SMP Is Dead. What Happened? Were Did It Go Wrong?

Samlen

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I think that one of the largest issues plaguing smp's has been balancing those who are pvp oriented and those that aren't. You cater too much towards the pvpers and the rest feel like they can't strive for anything without it being taken away easily. You cater too much to the non-pvpers and nothing exciting happens with people in their pillow-maze-forts and convoluted locks. You have to somehow create an environment that allows pvpers to fight and reap rewards without the more passive players getting frustrated and quitting. With that in mind, here's two suggestion for future smps.

It's been mentioned, but arenas would be a great way to start. Weekly arena tournaments with competitors putting in currency/gear to join and winners getting their choice of the loot from could be easy an enough start. Even changing the arena a little bit each week could be enough to keep it interesting, or maybe offer a unique reward every once in awhile.

This one is a little more complicated but what if each 'clan' had a loot chest that was easily accessible and passively guarded by mobs? The more people the clan had the more the loot chest would contain and the more money the clan members invested in their 'guards', the stronger they would become. It would work best if the clan's loot chest was not accessible by the clan members themselves and only from opposing clans. The chests would only be allowed to be raided every so often (Hourly? Daily? Not sure on this part) and everytime they were raided, it would deduct money from the clan's bank to refill it. If there were to be a set number of clans like LoP, then each clan could have it's own unique theme with it's loot chest area and mob guards. If there aren't a set number of clans, then the leader of each clan would need to create a 'loot chest area' and have it be approved by a staff members before officially creating the clan. I understand that this second option would be incredibly hard to code/put together, but I think that the general idea should be put out there to be discussed or changed to whatever we think would work best.
 

Adobewedge

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I'm a bit late to the game, I'm aware. No one decided to tell me Primordia was back, ya jerks. :(

I'll quickly go though my thoughts on Spawn/Starter Island, and then all the long stuff is on the bottom.

So, Spawn/Starter Island
Pros:
- Feels very much like the old Primordia island!
- Oh look, shops! And NPCs? Neat. Do they have quests?
- Still the same clans! Can't wait to Rejoin Primus

Cons:
- Oh god I forgot how big this goddamn island was
- I can't afford anything in this shop, and I have no idea how to get back here, and the NPCs don't give quests?
- How the hell do I join a clan? I have to go where? I can't just step into the portal?
- Shit, I have no food and now I can't run. The time spent on the island just grew 30%

Suggested fixes? (Many of these have already been suggested):
- Shops go to the main world, central location
- Spawn Island is only for picking families (and maybe some tutorial mechanics about the server. Econ, any leveling/class/clan stuff. BASIC INFO)
- Spawn world could still have a fancy island for later things, but new players want in the server with little/no delay
- Look at the server hub as example. Very, very quick to get to the server you want, but if you explore you find fancy things, but the servers are right bloody there.



Main world mechanics:
This is more stream of thought.

I remember classes from the original Primordia, but for some reason it seems way more confusing this time around than last time. I don't know if thats the old man in me talking, but back in my day I remember a lot of this information was either in /help or on the forums. It seems hard to find a master list of things around here. Like, I couldn't even use a stone axe I found? Thats seems super off for some reason. There is beauty in simplicity, and I am not claiming a class/role system is bad, but it might benefit the whole of the server if it was a little shallower and a little less restrictive?

As is one of my claim to fames, I have never killed someone in SMP. Shot? Yes. Hit with a sword? Yeah. But murdered? Nope. PvP is a large grey zone of information to me. I don't have any practical experience with it. Outside of Minecraft that is a different story, as I'm drawing on my experience as an EVE Online player for suggestions that might encourage PvP, raiding, non-clan entities, and many other smaller things?

Each clan in Primordia has the core corner-ish area they begin with. This is fine, and should stay the same. But they need to be significantly smaller than what it currently is. Smaller clan lands would be an interesting change for the builders of the SMP servers as a smaller space, restrictions, could lead to creative building solutions. Its like being given a blank slate and told to create, or being given a blank slate, but you can't use blue. Which is more interesting of a challenge?

Plus a vastly bigger Wild needs more space. The Wild Zone between clan lands needs to be large, dangerous, but also needs to be lucrative. This is where all the rare ores are, no longer to be safely mined under the clan lands. Diamond, Lapis, Emeralds, higher frequencies of coal, iron and Redstone all appear the further you go from home. But farther you leave home, the less likely you are to return safely. You'll need to mine in teams, or take along groups of fighters to defend your hard earned spoils. Or maybe you want to hunt the other clan's workers? Set up camp and let them do all the work, only to ambush them on the way home and pilfer their work?

This also introduces something I think might make PvP veeeery interesting.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of The Loot Fairy says 'No'?
I thought not.
It’s not a story the PvPer would tell you.

The Loot Fairy is an entity that drops 50% of the killed players inventory. That sweet, sweet Diamond sword your enemy has been raving about for the past month? The one with Flaming, Looting, Sharpness he got for only 25 levels of XP like some sort of enchanting savant? You kill him, and there is a 50% chance it drops. Same for that helmet, and his food, and his potions, and his golden hoe with that dirty nickname.

50% it's now yours, 50% lost to the void. This would help create scarcity with the rare ores, diamond gear could be lost to all time. Raids might become not where is the vault, but who has the best armor, and can we /destroy/ it.

Along the thought of scarcity of ores, maybe chunks in Wild can be refreshed, ('Wild Magic' or some sort of plot excuse), and it would create a bit of a gold rush as the clans receive noticed of a renewed chunk to dig in?

This is a large spattering of thoughts about SMP. I'd love to see NPC quests again, the Bounty system (of which I was a hilarious victim of back in the day), PvP Tourneys, Dungeons. There is so much potential for SMP, It's always been my favorite aspect of this community.

Okay, thoughts rant over. It's good to see you guys again. :D
 
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Danni122112

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Good thoughts here, for a lot of it, we are already very aware about what did not work, and we are on that track already.

I had completely forgot about the bounty plugin, that could be fun.
 

cheatyface

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The Loot Fairy is an entity that drops 50% of the killed players inventory. That sweet, sweet Diamond sword your enemy has been raving about for the past month? The one with Flaming, Looting, Sharpness he got for only 25 levels of XP like some sort of enchanting savant? You kill him, and there is a 50% chance it drops. Same for that helmet, and his food, and his potions, and his golden hoe with that dirty nickname.

50% it's now yours, 50% lost to the void. This would help create scarcity with the rare ores, diamond gear could be lost to all time. Raids might become not where is the vault, but who has the best armor, and can we /destroy/ it.

Along the thought of scarcity of ores, maybe chunks in Wild can be refreshed, ('Wild Magic' or some sort of plot excuse), and it would create a bit of a gold rush as the clans receive noticed of a renewed chunk to dig in?
Good to see you again, I even caught you on the server for about a minute! There's a lot in this post, but I like these 2 ideas particularly.

The second one, with refreshing ores, is something I've brought up in the past. Especially if we used the nether/end like this, build some cool terrain with it sticking out and have it refresh every once in a while, people would surely show up for the resources and have to fight over it.

The first idea is interesting, and I've been stewing on a somewhat similar idea for a while (I've probably mentioned this in the past as well). A system where when you die, the stuff in your action bar stays there, but everything else either drops or has a very high chance to drop. This way, you keep weapons so that you have a fighting chance of coming back for your stuff, and if you're a builder well then you just bring supplies in those 9 slots and you can't lose anything! But you'll lose armour for sure, and if you get greedy and bring more than 9 slots of supplies or a buttload of potions/food, well, it's your fault. I like the idea of a chance that items just fully disappear though. It would be a great help on spending the economy so that players need more stuff eventually, and I think that's something we generally have trouble with.
 

Adobewedge

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The second one, with refreshing ores, is something I've brought up in the past. Especially if we used the nether/end like this, build some cool terrain with it sticking out and have it refresh every once in a while, people would surely show up for the resources and have to fight over it.
Exactly, the Nether would also be a great transition into something along EVE's use of "Wormhole Space".

To not make this reply huge, the Nether could be this ever mutable/refreshing entity world with either very few stability chunks for the portals or nothing at all. The SMP world would be interesting if the mechanic of not being able to build Nether Portals was a thing. (Say they explode in a dramatic fashion if created in the Overworld or Nether like beds do in the Nether.) Scattered across the Wild would be Admin placed portals for the Clans to discover and their entrances to fight over.

Maybe some sort of rotating activations across a half-dozen or so portals would led to people fighting to use them and secure the entrance for fellow comrades, but also to figure out the activation cycle (every other day, 3 days on/3 days off, only on when it rains, only on at night).
 

Friendy

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Not enough players to sustain an SMP built for a large playerbase, gameplay got stale and not enough clarity on specific rules, should've been simple and enforced not 20 unwritten rules based around raiding etc.

Realistically there needs to be a server that is carefully planned and built over an extensive period of time, that needs to be unique yet simple, with gameplay inbetween SMP 3 and Primordia while taking all the new items into thought too. It'd be difficult, but going down the same SMP route every time clearly isn't working and so perhaps a new form of SMP based server should be made that doesn't exactly revolve around the "SMP" ideology that has persisted in every recent SMP that the community has created.

However I don't think an SMP is even sustainable in the current state of the community, Primordia 2 was the proof in the pudding.
 

Danni122112

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However I don't think an SMP is even sustainable in the current state of the community, Primordia 2 was the proof in the pudding.
Yeh, a server which were buggy as fuck when released, not completely ready and had a lack of staff amongst other issues is clearly great proof.

In addition to that the server actually helped the playerbase of our servers..
 
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Mastersten

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Maybe it's time to accept that the golden SMP days are over. Minecraft has changed from a basic game of gathering resources, building houses and griefing the fuck out of eachother to a full worldwide multiplayer game with an actual ending, teleportation pearls, gliding elytra's and other crazy stuff.

This crazy stuff just limits the good ol' smp like the elytra and enderpearls which are almost a wallhack for the basic minecraft. So I think it's time to accept that SMP has had it's golden days and was perfect for the basic non-redstone, non-elytra, non-enderpearl and other stuff but it's time to look at something we want to be rather than something we used to be.
 

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I think an SMP could work, but I think it'd be better to have it set up like a guild in Fairy Tail.
We can all have our own little teams, but with the fact that we don't exactly have 1000 players strong, it may be better to have all or most of us grouped under one big guild.
PvP could be more for open arenas and maybe a duel system that can be done in most areas with team settings.
The server would have to have a much greater focus on dungeons (that can actually be found) and should try to use more interesting mobs than in the past, and a usage of custom mobs is especially crucial if we want to try an RPG setting again.
It would also do good to have a number of the dungeons follow a story of sorts, that will likely lead up to the whole main guild trying to fend off a great calamity.
A second guild, one more focused on getting in the way of the main guild, could be done to make thins more interesting, but it would be risky to include and much effort would have to be put in to give this second guild something to do besides raid the main guild every 5 minutes.

Just a thought, and I don't expect it to really become anything for at least a year.
 

Danni122112

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Most of these won't be answered, as a lot of the ideas has been played around with before, but also because we don't want to spoil anything about the server.

It's good to see what the user base wants, and get some nice new ideas though
 
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☃Dr. Bob

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I won't say anything bad now because people got super mad at me when I talked about the flaws that I saw, so I'll say this: has there been any form of trophy system in this website? I haven't been on here in a long time and I can't remember seeing anything particular.

I think if there's some sort of permanent incentive to any sort of server you make, it would get more people active about it and get more people using this site too.

I guess if you wanted a server like this to thrive again, it would be a good option to look into. One option would be to make a point system which can give perks to veterans of older servers. More time spent being active could equal more points and more points could equal options to make things go more smoothly later on.

But these are just ideas. I don't own anything here besides them.
 

Catcocomics

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has there been any form of trophy system in this website?
To my knowledge, the closest we have are the forum trophies that almost never appear once you've been on for a month, and then there is AoD 2's achievements that also act as titles when unlocked and I believe grant tokens for special cosmetics such as the compmeme commands and particle effects..
 
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Yeh, a server which were buggy as fuck when released, not completely ready and had a lack of staff amongst other issues is clearly great proof.
Danni, you're a cool guy, but I have to stop you there. There's always another reason when SMP fails, and I think it needs to be brought up that maybe people don't like SMP as is.

The choice, really, is between a game-changing idea or just not bringing SMP back. If we organized a public brainstorming session (in Discord or something), we would have both an idea that people liked and a better chance for an idea that would completely change SMP.
 
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JtTorso

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Danni, you're a cool guy, but I have to stop you there. There's always another reason when SMP fails, and I think it needs to be brought up that maybe people don't like SMP as is.

The choice, really, is between a game-changing idea or just not bringing SMP back. If we organized a public brainstorming session (in Discord or something), we would have both an idea that people liked and a better chance for an idea that would completely change SMP.
I think this is pretty close to the right answer. We've gone through countless SMPs and their longevity has always been dependant on community population, the more people there are the more hype there is, the more hype there is the more people want to play but eventually nearly every SMP has tired down or closed due to technical issues. I simply don't think this community has the numbers to commit to long term servers anymore and it's been this way for a while.
 

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Overall we were confined to each family it was a challenge to be able to keep personal items outside your enderchest without having someone from your family or someone's alt minecraft account coming in griefing/stealing stuff. The heroes plugin seemed like an okay idea but it was hard to balance and was about who can grind more and spam spells quicker. A couple things that could be better was there was no dungeons and the event content came too late in the server. It seemed like with the large clans everyone hits end game faster and run out of things to do.
Maybe we could do something with land claiming where it costs a ton of money to buy more land for your clan and a harder economy. Land could cost some sort of virtual currency (topians or w/e) then the only way to gain the currency is dungeon rewards that are hard to complete and have a clear limit so it is not abused and shops to trade in items at low prices.
If players have a harder time reaching an end game or have lot of things to do it will keep the numbers up. The issue is ultimately creating a bunch of content to start the server off strong. Maybe we could hold a dungeon design contest to help with content like in JtE.
 
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