RoF problem

[Vatumok]

I've probably stated this before somewhere, somehow but I thought I would be useful to get in in here.

Problem
Rituals of Fire is a lava survival server that promotes passive gameplay. Basically the gameplay on RoF is buy some blocks (or collect them), build a house in the first 5 minutes and afk the rest of the time. There's just nothing really to do once you have your home, it's pretty much just people farming (super)cookies for higher ranks. I've literally seen new players log in and after a few minutes call it boring and leave. In my opinion it would be unacceptable to keep RoF in the way it is now.

Proposed solutions
A passive survival gamemode does not work, for a survival gamemode to work players should have to more actively playing the game. Right now the only thing survival mode does is give you building restrictions, it's only obnoxious really. With that said, there are 2 main options.

First option, RoF can shift into a more (passive) creative server. This is kind of the same as classic lava survlval. You get unlimited blocks to build whatever you want with friends or alone and sit the wave of lava out in your epic house.

Second option, RoF can become a real survival server. This option would be harder to realise but I think has more potential than turning it into a more creative based server. There should be interesting gameplay mechanics and a lot shorter round times. A possible idea I had was to wipe player's inventories every new round, meaning that every round they have a short time to collect resources and build a home, motivating active play and teamwork.

A lot of things would have to be changed to fit the new game (store, ranks) but I think it's more important to have great gameplay and adjust the rest around that.



Feel free to discuss this or other problems you think RoF has.
Thanks for reading!

With kind regards,
Vatumok (Temp IGN: Jackpot)​

 

[Psycho]

I think another element of gameplay would be nice. Maybe not directly related to what you're proposing, but more along the lines of keeping players busy, yet motivated to continue playing on. And I know that this has been previously discussed before and shot down, but I think something related to pets/creatures (yeah, yeah, I know) would be interesting to see being incorporated in the game. I'm sure we can all come up with a few ideas of what these pets/creatures could do, but I guess it's dependent on whether or not it's possible to even do. Keep in mind that it doesn't have to be pets/creatures, but really something to keep players active besides the usual talk, gather, build, and survive.

Then there's KOTL. The mini-game is nice and all, but I've personally gotten bored of it. And yeah, I can opt out of playing it and wait for the next round, but I kinda wish there was another mini-game that was offered. CLS' DeathRun w/Lava comes to mind, but I'm certain that idea was shot down too- possibly because it was hard to code/implement into the current server? But would a DeathRun without Lava be possible? I've seen another server that has that mini-game. What about a mini-game where we just bash sheep or villagers? Or keep KOTL and incorporate a parkour style area with different sections where the library used to be? Maybe include achievements (noidea) or special items that players can buy at checkpoints -- which randomly change every 24hrs or week.

But really, all of this is just easier said than done.

 

[std1997]

Vatumok

In what way does your first option a "passive survival server" vary from what we currently have in classic rounds? Are you recommending we instead of giving the option of classic or survival maps to instead shift more towards one or the other? Just confused as to how your first option would vary from what we currently have unless you were implying we should make a shift more towards one or the other.

As for your second option, I would think for those that have spent a considerable amount of ontime attempting to get these new prestige ranks and the items within those prestige stores would give them a bit of an unfair slap in the face considering how much time they've put into it to just throw that whole system all out the window for an entirely new system. The idea could work to where we have a completely vanilla survival round where people's inventories were wiped in such a fashion that it would possibly provide incentive for people to work together and play together instead of AFK'ing but I don't see how that'd work or even come around because as far as I know we're still attempting to get the server completely finished up from the 1.8 transfer and you'd think if we've already got basic survival rounds and people are STILL afk'ing that there would be no serious change.

Not shooting it down but in what way would this be so radically different that it wouldn't just be RoF with the staff saying "It's brand new" when in actuality it's almost pretty much the same thing except with different ranks and items and less availability for players to get items so as to make it a bit more challenging.

@Rawr Psycho

A new thing to give players incentive to play would be cool but it's just finding the right idea that would make it work on the server without also killing the server at the same time or making dirtcake overworked in getting it setup and maintained.

I do agree though with the KOTL deal wholeheartedly. I'd think it'd be cool if the staff were able to do something different from KOTL but as to what we could do differently, I would think the staff would like to see player's input as to what they want in new mini-games so the staff doesn't go into all the work of releasing a new min-game then everyone is like "this sucks.". Cause it is hard to think of a new mini-game that everyone can participate in while at the same time, being simple enough that any player can play it at the end of the round without new players being like "how do you do this" or older players getting super overpowered with crazy enchantments on their gear.

 

[Vatumok]

I'm all for new minigames (KOTL is not really interesting anymore either) but that's not of great importance. The most important thing is to improve the currently boring/bad actual gameplay. Std, classic rouinds are actually fine because you can build as creatively as you want, it's mainly the 'survival' rounds that are bad. What I mean is to shift completely to creative/classic rounds or active survival rounds (or even alternate the two). Now, those active survival rounds would last way shorter than 35 minutes, perhaps like 10~ minutes. The idea is to make the gameplay in a way that people have to actively try to survive instead of build a home with pre-bought blocks and afk for 30 minutes. Not starting with any items every round is just a possible suggestion, there are probably more ideas out there to reach the same goal. I'm not saying it's easy nor do I have an exact plan for all of this, but I really think it needs to change.

 

[Mastersten]

Just squeezing a small idea in this thread:
Zombie Lava!
Goal: Build a house, 1 player gets chosen and he needs to infect the other players (basically Infection on RoF) Zombies are immune for lava and can kill players by infecting them, when all players are infected, round ends. So you build a house and try to stay hidden for Zombie's

Not sure if this is even possible due to the different plugins but you never know!

 

[Hunter]

nice suggestions, but why isn't this in the rof subforum

 

[Vatumok]

nice suggestions, but why isn't this in the rof subforum

That was also an option but I decided it was very fitting with the overhaul.

 

[myusername22]

Rof was naturally a passive server in nature to begin with, but that on it's own isn't a bad thing. The biggest problem right now is with ironman mode. people always called it "boring" before ironman, but it was still easily one of Blocktopia's most popular server (i mean come on, at times it can make up between a quarter to half of our playerbase). Rof was never intended to be a full on completely active survival server, although, I feel there really could have been another survival element added to the game (perhaps if Ironman had been implemented in an active rather than a passive way). Ironman basically prevents players from building anything, and therefore basically says to players: Ok guys, just build a quick house in five minutes. If you're a player and you're stuck in a house you basically can't do anything until the next round. Because of this players decide to afk until the next round. At least when we were able to try large projects and race to build before the lava in a regular game we would see players who wanted to be active were still able to.

My suggestion: Add a more active equivalent to ironman mode or replace ironman mode altogether. Perhaps ironman mode could be where you are likely to spawn mobs next to you or maybe it makes half of your placed blocks turn to dirt after a certain period of time. I can't really think of many more options but there are some goodones. Otherwise, if there are no suitable replacements i suggest directly removing ironman and awarding supercookies regardless.