Survival Survival Suggestions / Feedback

[CROCKODUCK]

Where the new players are coming from doesn't matter, there are more players this rev that there were the last. Everyone agreed that survival needed to change dramatically in order to survive, I'm sorry if that's not what you wanted but you should've given a solid argument against it at the time.

A solid argument? I'm not going to derail this thread to point out that you've basically just pointed out the new features of survival and not any suggestions of how to make it work for anyone. Personal restraint is a good trait to pickup, as bias in an argument is like fighting a wall.

All we need to remember is that the majority is what matters. The core S players who come to one of the last "vanilla" servers, and not to be griefed and imprisoned. That was my point.

[HailSaban]

A solid argument? I'm not going to derail this thread to point out that you've basically just pointed out the new features of survival and not any suggestions of how to make it work for anyone. Personal restraint is a good trait to pickup, as bias in an argument is like fighting a wall.

All we need to remember is that the majority is what matters. The core S players who come to one of the last "vanilla" servers, and not to be griefed and imprisoned. That was my point.

 

The newcomers are the ones making it the majority. This S rev has been the most successful one in perhaps 3 or 4 revs, even. The new implementations are drawing people in, so it is working.

[WickedCoolSteve]

First off, let me get a few obvious points out of the way. I'm not an S player, anyone who's around knows that (hell, I'm barely an anything player these days). The gameplay style of S (past or present) has never been what I personally enjoy in Minecraft. However, I've always loved and supported S as an integral and critical component of the MCPublic community. Even though I don't have a direct gameplay stake in the server and I did not have any input or influence on the current gameplay changes, I firmly believe I am a loyal and dedicated (if distant) stakeholder in its community. So, that being said-

 

I really think that what's being tried this rev is an amazing example of a robust and healthy dialogue between the various active stakeholders in the community. As with anything as complex, controversial, and complicated as this there is no uniform consensus about the general health and condition of S. However, I think most people would agree that the server has been doing less and less well over the past couple of years. There are many reasons for this, however in my opinion the most obvious is the general movement of vanilla Minecraft gameplay in a direction that favors PvE style gameplay. For a community that prefers to implement "vanilla-style" gameplay as much as possible, this clearly presents a problem when there is a PvP intensive server in the mix.

 

The way I see it, in general there are three broad categories of actions that could be taken in this situation: (1) do nothing and maintain the status quo, (2) remove current gameplay features to move things closer to before beta 1.8, or (3) add features to move things in a direction that is less vanilla but more accommodating to online PvP. It's worth noting that (2) and (3) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I'm sure not many people would opt for option (1), no one likes a server that is dead most of the time. The real question is how do we change things to make the situation better?

 

The current rev should be thought of as a rough draft of ideas to answer that question. There are a lot of changes in place that put us as a community way out of our traditional comfort zone, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not an insult to or dismissal of people (including some long term players) that prefer more vanilla gameplay. To learn how to evolve and survive we have to be willing to try new things. A strong dialogue enabled these experimental changes to happen and a similarly strong discussion is what we need in order to continue. It really does make me sad to see so many downvotes here on the forums and on the subreddit. We can't grow and get better if people are attempting to silence and shut out opinions they disagree with. Let's talk and work together as a community. We can all disagree and still accomplish great things, but only if we all as a group encourage open dialogue.

 

We can mix and match ideas and keep trying all the new (and old) things until we get it right, and I really do firmly believe that will eventually happen. Features can be added and removed, merged and separated, whatever whatever. What we have now is not how it always will be. Change is disruptive and often upsetting, but it is also invigorating and exciting. I know I'm biased as all hell here, but I think we're the best set of Minecraft servers that exist. Let's act like it and get shit done. Free flow of ideas, respect, and open dialogue are the only things that will allow us to move forward. 

[EeHee2000]

My honest opinions on the current revision:
(Apologies if I leave anything out, I'm mainly putting down the things that I've noticed/and or can remember.)

The Positives (Things that I think that - for the most part - we should keep.)

+SimpleClans is a must. It packs groups of players tightly together rather than loosely banded clanchats and the like. 
Revision 23 was a pretty successful revision, as there was actually a decent amount of PvP between clans. I know I for one was zerging almost non-stop against enemy players, and that was great fun. 
It encourages rivalries, alliances and this revision it's actually allowed for a lot of Survival players to team up, (despite some of us having our differences in past revisions) which I absolutely love. 

+Citadel has really spruced up the gameplay, in my opinion. We actually have a risk of losing our stuff and we need to plan attacks a lot more carefully, as well as design our bases with strategy in mind rather than how it looks. No, it isn't super easy to break into chests, as I and many others feared before the revision. Even with a team of about 14 people, mining just a single block of Diamond reinforced Obsidian will take some time, which encourages players all the more to have a clan, to speed things up a bit. 
Playertraps don't save us as they did in previous revisions, and we need to set aside a chunk of our earnings (Diamond, Emerald, Obsidian) in order to have a safer vault/base. 
It's no longer about simply going into someone's base and killing them, it's also about getting all their goods and locking it away for yourself. I'll miss the ornate bases we used to have, but it's a worthy sacrifice to give that away for this. 
It gives the game more objectives, really. It also gives Emerald a use, hooray! 

+The Ore Plumps are pretty nice to have around, but I think it'd be pretty good to throw in a slight Diamond plump. Keep this one around, we should experiment with it.
The Glowstone in the Overworld (like on PvE) is also pretty good, let's keep that with us. 

+XP Plump is basically ingrained into Survival, I don't know a single person who disagrees with it. No reason to remove it and plenty of reason in keeping it. 

+Beds should stay the same, they've worked well the past 3 revisions.  


The Negatives (Please keep in mind this is only my opinion, feel free to argue with it.)

+Random Spawn doesn't seem to work as nicely as the central spawn did, and the new road we're using has barely any effect on the gameplay due to this. In past revisons, the road was what we marked our turf on whereas this revision it can be painfully hard to find enemy bases. Coupled with the rather massive map, it's very rare to get an enemy encounter without raiding a base/getting raided. A lot of people are simply going to turtle underground so they can be assured that they're safe, rather than actually interacting with fellow players and having times where they're forced to act or lose their work. It's not encouraging PvP, (it's discouraging if anything) which is generally the direction we agreed Survival should be steered in at the last meeting/s. 

+No Enchantism
I personally love Enchantism, and I found it to be a really nice plugin to have around. It meant that whilst enchanting was a fair bit more expensive (30 levels for a single top-level enchant as opposed to anywhere from 1-4), it was still far more convenient than having to enchant books over 20 times just to get a specific enchantment. I see no negatives to bringing it back, and I've gotten the vibe that a majority of people enjoyed Enchantism more than Vanilla enchanting. 
Besides, with Enchantism enabled we can still do old-fashioned Vanilla enchants. 

+No Cardinal Roads 
This is a joint issue with Random Spawn for me. Cardinal roads are what we aim to get a bit plot of land on so we have more power than those around us. If we added the old roads back, it'd have as little effect as the current roads have had.
With Citadel enabled, the Cardinal roads would instigate territorial wars all down the roads, and would keep us on our toes at all times, which would be a big juicy plus considering the playerbase has enjoyed being on edge as opposed to being bored. The PvP would mean a lot more than it currently does (which, at the moment, means more than it did in past revisions) and we'd be seeing a lot more of it. 

+Prison Pearl
I don't really like this plugin, due to all the negatives it brings forward. 
People have been abusing it, in the form of "releasing" a pearled player into a bunker made of Obsidian at Bedrock level, which they cannot possibly dig out of. 
Some have even gone as far as to fill these prisons with Cobwebs, so trapped players can't starve themselves to death to respawn. It's disgusting that people are abusing it in this way but frankly it doesn't seem to fit well into a small server like ours. It's already driven off quite a few of our regulars and that's terrible to see. 
Basecamping worked just as well (if not better) than this in previous revisions. 
Someone's being an asshole? Basecamp them. 

Edited August 4, 2014 by EeHee2000

[Four_Down]

My opinion on this reveision so far:

 

 

Things I'd like to see added:

- A rising cost to PrisonPearl (Prevents permapearls)

- A few hours of PearlProtection for new players, only a couple hours, enough time to get set up.

[dizney07]

+No Cardinal Roads 

This is a joint issue with Random Spawn for me. Cardinal roads are what we aim to get a bit plot of land on so we have more power than those around us. If we added the old roads back, it'd have as little effect as the current roads have had.

With Citadel enabled, the Cardinal roads would instigate territorial wars all down the roads, and would keep us on our toes at all times, which would be a big juicy plus considering the playerbase has enjoyed being on edge as opposed to being bored. The PvP would mean a lot more than it currently does (which, at the moment, means more than it did in past revisions) and we'd be seeing a lot more of it. 

 

My problem with this is that roads wouldn't really be all that useful in my opinion. With Citadel, most people would be hiding their bases underground still and staying as far away from spawn/spawn area as possible. Without a reason to build above ground, why would players do it?

[EeHee2000]

My problem with this is that roads wouldn't really be all that useful in my opinion. With Citadel, most people would be hiding their bases underground still and staying as far away from spawn/spawn area as possible. Without a reason to build above ground, why would players do it?

I agree with you point on the whole building above-ground thing, you have me there. However, the roads/central spawn would still serve as a hotspot for PvP. In past revisions, all we had to do was wait at spawn or run down the roads for PvP, and it worked well. At the moment, as I said the only way to find PvP is to raid a base/be raided. 

[EeHee2000]

 

 

EeHee2000 and Gizzletinks, I will reply to your comments tomorrow. 

Just a poke that our questions remain unanswered, just noticed. \o/

[barneygale]

Stats? Numbers? Proof it's old players returning? Last I checked you had been out of the survival community for a while.

 

Yeah but I'm still well-liked enough that old players PM me when they see me online, which has happened more this rev than last. I've seen players who've been gone since rev 7 come back.

[SpiderMan]

Things I'd like to see added:

- Anti-xray plugins!

 

 

-gsand

;D

Edited August 4, 2014 by gsand

[jllmprrt]

Things I'd like to see added:

- Anti-xray plugins!

-gsand

;D

I think X-Ray texture packs would still work and also the redstone block / fence glitch.

[Denevien]

Things I'd like to see added:

- Anti-xray plugins!

 

 

-gsand

 

-I think we've tried some anti-xray plugins before, but it caused some stability issues at the time. Trying again couldn't hurt though.

 

-As for adding gsand, I hear that causes small children to cry, and dreams to burst. I suggest against this addition. :D

[Four_Down]

-I think we've tried some anti-xray plugins before, but it caused some stability issues at the time. Trying again couldn't hurt though.

 

-As for adding gsand, I hear that causes small children to cry, and dreams to burst. I suggest against this addition. :D

All nerd servers are running Spigot now. Spigot has in-built anit-xray modes which are fairly good when it comes to performance, giving those a go would be more successful than third party plugins.

[barneygale]

Quick idea: when new players join, send something like:

 

"Welcome to s.nerd.nu! Can you tell us how you found us? Type /found <where you came from>"

 

Might be handy to know, right?

[jllmprrt]

Quick idea: when new players join, send something like:

"Welcome to s.nerd.nu! Can you tell us how you found us? Type /found <where you came from>"

Might be handy to know, right?

I like this one actually, good for data collection n stuff. I was also thinking having a command like /playtime so one can see it in-game (but keep the website too)

[slide]

All nerd servers are running Spigot now. Spigot has in-built anit-xray modes which are fairly good when it comes to performance, giving those a go would be more successful than third party plugins.

We are, and have been running the spigot anti xray stuff for a while.

[PeteLucas]

This isn't really a test though is it.

I keep reading about how it's a test and things may change. But for what its worth people are having to play like this. Its not a case of having a parallel server with the new testy stuff being done on it. This is the server now. This is classed as a revision.

Without a test end date in sight either its hard to not see these as permanent changes.

Also, I've only seen talk of tweaking a few things, not going back of trying anything else.

How are we rated our success here also? Is it on user numbers? If so then well done. We've made S popular by copying someone else and splitting their market share.

[Esperi]

I don't think the current user numbers indicate success. They might indicate interest in testing a radical change, but I don't think it's saying that all these players approve of and enjoy these plugins.

 

I've seen players who've been gone since rev 7 come back.

 

I am one of those players, but I came back randomly to see if the server was still good. It has nothing to do with the new plugins, and I don't like the new plugins (Citadel and PrisonPearl specifically).

 

1. Citadel and random spawns highly discourage PvP. Everyone is spread out, most people live underground. Unless you find someone's base, you probably won't find anyone to fight unless you sit on the road for hours.
2. Citadel and allowed griefing make it hard to play solo. I live deep underground in a hidden base. All my chests were reinforced with diamond. I logged on today to find 3 of my most valuable chests re-locked with emerald to another player. I can no longer access them, and they probably already looted them. I had reinforced every wall and door with stone. No clue how they got in, but they did. I did everything possible to protect my stuff besides building a diamond reinforced obsidian vault, and it was looted anyways. Also, your base can be griefed with reinforced blocks at any time. Someone filled in your entire base with reinforced cobble? Have fun digging it out for the next hour. Someone placed a reinforced block over your chest? You'll have to break the chest and move everything to another area, depending on how the block was reinforced. This is only fun for griefers.
3. I like JukeAlert. It doesn't discriminate against solo players, and encourages PvP by letting you know where other players are.
4. PrisonPearl just doesn't make sense. It allows other players to control when you can play the game. How is that fair? Especially to solo players. If you don't have a clan you're screwed.
5. I have seen many players join the server in the last week and leave because Citadel was too confusing for them and makes undesirable gameplay modifications. As I said before, even if you reinforce your chests with diamond, they aren't safe. nerd.nu was a huge server back in the day because it was easy to learn and very accessible to new players. Once you learned the command to lock a chest, you were good. The Citadel and JukeAlert wiki page currently lists 26 commands. That is not accessible, and drives away many players. Also if you join and get pearled by a clan, you can no longer play on the server and have fun until your captor lets you out.

I appreciate the experiment and understand why it was done, but I don't think Citadel and PrisonPearl are a good fit for S, which has a history of being accessible to new players and features high PvP activity.

Edited August 5, 2014 by Esperi

[arcanition]

So, I'm gonna try and keep this as brief as possible.

 

I lasted played Minecraft back in like Rev 20 or so, and got the urge to play again yesterday. I reinstalled Minecraft and hopped on this subreddit to read up on the changes, only to find tons of people enraged at the changes and really upset. I thought to myself "*Why are people complaining? So much more freedom! No more modreqs for flowing water/lava!*" So I read through all the wikis and tips and tricks for the new changes.

 

I opened up the server and set out for a location to build. I knew that due to the changes you had to make your base remote and inconspicuous. After several deaths I found the perfect place, a jungle biome about 3000 blocks away from spawn. So I dug down to make my base at bedrock. I spent several hours mining, setting everything up, protections/reinforcements on chests, everything.

 

After about 6-8 hours of playtime I had my bedrock base, 2700~3000 blocks from spawn, with two chests each reinforced with diamond. Considering these facts AND the fact that I hadn't seen a single person in my 6-8 hours of playtime, I thought I was more than okay.

 

So I'm getting something out of my chest when... fire. I think to myself "what the fuck?" and run away. At this point I'm at half health, on fire, still trying to get my sword out, and see that someone had dug down into my base and poured lava on me, then proceeded to kill me. I click respawn and appear at my bed only for them to surround my bed with cobble and kill me.

 

Cool, now I'm back to square zero.

 

I die to a spider and respawn and appear at my bed, only to see the guy who killed me along with 4-5 others standing around my chests whacking away at them to destroy the reinforcement, then they kill me again.

 

Several people suggested to /modreq as it "sounded like hacking" but considering that the people who did it are well known on the server, I highly doubt it. Apparently they used snitch blocks, which I still don't fully understand how there happened to be one at bedrock ~3000 units away from spawn where I randomly built.

 

Anyway, that's my experience on the server. To be honest it killed my  desire to play completely, even more so than when I used to play (Rev 20-ish). It doesn't make sense to start against and spend another 6-8 hours or more playing only to have the same thing happen again, and as far as I know, there's nothing I could have done to stop it.

 

tl;dr:

 

1. Ran ~3000 units from spawn

2. Dug to bedrock

3. Spent 6-8 hours mining, reinforcing, etc...

4. Get randomly found by "snitch block" and gangbanged by group of thugs

5. Sigh

 

EDIT: I know the "it's pvp, get over it" arguments are coming. And I get it, it is, you're right. But these changes were made to the server in order to make it better/more popular, and I'm telling you it has made the experience *worse*. If I want to be able to play solo, I should be able to do so without being hamstrung.

 

EDIT2: Oh cool, I got back to my [base](http://i.imgur.com/FdJ53TK.png). Looks like it only took them a few minutes to take my diamond-reinforced chests as well as grief my base.

 

 

My Suggestions:

 

• Restore modreqs and punishments for *obvious* griefing. If you look in the picture above, obviously filling my base with blocks I can't destroy is griefing. Taking someone's stuff is not.
  
• Remove these snitch blocks
  
• Allow people to lock chests like before (even if limited to 1 or 2)
  

Edited August 6, 2014 by arcanition

[arcanition]

Stats for first 5 days, compared to revs 12-25

 

* 91 peak players (historical average 105, last rev 45)

* 29 average players (historical average 39, last rev 19)

 

An improvement from where we were. Lets hope the numbers keep up and next rev maintains the recovery.

 

Number of people playing does not equal the number of people who enjoy/approve of the changes. If a boring library installed kegs in every room, it may attract more people. Does that mean it's a good idea? Not necessarily.

[elbeau]

Stats for first 5 days, compared to revs 12-25

 

* 91 peak players (historical average 105, last rev 45)

* 29 average players (historical average 39, last rev 19)

 

An improvement from where we were. Lets hope the numbers keep up and next rev maintains the recovery.

 

It's great to see larger numbers of players that have tried out this rev, but that's not the whole picture.  If we simply wanted more people playing, we can simply turn S.nerd.nu into a MC arcade like other servers which have hundreds or thousands of players playing at a time.  The downside would be that we wouldn't be much like s.nerd.nu anymore...but apparently a lot of people are OK with that so let's just turn it into an arcade.  All in favor?

 

My point is that s.nerd.nu is not just a hostname that we like connecting to.  It's a server with its own brand of fun.  It's not an arcade, it's not chaos, it's not PVE, it's not factions, it's not creative.  It's S.  Among other things, a player has always been able to choose between teaming up and going solo on S and has ALWAYS been reasonable to build an impressive base.

 

Many things have changed over the years, but S was always a place where cool stuff could be built in a dangerous environment.  Now there are no impressive builds and solo players feel like they're playing hide & seek.  That's not S.  It's this new place at an old hostname.

 

Fortunately this is a test rev and it has brought old and new players out of the woodwork.  I think we can find a balance between the good things from this rev and the bad things that are causing frustration and S can be S again in the near future.

[barneygale]

2nd week stats:

 

* 41 peak players (historical average 86; last rev 40)

* 13 average players (historical average 33; last rev 12)

 

Time to prepare a marketable launch event for the next rev?

[barneygale]

3rd week stats:

 

* 21 peak players (rank 15 of 15; historical average: 67; last rev 25)

* 6.8 average players (rank 14 of 15; historical average 26.2; last rev 6.7)

 

Above-ground building plz

Edited August 17, 2014 by barneygale

[barneygale]

This rev hasn't exactly been a silver bullet. We had a good start when a big clan joined from another server, but in terms of player numbers we're now on par with the previous revision, which most of us considered to be the worst we've ever played (though a certain staffer made sure we knew he was enjoying it).

Not asking for heartfelt repentance, but some statement along the lines of "this is where we are, this is why the numbers have been so low, this is how we're going to improve them" would be great to hear from a survival admin. Is the civcraft stuff functioning worse that expected? about as well? better?

Edited August 18, 2014 by barneygale

[barneygale]

4th week stats:

* 32 peak players (rank 13 of 14; historical average: 60; last rev 24)

* 5.9 average players (rank 14 of 14; historical average 21.1; last rev 6.1)

Overall stats for first 4 weeks:

* 13.0 average players (rank 13 of 14; historical average 29.9; last rev 10.2)

Compared to rev 15:

* 73.1% reduction in average players over first 4 weeks

* 83.4% reduction in average players in 4th week

Edited August 24, 2014 by barneygale