buzzie71

I have a final tomorrow morning so I'll need to get back to you in detail after that (sorry ._.) - but the ban was for some minor grief found after a previous warning for minor grief. Normally the grief involved would simply warrant a warning, but in this case a ban was issued because it was found after the last warning was made.

So the wifi capabilities of my laptop I use for gaming suddenly gave out and I can't bypass the issue with wired. I can still connect to Minecraft fine on a less powerful laptop, but am not really intending to doing that frequently, especially when I'm busy IRL...which is what it looks like might happen for the next month or so. As a result I'll appear sparse in-game until the issue is fixed or a workaround is found. I'm still intending to come back and host nerd Jeopardy if and when it happens, and I'll still be monitoring Reddit and the forums and will be in contact with staff in case I need to be reached.

Escorting a mob that has AI and a semisolid collision box can get frustrating though ._. unless players can stick him in a cart and push that :O

I was given a chance to check out the map and its mechanics the morning prior to the meeting. The one thing I'd like to offer for motivation is to set up a more tangible way of "winning" the event - eg. an abandoned antivirus dispersal station somewhere, which requires placing certain hard-to-obtain blocks into certain slots in the station (can be completed from the outset of the event), and then perhaps a hard-to-obtain-but-guaranteed-never-to-despawn-or-logout-with-a-player item that would be dropped into the world somewhere else on the map that players would need to bring back to the station (introduced into the world in the last bit of time left for the event if the blocks requirement was satisfied). Succeeding in both would result in dramatic lightning that will instakill zombies everywhere, and new ones that are spawned in or loaded in. Few ways this can go sideways though: If the blocks requirement is too light, then it will be satisfied early in the event which again nullifies this particular motivation to log in during the midgame. Players invested in this mechanic will still probably log in during the early-game and then the end-game. The most dramatic way of bringing the last item to the station would be for a party to escort a player carrying it across the overworld and defend the carrier from mobs on the way. The safest and probably more likely way it will pan out is for the carrier to reach the station via underground tunnels, where it is safer but less challenging. Player resourcefulness shouldn't be penalized, but at the same time the drop in challenge (projected) is there. Somewhat tangential: In light of the very high vE element of this map I'm not sure I would be in favor of introducing the vP element that was more dominant in previous fundraisers. Admittedly I haven't played much PvPvE on Minecraft, but on an MMO where I do visit such a spot, the most frustrating thing for me is to be focused on fending off an NPC only to be demolished by an opportunistic player enemy that swoops in for the kill. (It also doesn't help admittedly that the other side gets cloaking devices and my side doesn't.) If the map is intended to be periodically reset, it might be an interesting social experiment to allow PvP and see how much PvP actually occurs (do players take advantage of the zombies as distractions and kill each other, or do players set aside the PvP and focus on the zombies?). It might also result in a lot of ragequits if the former occurs (likely) and there are more players who share my mindset on PvPvE though (unknown).

Random thoughts from many days ago: I like the old format of a persistent (ie. no or infrequent map resets) main event spanning a few days with a lot of side events happening off-dimension (spleef, etc.) that rewarded items/gear for the participants' teams. Biggest issue with the side events was the manpower to maintain or ref the events, which, even though I think the periodic side-event start announcements might add to the liveliness of the fundraiser, it feels a bit impractical to organize - automation is great in this regard but (as a random, possibly impractical thought) it also deprives the staff an opportunity to interact with players. I'm partial to the PvP side of the fundraiser events myself, but it would be interesting to see what other kinds of (potentially non-PvP) events we could host that would be just as popular. I'm not sure what the logic was behind the CTF in previous years when the first such event was hosted, but back in those times I considered it a great way of unifying gameplay on the three servers (C/P/S); with the lack of a PvP server the case for a PvP-oriented event is a little more lacking now, in terms of uniting the community alone (whether it is popular with the players nonetheless is a question I don't know the answer to). I think it would be more fitting (if the fundraiser is meant to be unifying) for the main event to have players to stay together like in past CTFs, in the sense that the game is designed so that they will coordinate/play with their own team and eventually(?) meet many of the other players not on their team (presumably through combat), not just scattering off. (Mob defense, while not really PvP-oriented and heavily skewed towards PvE, would fit the objective of keeping players closer together - but in the interest of persistence, maybe tune the strength of the invading mobs so that it is never possible for the player side to suffer enough losses to the point that a new start is required to continue meaningful gameplay.) It's been mentioned in the last CTF's fundraiser feedback to make playing on the yellow team more meaningful and interactive in the game (ie. not just a group of players removed from the gameplay) - if balanced well it might make for a novel feature of the fundraiser.

Random thoughts as well as random reiterations of other thoughts: I like the old format of a persistent (ie. no or infrequent map resets) main event spanning a few days with a lot of side events happening off-dimension (spleef, etc.) that rewarded items/gear for the participants' teams. Biggest issue with the side events was the manpower to maintain or ref the events, which, even though I think the periodic side-event start announcements might add to the liveliness of the fundraiser, it feels a bit impractical to organize - automation is great in this regard but (as a random, possibly impractical thought) it also deprives the staff an opportunity to interact with players. I'm partial to the PvP side of the fundraiser events myself, but it would be interesting to see what other kinds of (potentially non-PvP) events we could host that would be just as popular. I'm not sure what the logic was behind the CTF in previous years when the first such event was hosted, but back in those times I considered it a great way of unifying gameplay on the three servers (C/P/S); with the lack of a PvP server now the case for a PvP-oriented event is a little more lacking now, in terms of uniting the community alone (whether it is popular with the players nonetheless is a question I don't know the answer to). There's been a lot of good thoughts for alternate events mentioned in the staff meeting. The thought of an adventure map that would be running for a few days came to mind (+1 for persistent map), but a large map might end up just scattering the players; I think it would be more fitting (if the fundraiser is meant to be unifying) for the main event to have players to stay together like in past CTFs, in the sense that the game is designed so that they will coordinate/play with their own team and eventually(?) meet the other players not on their team (presumably through combat), not just exploring the unknown. (Mob defense, while not really PvP-oriented and heavily skewed towards PvE, would fit the objective of keeping players closer together - but in the interest of persistence, maybe tune the strength of the invading mobs so that it is never possible for the player side to suffer enough losses to the point that a new start is required to continue meaningful gameplay.) It's been mentioned in the last CTF's fundraiser to make playing on the yellow team more meaningful and interactive in the game (ie. not just a group of players removed from the gameplay) - if balanced well it might make for a novel feature of the fundraiser. Having non-staff submit builds for inclusion in the event sounds good - I'd request that they be checked over before inclusion in case someone adds in an (illegal) hidden chest with advantageous gear - not a vote of no confidence in our playerbase, just that I got burned overlooking this the last time I sought community-submitted builds for inclusion in a staff product (rev 11), and would rather avoid the possibility of that happening than deal with it after the fact.

A few days of a road trip and consequent packing means I'll be absent from the game. EDIT: Not anymore.

To me it's less about the value of gold in the economy or how much can be obtained from smelting equipment, and more the value(?) of the path to obtain (not-mined) gold. I don't really feel the numbers proposed are too high in a balance sense (you've proven sufficiently that the most gain goes to zombie pigmen hunters and is still rather modest, which would indeed still promote it as a method of obtaining gold). I feel that building a grinder or fighting pigmen both require more preparation, effort, and/or problem-solving to engineer a setup (or just fight well enough) that gold can be extracted from safely. Smelting equipment for the same resource is, comparatively, easier (thus why I said figuratively cheaper), but you're right that with the proposed numbers, it would be rather time-consuming and difficult to extract a good amount of gold from a grinder setup other than killing zombie pigmen. Like I said, as someone who has been grinding pigmen since near the start of the rev (even before assembling a full set of Prot armor) this was the more personal reason - my pride was probably showing here and I'll get over it. To reiterate on the second point - I agree that it would be difficult to change gameplay drastically from smelting gold equipment, but the path to iron ingots from smelting iron equipment to me feels weird when juxtaposed with the iron golem spawner distribution (I am projecting that smelting iron equipment would be lucrative enough as an alternative to mining...gold potentially, but since it is possible to feasibly obtain it by means other than mining, like killing zombie pigmen, it doesn't feel weird). The goal of the iron spawner distributions was stated publicly to be to lengthen the tech tree (presumably by restricting the supply of iron). Being able to smelt villager products into iron, assuming there is a well-established support base to mass-produce iron this way, would allow for an inflation of the iron supply and an alternative feasible method of obtaining iron, undermining that goal. I'm assuming (correctly? wrongly?) that such a setup to smelt iron equipment from villagers easily could be made possible eventually during the rev, if not now. As a player who seeks to maximize resource gain per unit time and didn't like the spawner distribution this rev, I would gladly embrace that change - but I guess I see this more as a philosophy question outside the scope of this plugin, and not really directed at it (sorry if it seemed that way) - what is the intended dynamic of iron in this rev? Is the goal to eliminate free-flowing iron (aside from mining) from the game? Delay it for towards the end of the rev? Levy an additional resource cost on iron farming on top of time? Eliminate some of the AFK component of iron farming? (I'm not intending to knock on any of those as bad answers, just seeking something that is consistent. I know this is starting to move beyond the scope of this thread and might be irrelevant in this one.)

At risk of sounding like a party pooper, I am not enthusiastic about the addition. To keep my post within the bounds specified, there are two reasons: the more personal reason is that as someone who has been grinding pigmen for gold since the beginning of the rev, the ability to obtain enough gold through other means (ie. smelting equipment, not fighting pigmen or constructing a grinder or mining) feels like a devaluing of the other (especially non-mining) methods ("if I need some gold ingots, why brave the Nether or go mining if I can smelt some junk I have from the first few nights or a grinder?" - though a grinder or a platform or a lightly altered Hell biome area in the area would demonstrably be useful for more industrial applications, eg. powered rails for an intercity rail line; see the 20% additional gold from pigmen killing that totemo brought up, which I was able to match on my own testing). I don't think gold grinder designs have really been limited throughout the revs for this to be an equal offset, though it can be argued that the pervasiveness of Plains biome in the current custom nether relative to Hell is a limitation. Certainly, going off the number of swords I've tossed into lava because I was losing inventory space, the thought of being able to obtain extra gold in the same time I spend killing pigmen is always welcome - but it feels to me a bit cheap to get gold by smelting junk, both literally and figuratively, and the benefits from it are too high compared to the problem being addressed (getting rid of junk items sitting in chests - imo the existing solutions to that are enough). The second reason is an observation of mismatch between stated goals of the server and the possibilities smelting (iron) equipment will open up. I'm probably with most of the players who weighed in in the previous thread (https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/4357-i-would-highly-recommend-adding-4-golem-spawners-in-the-very-near-future/) opposing the distribution of iron spawners this rev, but having gameplay features that both makes resource acquisition harder and easier feels weird. Being able to smelt equipment opens the possibility of players with access to a solid support base of crops, fuel, and villagers (not unreasonable assumptions, either now or later in the rev) to farm iron by buying iron helmets and smelting them down into ingots, which in my opinion defeats the purpose of limiting iron spawner distribution. It's not necessarily proof of bad game balance (it could also be proof that players who engineer that setup are masters at the game), but it feels strange that iron grinding would be nerfed by spawners but made possible through equipment smelting.

For custom trees in particular, part of the dilemma to me is down to the difficulty of rebuilding custom trees without a schematic of the original or a close copy on the map - it is relatively easy to infer where missing blocks go (at least aesthetically if not exactly) if only a few blocks were taken out of a tree; this gets harder the less of the original tree there is to work with (though arguably the ability to make logs with bark on all sides solves the unobtainable blocks issue). Holes and beaches are comparatively easier to restore. Otherwise I thought it straightforward that natural terrain was otherwise not eligible for protections on the grounds that nothing is built or modified there to warrant it; claiming unaltered land that wouldn't otherwise fall in a build protection to be part of a build was, to me, equivalent to claiming land with protections, which under current policy is illegal. I sympathize with the desire to prevent alteration of nearby terrain and its features (I've handled a few modreqs like that even since way back then), but I'm a bit hesitant about using protections to prevent taking down of trees and other things though, especially if the requirements for it are nebulous, partly due to the latitude of interpretation and partly due to mismatches in player and staff perception of the rule (and maybe attempts to get nearby terrain protected by minimal effort modifications of a build to make that possible...would depend on what the final policy looks like). Undoubtedly it would also require a change to the stated purpose of protections, which is currently to protect builds, not land. Certainly, at least in the vicinity, it might be feasible to protect with larger buffers on the grounds that anyone who builds in the protected area would be too close to the protected build to be legal without builder's consent. (I was going to say that it would defeat the purpose of "do not build up against another protection without consent", but on looking at the rules page, the closest I found was "do not build very close to other players without their permission." It would still be consistent with that, just that allowable proximity to other builds without permission would then be enforced by protection rather than relying on player discretion - might save on land disputes but might also feel like too much staff intervention and/or implicate staff in case the protection is perceived to be unfair?) That being said though, I am not sure if an unquestionably objective method exists to achieve the same goal.

Disclaimer: I'm not an avid miner. In recent revs I've mainly gone mining to look for diamonds or dirt or gravel or whatever else I need that is down there. Iron is not usually on my need-to-mine list; I've preferred grinders partly because of the speed and partly because AFK-ing presents an opportunity to do other things in parallel to acquiring iron. To try to respond to the OP and stick to the topic of iron spawners only - what sticks out to me about the iron golem spawners is more philosophical (ie. I disagree with the game philosophy that it represents). In vanilla mechanics, given time and resources (alternatively, if resources are assumed to be abundant, patience), anyone can build an iron grinder almost anywhere (eg. not underground or underwater unless sunlight were allowed to filter in) and at any rate (subject to render distance as a practical cap on the number of pods that can be built, and thus the rate the grinder can output iron). This was approximated in the following two revs when golem production by villagers was disabled, replacing the effort in constructing pods and moving/breeding villagers to populate them with effort in amassing other resources to trade for (similar) local automatic iron production. This rev, automatic iron production only takes place in certain areas of the map at a certain fixed rate - arguably, under vanilla or previous rev mechanics, with enough time and resources it is possible to build a grinder somewhere else that is more efficient (maybe not extremely quickly, but quickly enough). To me, this represents a spirit contrary to "if you want a grinder that is closer/efficient/yours/other metric of 'better', just build it," which was the (implied?) spirit in all previous revs ever since iron grinders were possible to make - my guess is that most players who frequent grinders for one reason or another are most sensitive to this change. As someone who frequented grinders myself, this felt like a step backwards from previous spirit in a sense (I would argue even from vanilla, which in my opinion is the choice to build a grinder for iron if desired, not just to only go mining). In that sense I would prefer a return to trading effort for local auto iron generation (there's a pretty clear tech reason for not allowing vanilla iron grinders). The cost of the replacement system might be problematic (too easy?) - but this is also a server where a wide range of player skills and coordination are represented in the playerbase. I wouldn't be surprised if some found the cost to be too easy, but I don't think the cost shouldn't be too out of reach of a free agent, even if they are not capable of acquiring the same efficiency of grinder as larger groups. I disagree that this is a flawed system because it favors the towns or well-established, at least more so than usual. Towns will always have an edge over free agents when it comes to locating things in unexplored territory in the early rev, owing to the greater numbers and thus a greater area searched per unit time (assuming equally effective loadouts, which I am guessing is not too unreasonable in the first few days). Once iron golem spawners are located, though, since they have identical spawn rates, an independent maintaining/using a grinder can easily leverage it to their own benefit as well as any town with one (possibly better than, on the assumption that town demand for iron is higher than the independent's). In the sense of using the grinder, at least in this point of the rev, I think the playing field is actually pretty flat among grinder maintainers (I agree that, depending on how the output is allocated, the playing field for grinder maintainers and visitors can be skewed in favor of the former, though I have yet to see an example of this on P). Certainly it can be argued that the town advantage of numbers will be present in the server events that reward a spawner, though I would submit that the size of this advantage depends on the kind of event, who in town is interested in it, etc. Experience with Minecraft mechanics and a good resource support base I think present a greater advantage than town status. Note also that I'm mainly discussing this only in the context of automatic iron production and gameplay philosophy, and doesn't take into account the iron that can be found from mining or the practical consequences of finite spawners. From personal experience I've felt like I hit iron at a faster rate underground in the short stretch between my place and Haven (~600 blocks). If iron ore is plumped, then it might be possible to still acquire as much iron as previously, except more will need to be sourced from mining; it's simply too early to tell what (quantifiable) effect that might have on gameplay beyond the obvious additional effort required to acquire the iron and initial reactions of reduced grinding capability. Depending on the number of additional spawners distributed through events and the demand for them, there might be a point on P where everyone who wants one has one (or at the very least is located close enough to one), which would mostly lay to rest the worries of auto iron generation concentrated in the hands of a few - again, too early to tell. Sorry if some of this didn't make sense - spent a while writing this and it ended up being a brain dump more than coherent.

It's been about five days and a FFS Friday since the thread opened, and I realized partway through editing my local copy of the config that I didn't have everything in the live version - so I've submitted a request to redwall for reordering the kit hotbars for Division and Artifact (changes not live yet, but will be when redwall gets around to it). At time of writing the poll and comments show somewhat divided opinion on removing the colored blocks (poll: 3-2 against) and clear support (poll: 5-0 for, plus Tharine's comment) on changing the hotbar gear ordering to the first option. To that end: 1. Hotbar order is intended to be rearranged to [sword | bow | - | B | B | - | debuff potion (Division only) | buff potion | food] (B denotes the colored blocks). 2. Colored blocks are intended to be moved from the ends of the hotbar to occupy the otherwise empty spaces near the middle. If, after the changes are live, you find other suboptimal aspects of this new kit arrangement, let me know - further adjustments may be explored then. Thanks everyone for responding - hope this makes the maps more enjoyable!

After talking with some of you on Minigames about Division/Artifact, I've noticed enough requests that the sword should be moved to the leftmost slot to give hotbar rearrangement for those maps some thought. I'll be honest - I consider weapons in the middle of the hotbar to be the most optimal arrangement for my own PvP (I can't fight well with the sword on the left), which is why the player kit is arranged the way it is. However, for other maps in the rotations, the weapons are placed on the leftmost end of the hotbar, and I get the impression that most players are accustomed to that arrangement instead. So to gauge opinions informally, I've opened this poll to see what you think the hotbars on Division/Artifact should look like (as well as to ask if the colored blocks are useful). Please take a moment to weigh in - and feel free to suggest another arrangement in the comments if you don't believe the ones listed are great. I won't guarantee any sort of action based on the poll results or thread comments, but if there seems to be a clear consensus in the poll results and/or the comments I can certainly look into submitting an edited config to redwall for incorporation.

I agree with Barlimore that it would work well as a monthly news digest - but I think that should maybe be done as a forum post instead (announcements subforum? with a persistent link somewhere on the subreddit), and have sticky slots on the subreddit used and cycled for individual announcements. The rapid sticky cycling would keep the front page active - a monthly post would necessarily be sitting where it is for a month, in which time news of early events announced there can become outdated for most of the time the post is up, and I think that could be put somewhere else while subreddit stickies are occupied by posts that are more relevant in real time. (Unless there is a fear that there are so many events happening in a short span of time that not all of them will be stickied long enough for visibility, in which case, something like what was done for October would also work nicely.) We also have a subreddit header that we could leverage as another de facto sticky, though one that is less flashy or visible than the two we are afforded on the subreddit. I would suggest placing a link to a recurring monthly post there as an unobtrusive persistent link - but the counter-argument that it is not as visible as a sticky on the subreddit is could be made there.

Here's a completely random and maybe still a bit unpolished concept description (probably lots of holes in the examples but hopefully the general concept will be made clear) - but I was thinking, what if an item highly advantageous (with caveats) to gameplay is introduced but it requires the crafting together of components that are gained from various methods? Suppose the valuable item is something that could excel in a niche role of P gameplay - maybe a weapon that can one-hit KO any mob and can also kill admin doppels in a few swings (I know most of these are killed while safely boxed away, but as someone who enjoys MC fighting I can't help but dream ._.), or maybe it's a pair of feather falling (ridiculously high number) boots that mitigate a lot of fall damage, or a knockback 10 stick, or something. Ideally it wouldn't be something ridiculously OP in terms of farming other very valuable items (so not a sword that always drops a wither skeleton head on killing one), but something that would be extremely valuable in a niche situation but still be broadly applicable to gameplay to be compelling for players to obtain (it should not just be a trophy item that sits in an item frame all late-rev long for example). Suppose this item is only craftable by finding and assembling certain components - special items that are dropped very infrequently through different means and are (practically) useless on their own. One could be found as a chance drop by killing certain mobs in a certain biome under certain conditions (eg. kill a Guardian while underwater in deep ocean, kill a regular zombie in a desert, or even kill custom mobs?), one could be found as a low-chance drop from mining certain blocks, one could be found as a chance catch from fishing, one could be found as an item that pops out of a furnace while it is smelting ore, one could be obtained from a sign placed somewhere in an obscure part of the map (with clues there?). Methods that tie together all aspects of Minecraft gameplay and encourages some time spent in them - or, better yet, trade with players who specialize or spend a lot of time in them and come up with a surplus. Care would have to be taken to ensure that automated methods of obtaining these components are foiled (eg. for the fishing component, maybe the drop chance is modulated to take into account missed catches, frequency of catches, etc. to distinguish player-controlled fishing from afking at an autofisher), and that acquiring one of each component alone is possible for independent players (though the time taken could be very long, and of course trading components or information with other players should drastically? cut down on the time spent). As a personal preference I would also specify that acquisition of these components be more deterministic and rely less on random chance - though at the moment I can't think of a good way to do that without also preserving rarity. Thoughts? I wrote this mainly as a quick concept idea and not as a polished "padmins we really should get this nao!!1!!11!" proposal for imminent implementation, so if you find a lot of things wrong with this post, I can believe it :O (As a tangential disclaimer if the components label sounds familiar - for a bit I played on another server where items also named "components" were widely sought to craft other items vital to gameplay, which is where I borrowed the label from - these were obtained differently over there compared to what I am proposing above.)

Weekday evenings and weekends would work for me - will still sometimes be unable to make it but those are the times where I have a chance of attending. As a side note, I really like the idea of setting up league-based gameplay, though it might need more infrastructure to be implemented server-side ._.

The dash has been on P ever since it was introduced from what I remember - I don't think we ever had a "Welcome <X> to the servers!" welcome message on P during my time. It was brought up before when I was a Padmin; at the time I think we either rejected it or didn't act on it (forgot which). For my own opinion at the time, I thought that the knowledge of the dash signifying a new player logging in had become part of P culture - even though it was an unintentional plugin setting, it was one whose knowledge of it became part of what defined the P community, and I didn't want to lose that by switching it out.

Part 3 (the last) story segments have been queued on http://unityancients.tumblr.com. The first one went up today, August 15, and another segment will be posted every other day at midnight Eastern time until August 27. Be warned, though there are few segments in this part, many of them are longer than usual. Allusions to saberfysh's CMC Starlogs can be found here too. This concludes the story-related updates. If you have made it this far, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it!

I think if the goal is just to provide another fun thing on nerd for players and visitors, that minigames is worth, at the very least, a trial run. I would disagree with the idea of using minigames primarily as a way of bringing in new players to P (gameplay of C is a bit different and I'm hesitant to comment in this sense). Many of the gameplay styles represented on P require a lot of time investment - I imagine for a picky builder (the worst case), this includes gathering supplies and materials, then finding and getting to a suitable place to build, before building actually begins. For the best case, a player joining a town that has a starter kit and materials assembled for them, this still involves getting to the town, again before building actually begins. Minigames are going to be more drop-in-drop-out - getting started is almost instantaneous, and a player well adapted or suited to this playstyle will (I think) find the pace of PvE gameplay to be too slow for them without effort spent getting used to it - thus, I don't expect a very large portion of first-time visitors to nerd who frequent minigames to eventually migrate. Also would like to echo the suggestion to not jump to minigames from the lobby if there are non-staff present - you will(?) leave behind a message stating that you have switched to minigames-dev, and since its introduction is not known and still being debated, it would probably be better for staff if we can avoid the situation where players get hyped for minigames coming soon but then feel let down when the server is not launched (unless we let them in on news that we are currently discussing it and it may not launch).

The story segments for Part 2 are now queued up for release on http://unityancients.tumblr.com. The first one went up tonight, July 20, and another segment will be posted every other day at midnight Eastern time until August 9. Yes, I've redone the blog theme so lines and paragraphs appear properly spaced now. And yes, things might begin to get a little weird...

As a disclaimer for the rest of the post - I haven't given actual implementation details too much thought, only some ideas about gameplay mechanics: - The most important thing is to ensure that there is a steady supply of PvP targets to hit. A lot of why S revs have declined so fast I think is that fewer players amount to fewer targets to PvP, which leads to players not logging in, which again leads to even fewer targets to PvP. (This is assuming every player is fair game as a PvP target - which even though it creates PvP, especially in rev 20 with Bluehaven, I don't believe making PvP should include encouraging the killing of builders and other non-combatants; see below.) - There should be a way to allow for greater mobility in the PvP hierarchy. An often repeated line of advice for players who get camped is to leave the original base, assemble PvP gear in another location, and then come back to kill the camper. Though I believe this has come to be a core tenant of PvP, it is also extremely hard to kill someone in the highest level gear (thinking Prot4 diamond, potions, pearls, high-damage swords) without also assembling gear that is or close to the highest level gear - forcing only one way to prepare and fight. Multiple ways (eg. use of fire) would make for more interesting gameplay, give underdog players hope and reason to keep playing, and make players with the highest-level gear work a bit harder to ensure they keep their position or reputation at the top. - There should be a reward for PvP - something that would encourage players who want a fight to go up against similar players. Since high-level diamond fights tend to result in extremely worn down armor for the winner, one reward could perhaps be automatic armor or weapon repair for surviving pieces. Maybe economy currency for the killer (corresponding to a loss of currency for the loser to prevent rapid inflation), higher rewards for killing someone who is better equipped, lower rewards for killing someone who is less well equipped? - Alternatively, prevent damaged armor from being destroyed at all, similar to how elytra is handled, though there should be a defense penalty for wearing worn-out armor compared to pristine armor (maybe peg completely-worn-out armor damage reduction to 0?). - Similarly, there should be a disincentive to kill players who are on the server to build, or are not interested in fighting, or are returning to base (this implies disabled beds, which would be great for encouraging PvPers to stay close to a point on the map, but would not be great news for builders). For me, I generally treated anyone with a KDR of 0 (ie. no kills) as not a fighter, and avoided engaging them in combat. There would need to be a way to classify players reliably as being uninterested in PvP (ie. a way to tell apart a builder/non-combatant from a PvP support role from a player logging in for the first time, etc.) - but once that is done, some penalties could be assigned to PvPers for repeatedly killing them, or buffs can be given to the victims that will help them avoid PvP. (Invisibility? High damage resistance? Maybe even temporary PvP immunity?) - It might be worth manipulating what drops from a player and what doesn't. One of the biggest deterrents to playing on S/PvP was (is?) the fear of losing the entire inventory when killed. For non-combatants this included ores as well as building materials and/or tools; for PvPers this included gear that potentially represented hours or days of preparation lost in 10 minutes at most. Part of the reward of PvPing I think comes from getting the loot from the player killed, but there should be a balance between what PvPers gain (to make PvP worthwhile) and what victims lose (to encourage them to keep playing). Perhaps builders lose a large percentage of building materials, or PvPers lose their weapons and potions but get to keep their (damaged) armor? Incentives must be taken into account too - if builders always drop their armor for example, they can potentially be made a huge target by PvPers who seek to farm builders for even basic armor. - I'm not a huge fan of boss mobs on PvP myself, but in the absence of other player targets, that might be a fun diversion especially if there is a reward attached that can help PvPing ability (though not be crucial to it). It could even be summonable if there are fears of players stealing the reward at the location of the boss mob at one point on the map. - The sad part of all of these is that it's possible to game the system one way or another - care must be taken to minimize the possibility or advantages of doing so.

Hello again, and welcome to a new story serial! Unity Origins focused on the state of the map that led to Unity's creation. In Ancients, the focus moves mainly further into the past. The story itself is set in the period following the war betweeen Akro and Megatown and the launch of Unity, where the ambition of the surviving towns, emboldened by the conclusion of the war, lies once again in pushing the limits of knowledge. But not every new discovery is a joyous one... The story will again be hosted online, at http://unityancients.tumblr.com. Once again, any resemblances to real players or locations in Minecraft/PvE are largely coincidental. There are a few exceptions, one of which is a few deliberate references that may be outdated (since writing started long ago). There are also mentions of some story elements in and related to the recent CTF, particularly if you were on the lime team. Finally, the story does also connect to the CMC Starlogs authored by saberfysh, though these will be apparent later in the story. (Speaking of which, if you want to voice your opinion of CTF, come to this thread and make it known!) The first segment was posted yesterday, August 28. The rest of the first part will be posted every other day at midnight Eastern time, with the last segment scheduled for posting July 18. Please note: Though I think the current tumblr theme is aesthetically pleasing and suited for the story and header image, I'm aware that it also tends to eliminate the spacing between lines/paragraphs and make story segments look more like a literal wall of text. Bear with me - I'll see if I can do better.

As a disclaimer: I am a P player by and large, though I relish a chance to go PvPing. When I entered the field to fight in the second round (I wasn't participating in the first), I was wearing a U3P4 diamond jetpack, PP4 diamond leggings, and P3 diamond boots, carrying a Sh5M diamond sword and an P4FI bow. I also did help with general testing, though space-based PvP like the kind frequently seen during the event was not one of them. That being said I actually enjoyed the challenge of the space map and its effects on all aspects of the game in this event, one of which was in fact PvP. On the whole, though, while the target's extra mobility is very frustrating for PvPing (high-level diamond-gear opponents are already difficult enough to fight to a win or lose on the ground), it is a great boon for players seeking to dodge PvP, especially for flag capturing. This put a lot more emphasis on flag defense, which I thought was a nice challenge and change of pace from the usual, where both flag defending and carrier chasing could be done equally well. I've heard other complaints that the different speeds of diamond and iron jetpacks are too great, and that it is difficult to catch a flag carrier once they steal the flag. Though I think part of the fun is to formulate new strategies for the environment at hand, I will also echo both sentiments - the faster diamond jetpack made fleeing from a fight with iron nearly impossible if the foe is determined enough (and I know I've done that at least once ._.). On top of that, stopping a carrier in flight after they steal a flag becomes dependent on how much the carrier turns or stops while flying, how closely the pursuer is watching and taking advantage of them, and how quickly the pursuer is able to kill the carrier (I actually landed a few hits on a flag carrier before he got away). A carrier who steals the flag, gets out, and beelines for a friendly flag post is near impossible to reach, let alone take down. (I bring the last point up mainly to echo gameplay feedback, though during preparation, slowing the flag carrier was considered difficult to infeasible to implement technically.) The other comment I have is that, being on lime team for the second round, it seemed weird to me that diamonds were more straightforward to get (acquire potatoes, bake them, trade) than iron (mine or sit at the spawner). Not sure how silly it is; we did have three layers of potato farm and we still lost to red in the end after all :P...but it felt weird in the end that diamonds seemed easier to acquire than iron. Also, as a random point - would it be possible to implement a team auto-lock like what Switch mentioned, and/or ensure livestock in base can only be killed by the team that owns it?

For testing tomorrow I've straight-up copied all the messages in the spreadsheet and arranged them in a config file. It's been sent to techs.

First off, thank you to every one of you who has written something in for the death messages spreadsheet, which now has both an extensive and diverse set of death messages as a whole (perhaps more so than, if not as much as, P's default death message set!). I think players will be well entertained with these death messages, especially given how many of these are laden with references to either IRL space exploration or other sci-fi media. Well done. Some of you have seen this in Slack already, but what I wanted to bring up are the more nitpicky things that I think should be taken into account when revising the death messages. I know I didn't highlight some of these very well before, sorry >< so bear with me. The biggest bit is some mechanics that will lead to weird grammar or sentences. For every death reason, the plugin picks a message from the config's list at random and displays it, subbing out all applicable flags (for example, &p is subbed with the victim player's name, &z is swapped out with the nametagged name or name of the killer, or the mob type if there is none, &i is replaced with the name of the item the killer was holding at time of death or "a "+<item name> if not, all color codes etc.). If the kill message is coded such that it can report the item in the killer's hand (like for zombie kills), the plugin will also pick a with-item phrase at random and then append a space and the with-item phrase at the end of the base death message, or insert that where a &w flag exists if it is specified. This means that for death messages that can report an item, ideally every death message must be able to work with every with-item phrase. For example, going on what the spreadsheet has at time of writing, one of the possible death messages for arrow-by-skeleton kill might show up as "buzzie71 was bodyshotted by Jackal Sniper with a bow," and another one might be "buzzie71 was bodyshotted by Jackal Sniper by murdering them with a bow." The second sentence (at least to me) doesn't seem to flow as smoothly as the first grammatically, and I think could be improved. There are other instances in the spreadsheet that can be similarly revised. On normal P, there is only one with-item phrase for every such death message (iirc), and all base messages were written around that - that works too, but despite the challenges of using multiple with-item phrases, I think the possible variety for CTF is worth it. (btw - the Jackal Sniper base message was mine; if the base death message is changed to "Jackal Sniper bodyshotted buzzie71," then I think the appended "by murdering them with a bow" will lead to a more grammatically correct sentence. I'll rewrite that.) Some other pointers: &i will contain an article "a"; you won't need to supply that in the with-item phrase. The only time it won't show up is if the item has a custom name (eg. named on an anvil or with plugin magic) - the name is straight up reported (eg. for a named diamond sword, the death message will end with, say, "with Bane of Padmins V" instead of "with a diamond sword"). If you remember stuttery P death messages that ended in "with a a <item type>" from very early on (Halloween 2014?), this was the reason why. Make sure color codes are in the right place. Current plan is to mirror P's death message color scheme - names (hardcoded or not) light yellow (&e), everything else blue (&3). Default color (no codes) is white. For death messages with the possibility of item reporting, there is no guarantee that a terminal punctuation mark (eg. periods) will always appear at the end of the message for every message. This is because the with-item phrase is not printed if the killer is not holding an item. This is not true for death messages that do not have an item involved; as long as it's written in the message in the right place, it will always appear there. Remember that you can move the with-item phrase around with the &w flag - it does not need to always be at the end of the message. If you really want to mention the victim's or killer's name more than once, or omit it, that's totally possible too. Same with item names, though the with-item message will still appear in the death message regardless of item name inclusion. Anyone who has been around to witness the cave spider civil war on P knows this well (there was a &z flag where there was supposed to be a &p). Any weird death message combinations should be noticeable during staff testing, in case they slip through the cracks now. Again, very great job on the death messages so far - with a bit of revising I think we can improve the messages further and give the players an even better time.