Here is another point, what if someone just camps out in your base for the entire day, making it a hassle for people who are just trying to build or have fun, or even just enter their house without someone rushing in and being annoying for no reason. You can't call it a "raid" if the people in the town have no way to "defeat" the invader. Its more like "We can't do anything to you so just run around and be a dick until we open our chests." You don't just walk into a "Raid" in any RPG and wave at the enemies as you grab the loot and walk out. I understand that you may enjoy PvP but some of us aren't here for that, hence why we stay in the PvE side. We aren't going to raid the PvP side bases because we don't have that mentality or want to. We just wanna play a nice relaxing game with friends and not have to "bar the gates" every time someone walks in. It just gets really annoying. As well as the "put a block over it mentality." its basically just putting a band-aid over a gun shot. Its just an apparent fix that favors people who enjoy PvP over PvE. It makes people who like harassing others have more fun while the ones who are trying to enjoy themselves with friends have to just watch and be annoyed because they can not do anything about it or fight back.
Overall PvE should be treated how it is in any other MMORPG, no player can harass or fight another unless they are in an area or tagged for it. That's why we have the two separate tags (PvE ,PvP) in the first place.
This is an interesting point brought forward which is something I have experienced quite expansively. I have been both on the giving and receiving side of this type of "raiding".
Starting of with our retaliation on VTS after being raided we decided that next to emptying the chests it would be best to stalk them in order to infiltrate their main storage and try to empty them out like they did with us, whenever I refer to this current rule set encouraging toxicity it is exactly this reason why I think it encourages it, we have seen ourselves and aggravated others to a point where an arguably fun raiding experience was nowhere to be found anymore. I especially feel this is true because after the situation died down 1 guy was banned, at least two members of a faction that where just building a cool town together left the project, a whole group of people that had nothing to do with it where griefed by raiding out of perceived necessity and two bases where attempted to be grieved (this never escalated mainly because of the quick and smooth response of the mod team which is why I had respect for them). Furthermore both me and a member of VTS have stalked each other for most of the day after the events till a point where the opposition was spotted saying "Fuck this" and logged off, this was someone who likes raiding tried to raid and ended up in a big shitstorm so to say because it was the only way to retaliate on each other within the ruleset. Someone who just wanted to have some fun playing Minecraft but found no fun and decided to log out.
I personally felt the same way about the entire situation and still do sometimes when people are standing outside of our base circling it again. Yesterday right after the server crashed the only other outsider that had been in our base with our permission was found stalking around with invisibility inside our base trying to look for ways to raid us. This person I think decided it would be best to attempt an action like this right after the server crashed since we would not have been able to close of our base during the time the server was crashing. Normally in a really dodgy situation like this I'd ask help from the moderation team but that presented me with a dilemma that I do not think anyone should ever have to face on any server. The person that was attempting to raid us was the mod that had been in our base before for helping out with the whole illegal raid situation, this was a mod that had seen exactly where our storage room is and been inside it and therefore knows all exits and entrances of our base even underground. This was a mod that had spend the entire day figuring out what exactly happened in order to help us out and most likely even knows therefore how the entire tunnel system underneath our base runs.
I am not ungrateful for the time the entire moderation team spend on helping us out when we where raided, the response when I asked for help was extremely quick and professional, because of this I had great respect for the moderation team and how dedicated they are for this server, I do not wish to attack any of you personally and besides being pretty anally hurt about the whole dropping by to try and raid us situation I still feel great respect for the moderation team since I was able to calmly and logically talk it out in the end with a third party and this attempt to raid us was dealt with in an respectful manner by the raiding party.
That being said I have a few other situations to portray, up until yesterday I had not truly realized the hornets nest that I have been poking. Yesterday night after taking one last look at the discord before heading off for the day I realized that one of the guys that had actually stolen our stuff illegally is a member of the moderation team on Discord TheArchiteck, I do not yet fully understand how the internal infrastructure of the moderation team on this server works but I believe that TheArchiteck is a moderator on the server as well. The problem I immediately saw in this is that I would have reconsidered before raiding TheArchiteck his town, in the end I'm glad I did not know at the time that I was raiding a moderators town since I feel that in a situation like this I should not act different just because the opposing side is someone with power.
Another issue I have had is that the only member of Bonfire that lives in the PvP zone had killed someone, after killing this person he looted his gear and stored it away in a blocked chest. The person who was killed then went back to literally unblock this chest and loot back his gear, this all while the same moderator who has stalked our base invisible was there together with him looking for from what I have understood "his chest plate". _Mr_Matt_ had tried to explain the situation to both guys (while still in the dangers of the PvP zone from what I understand) but this player and moderator duo did not want to listen to his explanation. This story is fucking mental in my opinion and one of the reasons why I keep asking players and even moderators that are playing as players to just immediately leave our base. In the defense of the moderator I will say that it must have been that he did not understand the situation at that time and therefore most likely accidentally looked in chests he should not have been able to look around in since his friend unlocked the chest illegally, furthermore after _Mr_Matt_ decided to publicly call these actions out the server from what I understood went berserk and the player who looted _Mr_Matt_ his chest has put the things back in the chest we assume, _Mr_Matt_ wasn't able to ask for any moderator help on this matter since the only moderator that was online at the time was the same moderator that assisted this player while he himself was participating on the server as player.
There are many more fun stories like these to be told like how yesterday when I decided to log off a bunch of members of K/DA showed up and "accidentally" circled our wall twice before stating that they where just heading to Narcotia or how often we spot people just stalking around in the caves underneath our base even though there is no other base in hundreds of blocks radius around our base. but I'd like to wrap it up.
I was in the opinion that we should take it easy and wait with this since it would be best to wait it out and see if there is a common ground to be found, but the current shit we have to deal with a lot of the time is starting to get quite draining while we are trying to have some fun building a base. Therefore I'm pretty happy with this situation being wrapped up.
As this is for now most likely the last time any of us can give any input I have taken one last look at the many points brought forward and would like to expand on my believes of what a solution would look like.
So I had to create a forum account just to add my opinion because I'm an absolute darling and feel like I can throw in my two cents, though not like I should at this point.
So we're split into two groups, those for PvE raiding and those against it, And both sides have made valid points. Camping and sneaking into bases is a serious problem, And there's no counterplay to it whatsoever. However, blocking your chests may look ugly but it gets the job done.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the ability to run into the PvP zone from the PvE area and do a fair share of raiding, but given that we're quite literally having a contest to build the best walls, maybe it can be overlooked.
I propose that if somebody were to follow through with the above, (entering the PvP zone to raid and then fleeing it To their base in the PvE area of the map.) They are free game for a raid attempt in retaliation, but otherwise, PvE raiding should likely be banned.
And of course it's hard to moderate what a "single raid attempt" might look like, "what happens if I'm unable to score loot?" "Can I troll the player?" But we have to find some sort of a middle ground, rather than just saying yes or no, and that's gonna take work.
A solution like this one in my opinion seems really sound without really touching the current system of the server to much, but one thing I want to point out about the current system is that there is not really a normal way to raid people on this server, if you'd go and raid someone you'd just end up standing inside someone's base doing nothing since the person getting raided blocked most of his chests. In this sense there isn't any real form of raiding in this server and its more a big system you can use to annoy people up to the point that you bully them off the server.
this is why I have offered the following idea before in order to spice things up:
My Solution
As promised earlier I'd like to offer some ideas me and my friends thought of.
My earlier offered solution of mainly being able to lock chests still stands, but in order to prevent issues like the PvP community being shut down by chest locking I'd say to allow base raiding in certain conditions. You could say for example that two factions could agree to being raided and for this occasions mark a few chests with signs to be raided in this event. after agreeing on a time and place these factions could duke it out until either of them concedes and lets the other party raid them. A few simple rules to enforce this system would be to unlock the chest to the other faction and allowing each other to take a look inside of the raid chest so both parties can agree on the raid loot being reasonable. next to that both factions could also discus win conditions to their liking whether it be guerrilla warfare in the PvP zone or one on one duels of the faction members for example.
Another solution could be to allow people to opt into the PvP scene, in order to have a town in the PvP area and be allowed to actually raid others you'd have to found an outpost in the PvP zone yourself that offers sufficient loot for other people to raid, this raid able loot would have to be stored in an unlocked and accessible chest. there would have to be rules about what would be stored in a chest like this but I think an easy rule would be at least the amount emerald it takes to found your town (200 for starters, 1.2k for city's, 6.2k for empires). once you get raided and are unable to fund your raid chest within the next few days you'd lose the right to raid and will be asked to vacate the PvP zone within a reasonable amount of time. In a system like this I'd suggest to allow the raiding of others in the PvP zone if they do not own an official outpost to prevent people from locking chests freely in the PvP zone, if someone still does lock a chest within the PvP zone a mod can be asked to unlock and warn the person who locked it. With this system if someone gets raided and no one claims to be the raiders the mods only have to check 1 single unlocked chest in order to determine whether the raid was legal or not.
These solutions don't have to be exclusive and would offer in my opinion a more interesting and less toxic and abusable raid system then currently in place. But I'd love to hear other ideas or opinions about this matter even if they stray from my views on this topic.
As I feel there is more to expand upon I'd like to dig deeper into this thread and try expanding further on my offered solutions.
So I had to create a forum account just to add my opinion because I'm an absolute darling and feel like I can throw in my two cents, though not like I should at this point.
So we're split into two groups, those for PvE raiding and those against it, And both sides have made valid points. Camping and sneaking into bases is a serious problem, And there's no counterplay to it whatsoever. However, blocking your chests may look ugly but it gets the job done.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the ability to run into the PvP zone from the PvE area and do a fair share of raiding, but given that we're quite literally having a contest to build the best walls, maybe it can be overlooked.
I propose that if somebody were to follow through with the above, (entering the PvP zone to raid and then fleeing it To their base in the PvE area of the map.) They are free game for a raid attempt in retaliation, but otherwise, PvE raiding should likely be banned.
And of course it's hard to moderate what a "single raid attempt" might look like, "what happens if I'm unable to score loot?" "Can I troll the player?" But we have to find some sort of a middle ground, rather than just saying yes or no, and that's gonna take work.
Fundamentally this idea feels quite fair to me but I can't think of a reasonable way that this could be implemented without some from the ground up plugin development and an quite extensive underlying ruleset to support it. I'm not an expert in specifically Minecraft plugin development but as someone familiar with programming I think this will be quite hard to realize.
Next to that I think a big problem that this solution does not at all touch on is that right now we have to check our base every time we log in to see if anyone has grieved us or not.
Here is a quote from Danni a couple of years ago when we had basicially a 100% pve smp with dungeons.
"He may either be referring to town protection, or maybe the thing that way too many clans go this way.
Founded>Having fun>trying to get a rank>gets rank>is happy for a bit>inactive."
We can't make the same mistakes as the past having the server go in this direction. There needs to be some spice for players to keep playing. Once you have finished your town in the pve zone that is free of any threat. You finish the questline complete the dungeon content and then what? I know most DoD players are satisfied with the server set up even though there is a half pve instead of full map pvp. Thought I would give my two cents on the matter.
This is a solid argument however I feel like people misunderstand what this would be a solid argument for. I 100% believe this and think that this is why the server seems to be setup on such an amazing concept, at some point in any game you will run out of content and will only be left with whatever competitive aspect remains to partake in. Be this building the biggest base, gathering the most diamonds or actually PvPing with other players. You can also dabble in the creative aspect of Minecraft but this eventually does not lie in the interest of most players.
The following question is asked:
You finish the questline complete the dungeon content and then what?
This is what is so cool about this server, then PvP! I don't like the constant pressure of this whole base raiding thing and always having to be paranoid but I'm not entirely against PvP. I have yet to set foot in the PvP zone but one day I'd certainly want to check it out and maybe hunt some players or go to some high activity area.
I'm trying to say that players will come to PvP eventually, especially if you add incentives like the best pre dungeon gear only dropping in the PvP zone and things like the rumored end portal actually being in the PvP zone.
Next to this I can see that base raiding can also be pretty cool and I'd be sad to see it disappear even as someone who is anti PvE base raiding. I think people should be able to opt into base raiding as it can be fun to partake in definitely with some cool ideas build around it, my offered solutions still stand and I can already imagine situations like these happening:
raiding should be the same as raiding was in LoP chests can’t be locked and have to be accessible but clans can make intricate vaults that require a process of parkour or combinations to get to.
The original post described this system as a system for the PvE side of things but I'd see this actually being something quite fun and engaging to do in the PvP zone while the PvE zone could be turned more into a PvE zone.
Of course a system like this would only work if people who attempt to raid in PvP can't take back raided loot to PvE therefore I can imagine there being an issue. Looking at the problem from both sides of the argument you could say that this is the only real issue that pro PvE raiders have with any solution being offered and I can fully understand that this is a problem. Therefore I'd say that when a player or faction would raid someone else they would just have to store whatever they got by raiding this other player in a chest somewhere in the PvP zone for 7 days to give the raided player or faction time to retaliate and get his things back. Something like this could easily be enforced by requesting players to make a forum post on closed forums about where the chest would be located and to simply have them mark the chest with the raided loot with a sign and post a screenshot, this way whenever someone feels that the party that raided him took his loot outside of the PvP zone the mod team could be requested to validate the claim and easily figure out if it is true. At the end of this 7 day grace period the storage location of the raided players loot would be revealed to show that the system was not cheated and no one would have to be suspicious of each other by wondering whether the other party is cheating or not.
This might cause a large back and forth raiding situation which could eventually also turn out ugly, therefore I'd suggest to only allow raiding each other when the other party is actually online and able to defend themselves if they wish to do so. But maybe a rule like this wont even be needed since I'd imagine any conflict like this arising will eventually die down.
TL;DR
Turned out people that raided me first time apparently had a mod with them and I didn't mean to retaliate against a mod base. Didn't wanna poke a hornet nest but guess I did so anyway and a lot of nasty shit went down. A lot of players keep trying to raid me including people that have explored my base while moderating but now checking us out in order to raid us
pretty scary and we didn't dare to report some dodgy business since the only mod active that time was part of the group being dodgy.
This is likely my last post for now so I offer one more solution to the following problem:
PvE players raiding and taking the raided loot back to the untouchable PvE zone.
I suggest forcing players that raid to store the loot in an unlocked chest within the PvP zone, this way the raided party has a chance to retaliate and the system stays fair for both parties. After 7 days the player can take the loot as his own and will no longer be required to have it stored in an unlocked chest within the PvP zone.
