PvE general poll for future revisions

[Trooprm32]

We've seen the concerns regarding PvE's current state is this post, and are aware of the issues and hope to correct them in a fashion with the upcoming rev. As Sapphric said, we have been working on the new rev for a while now, and I just wanted to give an update on what we have going on; a sneak peak if you will.

 

The map is going to be considerably smaller than the current map, and the rev length will not be 6 months again. We hope to retain these promises for the next rev, and based on your feedback, for the succeeding rev's.

 

Sorry for the last-ish post, meant to do this sooner! Feel free to discuss this here or on the subreddit.

[ultrahub]

Troop pls, give info ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ

 

We go way back, let me in on your wizard Padmin secrets.

[schererererer]

I think the regimen of map expansion used on C makes a good model to emulate. Tight building early rev encourages social interaction, heightened activity, and railbuilding; while expansion later in the rev prevents overcrowding and allows for a more naturalistic "frontier experience". I think it's worth a shot.

[Trooprm32]

I think the regimen of map expansion used on C makes a good model to emulate. Tight building early rev encourages social interaction, heightened activity, and railbuilding; while expansion later in the rev prevents overcrowding and allows for a more naturalistic "frontier experience". I think it's worth a shot.

 

We're looking into the possibility of map expansions.

[saberfysh]

I have posts from last rev and the previous poll related to this topic, here they are for reference:

https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/3051-long-term-player-retention-on-pve/?p=23892

https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/2948-pve-map-poll/?p=23080

 

If this is too long to read, here are some brief points:

• Small maps lead to stronger and easier travel networks that promote community; Large maps prevent map crowding or ore shortages. This is the hardest thing to balance.
• Short revs provide high activity and keep the server map fresh; Long revs allow mega builds, less administration, and better timing with new Minecraft version releases.
• Maps of all sizes benefit from biome variety; large maps are a great opportunity to add surprises or interesting landmarks/terrain at the edges to spark exploration.
• Proposed formula for PVE's map size: Rev Duration = (K - 1) months, whereby K is thousands of blocks in map diameter (i.e 8K) -- an 8K map is set for 7 months of play.
• Server activity has been stimulated by player events (PVE lotto, Spleef League, Archery, Porkball, Golf Tournaments) and admin events in the past (e.g. Halloween/Xmas mob invasions, Treasure Hunts, Bounties, Obstacle courses, Contests, etc.)
• PVE's greatest asset is in crowd-sourced storytelling (Argoth/Brom nuclear war, Yowie drug cartel, Spleef rivalries, Signeca) and recurrring admin plot devices (Aboose Moose, Hail Broadcast, Unity, Dr.Sign)

I could elaborate, but that would be redundant. It would seem the latest experiment in having a large map did not pan out in spite of the majority vote from the last poll to have one. Now that everybody is aware of what they're asking for, this poll will reflect the opinions of a more experienced player base. 

Edited July 31, 2015 by saberfysh

[d3north]

Some things ive said before about P revisions that have gotten some support:

 

Pre-defined revisions, Start with 15-week revs, with a vote to extend to 20. It keeps things fresh, and the eternal "new-rev when" question will be answered. With revs lasting approx 3 1/2 months, its not too short to be cut, but not too long to fizzle. Here's where I first brought it up 

 

Revs should never be nebulous. Have a cycle of fifteen weeks, about four months. In week twelve to thirteen ask, is the server still a viable map? Is there enough interest in keeping this? Hold a vote, a five week extension for the cycle, after which the new rev starts. Do not compromise on this cycle. With a firm cycle the questions of Will the rev end soon and How old is the rev will disappear, and a good timeframe is added for events, for large builds, and for staff deadlines.

 

 

Also a 5x5 nether portal arrangement would work best, a good round number, easily dividable into military alliances when the late-rev wars begin, and has midway points so you dont have to travel too far.

[Trooprm32]

Revs should never be nebulous. Have a cycle of fifteen weeks, about four months. In week twelve to thirteen ask, is the server still a viable map? Is there enough interest in keeping this? Hold a vote, a five week extension for the cycle, after which the new rev starts. Do not compromise on this cycle. With a firm cycle the questions of Will the rev end soon and How old is the rev will disappear, and a good timeframe is added for events, for large builds, and for staff deadlines.

 

 

 

Also a 5x5 nether portal arrangement would work best, a good round number, easily dividable into military alliances when the late-rev wars begin, and has midway points so you dont have to travel too far.

The problem I had last time you suggested it, and still now, is that I don't think its a good idea to be bound by solid end dates. There needs to be wiggle room. Maybe if people are still interested, we could consider map expansions and such, but binding rev length to a precise date isn't what we want to do.

We've yet to decide on the future of how our portals work, but the main problem I encountered this rev is that too large or oddly shaped portals could give players fall damage, which is no good.

[Avi_Dangerstein]

I'm of the philosophy that smaller maps and shorter rev times makes maintaining interest easier.

[Herr_Fawkes]

My biggest gripe is probably revision length. I joined at the strt of R14, and it seems like revs 14-15 have worked like this:

 

Month 1: Cities get established, portals are claimed, a bunch of derp builds show up and are left lying around as players leave and never come back.

 

Month 2: Roads are fleshed out, as is the nether/CARBON rail system, cities and player count stabilize

 

Month 3: Spleef begins, not much else happens

 

Month 4: Nightoak preparation begins, the megabuilds begin to get finished

 

Month 5: Most people are gone now, those wh remain are waiting for Nightoak and the new rev. Anyone new who joins asks the inevitable "when is new rev?" question and we all get drunk ingame

 

Month 6: Nightoak, new rev begins

 

It's clear to me that the revs are about two months too long. Months 4 and 5 have very little going on that couldn't happen in a 4 month revision and still leave room to finish megabuilds and do Nightoak and spleef. I think the current vanilla map generation is fine for a short rev, but if I'm playing for 6 months I want to have a crazy map to explore. I'd also like to see the return of a square map, because it allows people to build a perimeter road. Additionally, the mesa was too big last rev and this one, and no one uses it. The map could shrink a good deal simply by getting rid of the huge mesa and jungle biomes that sucked up the far North and Southwest in R15. Of course, we still need jungle and mesa for their resources, but they need not take up a third of the map. As for map size, I thought that R14's 4k square was about right. Travel between cities was easy, but there was still plenty to explore, and the distances were small enough to allow projects like NorTH to be built. In short, we need a return to a square map with more viable biomes and a shorter rev duration to make things more interesting. PvE is about community, and it's hard to have that when the map is so large that it doesn't encourage cities to build near each other. R14 had the Argoth-Ambrosia-Yowie triumvirate, but the closest R15 comes is having Yowie and Avalon sort of near each other. Yes, Ambrosia and Brom are close, but they aren't well-populated enough to be a real community.

[Guest]

I think we all still want to have a set timetable for a rev. The reason for some people not to build much at the end of the rev is that nobody knows when the rev ends. Why start building something when you have no idea if you have two weeks, a month or two to finish it? If there was a timetable there could be so much more planning done to help the server grow. You know what you have time to build, you could actually plan a proper spleef tournament system, since you don't need to be scared that you run out of time for all the games to finish. It's very hard for me to come up with negatives for knowing. And I've yet to hear anyone say "Gee, I really love this system where I don't know where the rev end." but everyone is wishing for the opposite.

 

So what I'm saying... could we try for the next rev that everyone knows beforehand when the rev is going to end? Lets see how a set timetable would affect it, please.

[Sapphric]

The reason we don't announce ahead of time when the rev will end is because we've seen time and time and time again that when people know the rev is ending on such and such a date, nobody bothers to build ANYTHING for the last month or so. That was one of the big reasons the Padmins at the time moved away from 3-month revs every time. The server would only be populated for about 2 of them and no one would build in the last month because, "Why bother, the rev is ending soon."

[Guest]

The reason we don't announce ahead of time when the rev will end is because we've seen time and time and time again that when people know the rev is ending on such and such a date, nobody bothers to build ANYTHING for the last month or so. That was one of the big reasons the padmins at the time moved away from 3-month refs every time. The server would only be populated for about 2 of them and no one would build in the last month because, "Why bother, the rev is ending soon."

 

But I think you're missing the point. They still say that. I've heard it every rev and usually it starts annoyingly early. When was the last time this was tried? It seems lot of people are advocating for the 3-4 month rev currently, so everyone will start saying that after a couple months no matter what. I realise I haven't been around that long (since rev 12), but I have never experienced a rev where the end date is already known and yet even when I came for my first rev people were saying that from my day one and the rev still had quite some life in it. From my perspective it will prevent that happening prematurely. And if we have events and community builds planned for the time, I seriously think this could be done. Wasn't the time you're talking about a time when the revs generally were much shorter and unstable? Can't we have a poll about it at least and give the community a chance to decide it so we can at least try it again?

[tobylane]

0 hours this rev, but hundreds on previous revs. 3-4 months meaning it should only last past the start of the fifth month if there are technical reasons to, ie tech admins are on holiday, spigot is coming out in a week. I'm not familiar with circle maps, I just care that everything is within easy reach - <40-50m blocks does that. Biomes are tricky - we want oceans for a lot of temples but not much else, swamps for witch huts but not much else. Some biomes like extreme hills and jungles look difficult but are wonderful and popular to build in. Portal numbers - we've had too little in the past, have we had too many? I'd like to see P test out how many is too many, say is one every 2km^2 too many? If cities are 500 blocks wide then there's still 1500 blocks between them where towns and independents can easily not see each other.

[Heysofia]

My answer is the same as most people, I stopped playing because it is drawn out. I get what saph is saying about people stop building when they known an end date, but you can still have a shorter rev and not have that. Just say the rev averages 3-4months and people will get 2 weeks notice before it ends. Biomes, you want a mix of plains and forest, other biomes thrown in for resources and different building ideas. Current map, I think it's too big. Takes too long to travel around and uses up more resources having to build longer roads, rails etc. Plus other towns are ages away from you, you don't get that community feel as much.

[Guest]

We could also rework the portals. Instead of having a portal hunt at the start (which is fun for sure as such) make it so that towns can apply for a portal if certain criteria are filled. The criteria could be something like distance from spawn, how developed the town is, how many members are there etc. (and of course you can't get one too close to another portal). So in the start there would only be the spawn portal and others would pop up once towns get worked on more.

 

This would do a few things:

 

1) towns could actually build on spots they want to, not on spots they happen to find a portal on

2) would make early roads and railnetwork more relevant.

3) only towns that are actually built and active would end up with a portal

 

The negative is ofc the thrill of the portal hunt at the start wouldn't be there.

[buzzie71]

Word of warning about that - the topic of distributing portals to developed towns has been brought up before and historically has been a tough problem, mostly due to ensuring fairness and minimizing potential drama.  

[Guest]

Word of warning about that - the topic of distributing portals to developed towns has been brought up before and historically has been a tough problem, mostly due to ensuring fairness and minimizing potential drama.  

 

Which is the lesser evil though, if the other option is portals with no activity?

[ultrahub]

Word of warning about that - the topic of distributing portals to developed towns has been brought up before and historically has been a tough problem, mostly due to ensuring fairness and minimizing potential drama.  

 

I agree, it could get really convoluted easily. I'll use my own town Vinhaven as an example, we could be considered a well developed town as we typically get a lot of done in a very short amount of time, but as everyone knows by now the town becomes more or less abandoned after a month or two (to the point we now intentionally make the place look like ruins lol). Theoretically I could apply for a portal, as Vinhaven has been around for quite some time and we have experience with managing portals before. But then what happens when the inevitable activity dies down? We would have developed all our portal roads and stuff by then, but we would still be considered abandoned. Even I'm not sure If I would give a portal to myself. There's absolutely no guarantee that any town will/won't be abandoned.

 

And then of course you would have people bickering about who actually receives portals, "Why do they get [X] portal and we can't get [X] portal, when [TOWN] has been here since rev [X]!" which is a whole other monster of issues. I think portals as we have them now is as good as we can get without causing too many issues.

[Guest]

And then of course you would have people bickering about who actually receives portals, "Why do they get [X] portal and we can't get [X] portal, when [TOWN] has been here since rev [X]!" which is a whole other monster of issues. I think portals as we have them now is as good as we can get without causing too many issues.

 

I wasn't thinking that giving portals out would have anything to do with how long a town has been around. The only criteria would be that specific rev. My proposal was that they're not given out before the town is developed, thus eliminating the possibility of it ending up in an underdeveloped area. A town that's developed should be good enough. This would mean that at the start of the rev only means of travel would be old fashioned roads and railroads, which is partly why personally I like the idea, especially if the map is going to be smaller. Getting a portal would be a reward for a town on that specific revision of being active.

 

However I understand why this probably doesn't sound appealing to many, but thought to bring up the issue, since people are complaining portals being owned by people who do not develop the area and it's all half done. If it's fully abandoned with no builds, that's an easy case, but what happens when the area is half done, but then abandoned?

 

Another option would be "wild" portals, what I think I suggested before this rev. It would mean portals are set up around the world, but nobody would be able to build right at them, kinda like the spawn area.

[Cujobear]

 

Another option would be "wild" portals, what I think I suggested before this rev. It would mean portals are set up around the world, but nobody would be able to build right at them, kinda like the spawn area.

I like this idea, maybe 3 or 4 small towns could work together to build the portal area together but no one town would own the rights to it. This would add to the community experience for small groups or single players like myself. 

 

I also wish the area around spawn could be more of a buy, sell, and trade type hub. Instead of having large empty builds (although they look neat) if it was set so that anyone who wanted could set up a small shop or storefront to do their dealings with other players. I think it was Silversunset01 that made a post office last rev where players could deliver items to another players box to picked up later. Ideas like that are what I'd like to see nearest to spawn.

[totemo]

On the subreddit, here, I have made the argument that the P admins could generate out the map to a larger size than the map border, and then expand the border mid revision and add extra portals at that time to open the possibility of new portal towns.  Therefore I have not voted for a specific map size or revision duration.

 

On the subject of duration, I think we should establish an objective cutoff point, in terms of server population, at which point this kind of discussion thread is triggered and a hard deadline for the rev is set, during which time the new map is made.  The cutoff could be, for example, less than 30 players for 2 weeks straight.  This would be clarified before the revision begins so that everybody knows what to expect.  The deadline for map making should not be short.  Previous experience has shown that it takes a lot of time and effort; 6 to 8 weeks would not be unreasonable.  People naturally tend to underestimate this because it is not something they don't do every day.  Note that it's not 6-8 weeks of work every day; it's 6 to 8 weekends for someone who works or studies.

 

This revision we had a circular map border.  I would hope that we go back to square.  The circular border is a major pain when mining near the border because it is all too easy to cross and then you warp up to the surface.

[totemo]

I see that there is some discussion of the means by which portals are allocated in the thread above.  Might I suggest that portals be purchased by collective effort in gathering materials.  A certain amount of wheat, a certain amount of potatoes, carrots, beef, eggs, wool, diamonds, wither skulls, blaze rods, ender pearls, a largeish amount of obsidian to really slow people down.  All of these materials are placed in a chest and a modreq made.

 

Such a system would favour large groups that can band together to collect those materials quickly.  Individuals or small groups would simply not be able to gather those resources quickly enough before the maximum number of portals could be allocated.  Surely that is exactly what you want?

Edited July 31, 2015 by totemo

[Guest]

This revision we had a circular map border.  I would hope that we go back to square.  The circular border is a major pain when mining near the border because it is all too easy to cross and then you warp up to the surface.

 

Well that comment made me change my vote for square map. I like the circle one, but wasn't aware it had issues like that.

 

 

I see that there is some discussion of the means by which portals are allocated in the thread above.  Might I suggest that portals be purchased by collective effort in gathering materials.  A certain amount of wheat, a certain amount of potatoes, carrots, beef, eggs, wool, diamonds, wither skulls, blaze rods, ender pearls, a largeish amount of obsidian to really slow people down.  All of these materials are placed in a chest and a modreq made.

 

I like this idea a lot. Then it wouldn't be dependable only by the factor who happens to find it, but there would actually be a group of people guaranteed to take care of the portal area.

[saberfysh]

I see that there is some discussion of the means by which portals are allocated in the thread above.  Might I suggest that portals be purchased by collective effort in gathering materials.  A certain amount of wheat, a certain amount of potatoes, carrots, beef, eggs, wool, diamonds, wither skulls, blaze rods, ender pearls, a largeish amount of obsidian to really slow people down.  All of these materials are placed in a chest and a modreq made.

 

Speaking of buying nether portals, that gives me an idea: Padmins can have a contest with a portal as the prize. They would be able to choose how many they feel like adding, as well as when to do so. Anybody could sign up to something like that and play for a chance to win.

[TheRandomnatrix]

Just had a crazy thought(so normal by my standards).

A difficulty when dealing with portals is that they tend to discourage infrastructure. What if not all portals were active at any given time? They could rotate once every <insert time span>, making them only use able every now and then. The pattern would be easily predictable to make event planning easier, but general purpose map traveling would be more difficult.

I'm just throwing that idea out there to chew on, since I haven't heard it mentioned before.