Huruki

just make a Douglas Fir farm, set them in a grid pattern 2 apart and when you break one they all break. This works better than sequoias in my opinion since you dont have to travel to go pick up the wood and you can grow them again in the same place.

Once you have a forge and have located a decent source of coal then in my opinion the firepit becomes obsolete. The fuel requirement is more of a storage value question than effort to obtain since I can store hundreds of coal in the same space to store 16 logs. If you need to cook something then just throw a single cheap piece of coal in the forge and use the excess heat to make some spare torches.

Although if you need to keep something hot I would recommend the output slot of a crucible, as items set there do not change in heat and every item I've tried will go into the slot

This would also affect levels lost due to legitimate deaths, as the game has no way of telling if the death was bug related or not. And as well if your major complaint is that the server caused bugs were the cause of death rather than a legitimate reason then likely adding the config option would do nothing for you as the admins on the server would likely leave it set to the default.

I used to use a mod for vanilla that I have since forgotten the name of, but the core concept of it was the removal of infinite water sources and making water a finite, measurable resource. The only water that remained infinite was that of oceans as draining them would be an unrealistic task, all other water sources we replenished either by this or by water accumulation from rainfall. This would be my preferred fix for the bucket situation. You can move an amount of water but cannot create or move source blocks. The other feature of the mod was water pressure, if you tunneled into a lake/river/ocean from below the water would drain into your shaft, filling it up and possibly drying out the body of water you dug into. Basically it put us one more step closer to turning minecraft into dwarf fortress since those are the same basic rules that water in DF operates under already. Also Visitor you can actually move full barrels, I do it all the time. I go fill 5-6 barrels from a local water source and then lug them up to my mountaintop home for easy quenching/drinking/leatherworking.

I think the best thing to do with caged baby zombies is host pit fights where players are put into a pit and made to fight off the munchkin hoards for a possible reward. In fact I think that if this was possible I would set these sorts of fights up on servers with new players being given maybe some leather and a few javelins and being made to fight for food/metals/seeds they need to start out but are too lazy to find on their own. Also the cages should be placeable and you should be able to open them via redstone signals for maximum gladiator fun.

Sleds are much too situation dependent to be a practical addition on their own. But I would support it if they added carts and other forms of transport to also add sleds and possibly modifications so that you can equip your cart/wagon/whatever for winter conditions they might otherwise be unable to move through. This also brings another thought to mind regarding vehicle movement, if snow would be an impediment that would require a specialized solution then the addition of mud caused by rain on exposed dirt blocks would also be a reasonable addition. Also have you noticed that as you move through ice fields sometimes new areas aren't properly frozen/snow covered? These areas would make sled transport difficult as you would need to route several chunks around to stay on terrain your sled can move on.

Anyone notice that coke is already in the creative menu? I'm not sure if it will be used as a charcoal replacement, but it seems like they already have plans for this.

The devs have stated so a while that they are balancing for SMP, and these requirements perfectly accurate if you can expect that several people are working on resource gathering at once. You can still do it on your own, though the time it takes is greatly extended. Even if you aren't working directly with other players their presence allows you to trade for resources you might otherwise spend hours searching for. And in the time you save you can mine more iron.

I think that at the same time they introduce body temp they will also bring in clothing, possibly with its own equipment slots, but maybe you have to choose between heat and protection at some points. Wool would probably be first along with sheepskin, though other hides are sure to be useful as well. It wouldnt be too far of a stretch to have armors that are animal specific in the case of hides and fur, with wolves, sheep, bears, and deer being the most relevant for this. Having bear hide armor would finally give me a use for all the leather I've been collecting from them.

cobble could just be changed to rock piles like log piles, this would allow you to pick it up quickly by hand and may also allow for ores to be dropped into the rock pile that you would have to dig out. Though if this happened I would lobby for increased capacity as cobble would then be a viable form of rock storage and 4 rocks per pile would be far too few

And maybe breads and salted meats take down your thirst a bit

A good way to prevent manipulations like these would be for wood piles auto-extract from piles above themselves when they are not full.