Survival: The Next Revision

[Guest]

Following straight on from the news post here, this is the topic that we'd like to begin coagulating thoughts and ideas into a plan. You're more than welcome to submit these as individuals or as a group. We're looking for something quite different to survival as we know it, something that is fun to play and something more focused on pvp.

 

To help guide these suggestions, I'd like to offer a few categories to include with any suggestions submitted:

 

Community - Let us know which community events you'd like to see upon survival.

 

Design - How would you like the map and spawn to look? Would there be multiple maps connected through multiverse?

 

Features - Are you a complete Barlimore at pvp, why not try pvp kits?

 

Goals - What would people log in for and what is the end-game?

 

Plugins - Which plugins are essential to supporting your plan?

 

I hope those very brief descriptions help to give some guidance. If you do take the time to make a submission then don't feel the need to answer the questions I've typed up, interpret those categories as you wish and add more as you see fit.

 

If you see an idea that you think is bad, offer a way to improve upon it as we'd like to see Survival succeed. We'd like to continue developing as much of revision 30 in public as we can together (without revealing anything specific enough that would spoil someone's fun).

 

The most obvious thought now is "This is ok, so who is going to run it?". If you'd like to submit those thoughts privately to me or share here then that would be good. Just none of the applyformoderator messages I've seen please, where people nominate themselves under another username while pretending not to be themselves - Just be confident in yourself if you're putting yourself forward. Ideally, we would like someone who cares about seeing Survival succeed, would be interested in trying a malleable approach to upcoming revisions with significant community feedback and has a reasonable time committment.

[Forever_A_Steve]

I'd say that S deserves a break until 1.9 patches come out. 

 

If you do another one during 1.8, then you run into the same problem. 

 

 

 

1.9 will introduce different PVP mechanics that will prove interesting to future revs. So it will be good to wait until then, drawing your plan up.

[Guest Former Staff]

I'd say that S deserves a break until 1.9 patches come out. 

 

If you do another one during 1.8, then you run into the same problem. 

 

 

 

1.9 will introduce different PVP mechanics that will prove interesting to future revs. So it will be good to wait until then, drawing your plan up.

 

1.9 is certainly worth considering for the gameplayer mechanics and if anyone wants to try out the latest snapshots to get a feel for it or read up on their update notes then the versions and details are listed here. I don't believe that update 1.8 was the issue with our declining survival server, based on the downward trend since September 2014 and with that I feel we can begin putting together some ideas now.

[Willravel]

Community: I think the Arena events were quite popular, and for good reason. Over many, many revisions, the arena events were able to see a lot of different people rise and fall as capable  , as the game changed and as the community changed. I think that kind of organized pvp event is perfectly suited to S. 

 

Additionally, I think it might be fun to play with the idea of clans and have clan events. While I may not have been big on clans personally (nor pvp, for that matter), it could be a great way to combine healthy competition with healthy cooperation and team building. 

 

Finally, I'd like for S to have some sort of incentive for town-building. One of the things I've been saying since revision 7 is that we don't need to only incentivise pvping, we can also tweak the revision so as to inspire players to other success, like mining or building. Towns require cooperation and leadership and can (*cough* Sanctuary *cough*) result in builds that one would never expect on a pvp server. Maybe there could be a building/town contest which has beacons as awards. 

 

Design: this often ends up being the most challenging aspect of a new revision. We've had massive, elaborate spawns, we've had warp spawns, we've had drop spawns, we've had pap-heavy spawns and zero-pvp spawns. When I think back to my favorite revisions, there's a medium-sized spawn with drops to locations far enough apart to avoid camping, but close enough together to where they're not like hundreds of blocks apart, that way spawn and the drop area still feel centered on the map. As far as the aesthetic, I'm absolutely wild about revision themes. One revision could be ancient Greece, with tall columns and white stone and a Mediterranean look. Another revision could be the Nether is leaking, where there are areas of soulsand and netherrack leaking out of nether portals. Things like that keep it fresh, and don't really have to change the function of spawn, simply the look. 

 

I also am a big, big, big fan of road systems. They incentivise building close to other people, they aid in travel, but they also make it easier to get away from others if you need to mine and gather other resources to get ready to come back to the roads to pvp. NSEW roads leading from spawn out 1000 blocks, with the end of each of those connected by a square road system to allow outside travel, or something similar. 

 

And nether portals. The speed of the nether portal system is absolutely vital to larger maps—and I do prefer larger maps—and for the quicker collection of nether resources. 

 

Features: Dragon reset. This is another thing I've been talking about for a while. While my hat is off to people who manage to kill the dragon within the first few hours of a revision so we can get to work setting up nether grinders, if there's some way to do it, it would be a blast to have a new dragon reemerge every few weeks, not announced, to provide players with a new challenge and actually make the End (which is boring once it's torched and water'd) interesting again. 

 

The second thing is taking into account balance when looking at kit. I think this has been the biggest challenge on S, finding a way to reward players who want to put in really hard work grinding for god armor but also not wanting to drive casual players away because it'd take them forever to be on the same level as the full-timers. And this is made more complicated because we get significant changes to pvp every other game update. I think we need to convene a PvP Council, elder warriors who love S for pvp and who's job it is to look at balancing pvp to optimize fairness and enjoyment for a wide range of player experience and time invested. We can tweak any number of things, like limiting enchantments or plumping diamond. We just really need to find a way to make it work, because this is a big deal. 

 

Goals: Survival allows pvp. Survival's central purpose is not necessarily pvp. Rather Survival should be able to give out what people put in, adapting to the needs of people like me who like to build and supply resources or people who like to make impressive builds or people who like mining for that ultimate loot or people who want to explore a strange new world or people who want to pvp. One of the greatest strengths of Minecraft is that it's a sandbox which leaves the point of the game up to the player. Survival is just one level freer than PvE in that it allows combat. This all needs to be taken into account when thinking about how things like rule and gameplay and map tweaks affect the revision. We need to be like the subjective naturalist philosophers in understanding that the meaning of life is subjective, and can be found by each one of us individually. 

 

Plugins: I'm hopelessly addicted to Enchantism. It's gotten so bad that I get frustrated playing single player. I need dat. Safe Buckets, LogBlock, and basically all of the current plugins are pretty great. I've been quite happy with the plugins our techs and admins have in place. 

 

Other:It seems to me that there's a much deeper, underlying issue with S that's been around since day one and which we've never really managed to figure out: pvping and asshollery. I've been moderating for I don't even remember how many revisions now, and there's a correlation between pvping and rule pushing or even breaking. While most of the people I've banned are newbies who didn't read the rules about griefing, the people I've banned who I knew by name and who were long-time players are almost exclusively the people who pvp a lot and who can be dicks about it (severely uneven fights, god armor vs. no armor, tare-killing, spawn camping, base camping, etc.). There have been many times I thought, "Fuck, I don't want to ban this person, but he or she is a complete asshole and this has to be the last straw." On the one hand, this is obviously good for the server because it makes it a better place, free of people who excessively troll or grief or X-ray. On the other hand, though, we've lost some prolific pvpers, some well-known names, and eventually we banned so many that I honestly think it affected S activity. It's a catch-22: if you allow pvp there are going to be assholes, but if you ban too many assholes, there's not going to be much pvp, which seems to translate to less activity on the server overall. Obviously, this is not to say all or even a majority of pvpers are assholes, in fact many of my best friends on the servers are assholes.... err, I mean pvpers, but it's a let in the good with the bad thing, and I don't know that there's a real solution. At the very least, I think this needs to be looked at before Revision 30: the Return. 

 

As an aside, I want to send out the biggest "thank you" humanly imaginable to everyone who's been on S, especially my fellow moderators. Being a member of the community on S and moderating, though sometimes a challenge, has always been a complete blast. There have been and still are some pretty great people on S, and I wish you nothing but the best going forward, regardless of what happens. When and if S makes its triumphant return, I look forward to seeing you. If not, may your mines me lined with diamond. 

[tobylane]

I agree with waiting till 1.9 spigot. People are excited now for it, but the only relevant delivery is spigot.

[unce]

I'd like to see the "new" survival server focused on PvP. Right now survival is too close to a PvE clone with PvP enabled.

Edited September 8, 2015 by unce

[tobylane]

I'd like to see the "new" survival server focused on PvP. Right now survival is too close to a PvE clone with PvP enabled.

 

Some of that is just running a stable server, some of it is player intention and groupthink. What would you like to test changing?

[SpiderMan]

I'd like to see the "new" survival server focused on PvP. Right now survival is too close to a PvE clone with PvP enabled.

 

 

When the servers initially split, they were radically different.

 

In the past 10 maps, s has essentially become a pve clone with less features. Although pvp is encouraged, it's rarely happens and isn't generally expected.

 

So for new people joining, they check out both servers, see that nobody is dying on both of them, pve has real builds near spawn, pve has protections, pve has more people on, pve has towns, pve has a rail network, pve has active moderation, and there's a chance of dying on s.

 

Just by comparing player visible features alone, it's obvious which one is better.

 

For people that want to pvp, s is a really bad server.

 

For people that want to pvp occasionally, pve is a much better server than s.

[Guest Former Staff]

For people that want to pvp, s is a really bad server.

 

For people that want to pvp occasionally, pve is a much better server than s.

 

I don't disagree with you at all here but my next question is - So what would you like to see to improve it / change it?

[Texas]

Survival means certain things, we would call it something new.

The head admins would continue to have control over the server, but the server admins and moderators would be independent of the other servers.  The moderators would be chosen and approved by the server admins.  There would be a minimum of two server admins and no more than three.  For the purposes of my suggestion post, this would be Mumberthrax and TexasTormenture with a possible third TBD.  Guidelines would be posted publicly on how certain actions will be moderated.  We would utilize temporary bans and mutes to administer the server.  For instance, racism/bigotry would be automatically filtered by plugin and result in a 24 hour mute for a first offense.  A player being disruptive in chat may experience a 5 minute mute.  A second offense might be 10 minutes, followed by an hour, a day, 5 days, permanent.  We can iron out the details, but forcing players to appeal for minor offenses is unwarranted.  This policy would allow moderation to be more swift and understood.  No more pushing the limits and fighting the system in the appeals process.  If you get banned because you're nothing but a troll, expect to be banned indefinitely.  If you're banned because you're having a bad day, expect to be banned for a day.

We would use Citadel as a base plugin to encourage PvP including snitches (possibly with an inflated cost).  A plugin would need to be discovered or developed to have reinforced blocks automatically replaced after a 4 hour cooldown.  Using the acid block would bypass this (if easily scripted).  Reinforced blocks broken as grief would not drop for players to pickup, this is necessary to prevent duplication.  Chests would still spill their contents and only the chest itself would roll back.

Multiverse would be used to house a tutorial world where we could cover the basics of the plugin and its functions with visual appeal.  There would be a warp command to access this world and a back command would return you to the same spot you left.  There would be a 180 second cooldown for using the back command but the cooldown begins as you enter the tutorial world.  When used appropriately, no one would notice the cooldown.

An economy is essential.  The server shop would buy extemely low and sell fairly high.  The items available would be limited, but enough to spark the economy.  The shop would be available by a warp command for a predetermined amount of time to help launch the revision.  After which, it may or may not be available by warp.  The shop would contain a limited number of player plots available for purchase, this would include a use tax that is ongoing to ensure it is used for shop purposes.  Storage of items would be closely moderated.  The goal would be for bases to be developed including shops.  Perhaps these are even towns or cities - our players would have to determine this.

To help encourage new players, players would start with a kit.  The kit would progressively get better as time goes on.  So a player brand new to the server would receive slightly better items three weeks into the revision, than he would joining in the first week.  Players connecting from non-unique IPs would receive nothing.  If someone wants to bypass this, great, we'll moderate them.  The kits won't be THAT great.

The server would expect weekly updates on a pre-determined schedule.  Some things announced, others a surprise.  But only on the schedule.  So, say one week we tweaked villager trades and made a horrific mistake.  Great, you've got a week as a player to exploit that to no end.  Obviously fixing a duplication glitch or a well-known bug is another story, but a mistake in our admin-controlled updates...  This would help keep the server fresh and allow for us to mold the server as the player feedback warrants.  Maybe a month in the map is well-developed and there is an overwhelming demand for prison pearl to be added.  Great, we add it during a Friday update.

The map would begin as a rounded border with a radius of 2500 from the center using vanilla generation topside and some level of plumped ores TBD (including but not limited to glowstone).  The map size would be subject to change during each Friday update.  These two things would prevent obby bunkers in a corner.  The nether would be accessible by admin-placed-portals but the portals would be placed after a mad dash to find them like PvE does on the first day.  You can read their posts for more details.  We would employ a modified nether concept like the one used during the citadel revision.

Vanilla PvP would be utilized.  This gives us the ability to launch before 1.9 and to upgrade later on with some advanced notice of the change.  No time should be given to tweaking strength potions and protection limitations, especially with the upcoming change.

We would host regular arenas with progressive prizes and some sort of player ranking for various match types.  This could be further separated by BYO and kit-provided matchups.  IE: 1v1 BYO, 1v1 iron-kit.  The prizes for kitted matchups would be far less than matchups where players provide their own gear.  The arena would be hosted on a separate world using a warp.  The moderator hosting the event would have the ability to toggle players joining to keep their items, or for their inventory to be held separately for their return, but empty when they join the world for kitted matchups.  Think of that plugin where you warp away in order to fight mobs, it has this functionality.  The league would be at a consitent time to be determined a couple of weeks into the revision based on peak player counts - likely the Americas, but who knows.  So we'd be playing to the masses, sorry guy from a unique timezone who can't get here then, you'll need to find a different purpose in playing (which shouldn't be hard).

We can iron out the details, but these are the important aspects I would like to present as a starting point.  The above should give us strong PvP presence while being able to incorporate a fun raiding possibility without the drawbacks of grief.  So, the fun aspects of the previous citadel revision, but with above ground concepts and a player-driven economy.  I'd suggest auctions, but I am still struggling with how to counter-act players using this to transport items.

[tobylane]

Can you give any estimate to how much admin and tech admin time that would need per week, Texas? The economy, weekly updates, effects of map size change, arenas and leagues sounds like more than has ever been achieved in that timeframe. There'll also be a lot of things to tweak based on feedback, eg the kits.

 

The rest of it sounds like a merge of previous revs, which were each seemingly close to the limit of what was possible in one go. But what is appealing here that we haven't already seen to not be appealing? I don't see what there is to stop a repeat of the citadel revision, what is pushing people up to the surface? What is there to stop Prot 4 and Str II users scaring anyone else away from PVP? Why wouldn't you want non-US centered arenas?

[Texas]

Toby, your question is based on a paradigm of how server moderation is performed.  I expect the moderators would contribute to these updates and things would not be reliant upon a single tech admin.  The updates would be based upon player feedback and availability.  Some weeks you have adequate time from the administration team, some you have less and make less updates.  Adjusting the size of the map and editing a kit is a simple task, roughly 5 minutes each.  Running an arena league requires a couple of hours, no more time than playing in it.  There are sites dedicated to bracket automation, so this is seamless.  There is a large probability players make suggestions for plugins that already exist and very little work may be required to configure that if it was desirable.  IE, we'd begin with citadel, the drawback here is we may or may not need to script the rollback feature.

 

Are you saying something specific is unappealing?  The mix of things drives a very heavy PvP focus, gives players multiple reasons to login even if the server population is low (thus raising it in the long term), and we stop driving players away with our moderation style and start encouraging them to stay.  The citadel revision was a greater success than it is given credit.  I'd actually like to replicate many of the positive things that came from the citadel revision.  This by definition would be a citadel revision.

 

While you're suggesting a lack of time and resources is possible, why would we dedicate something in short supply to cater to a small subset of our population?  Perhaps there is a separate league based on a time zone that accommodates someone in Australia.  This is dependent upon your player base being present for it.  We can find a moderator among them to facilitate it.

[Texas]

Oh and Toby, please respect OP.

 

 

If you see an idea that you think is bad, offer a way to improve upon it as we'd like to see Survival succeed. We'd like to continue developing as much of revision 30 in public as we can together (without revealing anything specific enough that would spoil someone's fun).

 

[ScaryBilbo]

Community -

• So obviously arenas are popular, right, or we wouldn't have them. (Kits should be provided for all non official server arenas.)
• Clan wars yo. Each week the clan with the most kills from people in enemy clans (not randoms) gets a prize.
• Mini games. KOTV, Mob arena, Skywars, etc etc. We need people on other servers to be like "hey lets go to S and play that dank new  mini game they have." People who win will be given a prize that can only be used on s. 
•  

Design -

• A multiverse sounds like a fun idea, ive even suggested it before.  At spawn we could have warp signs. /warp could be used only in certain areas and would have a charge up time as well as a cool-down. 
• A huge map with one of each biome. The area around spawn would be a small version of the whole map. Every week the map gets bigger.
• Spawn should have a nether portal. From spawn there should be four roads and a large ring road circling around. At the end of each road there should be a nether portal. then there is an outer road that boxes in the inner road, the two roads are not connected.(same for in the nether) This is a rundown of what i mean. http://i.imgur.com/YxTVzDT.png?1

Features -

• Yes, every fresh spawn(after the first 24hrs) should be given a shit-kit along with their rule book. 
• Ores need to be plumped. Its no fun to go mining for an hour and have nothing to show for it but some cobble and a bit of redstone. 
• Massive xp plump. 
• Dragon reset.
• Server shop sells god armor and weapons.
• Silk touch spawners 
• IMO the nether is dangerous as it is. Keep it vanilla

Far fetched idea-

• Regions/kingdoms. Each region has an invulnerable capital NPC village with villagers who act as a server shop. Anything that the server shop would sell/buy can be found here. The villagers would be balanced differently depending on the region. Players could buy/rent plots for their own shops. Each region can be "claimed" by a clan through clan warfare. If a clan controls a region, they get a percentage of the server shop profit.  this promotes pvp and community.

[c45y]

Community

 

Clans are a great part of survival, but over the course of many years they have dropped off. I would like to see events focused around team games, such as having a multiworld that is a large arena of some kind, where weekly fights can be held for various prizes and position on a clan leader board at spawn. Individual fights are still fun for teams, and should award in-game currency for positions.

I don't have any real great ideas for how to encourage clans without penalizing players who do not wish to join one, extremely open to suggestions

 

Design

 

Much of the problems with survival is the initial time to start and get gear, and the constant threat of losing a full dia suit every time you pvp. My suggestion is to completely do away with player crafted armor - much like many 'kit' suggestions that have been thrown about over the years.

 

All players will spawn with a default leather armor kit, with the properties of diamond armor ( which will need to be revised once the full changes in the new releases are understood ).

Each player will start with a rank of 0. As players pvp their rank will increase, at various places their ranking will bump them into a new group. Each group will have a certain colored armor, which is not removable from the player inventory, as players progress through the ranks they will have their armor replaced with the various color of their group. ( example image can be seen in the plugin link at the bottom )

 

Dying to a player of the same or lower level will decrease the player rank by 1 point and award that point to the player who killed them. Dying to a player of higher level will not remove points to the victim or award points to the killer.

Rank points will also decrease over time with a decay, currently I suggest removing 1 point every 3 days, so players in the top ranks will have less people to kill, and more likely drop down a group as they run out of points, this stops a small group of players from getting too far ahead of the larger percentage of the players on the server, as they need someone of the same or higher rank in order to gain points to level up.

The player economy will use the existing and popular system currently on survival, with the exception of no placed spawners and no server shop. Economy will be entirely player driven without outside interference. Auctions and shops will still exist within the game in their current form, however adding a % cost to auctions may be a good idea to peruse.

 

( I am considering the idea of using the in-game economy points to avoid the decay for a certain time period, as well as offering non-combat enchants to armor for a set number of coins )

 

Spawn will be a small raised platform surrounded by 100 blocks of no-build area, with no cardinal roads or portals in place. Portals will be placed randomly on the map and be claimable by clans, who will however still allow for a 3x3 path for players to travel on to the portal. The map will be 3k x 3k in size, with spawn at 0,0

 

Griefing will be treated much the same as it currently is, players will /modreq to get grief fixed by a staff member

LWC will still exist in its current form with no changes to the rules about using it as a protective wall.

 

Rules

 

Bans and moderation will be completely reworked, survival by nature often has moments where people snap or say the wrong thing, we shouldn't remove people from the game for days or weeks over a moment of hot headedness. Breaking any of the nerd.nu global chat moderation rules will result in a 12 hour mute, every single time, unless players are specifically targeting the same player(s) over and over they will not be immediately banned.

Most other rule breaking will result in a 24 hour jail time, where the player will be unable to chat or use commands and will be locked in a box.

Bans will only be given out for repeat excessive breaking of chat/griefing rules or in instances the server admins all agree a ban is required ( this isn't a democracy )

 

Plugins

 

I have written most of the armor/rank functionality in a plugin called Battalion which will only need a bit of work once I look at the armor changes in the new releases - I would love to include a web interface with a complete listing of rank/level/clan information for every player, with detailed information of pvp history kills/deaths to other players however I find myself short of time at the moment to write that part of my design

[aaa11]

I've been playing 1.8 with some IRL friends of mine and I've been loving the tits off of it and I really want to play on S again. Heres what I think should go down.

 

For starters I think a 1.9 reboot would be the best course of action.

 

Community - Simple Arena with all kinds of different fights for people to enjoy, not just clan battles but I'd like to see player vs mob fights and randomly selected one on ones. Leave clans alone to form naturally, none of that faction plugin guff, keep it more vanilla. Leave things like balancing mobs and XP out of the equation as 1.9 is going to change everything and were all gonna have to learn new stuff. Balancing can come in a future revision (or sooner if truly necessary)

 

Design - Spawn can look pretty sweet as long as it isnt larger than like 250 blocks, I'd say a single world with borders limited at say 1500+- Smaller map means people have to interact more often with each other. would definitely have to tweak world generation to get a variety of biomes on a smaller map though.

 

Features - LWC. Yeah.

 

Goals - Well if the community cant succesfully keep themselves engaged with each other hopefully the arena will be enough. I think everyone learning and getting used to 1.9 will also keep people pretty focused as it did back when 1.0 hit.

 

Plugins - LWC (if its even still a thing anymore), and the usual mod/admin plugins.

 

 

Now while I do strongly prefer a vanilla minecraft experience, I do think that keeping S mostly vanilla for a 1.9 debut would be the best option since everyone is going to have to change how they play the game and adding in all kinds of plugins and stuff will probably make it daunting to not only learn new stuff about pvp and everything else but to learn new plugins too. Lets keep things simple and enjoyable.

Edited September 15, 2015 by aaa11

[Guest Former Staff]

Now while I do strongly prefer a vanilla minecraft experience, I do think that keeping S mostly vanilla for a 1.9 debut would be the best option since everyone is going to have to change how they play the game and adding in all kinds of plugins and stuff will probably make it daunting to not only learn new stuff about pvp and everything else but to learn new plugins too. Lets keep things simple and enjoyable.

 

I think you have a really good point here. Once 1.9 hits, I'd like to see a map go up for a barebones survival for a week or so, to let people try it out and get used to the changes. We can add in signs which give you access to items such as shields to get straight into trying them out.

[MasterCommaThe]

Zombie Survial
 

Design - Downtown Urban Sprawl from Eps. 1 of The Walking Dead/I am Legend/L4D. We can trial it with a Farmhouse setup though.

 

Features - Players that spawn as mobs will be automatically kitted, though they may pick up weapons from killed players.

 

Goals - People will have a running kill total and monthly total they are trying to keep up. Kills include those made while player as "people" or as mobs.

 

Plugins - Mob Disguise for players assigned to the "mob team", Kill Count of some sort, Auto Assign Team when login (reassigned randomly every game, games last 1 day),

[Bluuefuzzy]

I have a few ideas I still need to put together. I like many ideas that have been put forward too.

[redwall_hp]

Age of Alchemy

 

Dangerous monsters haunt the night. Even a seasoned player will feel like a newbie trying to hide in a makeshift shack. (Buffed custom mobs of various kinds. Along with the occasional wither, etc.) And those you've killed in the past may haunt you, in the form of doppelgangers desiring vengeance...

 

While you may find limited iron ores in the overlands, best saved for tools, you'll find iron grinders to be impossible to make, and no diamonds to be found. The only place to go for them is the Nether, a very dangerous place that requires an eldritch ritual to enter. The skull of a player, doppelgänger, or wither skeleton must be sacrificed, along with a precious mineral. (An individual player will only drop a skull once per hour.) Placing the skull on the ground, and clicking it with an emerald will transport you to the hellish dimension, consuming the reagents. There, you will find hostile pig-zombies—always ready to mob you, they never go passive—and the usual nether monsters, albeit with more frequent wither skeletons.

 

In the nether you will find your diamonds, scattered amidst the lava and roving monsters. But how do you leave? Only one of four portals will return you to the place you left. Hopefully you'll find one while your supplies last...

 

Experience is an important commodity, for it fuels the eldritch crafting system. You'll find that some items may be transmuted into others if you have enough experience to make the trade, but the ratio will have a cost—equivalent exchange. Don't worry, you'll collect it quickly...but you have to stay alive to use it. This requires an Arcane Crafter: an arrangement of bookshelves surrounding an enchantment table. But when you access the table, you'll see a familiar crafting table UI.

 

This replaces enchanting, and then some. Want a feather falling book? You must craft together a feather, a book, a diamond, and a requisite among of experience. Want to bottle some of your XP for later? Brew a potion of the required variety (mundane, perhaps) and combine it with an emerald. You'll bottle a set amount of XP into a "Bottle o' Enchanting," though you'll lose a little more than you bottled. Need a diamond? Craft two emeralds together, if you have the experience. Gold? Out of luck...that form of alchemy is still unknown.

 

Death is an interesting experience. Usually, you drop your items and respawn. But if you happen to be carrying an ender pearl on your hotbar when you are struck down by a player, you'll instead be magically transported to the End dimension, where you will be able to return to your body—with your items—if you complete the trials and reach the exit portal without dying. You must brave a maze of traps, parkour, and monsters, armed with nothing but your wit. If you succeed, you'll appear in a random part of the overland with your inventory intact...and your killer will be transported to the End for judgement. If you fail, your items will be gone forever...and the endermen will reward your killer with extra experience and possibly a mystery gift.

 

The question is: how do you obtain an ender pearl if endermen don't drop them in the overland? You'll have to raid their domain yourself, gearing up for an invasion, finding a portal to light, and crafting eyes of ender with alchemical recipes. They won't take kindly to you entering their lands and killing them for pearls, and you can't place any blocks there, so you must play on their terms...

 

 

Additional Notes...

 

• PvP enabled, but with a RuneScape style skull system that should create both risk and reward for killing players. The game is about surviving, and that means killing or cooperating. Each may be beneficial, but there are consequences for being evil. Killing a player flags you as a murderer for 30 minutes, and players receive some sort of advantage over you, as well as an incentive to hunt you down.

• Ender pearls cannot be used to teleport

• No spawner blocks should exist in the overworld, as grinders provide too east of an XP source.

• Villager trades will have to be rebalanced or removed.

• Villages will not spawn iron golems, rendering iron farms impossible to build.

• The general idea is to lengthen and complicate the tech tree, and make the world far more hostile.

[TornadoHorse]

Is this an idea or an announcement?

[Mrloud15]

Is this an idea or an announcement?

I believe it would be an announcement of an idea.

[SpiderMan]

1.9 is certainly worth considering for the gameplayer mechanics and if anyone wants to try out the latest snapshots to get a feel for it or read up on their update notes then the versions and details are listed here. I don't believe that update 1.8 was the issue with our declining survival server, based on the downward trend since September 2014 and with that I feel we can begin putting together some ideas now.

 

Nobody will stay if there's no feature parity to most of other pvp type servers. That's a fact. and it's the reason for the downward trend.

 

Most servers nowadays have multiple koth arenas, limits on over powered vanilla enchantments, some sort of base protection, economies, armor kit effect for various tasks. That would be a good starting point.

[TornadoHorse]

Are you really gonna do this? Cus it's looks to me like you're not gonna do this. No one has shown any committed enthusiasm for this new survival, why bother?

[SpiderMan]

Are you really gonna do this? Cus it's looks to me like you're not gonna do this. No one has shown any committed enthusiasm for this new survival, why bother?

 

Hmm... good point. Enthusiasm should trickle down, and that doesn't really seem to be happening.

Edited October 24, 2015 by SpiderMan