn rate has been 0 in most contexts for a long time.  Beyond that, the rate is not the only problem: the rules are inconsistent as well.  I appreciate Gruva's work more than can be stated, but we shouldn't have to COMPLETELY rebuild everything we've ever built because the rules were changed incorrectly.

The aquatic update seemingly just created a new host of bugs that will probably be prioritized over fixes to spawning rates, just as every single update has prioritized other issues for the past year.  Yes, this issue is officially 1 year old, which means this game has been an inconsistent mess that is in no way challenging for an entire year. 

An extremely sarcastic "thanks" to the powers that be for stealing my investment in Bedrock.  If I could be sure that purchasing the Java edition would not line the pockets of those who have neglected the Bedrock edition then I'd consider it, but those who profit from the Bedrock edition won't get another cent out of me due to their "bait and switch" shenanigans.  It's just too bad that the devs won't read this to know our frustration; I'm likely yelling into the void here (as we all have been for, well, a year)...

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

@Mark St. Louis, my farm is set up like yours: I've dug the chunks around it out down to the bedrock, or most of them anyway. The only light is ambient, from the redstone that wires the farm, and the 2-3 spawns all occurred at night (and on the top level only of my now open air mob farm, interestingly enough); I'll try to put wings over the sides so none of the redstone light bleeds over the top and try again. I suspect the lower rates are because I'm not quite done with my clearing project and there is likely some dark areas I missed for mobs to hide. That said, I cloned my world and have been watching (and clearing) what spawns when I'm in my mob farm nest (~30m away from a ~40m long farm ~140m in the sky) with "/kill @e" and it does not appear that there is any great cache accumulating in the vicinity. Not sure what the range on that command is, perhaps it has a shorter range or perhaps there really is a caching/counting issue where mobs outside of the loaded area are sticky, but regardless it does seem there is difference between open air and closed farm spawn rates. I think there must be a hit squad of bugs in play here.

Thanks for feedback!

@Mark St Louis, I tried that myself and my rates went from 0 to 2-3/day cycle. At those rates it could be coincidence, but this farm has been 100% cold for weeks so I'm thinking that you may be on to something. Given the abysmal rates though, perhaps its a combo factor of broken spawn AND despawn rules. Good eye.

I'd think that cached mobs would be mobs that shouldn't despawn (hooked to a leader, in a minecart, etc.) while uncached mobs should despawn according to the stated proximity rules. Prior to a mob spawning, cached counts would be counted first, then non-cached mobs counted, and then the difference between those counts aggregated and the mob cap is what is allowed to spawn at any given time. I'm not sure completely doing away with caching of mobs is a great idea, as those who like to trap them for various reasons may not be able to do so.

Regardless of the semantics of the solution, I would echo everyone's frustration with the timeline of this fix; particularly given that this is the CORE of the game for us Survival Mode junkies... Small silver lining is that this is a good opportunity to build a gold farm in the Nether without too much hassle, but then again the lack of hassle really saps a lot of the fun of Survival, so I build grudgingly 🙂

Windows 10 v1.2.9 - New here, and not sure if what I have to say has been covered or not (TLDR all), but figured I'd add my +1 and details...

I have 2 bases connected by the Nether, one of which is at the player origin. It appears that the mobs around the player origin are not despawning while mobs at my base away from the player origin are. I killed everything off at the player origin (mobs I recognized well after traveling between bases and going on long walks multiple times trying to get them to despawn), then hauled it over to the other base and was able to see my slime farm go active; for a few moments. Half of them despawned pretty quickly while the farm got 1 or 2, and there was no 2nd wave of slime spawns. I then backed up to 40m from the slime farm and quickly logged out and back in, and noticed a few slimes spawn and then immediately despawn in less than a second; almost so quick as to call it a flicker.