Proposal: Merge P and S

[zifnab06]

Hello,

 

PvE has been thriving and S has been dying for as long as I can remember. With every revision, S gets closer to PvE rules. 

 

Proposal: Merge the two servers. 

 

My thoughts on how this would work is with a Runescape style "Wilderness" area with a Warcraft style PvP cooldown. A custom plugin would need to be implemented (and I realize the tech team is way too busy already - I suggest this comes from the community. I'm more than happy to help, and actually have a fair bit of this code already finished for a long dead project). I also realize Bukkit is a dead project, so it would probably be best to wait until an alternative is found. 

 

The wilderness: the outer 1000 blocks of the map would be a PvP zone. PvP is automatically enabled for every player once they enter this zone. 

 

The PvP flag is a ternary variable - it has three states. "ON", "OFF" and "COOLDOWN". 

• Players with the flag set OFF cannot be attacked by other players.
• Players with the flag set ON or COOLDOWN can attack other players with the flag ON or COOLDOWN.
• If the flag is in COOLDOWN and a PvP action is performed, the cooldown is reset. (This would be any form of attack - either you attacking another player who is attackable, or them attacking you)
• Once the cooldown timer reaches 0, player goes to OFF flag state.
• How to change:
  • Changed to "ON" by either entering the wilderness or typing /pvpon
  • Changed to "COOLDOWN" by either leaving the wilderness or typing /pvpoff
  • Changed to "OFF" once the cooldown timer expires. Cooldown timer is reset any time a PvP action is performed. I'm purposefully leaving the time out here - would be configurable for balance issues. 
• How it functions:
  • Players who are flagged for PvP can fight each other - anywhere. 
  • Players who are not flagged for PvP cannot PvP with other players for any reason (excluding arena zones), even if the player they are attacking is flagged for PvP.
• State changes:
  • "ON" -> "COOLDOWN" (Leave the wilderness, type /pvpoff, or disconnect)
  • "OFF" -> "ON" (Enter the wilderness or type /pvpon)
  • "COOLDOWN" -> "OFF" (Cooldown timer expires after X minutes of no PVP actions)

Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks!

[zifnab06]

One thing I forgot - and I'm too lazy to edit the post. There would need to be a way to distinguish players who are flagged for PvP and those who are not. Stealing an idea from the CTF maps - players would need a particle effect if they're flagged for PvP. CTF shows flag holders with fire - the same idea could be applied to players who's state is either ON or COOLDOWN. 

[Mumberthrax]

I doubt padmins would go for this at all. We're basically talking about changing a setup that has been working excellently for p.nerd.nu for a long time. We'd also be attracting a crowd with a completely different sort of culture than what is presently on P. It would not be advisable, IMO.

 

That said, I think it's a decent idea worth considering for S. It's been suggested in other forms in the past to have some areas have no-pvp and some have it. It's difficult though to balance building in minecraft with PvP. What would be the incentive to go out into the wilderness?

[c45y]

I always thought survival would be better as a multiworld within P.

 

You get to take your inventory with you, so a lot more people looking for pvp would be fully geared and prepared. Not starting out trying to build their first set of armor

 

To some extent it would also give pve players something to do late revision on pve. Since i stopped playing on survival and started on pve I always find myself with an excess of materials after the first few weeks of the revision, my major worry with survival is the cost every time i lose a fight, this is a lesser issue with shared inventory.

 

To stop people quickly ducking out of pvp to pve and avoid fights, the portal to get back could require a longer time before teleporting the player than the standard portal time, or not work if another player is within X blocks around the player, this would be easy to achieve with a plugin

 

Players wanting the full survival experience could live in this survival world, set their beds there etc. Players from pve could simply use the world in favor of the current arenas or even as an extension to them.

 

Ore / experience buffing could also be looked at to add incentive to players ( and groups of players ) to use this survival world.

Edited October 17, 2014 by c45y

[zifnab06]

I doubt padmins would go for this at all. We're basically talking about changing a setup that has been working excellently for p.nerd.nu for a long time. We'd also be attracting a crowd with a completely different sort of culture than what is presently on P. It would not be advisable, IMO.

 

That said, I think it's a decent idea worth considering for S. It's been suggested in other forms in the past to have some areas have no-pvp and some have it. It's difficult though to balance building in minecraft with PvP. What would be the incentive to go out into the wilderness?

 

I'm honestly not sure here - when we attempted it on a different server the plan was to double (or triple, or 4x, or whatever you want) non-spawner mob spawns, add a ton of above ground ores (including diamonds), and add custom spawners only in the wilderness. You could also probably add portals in the PvP zones only if you wanted. 

[Gizzletinks]

no

[c45y]

no

 

Thank you for your constructive criticism! I'm glad you offered your reasons for disliking the idea and even some alternatives which can contribute to this conversation

[SpiderMan]

Well, it's inevitable.

 

Might as well do it now.

 

The pvp server has been dying for a long time. Every iteration has made it more like pve. Horse locking, redstone protection, autolocking placed chests rules against griefing, shop constests, you see the point.

 

Everyone that actually pvp's has already left, anyways. Plus, most of the s admins have considerably longer play time on p than s, so it wouldn't be a massive change.

 

If you disagree with any of the points I have given, please reply and tell me exactly how I'm wrong.

 

-gsand

;D

Edited October 20, 2014 by gsand

[Darkelmo]

This seems Symptomatic of what appears to be an issue with S.nerd and the ever crushing success of P.nerd that somewhat dwarfs the struggling survival server. 

 

I know things have been tough for S.nerd and while on the surface this looks like a convenient resolution for the issue, I really don't think it's going to fly well. Survival has had issues that are Easily fixable but are hard to define amongst the varying opinions and experiences on S that have gotten in the way of progress and has ultimately led to large chunks and icons of the S.nerd community leaving because of a failure to change the experience into a positive one from the rut it seems to be in now.

 

While I won't get into what needs fixing (from the perspective of what others and myself have deduced) I know for certain this isn't the direction to go with S.nerd. For one because once we go to this, we may never go back and 2. Because there is a way to make survival a fun standalone server again with a large player base. I have been very reluctant to post my idea for a fix for survival publicly for numerous reasons most of those being somewhat personal as I don't really play on nerd anymore and my idea could be shot down by a couple of individuals who have their own negative opinion or discrepancies with it that I'd rather avoid. I have tried pitching this to some of the admins and while it looked promising none of the fixes were discussed further. If I have to throw in my 2 cents and say why Survival isn't doomed and how to fix it, I will in a separate post but for now I want to say I'm adamant that this isn't the best possible outcome for S that we can muster. 

 

It has been part of our history as its own server, it has (or had) its own style of communication and gameplay that will be changed if it gets ported into PvE and will most likely cause community disruptions.  Also, the Survival we all know has been home to some of the most vocal, well known and contributing players on nerd.nu both from and not from the staff team which to me says that the old survival had it's place and it's own identity as something other than an extension of P.nerd. Most of the players I have spoken to about what made survival great in the old days have been here for a long time and know what works through experience. While I appreciate the input of others, I notice that newer players who hopped in when survival was on it's way to the shitter have given input in the form of a majority that hasn't quite captured the issue and/or fun components of Survival that we wish to preserve. Some players from the old survival also know exactly of the fixes required but due to the way they communicate with people (especially staff) their legitimate ideas get turned into finger pointing, Feuds and in general just don't get to the actual point of the topic.

 

We can see this time and time again by the attempted mumble meetings and community discussions declared in an attempt to fix the issue. We had the motive, we had the means but in the end we didn't execute these discussions in a way that would come to a working conclusion. And instead the input comes in from players who do not know all of the essence of what used to make survival great, or a minority within the survival servers that bothered to go to the meeting tends to be the only group heard.

 

I am sad to see where the server has gone from when I left, but to be fair this community has taken a lot of blows over the years which some of us have all sat through. Whether it be how external pressures have compromised the ability of particular staff members and the community hasn't supported them or when rules and protocols have done away with members of the community when we all know they weren't matters to be settled on the ban appeal forum. When the users felt oppressed and silenced and when the staff felt that too much was being asked of them, we've been through a lot. But all is not lost for the S.nerd server which I think these events have dramatically affected, we can fix it, but we have to get over issues of communication and identifying the problem. 

 

Tl;dr

 

This isn't the fate that S should end with, we should try to give another good go at fixing it instead of letting it merge with another server. I'd hate to see it go this way...

[schererererer]

I doubt padmins would go for this at all. We're basically talking about changing a setup that has been working excellently for p.nerd.nu for a long time. We'd also be attracting a crowd with a completely different sort of culture than what is presently on P. It would not be advisable, IMO.

I actually personally kind of like the general concept. I can see how the culture clash could be a problem - perhaps something like a multiverse with multiple pvp and pve worlds would allow more aggressive/passive (or competitive/collaborative) cultures to find distinct niches in a broader system. Having richer resources in the pvp enabled world, including relative ore plumping, unique mob spawners, etc. would incentivize development in the pvp areas and thus encourage the risk of pvp for the ambitious and adventurous (rather than just gathering resources in pve zones to battle in pvp zones without any stakes). The very casual players could still spend most of their time in the pve zones and only venture out when they feel like it, but would naturally miss out on the advantages of working in the more dangerous and lucrative environment.

 

One potential drawback that I've thought of is that people would tend to use the pvp worlds as a resource farm, and just take all their gains after a quick mining trip back to use in building at their pve homeworld base. There are many possible ways to counter this - for example, having a number of permanent KOTH points in the pvp world each yielding a cross-server buff would encourage a long-term presence. Perhaps even the potential for raiders to attack resource extractors would be sufficient for gameplay purposes.

 

Note that this is a very loose idea, and I haven't thought very deeply about all the implications, but I feel that most of the prior objections to a carefully crafted combination of S and P could be ameliorated. Of course, such a massive change would have to have broad feedback and support from across the community as a whole, but I feel that such a setup would allow people to either continue with mostly the same playstyle as in the past or try out a new dynamic at their own pace. As a disclaimer, the above are all my personal thoughts and do not reflect any sort of official position on the subject.

[Sapphric]

I actually personally kind of like the general concept. I can see how the culture clash could be a problem - perhaps something like a multiverse with multiple pvp and pve worlds would allow more aggressive/passive (or competitive/collaborative) cultures to find distinct niches in a broader system. Having richer resources in the pvp enabled world, including relative ore plumping, unique mob spawners, etc. would incentivize development in the pvp areas and thus encourage the risk of pvp for the ambitious and adventurous (rather than just gathering resources in pve zones to battle in pvp zones without any stakes). The very casual players could still spend most of their time in the pve zones and only venture out when they feel like it, but would naturally miss out on the advantages of working in the more dangerous and lucrative environment.

 

That kind of reminds me a bit of how EVE Online handles PvP areas. There are many solar systems, each with a security level, 0.0 to 1.0. The lower the security level, the more at risk you are for attacks by other players (there is an NPC security force that shows up if you attack in the higher level systems.)

 

It sort of gives me an idea where different areas could have different PvP levels, say 1-5. Level 1 would be normal PvP, level 5 would be PvE. 2-4 would be areas where PvP is possible, but it takes longer/has less effect. Say I hit someone with a diamond sword in a level 2 area. It does, let's say, 4 hearts of damage. In a level 4 area, it could do 1 heart.

 

Just an idea, it's late and I'm tired, so I apologize if it's terrible/hard to understand.

[Four_Down]

It's really awesome to see the P Admins being so open to this idea! :D

[djt832]

I'm going to have to say I am against this. 

 

There is still a good chance for survival. There are a few really great and unique gameplay ideas out there that we need to try first. Unfortunately, in our first effort to change, we just copied Civcraft. Which was really fun for the first couple weeks, but copying a successful servers game style just isnt going to work. It was also obvious it wasn't going to be a sustainable play style for us, just based off no one being on the server for the last half of the rev. You can argue all you want about it being "successful", but it just was not. Was it a good first step in Survival branching out and trying this new? Absolutely. I know it seems as though this upcoming revision we are just going backwards again, but hopefully this bides us some time to put a real effort into S and try out some of the ideas players have brought to the table. 

[Four_Down]

I'm going to have to say I am against this. 

 

There is still a good chance for survival. There are a few really great and unique gameplay ideas out there that we need to try first. Unfortunately, in our first effort to change, we just copied Civcraft. Which was really fun for the first couple weeks, but copying a successful servers game style just isnt going to work. It was also obvious it wasn't going to be a sustainable play style for us, just based off no one being on the server for the last half of the rev. You can argue all you want about it being "successful", but it just was not. Was it a good first step in Survival branching out and trying this new? Absolutely. I know it seems as though this upcoming revision we are just going backwards again, but hopefully this bides us some time to put a real effort into S and try out some of the ideas players have brought to the table. 

I agree, there are loads of ideas out there that are still untouched by Survival, however, we're not trying them. We're still doing the same old PvE with PVP approach that is proven to be unsuccessful.

 

If the Sadmins were showing interest in trying out new server ideas, I'd agree with you, but that's not the case.

[tobylane]

This seems as deserving of a test on S as the chaos variant did. Possibly even more so, as we can more obviously see how it would bring new players.

 

Gsand those things are moving away from chaos, that doesn't always mean moving towards PVE.

 

Schererererer the wild being used as a resource world is how it is in Runescape, it is how any PVP server is, especially if you're mining away from your successfully hidden base. The Runescape wild (when I knew it) had two minigames, several diamond ore, a very good afk experience gathering spot, a few shortcuts. It also had specific spawns of high level mobs, which were used despite everyone knowing clans would sweep by frequently in peak times.

[dizney07]

I agree, there are loads of ideas out there that are still untouched by Survival, however, we're not trying them. We're still doing the same old PvE with PVP approach that is proven to be unsuccessful.

 

If the Sadmins were showing interest in trying out new server ideas, I'd agree with you, but that's not the case.

 

Completely agree with this and Djt's statement. Our old formula proved to not work, so we tried something new that worked for about 2 weeks and then fell off. Why not try something else or build off of the success we had early on in rev 26? Going back to the way which proved to be stale gameplay after a week won't fix our problem in my opinion.

[totemo]

This is an attempt to hijack the success of P and put it to the service of S.  Consequently:

• It risks diminishing the culture of the successful server to support the unsuccessful one.  The two mindsets are quite distinct.
• S players will use P to farm resources and build elaborate bases in complete safety, thus diminishing the gameplay of S, where hunting a player who is otherwise distracted by those activities is an essential part of the game.
• If resources can cross the boundary from the P to the S domain, then P admins must factor S gameplay into their decisions.  For example, the spawning of ores and XP in the PvE zone might be changed to accomodate the S players.

We have the resources to run 3 servers. We've been doing it for years. The existence of the S server is publicised to P players in the lobby at every restart and constantly on the subreddit.  If P players wanted to play on S, they would.

 

S should stand on its own merits.  S should provide a gameplay experience that attracts and holds new players from outside the existing population rather than trying to cannibalise P.  If you think that this kind of game is what people want, then put it on S, next revision and see what that gets you.

Edited November 3, 2014 by totemo

[EeHee2000]

I personally don't think a merge is needed. This Survival revision is actually what people have been asking for for ages, but everyone had pre-determined that it would be shit, that includes myself. 
Because of that, the playercount is one of the lowest we've had before, on par with the revision before the previous one. 
I think people should come on and check stuff out, it's brought forward a few changes that I quite like. There aren't any major fuckups on the staff's part, just the players, because we haven't actually given this revision a chance to flourish, at all - as much as I doubted I'd ever say that. 
Give this revision a go, because the staff paid attention to what we said, especially with the PvP changes. 

Edited November 3, 2014 by EeHee2000

[TornadoHorse]

Speak for yourself, Eehee. I don't mind this revision either, but that's not because of the couple of changes that've been made but because it's something to do. I'll quite happily play most of the revisions that survival has put up but that doesn't make them good. I'm happy to play casually with people I know, that's the same for many left at survival. It's not the player's fault that there is a low player count, it's the fault of the revision for not being interesting, for not being advertised, for not trying new things.

It's all very well saying "come on players, let's give this revision a go" but who are you actually speaking to when you say this? Everyone who uses the forums frequently is already playing. After months and months of sitting stagnant we've lost far too many players and we're not replacing them.

[dizney07]

I agree with Tornado completely. This rev has proven to be exactly what everyone thought it would be. I don't get on because there's nothing for me to do. The problem isn't pvp mechanics, it's that there's no reason/gain to pvp. Without pvp, why not just play on P with more players and more chances at making friends? I've tried to give this rev a chance, but there's just nothing for me to do anymore

[WayneByNumbers]

I'm not an S player and probably never will be, but I too am sad to see it dwindle.  There's one aspect that I think hasn't been much addressed, one I'm rather sensitive to, being such a non-competitive sort; what is there for players who "lose?"  Most old guard S players have fond, satisfying memories of being a member of a widely feared clan, pulling off heists and assassinations, winning duels and arena fights, etc.  But what about those who die and lose their gear/load of goodies/chest of valuables?  This applies to new players especially, which we always need.  What reason can we offer them to keep playing?  And how do we offer such a reason without sucking all the fun out of "winning?"

[CROCKODUCK]

Speak for yourself, Eehee. I don't mind this revision either, but that's not because of the couple of changes that've been made but because it's something to do. I'll quite happily play most of the revisions that survival has put up but that doesn't make them good. I'm happy to play casually with people I know, that's the same for many left at survival. It's not the player's fault that there is a low player count, it's the fault of the revision for not being interesting, for not being advertised, for not trying new things.

It's all very well saying "come on players, let's give this revision a go" but who are you actually speaking to when you say this? Everyone who uses the forums frequently is already playing. After months and months of sitting stagnant we've lost far too many players and we're not replacing them.

Well said, I completely agree we need some drastic interesting and addicting change. This could be it and is the best alternative I've seen. I truly hope the sadmins hear us out. This change could push to balance building cities, and then possibly using admin incorporated rewards out in the wilderness to make PVP worth while. Armour and other rewards that only pvpers get could help make incentive, along with events and maybe staff built fortresses out there would be the defining factor.

This is even less drastic than going back to civcraft in my opinion. This could be very productive change if carried out correctly. The planning process is important, and I will leave this open for sadmin response on if they would consider this with community support and planning.

[Trooprm32]

As someone who primarily plays PvE, not a chance. This would break pve personally for me, because I play it to avoid pvp and hostilities, and enjoy the freedom to explore the map without restricting me to a certain area. If S wants to test this system themselves on their server thats fine, but leave us alone here.

[TornadoHorse]

As someone who primarily plays PvE, not a chance. This would break pve personally for me, because I play it to avoid pvp and hostilities, and enjoy the freedom to explore the map without restricting me to a certain area. If S wants to test this system themselves on their server thats fine, but leave us alone here.

 

This is the kind of reaction that worries me. We should only do something like this if the Padmins think that it would really make PvE better, not because S needs saving. I don't think this idea would work if we put it on S alone due to it being very similar to PvE. In theory I really like this idea, but I wouldn't want to risk PvE's success to possibly make S look a bit better.

[Four_Down]

As someone who primarily plays PvE, not a chance. This would break pve personally for me, because I play it to avoid pvp and hostilities, and enjoy the freedom to explore the map without restricting me to a certain area. If S wants to test this system themselves on their server thats fine, but leave us alone here.

You raise a good point.

 

This idea should only become a reality if both sides are happy, it's all good S players saying "Yes! Move us into P!", but if P isn't happy, it shouldn't be done.