[SUGGESTION]: Supplementary Battle/Games Server

[ultrahub]

Hello everyone, long time lurker ultrahub here with an idea that has been rattling around my head for some time now. Based on recent discussions that have come up, I feel now would be an appropriate time to put my idea out.

 

The Idea

 

I would like to see some sort of battle server for organized pvp and possibly minigames, I'm thinking hunger games, capture the flag, team deathmatch, and other game modes. This server would run separate to the others, so no major changes would be needed for any existing server. The idea is to have a server that everyone else on the other servers can hop to and from at their leisure to participate in the games. Maybe have some sort of command that let's you queue for the next round of something while building or hunting down your enemies. Then, once it's time you are transported to the battle server for a quick battle, and once it's done you are taken back to a lobby. From there you can go into another game or take a portal back to the server you were previously on.

 

Why I Think It Will Help

 

I believe that we can solve a few of our issues with a server like this, namely bringing in new players. Admitably I think Nerd is falling behind a little when it comes to some other servers I have played on, however no other server has the same attitude and community feel. I think by having a more direct pvp environment, it will attract a lot of "tourists" if you will, then those people would be more inclined to explore the other servers once they had their fun on the battle server. This will undoubtedly draw a lot of pvpers, and many may stick around on S. The reason I think this is simple, people want action immediately. Not everyone wants to start from scratch when it comes to a survival pvp server, as most servers offer a "starter kit". However people will be more inclined to stay and explore our existing servers if they have a direct way of getting to some action.

 

I also think this would be a great compromise for the rest of our servers as well, as I know many people who like to pvp but don't want to play on S, myself included. I feel this may be the closest we can get to pleasing new and old players alike, without drastically chainging our existing servers.

 

End Comments

 

I don't know how possible this would be, and I don't know jack about plugins or the inner workings of the server hardware, but I really do believe this would be a great help to our servers. I know we pride ourselves on being as close to vanilla minecraft as we can, but I think we can't fall too far behind other servers. I'm not saying we should change our ways, but adding in something new as a separate entity to spice things up in addition to our current setup may be just what we need.

 

We could even take this a step farther and have community made maps for our games, I would be more than willing to make a few if needed. I think our community could make a battle server like this stand out from the rest with our... "charm"... or whatever you would call it.

 

Thanks for reading my wall of text, would love to hear constructive comments and suggestions, ultrahub out.

Edited December 12, 2014 by ultrahub

[Guest]

I feel as though this has been done before many times, and if added would not make nerd any more special than it already is. I also think that it's unlikely that the admins will add something like this, due to the fact their donation drives get a majority of their revenue off of these events.

[ultrahub]

I feel as though this has been done before many times, and if added would not make nerd any more special than it already is.

 

I understand that, but at the same time we don't offer as much as other servers. Why would some random player choose us over another server with similar features? Our best asset is our community, but people won't see that at first glance. I know a lot of people may not want to lose the magic of our servers, but at the same time we can't stay stuck in the same stuff forever, that's why I proposed this as supplementary rather than a drastic overhaul of another server. If we can draw more people in with something familiar to them, they will get a chance to see our community and decide for themselves if they want to stay.

 

 I also think that it's unlikely that the admins will add something like this, due to the fact their donation drives get a majority of their revenue off of these events.

 

Like I mentioned, I don't know the inner workings of the servers, I would need an admin's input on this to formulate more ideas.

[Guest]

Regardless of more servers, advertising would be required to see an increase in players. Unfortunately as others have said, nerd lost the chance to gain a significant amount of players through advertising (again - based on my knowledge from the other thread, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong).

Additionally, I don't think people will seek nerd out based on its community, especially when servers exist with far better setups (with these features just part of the deal of playing there), and based on the fact the rules are so heavily enforced on nerd. With that said, I still like the idea for events on existing servers, but I do not think that based on the points I stated above that nerd will benefit with high player numbers because of a change like this.

[ultrahub]

Regardless of more servers, advertising would be required to see an increase in players. Unfortunately as others have said, nerd lost the chance to gain a significant amount of players through advertising (again - based on my knowledge from the other thread, so feel free to correct me if I am wrong).

Additionally, I don't think people will seek nerd out based on its community, especially when servers exist with far better setups (with these features just part of the deal of playing there), and based on the fact the rules are so heavily enforced on nerd. With that said, I still like the idea for events on existing servers, but I do not think that based on the points I stated above that nerd will benefit with high player numbers because of a change like this.

 

Yeah I have to agree about the advertising, but if you believe people are not coming to us for our community, then what are they coming to us for? I feel I should clarify, when I mention bringing in new players, I don't mean hundreds of new players will be cycling through on a weekly basis like a massive server, but anything that can bring in people who otherwise wouldn't give us a second glance can't hurt can it? I think our servers are great, but they don't feel "complete" to me. There seems to be this gap in between P, C, and S, I feel. Right now it's you either build, or be thrown into the wolf den. While I think this contrast is great, we seem to be missing the "casual pvp" middle ground.

 

And your mention of servers existing with better setups only furthers my point, we don't need to compete with them, but I feel we should at least be a little more relevant to the majority of minecraft players out there. I fully believe we can have our cake and eat it too, obviously an additional server would have our own unique spin and style on it I'm sure. This doesn't need to big the biggest change ever in the history of the server, but I would love to see this implemented for at least experimental purposes. Nothing ventured, nothing gained right?

[tobylane]

It requires so much time to prepare and lasts so short. We have chaos up occasionally for a similar purpose, we have arenas on P and S all the time for that. Maybe you could organise team fights in the arenas.

[ultrahub]

It requires so much time to prepare and lasts so short. We have chaos up occasionally for a similar purpose, we have arenas on P and S all the time for that. Maybe you could organise team fights in the arenas.

 

I would love too, but I simply don't have the schedule for that, that's why I thought if we took the the time to automate the process, it wouldn't be such a hassle to round up people and move them to a specific area on the map. I think a good deal of people simply can't commit to specific dates/times/locations, I know I can't, which is why I proposed this being it's own server. Something that's running all the time ensures no one is left out.

[JackTheLumberr]

I stopped at "CTF" that sound good!

[ultrahub]

I stopped at "CTF" that sound good!

 

Come on man! There was more than that to my post. |:[

[tobylane]

I would love too, but I simply don't have the schedule for that, that's why I thought if we took the the time to automate the process, it wouldn't be such a hassle to round up people and move them to a specific area on the map. I think a good deal of people simply can't commit to specific dates/times/locations, I know I can't, which is why I proposed this being it's own server. Something that's running all the time ensures no one is left out.

 

What do you think can be automated? If you can't get a group of people together at one time, who will be there at whatever you want on a new server?

[ultrahub]

What do you think can be automated? If you can't get a group of people together at one time, who will be there at whatever you want on a new server?

 

I'm not sure how familiar you are with this concept, but I have seen setups on other servers that went like this:

 

You type something along the lines of "/join ctf" it now queues you for the next ctf match which is in say 15 minutes. You go about your business, 15 minutes later you get a message saying you are about to be transported to the battle server. You get automatically switched over, you are now on the separate battle server in the lobby. After a short period all players who have also queued for ctf are transported there as well. Whatever plugin we would be using would then handle everything, splitting people up onto teams, resetting the maps, keeping track of score, everything. You go about the match, the match ends. All players in the match are taken back to the battle lobby, where they can join into the next starting game, or go back to their server.

 

The whole concept revolves around having the battle server run a match automatically at set intervals, some have it for every 15 minutes, others every hour, or even at a single time each day. Not every match will be full of people, you may even have a match where it's just 1v1, and if there is only one person then the match won't happen. The point here is that anyone, on P, C, or S, can queue up for the battle server, so they wouldn't need to drop what they were doing just to trek across a different server to find an arena. The reason I keep saying this is supplementary is because it is just that, something extra, not the full package. I don't expect people to be on the battle server 24/7, but having one in place would makes things a heck of a lot more convenient for these types of things. wouldn't it be nice to queue up for a battle, without having to swap servers, navigate terrain you don't know, find your way through someone's build, wait for night to fall so you can set your spawn, then have to walk all the way back? It's all about convenience and ease of use.

[tobylane]

You'd need to interest P players to join to have enough players, and my guess is that they'd rather build a ctf pvp arena in their city.

[Mumberthrax]

How would this differ from having a minigame server hosting ctf, team deathmatch, etc. ?

[ultrahub]

You'd need to interest P players to join to have enough players, and my guess is that they'd rather build a ctf pvp arena in their city.

 

The thing is though, you can't build an arena on P and have everything become fully automated. With a battle server you can customize it with a number of plugins, you can have class kits such as archer, alchemist, warrior, etc. You can have destructible maps with tnt and firespread that reset after every match. The whole point of this server is that we wouldn't have to change an existing server to try out something new. As for drawing in players from P, I know plenty of people on P who would enjoy something like this, and I mentioned earlier about using community maps right, well, why not "town sponsored arenas" or something of that nature. I don't think it would be that difficult to have a town make an arena on P or C, then have the admins world edit a copy of it to the battle server, so long as it met a set of requirements of course.

 

*edit: Had a thought, imagine if a town did build an arena, and it got put on the battle server. That would give the town free advertising! Think about it: you join a match of team death match, the arena is really awesome! The announcement message informs you: "Now playing on: Vinhaven Arena (P)". Now you know that arena exists somewhere on P, and you can go check out the town that made it. I think that's actually a pretty cool idea, thanks for inspiring me!

 

How would this differ from having a minigame server hosting ctf, team deathmatch, etc. ?

 

Honestly, not a whole lot. However, the discussions I saw about having minigames didn't quite touch on what I had in mind, hence my post here. These posts are more about having a supplemental server where we could put all this new crazy stuff without having to drastically change our current ones. The biggest point I want to make is the automation, the easier it is for people to join in on a battle server, the more people will be willing to give it a go, that's why i think a cross-server queue system may work the best.

Edited December 13, 2014 by ultrahub

[ROCKONN]

The thing is though, you can't build an arena on P and have everything become fully automated. With a battle server you can customize it with a number of plugins, you can have class kits such as archer, alchemist, warrior, etc. You can have destructible maps with tnt and firespread that reset after every match. The whole point of this server is that we wouldn't have to change an existing server to try out something new. As for drawing in players from P, I know plenty of people on P who would enjoy something like this, and I mentioned earlier about using community maps right, well, why not "town sponsored arenas" or something of that nature. I don't think it would be that difficult to have a town make an arena on P or C, then have the admins world edit a copy of it to the battle server, so long as it met a set of requirements of course.

 

*edit: Had a thought, imagine if a town did build an arena, and it got put on the battle server. That would give the town free advertising! Think about it: you join a match of team death match, the arena is really awesome! The announcement message informs you: "Now playing on: Vinhaven Arena (P)". Now you know that arena exists somewhere on P, and you can go check out the town that made it. I think that's actually a pretty cool idea, thanks for inspiring me!

 

 

Honestly, not a whole lot. However, the discussions I saw about having minigames didn't quite touch on what I had in mind, hence my post here. These posts are more about having a supplemental server where we could put all this new crazy stuff without having to drastically change our current ones. The biggest point I want to make is the automation, the easier it is for people to join in on a battle server, the more people will be willing to give it a go, that's why i think a cross-server queue system may work the best.

 

Bleh. Just call it a kitpvp server & leave it at that. Boring, overdone, not worth devoting an entire server to in the current Minecraft entertainment market.

[ultrahub]

Bleh. Just call it a kitpvp server & leave it at that. Boring, overdone, not worth devoting an entire server to in the current Minecraft entertainment market.

 

I can understand why you think that, but isn't vanilla minecraft overdone just as much if not more? And this wouldn't be an entire server in the sense of P, C, or S, it's an add-on, an expansion pack for our current servers. It would run in the background so to speak, I know that it very well can't hold up on it's own, but combined with the other servers I think we could have a complete experience overall. This server doesn't have to be a kitpvp server exactly either, it can have whatever we want on it, personally I'm partial to hunger games or battle royale setups.

 

I know it may seem not worth it because "it's been done before", but people are drawn to these types of servers, that's why it's so overdone in the first place. Not having something engaging like this only puts us behind the curve of other servers. Obviously we wouldn't just copy-paste someone else's server, we are too creative for that.

[ROCKONN]

I can understand why you think that, but isn't vanilla minecraft overdone just as much if not more? And this wouldn't be an entire server in the sense of P, C, or S, it's an add-on, an expansion pack for our current servers. It would run in the background so to speak, I know that it very well can't hold up on it's own, but combined with the other servers I think we could have a complete experience overall. This server doesn't have to be a kitpvp server exactly either, it can have whatever we want on it, personally I'm partial to hunger games or battle royale setups.

 

I know it may seem not worth it because "it's been done before", but people are drawn to these types of servers, that's why it's so overdone in the first place. Not having something engaging like this only puts us behind the curve of other servers. Obviously we wouldn't just copy-paste someone else's server, we are too creative for that.

There's a bit of a difference in the default Minecraft experience being overdone & the KitPvP Minecraft being overdone, namely it being a voluntary addition. If you want to dedicate a server to it, regardless of the amount of power/space/etc it takes up, you're still dedicating a server to it. There's no "running in the background" of the other servers, it either is a standalone server or isn't. You mentioned the class-based combat system, controlled by sign kits, which boils down to a KitPvP server setup. You speak of arenas for these kit-based combat scenarios, built by towns as a way of advertising their presences, and you additionally speak of the many people who are attracted to KitPvP servers for what they are. Allow me to challenge that line of thinking with one that asks this: Of the people who join a server that offers KitPvP, how many stick around to see what else the server offers? How many go & look up who made the arenas they fight in? How many dedicate an extra second of thinking beyond the experience directly in front of them? The answer is very few. Our objective is to drive interest to our servers as a whole, not just to draw in players for a cheap, quick experience seperate from everything else we have to offer.

[ultrahub]

If you want to dedicate a server to it, regardless of the amount of power/space/etc it takes up, you're still dedicating a server to it. There's no "running in the background" of the other servers, it either is a standalone server or isn't.

 

I never said I knew if the servers could handle this or not, for all I know it's not possible, but I am waiting for if an admin will respond with more information before contemplating that further.

 

 

You mentioned the class-based combat system, controlled by sign kits, which boils down to a KitPvP server setup. You speak of arenas for these kit-based combat scenarios, built by towns as a way of advertising their presences, and you additionally speak of the many people who are attracted to KitPvP servers for what they are

 

Merely examples, I went with those because they are the most familiar to me, and probably to others as well. There's tons of games plugins out there, I'm sure we could find an interesting variety of them for the server.

 

 

Allow me to challenge that line of thinking with one that asks this: Of the people who join a server that offers KitPvP, how many stick around to see what else the server offers? How many go & look up who made the arenas they fight in? How many dedicate an extra second of thinking beyond the experience directly in front of them? The answer is very few.

 

Personally, I don't think either you nor I can answer that, there's a lot of different types of people out there. Who's to say they won't be interested? If 1 or 2 people stuck around out of every 10, 15, 20, 100 people, would it really be that bad? I know I used to server hop a ton before I found these servers, there were a few that had set-ups similar to what I am suggesting, but they did not have the community our servers had, hence why I didn't stick around. Most of these other servers are like you said, cold, quick, cheap fun. Which is exactly why I think we can incorporate an idea like this an an enhancement to our already great servers. If people stay, it's because this is Nerd.nu, and not one of the servers you mention.

 

. Our objective is to drive interest to our servers as a whole, not just to draw in players for a cheap, quick experience seperate from everything else we have to offer.

 

So how do you suggest we build interest in the server then? And I think you are missing my main point, this sever would not be stand alone, you would need to be on one of the existing servers to queue up for it. It may be a separate server in a physical sense yes, but in practice it will be a cross-server feature that ties them all together. Heck, we could even make it so there is no lobby for this new server, and that everything is accessed as commands while playing on our current ones.

 

If anything, I think this is at least something worth trying as an experiment.

[ROCKONN]

So how do you suggest we build interest in the server then? And I think you are missing my main point, this sever would not be stand alone, you would need to be on one of the existing servers to queue up for it. It may be a separate server in a physical sense yes, but in practice it will be a cross-server feature that ties them all together. Heck, we could even make it so there is no lobby for this new server, and that everything is accessed as commands while playing on our current ones.

So you suggest that we incorporate a server that, unlike the existing ones, cannot immediately be gotten onto, must be waited on, must interupt gameplay on another server to be apart of.

 

I get that these postings of yours are all just suggestions, I do, but I see a number of flaws with them, glaring flaws, which seem to stem from your own lack of knowledge or at the very least clarity on what you're proposing. "Not a stand-alone" but still "a seperate server in a physical sense" is still a stand-alone server. Cross-server queueing be damned, its still a seperate entity. All you'd be doing with that most recent idea of yours is implementing an unnecessary waiting time onto a feature that's inherantly quick to access.

 

 

Personally, I don't think either you nor I can answer that, there's a lot of different types of people out there. Who's to say they won't be interested? If 1 or 2 people stuck around out of every 10, 15, 20, 100 people, would it really be that bad? I know I used to server hop a ton before I found these servers, there were a few that had set-ups similar to what I am suggesting, but they did not have the community our servers had, hence why I didn't stick around. Most of these other servers are like you said, cold, quick, cheap fun. Which is exactly why I think we can incorporate an idea like this an an enhancement to our already great servers. If people stay, it's because this is Nerd.nu, and not one of the servers you mention.

When you've been playing as long as I have, you tend to pick up on how the masses act when presented with certain scenarios. While there are always exceptions to the situation, the generalization that "The majority of players lack the inherant interest or attention span to explore beyond what's immediately presented to them" is usually correct. This can be observed not only in Minecraft, but in any other media.

 

As for my own opinions on how we can attract new players, or how we can drive interest back into seemingly decaying aspects of the server, this isn't the place for them. My sole point here is that these suggestions of yours seem to not be enhancements to what currently exists, but an entirely different topic altogether (if not a detriment to what exists currently).

[ultrahub]

So you suggest that we incorporate a server that, unlike the existing ones, cannot immediately be gotten onto, must be waited on, must interupt gameplay on another server to be apart of.

 

I only mentioned removing the server lobby because you seemed opposed to it, how else would people access the new server without a lobby or commands while on the other servers? And personally I don't think it would be interrupting anything, it would be entirely voluntary, we wouldn't be advertising based on a games server alone.

 

 

When you've been playing as long as I have, you tend to pick up on how the masses act when presented with certain scenarios. While there are always exceptions to the situation, the generalization that "The majority of players lack the inherant interest or attention span to explore beyond what's immediately presented to them" is usually correct. This can be observed not only in Minecraft, but in any other media.

 

I have been playing minecraft for a long ass time as well, I have literally server hopped for over a year before staying at these servers for a bout 2 or 3 years now, before all that I frequented other servers since multilayer was released for minecraft. I have played on towny servers, mcmmo servers, faction servers, no rules servers, hardcore survival servers, and many other various modded servers. So trust me, I'm not making all these suggestions without some form of prior knowledge. I will agree with your point about  the average player's attention span to some degree, but my own personal experience proves to me that people really do like picking one, reliable, friendly server that they know they can log into every day for some guaranteed fun, even if it is only for a little while at a time.

 

I get that these postings of yours are all just suggestions, I do, but I see a number of flaws with them, glaring flaws, which seem to stem from your own lack of knowledge or at the very least clarity on what you're proposing. "Not a stand-alone" but still "a seperate server in a physical sense" is still a stand-alone server. Cross-server queueing be damned, its still a seperate entity. All you'd be doing with that most recent idea of yours is implementing an unnecessary waiting time onto a feature that's inherantly quick to access.y).

 

Well, that was the entire point of this whole series of posts, I knew my idea had some flaws in it, I didn't know which flaws, but through discussion we can learn them and work to sort them out. You won't be hurting my feelings by opposing my ideas, I love good old fashioned honest discussion. That being said, I will try my best to sort out the "not a standalone" miscommunication we seem to be having. Yes, the new server would be a separate entity, I never meant to say it wasn't. Resources would have to be put aside to run it I know, but how much resources it would take to do so, I do not know, only the admins would know, so I wait for if they will comment with more information on that. When I keep saying "not a standalone", I mean the games server won't be advertised as G.Nerd.nu alongside P, C, and S. Yes, it will be it's own server, but it will act in a different fashion than our current ones, sort of like event or chaos, they are still hosted on the same hardware, but are different entities with a different set of parameters. However, I still don't how it would be best for this server to be set up, the cross server queuing was just a suggestion, I'm not really sure of how else to set up a server like that without forcing people to log into it directly and take away from the other servers.

 

As for my own opinions on how we can attract new players, or how we can drive interest back into seemingly decaying aspects of the server, this isn't the place for them. My sole point here is that these suggestions of yours seem to not be enhancements to what currently exists, but an entirely different topic altogether (if not a detriment to what exists currently).

 

Let me ask you a couple things:

 

What exactly do you think would be detrimental to these servers with this idea?

 

What good, do you think could come of my ideas?

 

If this idea were to be implemented, how would you implement it?

 

I'm not an unreasonable person, I'm a game designer, it's what I'm going to college for. So far I'm having a lot of fun debating these ideas, I appreciate your directly oppositional points.

[jllmprrt]

I feel like the vanilla (or semi vanilla) servers are becoming more obsolete actually. Looking on any server list website the ones that often top the list are faction or minigame servers, so I like to think nerd.nu is different from many in terms of play style.

[ultrahub]

I feel like the vanilla (or semi vanilla) servers are becoming more obsolete actually. Looking on any server list website the ones that often top the list are faction or minigame servers, so I like to think nerd.nu is different from many in terms of play style.

 

That's what I'm getting at here, I think we can incorporate something successful while keeping our own style.