Bringing up an old idea with some changes

[dizney07]

So this morning during my shower, I started thinking about Survival and what can be implemented into a revision in order to make it more fun without taking away from the survival aspect. One of my ideas I truly liked was this one: https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/2250-a-survival-idea/

Now some people didn't seem to like the enchanting idea, and to be honest, I don't either as much now that I think about it. Not being able to enchant based purely on luck would be...well annoying. Enchanting has never really been the problem due to enchantism and grinders, so really there's no point in making that aspect harder. So instead, I would like to propose a few changes to the idea itself. 

 

Instead of making enchanting harder, I determined it would be better to make mining harder. Now I know, that sounds dumb at first but hear me out.

- Ores are not plumped, but are more scarce than usual. 

- The areas, ghost towns, whatever/wherever the chests are will no longer hold enchanted books. Instead they can house any kind of ore, and any kind of armor.

This puts an emphasis on going out into these areas to try and scavenge for armor and diamonds, instead of focusing on the mining aspect. Maybe I'm wrong, but mining in general tends to be a bit boring, and while it's still an option, this just feels like it adds more to gameplay having to explore and search. At the same time it's a risk/reward situation. 

 

More balanced enchants/kits for pvp. Honestly I have seen this come up in countless threads about S and I think it would be very important now that I actually know what it means. I'm not huge on PvP that doesn't require a stone sword and an angry person who just lost his carrots, basically because I never thought it was worth it to spend maybe an hour on a set for a 5 minute fight that I'll likely lose because I don't have great pvp experience, or I win and now I have two broken kits that need repairs. So with this, enchants and potions would be balanced out in the best way the community sees fit. Since I don't pvp a lot, I don't know what is the "perfect kit" to make pvp rewarding (actually earning a kit instead of having two broken ones) but I have talked to a few players about it and many seem to know what would be the best.

 

Honestly this post is for mainly community feedback. Obviously we only have one sadmin at the moment, so that's not the target audience. I want to hear what the community thinks, for no other reason than to see what the community thinks. We have a ways to go to get back to where S once was so we might as well start now.

[iamdarb]

I like the idea, but after a certain point there would be no more unexplored chests and then we'd be back to the monotiny of mining and with the scarcity of ore(as suggested in your post) I can see that becoming an even bigger bore. I like the idea of having gear in village chests, and mineshaft chests though. I just think that ore levels should be left at vanilla.

 

As for the kits, I just started to PvP this rev so I don't have the most experience to know what is or isn't good. I know for Rev 27 it was exremely easy to kill someone with 3-4 Harming II pots while your opponent was in fully enchanted diamond gear. I would definitely like to see some of the restrictions on enchantism removed.

[dizney07]

I like the idea, but after a certain point there would be no more unexplored chests and then we'd be back to the monotiny of mining and with the scarcity of ore(as suggested in your post) I can see that becoming an even bigger bore. I like the idea of having gear in village chests, and mineshaft chests though. I just think that ore levels should be left at vanilla.

 

As for the kits, I just started to PvP this rev so I don't have the most experience to know what is or isn't good. I know for Rev 27 it was exremely easy to kill someone with 3-4 Harming II pots while your opponent was in fully enchanted diamond gear. I would definitely like to see some of the restrictions on enchantism removed.

 

I should clarify, the chests aren't in minecraft villages/mineshafts, but set protected areas built into the map. The chests found in these areas have random items in them, and are set to respawn items after a certain amount of time. So there would never be a shortage of chests on the map, as they would always be respawning. It gives players the option on how to get armor and ores, and creates hotspots for pvp 

[tobylane]

That idea has been shot down in the past due to fears of clans camping there. Could you suggest a way this wouldn't be a problem?

 

How would the mining affect new players, who may not know that the slowness is intentional?

[SpiderMan]

• The areas, ghost towns, whatever/wherever the chests are will no longer hold enchanted books. Instead they can house any kind of ore, and any kind of armor.
  • This puts an emphasis on going out into these areas to try and scavenge for armor and diamonds, instead of focusing on the mining aspect. Maybe I'm wrong, but mining in general tends to be a bit boring, and while it's still an option, this just feels like it adds more to gameplay having to explore and search. At the same time it's a risk/reward situation.

 

The world would have to be massive for that to be effective 20k square. Also, that is a feature on a lot of servers that have mcmmo installed.

 

 

More balanced enchants/kits for pvp. Honestly I have seen this come up in countless threads about S and I think it would be very important now that I actually know what it means. I'm not huge on PvP that doesn't require a stone sword and an angry person who just lost his carrots, basically because I never thought it was worth it to spend maybe an hour on a set for a 5 minute fight that I'll likely lose because I don't have great pvp experience, or I win and now I have two broken kits that need repairs. So with this, enchants and potions would be balanced out in the best way the community sees fit. Since I don't pvp a lot, I don't know what is the "perfect kit" to make pvp rewarding (actually earning a kit instead of having two broken ones) but I have talked to a few players about it and many seem to know what would be the best.

 

A lot of the major pvp servers actually rebalanced the game mechanics. It's a lot of work, but it guarantees unique pvp gameplay. Most pvp servers actually rebalance strength potions and enchanted golden apples already, so doing the extra step is a no-brainer. A few servers also limit enchants too. So rebalancing while creating additional progression is a concept that can become popular, for example, mcmmo and factions.

 

 

As for the kits, I just started to PvP this rev so I don't have the most experience to know what is or isn't good. I know for Rev 27 it was exremely easy to kill someone with 3-4 Harming II pots while your opponent was in fully enchanted diamond gear. I would definitely like to see some of the restrictions on enchantism removed.

 

The major problem with enchantism is that it allows people to get to the endgame ridiculously fast. It kills progression. It's not that noticeable on servers with large player bases because of the constant influx of new random players, but on this one, it creates gameplay stagnation relatively fast.

 

 

That idea has been shot down in the past due to fears of clans camping there. Could you suggest a way this wouldn't be a problem?

 

There's absolutely zero evidence that has ever been an issue caused through gameplay. It's more of a "walking into a pit of lava" type of problem and only happens with centralized spawns where there's no other path to take to exit.

 

 

How would the mining affect new players, who may not know that the slowness is intentional?

 

I'm 100% sure people who play on multiplayer minecraft know how to play minecraft. Mining is one of the fundamental aspects of the game. As long as the method is obvious and straight forward, I doubt anyone will have a problem.

Edited February 14, 2015 by gsand

[dizney07]

That idea has been shot down in the past due to fears of clans camping there. Could you suggest a way this wouldn't be a problem?

 

How would the mining affect new players, who may not know that the slowness is intentional?

 

I don't know, from my perspective it seemed like it was heavily supported aside from the enchanting. Honestly there would be no way to truly balance players entering the areas and sitting there aside from other players coming along or by having the timer on respawn times long enough to where players get bored of sitting there (i.e. 15-20 minutes). This gives advantages to players who play on the server more, but on any server players who play more are likely to be more powerful and be richer than those who play less. 

 

It would be listed at spawn, along with any other change that would be put into place. Mining would still be a thing, I don't mean to have it gone completely. Just a bit less than vanilla MC to put an emphasis on leaving your base to try and gather/explore/pvp.

 

 

The world would have to be massive for that to be effective 20k square. Also, that is a feature on a lot of servers that have mcmmo installed.

 

 

Why would the world have to massive for it to be effective? Sure, this one feature could be on other servers, I don't get why that's a problem though? Many servers try stuff from other servers to see how it would work with their player base (for example, civcraft).

 

 

A lot of the major pvp servers actually rebalanced the game mechanics. It's a lot of work, but it guarantees unique pvp gameplay. Most pvp servers actually rebalance strength potions and enchanted golden apples already, so doing the extra step is a no-brainer. A few servers also limit enchants too. So rebalancing while creating additional progression is a concept that can become popular, for example, mcmmo and factions.

 

But how would this affect the server running? If it would work I would be interested in hearing more for sure. 

[SpiderMan]

Why would the world have to massive for it to be effective? Sure, this one feature could be on other servers, I don't get why that's a problem though? Many servers try stuff from other servers to see how it would work with their player base (for example, civcraft).

 

The issue is... the current player base is only a fraction of what it once was. If you want new people to stay, there has to be enough exploration areas for the target player base and features and things that they're already accustomed to.

 

 

But how would this affect the server running? If it would work I would be interested in hearing more for sure. 

 

It wouldn't affect the server stability at all.

 

 

If it would work I would be interested in hearing more for sure. 

 

It's clearly working. Factions and similar types of servers have considerably more player numbers than vanilla survival with pvp enabled servers, by orders of magnitude.

[dizney07]

The issue is... the current player base is only a fraction of what it once was. If you want new people to stay, there has to be enough exploration areas for the target player base and features and things that they're already accustomed to.

 

Yeah I agree, which is why this is a relatively vanilla idea. While the concept is to reward exploring, we also want to focus on PvP, so having a massive map might take that away. Having around 4-6 of these "areas" I think would be ideal, while having a few smaller areas could be in as well (maybe only having 1 or 2 chests). We don't want another rev 25 where everyone is so far away from each other pvp is nonexistent. 

[Pyr0mrcow]

Smaller supply areas near the larger ones, so that newer players have a chance at stocking up before breaking the older players' hold over the large areas? People could of course camp all supply locations within their area...but that'd require bringing more people on the server to help, which would make the camping less of a downside anyway.
I don't know how the past suggestions were or how S has done it so far, but I'm thinking along the lines of State of Decay, if anyone's ever played that game; area has a primary building with minor defensive positions and whatnot, but with seperate, small buildings/camps nearby containing lesser supplies of different types, such as food, maybe minor beneficial potions, ect. If you're able to hold the primary settlement for a while, you could stock up on armor and whatever else the area has and move on; but you simultaneously make yourself a bigger and bigger target the longer you stay, and people who want to take your earnings do have a fighting chance, given the outer supplies.
Make the areas accessible and well known, increasing the risk for the potential gain. I would even say don't allow people to set their spawn point. That should be managable with regions, if I remember right.
I'm probably thinking of a more fast-paced server than is planned, though...

Edited February 15, 2015 by Pyr0mrcow

[tobylane]

There's absolutely zero evidence that has ever been an issue caused through gameplay. It's more of a "walking into a pit of lava" type of problem and only happens with centralized spawns where there's no other path to take to exit.

 

 

I'm 100% sure people who play on multiplayer minecraft know how to play minecraft. Mining is one of the fundamental aspects of the game. As long as the method is obvious and straight forward, I doubt anyone will have a problem.

 

It's an issue other people thought of. I'm just repeating their thoughts. I don't see how spawn and exit matters.

 

They won't read signs and books, we've covered that heavily before. They could get annoyed at slower mining when they go to it, as it is fundamental.

[EeHee2000]

It's an issue other people thought of. I'm just repeating their thoughts. I don't see how spawn and exit matters.

 

They won't read signs and books, we've covered that heavily before. They could get annoyed at slower mining when they go to it, as it is fundamental.

They'll read anything that's convenient to read. If signs are placed in such a way it's impossible to ignore them at first glance, they'll read them and from there they can be directed to the rulebook - which, might I add, we need to start simplifying. 

[dizney07]

It's an issue other people thought of. I'm just repeating their thoughts. I don't see how spawn and exit matters.

 

They won't read signs and books, we've covered that heavily before. They could get annoyed at slower mining when they go to it, as it is fundamental.

 

I've seen something that I think MrGauthier set up, where when you spawn for the first time you have to walk through a room full of questions, and the only way to advance is to select the right answer to each question. It would be as simple as

 

"Ore on this server during this revision is:"

-Plumped

-Vanilla

-Scarce

 

"Diamonds can be found in a different way than mining. This way is:"

-Respawning Chests located in built in areas.

-Underwater

-Neither, only by mining

 

This way they are well aware and are forced to see what changes have been made. Again this is MrGauthier's idea, but it works. This also works for some of the more basic rules such as logging or griefing

[iamdarb]

I definitely would like to see a spawn that coerces you go through a series of questions on the rules. I've seen it work on other servers and at least once a player has successfully exited spawn the excuse "I didn't know that was against the rules" becomes void.

[Pyr0mrcow]

Yea, used that on an old server that had 100-200 usual traffic and it worked well while we were up. However, I suggest only using it for major things, since asking about ore generation and whatnot could seem tedious and unnessecary to a new user. Have them answer a max of 5 questions, preferably 3. Focus on the major rules that are the most likely to get new players banned, like the general feelings on homophobia across servers, no 'improper' builds, ect. Maybe include a question based on how to get help from staff (Modreq).
Also, I'd say limit the possible answers to 2; if the player really is reading in the first place, it doesn't take more than 2 tries to remember which one was right.

 

I'm thinking this would be a first login to the server cluster thing, rather than one for each server. Maybe a seperate world players are redirected to, rather than the lobby. At the end, tell them how the lobby portals work, then teleport them to the lobby; that way, people aren't so confused during their first restart.

Edited February 15, 2015 by Pyr0mrcow