i. Preface
Hello ER, before i get knee-deep into this suggestion I'd just like to preface it by very briefly explaining why it's come to light now - in wake of the release of solitude.
A few months back the donations were cut down to $50, this followed me purchasing back one of the two dedicated servers (magenta) off of your fellow admins, following realization that they didn't need it and - couldn't get rid of it due to a yearly contract with our hosting company. The original plan was to develop the below proposal before presenting it to the admins as a proposal for an ER server.
However, we got wind of an ER SMP being in the works and quickly abandoned the idea (since it would've been fruitless to have two competing SMP servers). Recently that got released in the form of Solitude which - though a great server, wasn't quite the SMP I and some others were expecting.
Hence, I submit the following server proposal for community feedback, after discussions with the admins they are perfectly happy as of writing to, at the very least allow the proposal to go forward publicly - I will attempt to address all reasonable feedback and questions in this thread, for anyone interested in the proposal.
ii. The Problem
Quite a number of us like SMP, in the various forms that it was presented in through BT/ER's history (Primordia, Kami, smp v.3, etc.), but I think we're all aware that it's popularity dwindles within about 3 months nowadays, even at best estimates. I would like to think - given it's initial rush of players, this can be attributed to two reasons.
iii. The Proposal
I don't want to suggest anything horifically complicated, we've taken the path of heavily modded servers or heavily 'event driven' servers - they require too much time to maintain, time that no one has, and to be quite frank we cannot compete with other communities offering heavily modded versions of smp. What i want to suggest is an SMP that is simple/barebones, but attempts to address some of the issues that usually hamper the playability of SMP in the long term.
The below are examples of some steps I think we can take to rebalance out SMP mechanics/create something more durable without overmodding the gameplay, these aren't concrete and, one of the reasons for this thread was to take suggestions from people who are in favour of trying to rebalance the gameplay.
My aim is to have a pretty simple server - with only the mechanisms we introduce and a very basic plugin suite, with no caveats such as pvp being limited to one small corner of the map. I'm not trying to shoot for some 'ground breaking super popular server', I just think it'd be nice to try get a solid SMP for those of us that enjoy SMP and would rather see it as a more stable server.
Thoughts/Feedback? I'll answer all in the feedback post below this, I've also added the poll to gauge generic opinion for people who aren't interested in providing written feedback.
Hello ER, before i get knee-deep into this suggestion I'd just like to preface it by very briefly explaining why it's come to light now - in wake of the release of solitude.
A few months back the donations were cut down to $50, this followed me purchasing back one of the two dedicated servers (magenta) off of your fellow admins, following realization that they didn't need it and - couldn't get rid of it due to a yearly contract with our hosting company. The original plan was to develop the below proposal before presenting it to the admins as a proposal for an ER server.
However, we got wind of an ER SMP being in the works and quickly abandoned the idea (since it would've been fruitless to have two competing SMP servers). Recently that got released in the form of Solitude which - though a great server, wasn't quite the SMP I and some others were expecting.
Hence, I submit the following server proposal for community feedback, after discussions with the admins they are perfectly happy as of writing to, at the very least allow the proposal to go forward publicly - I will attempt to address all reasonable feedback and questions in this thread, for anyone interested in the proposal.
ii. The Problem
Quite a number of us like SMP, in the various forms that it was presented in through BT/ER's history (Primordia, Kami, smp v.3, etc.), but I think we're all aware that it's popularity dwindles within about 3 months nowadays, even at best estimates. I would like to think - given it's initial rush of players, this can be attributed to two reasons.
- Gameplay Mechanics: We've all been there, third month in - several hundred diamonds, nine chests of cooked steak, enchanted/overpowered gear. You've hit a stage where realistically there's nothing more to do, and to cap it off - every other group is the same, everyone has hit a plateau of resource hoarding with no further endgame in sight.Current minecraft smp gameplay mechanics just do not lend themselves to long term playability.
- Clutter: This would be fine, on it's own, but the issue now is that there's all these giant empty bases, with absurd amounts of land fenced off from everyone else - anyone new is faced with a server crowded with abandoned structures.
- Resets: Now we're stuck in a situation where we have a server full of abandoned bases, the only remedy of which is usually to just reset the entire map & inventories. Players get upset that they're put back to stage one, players don't rejoin, if you're lucky and players do join - rinse repeat the entire process.
iii. The Proposal
I don't want to suggest anything horifically complicated, we've taken the path of heavily modded servers or heavily 'event driven' servers - they require too much time to maintain, time that no one has, and to be quite frank we cannot compete with other communities offering heavily modded versions of smp. What i want to suggest is an SMP that is simple/barebones, but attempts to address some of the issues that usually hamper the playability of SMP in the long term.
The below are examples of some steps I think we can take to rebalance out SMP mechanics/create something more durable without overmodding the gameplay, these aren't concrete and, one of the reasons for this thread was to take suggestions from people who are in favour of trying to rebalance the gameplay.
- An alternate sink for diamonds: For example, I was leaning originally towards a Guild wars styled mystic fountain (throw items in - get a random item out. Better the items you throw in, the better the item you get out - offer a few modded/legendary items via this), just one idea, feel free to propose more.
- Rebalance diamond armour/weapons: I believe diamond gear needs rebalancing, lowering its durability closer to wood in favour of other benefits (for example, faster runspeed? immune or, at least stronger vs enchantments? ) the aim isn't to nerf diamond armour, just to stop it being a defacto "best armour", and instead something situational.
- Rebalance food: I believe food should be made to 'rot' after a number of irl hours/days, but on the flipside should fill up your hunger bar for a lot longer. this is to dissuade people from trying to hoard several chests full of roast chicken.
- Punish battery farms: To accompany above the rebalance and stop people hoarding animals rather than food, It should be entirely possible to make animals take damage/die if they're stuck within too close a proximity of other animals, people are always able to expand their farmspace to accomodate more animals, it just avoids the occurence of a few hundred cattle in a 2x5 pen.
- Weapon enchantments: Either limit them to only diamond weapons (which, if you remember - will have a low durability) or remove them in such a way that weapon enchantments are a rare reward from whatever diamond sink is implemented.
- Player building decay: This is arguably the hardest thing to implement and, something I'm still wrapping my head full around. An ideal scenario would be for buildings that have not had atleast one player around them for x hours in x weeks, would begin to decay - randomly removing blocks from the top down,
the purpose hopefully, is to add a natural mechanism for removing unused player bases. Little tricky but, I think it's feasible.
My aim is to have a pretty simple server - with only the mechanisms we introduce and a very basic plugin suite, with no caveats such as pvp being limited to one small corner of the map. I'm not trying to shoot for some 'ground breaking super popular server', I just think it'd be nice to try get a solid SMP for those of us that enjoy SMP and would rather see it as a more stable server.
Thoughts/Feedback? I'll answer all in the feedback post below this, I've also added the poll to gauge generic opinion for people who aren't interested in providing written feedback.
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