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

[Psycho]

Well, It's not really dead dead - there are a few people that get on from time to time, but over a month ago it seemed fine with a good amount playing. Now it seems like there are only builders and a few stragglers that get on for only a few minutes.

So, why did players stop playing? Was it the server? The people? I'm sure you guys have your opinions, so explain, but try to be constructive if you think that there are ways to help improve the server.

Where the hell are you guys?!​

 

[Iggish]

The lack of raiding certainly didn't help it. In the early stages, people could raid freely but understandably this got gradually harder as people improved their defences. People had to increasingly try harder strategies to get into a base. However, all clever ideas for raiding seemed to just be squashed. Flying machines were outlawed and elytras were banned for raiding.
The elytra ban was the big one for me. People were on the server grinding money for elytras, preparing for raids with them etc. For example aeres had a raid planned a week in advance with elytra and our elytra tower. It would've been a lot better to made it legal to grief elytra towers instead of outlawing them altogether.
In general, I feel that the server didn't really cater for builders or raiders. A building competition or best city prize weekly could've been a thing. As I said before, raiding was very hard and there was little done to cater for pvp. It wouldn't have been hard to make a pvp arena warp where people can battle it out. In fact, this should've been a feature right from the start.
Even the pvp tournament was called off.

Idk, I know this hasn't really been constructive and I haven't really been giving suggestions but these are just my opinions.

 

[les_morts_vivants]

another thing is the level gap between new players who are starting out and the players who have played longer it makes it almost impossible to catch up unless you grind for hours on end and then you're burned out on it also another thing is that no wants to raid when there a what 10x10 lock on the vault that resets with every wrong click while fighting mages

 

[BanSwift]

Sounds like people want cities opening to the public.

 

[cheatyface]

The lack of raiding certainly didn't help it. In the early stages, people could raid freely but understandably this got gradually harder as people improved their defences. People had to increasingly try harder strategies to get into a base. However, all clever ideas for raiding seemed to just be squashed. Flying machines were outlawed and elytras were banned for raiding.
The elytra ban was the big one for me. People were on the server grinding money for elytras, preparing for raids with them etc. For example aeres had a raid planned a week in advance with elytra and our elytra tower. It would've been a lot better to made it legal to grief elytra towers instead of outlawing them altogether.
In general, I feel that the server didn't really cater for builders or raiders. A building competition or best city prize weekly could've been a thing. As I said before, raiding was very hard and there was little done to cater for pvp. It wouldn't have been hard to make a pvp arena warp where people can battle it out. In fact, this should've been a feature right from the start.
Even the pvp tournament was called off.

Idk, I know this hasn't really been constructive and I haven't really been giving suggestions but these are just my opinions.

Pvp tournament was delayed until they can get people back on the server and get a better turnout. Who knows if that'll happen, but at least things are in the works to try.

The arena idea is something that I've meant to post here for a while, I've mentioned it to danni a few times already. The idea I have is to get some of the builders to make a few places that will look nice and be fun to fight in, then either plant them into the map or setup warps to them, and setup a raid schedule here on the forums. The schedule would give people the dates and times when a staff member will go to one of the places, fill the chests with cool loot, and then open the doors so that families can rush in and fight for the loot. My initial idea was to have each family make one such place, and make the chests not openable by that family if possible, so that they can only get the loot by killing people who've taken it from the chest. This would give pvpers regular events to participate in, and with several locations you could schedule to cover different time zones and different locations each week. It would also give the builders a project to work on.

And, to be fair, if elytras had been legal we would have either extended the walls to max height or just built a glass roof over it.

 

[rosekill]

The reason elytra's were not allowed on server release was due to the very reason that they aren't allowed for raiding as you all have mentioned above. It fucked the meta-game over and threw it into a kind of wall building pacifist limbo which wasn't exactly intended. The heroes classes weren't designed to be the focal point of anything other than a pvp enhancement which would gradually grow over time as it did. Port bastia was supposed to at least do something rather than just be an eyesore in the middle of nowhere...? Locks were never meant to get this large as i had stated but apparently nobody fucking listens anymore. The endgame design is shoddy at best and the expansions don't exactly enhance it but only increase the time sink and throw more rng at you in the hopes you wont notice that you've spent 2 hours looking for mobs in your darkroom to drop something worthwhile. There is also a massive difference between the old sky lands tournament and any Colosseum you could dream up. There was strategy there were no heroes classes there was a modifiable environment which enhanced the experience all together, there were multiple win conditions and there was an active community revolving around the server.

Overall we have to look at this as less of a "We don't have enough players" case scenario and more of a "How can we make this server better" scenario. There is direct relationship between the quality of the server and the quantity of players on at any given time and failure to recognize and act on that will only lead us further down the same hole we always go down.

 

[Ogarci]

I feel like the reason where I/we messed up a lot was a mix of a few things:

1) How players will interact with the rules we made?

IMO, I feel like we tried to make a middle ground of not-super complicated rules and complicated rules. We shouldve chosen one extreme and lived with it, but the more rules and the more complicated the rules, the harder it is for everyone. About the walls and raiding, a rule of "walls can only be x height" mightve done some good, with the inclusion of enderpearls and elytra/etc. The reason elytras werent there from the beginning is a) theyre in the end and it was supposed to take ya'll a hot minute to get them. and b) heroes didn't play nicely with them/we hadn't added them to the allowed shit.

Another bitch was locks. The raiding rule worked great for old LoP imo, and that was the motivating force in allowing that rule, but locks were a different beast this time around. We shouldve put some hard limits around them, or not allowed them at all. Redstone was meant to be rare and slow down the lock building, but that did fuck all.

2) How players will spend their time and what do they have to strive for?

The only initial goal that we had for players was the broken class progression, brand-new city building, and getting to the end with the somewhat expensive recipe for eyes of ender. I had thought that the end would take you guys at LEAST a month or two, not a week, and I had hoped that more people would care about it. It was an experiment that didn't go as well as I'd hoped. If I were to plan a new SMP, it is something that I would look at, but if I did I would have a much longer thought and consideration for what it would really do.

Once the cities were built, and everyone had class progression with the BROKEN classes and skills done, I/we weren't ready with new shit at hand. I said it multiple times to myself and others, and had several say it to me, that we shoudlve had shit ready before release. Like, shit done, just enable a config or press a button and implement new stuff, so we're not panicking and scrambling at the last fucking second to try to pull some quality material out of our eye holes.

3) Are you actually fucking ready to release the server?

I single-handedly dropped the ball on this one. Everyone told me to wait, and be ready, but here's what was going through my mind: We have to generate hype, not better time than the present. With hype came pressure to get it done and KEEP the hype up, not say "Oh hey smp" then not mention anything new for 8 months. I think we did well with the hype, because the signup and release had GREAT turnouts, but I didn't live up to my own or other's expectations. I rushed the release date, and shouldve kept my fucking mouth shut until it was ready. There was pressure from the Admin team, from my own smp team that had already gotten burned out on it before release, and on myself who was already getting burned out before release.

On top of that, things that I THOUGHT would be ready, weren't. Heroes worked great before the update I did RIGHT BEFORE RELEASE which broke a ton of the skills and classes, and I didn't know they were broken until after release, because I hadn't properly tested it. Then Kainzo and his team took their sweet time fixing it.

If I was still on at this point, I would cut my losses, take a very thorough survey and take a serious hard look with the team and what went wrong, what went right, and how to play those strengths and weaknesses for the next iteration.

What I would change, definitely:
Ditch the hard-drawn family lines. Let people make their own clans, where they want, with who they want, for a cost, no land claiming/anti-grief, just disallow griefing. No 'complicated' clicking a sign to join a family. Leader with enough money does command to pay price to become official leader, then invites who they please, if they please.

I think the biomebundle/terraincontrol map was great, but put less effort into the biomes and more into the structures and the loot. Add more structures, change the loot around, and make it worthwhile to explore. Add bigger dungeons manually.

Ditch the spawnworld, it did nothing. Make a small beginning town in the center of the map, not a huge fancy city, just a small village that might have a few necessity shops.

 

[les_morts_vivants]

Sounds like people want cities opening to the public.

No just stop

 

[BrickWolf]

also another thing is that no wants to raid when there a what 10x10 lock on the vault that resets with every wrong click while fighting mages

never forget that this was an actual lock to aeres

 

[les_morts_vivants]

never forget that this was an actual lock to aeres

that is what I was talking about I think it's rediculous

 

[Vatumok]

I don't think anything really went wrong. SMPs are just extremely hard to sustain, minecraft itself doesn't have a lot of gameplay and eventually players will get bored. I know the plan was for this to last but it was wishful thinking that it would stay very popular for a long time.

In my opinion the only way to keep an SMP going is to:
1. have a ton of extra and constantely updated content/gameplay, which is very hard or impossible to do without modding.
2. have a lot of players and new players which makes interaction between families more interesting.
I don't think we come close to either of those points.

I agree that there are some problems with the server and that could've contributed to players leaving but I don't think it's the real reason SMP is dying.

 

[Danni122112]

I don't think anything really went wrong. SMPs are just extremely hard to sustain, minecraft itself doesn't have a lot of gameplay and eventually players will get bored. I know the plan was for this to last but it was wishful thinking that it would stay very popular for a long time.

In my opinion the only way to keep an SMP going is to:
1. have a ton of extra and constantely updated content/gameplay, which is very hard or impossible to do without modding.
2. have a lot of players and new players which makes interaction between families more interesting.
I don't think we come close to either of those points.

I agree that there are some problems with the server and that could've contributed to players leaving but I don't think it's the real reason SMP is dying.

I disagree on that how the server is, and was, affected how soon it died.

SMP's will all die, no SMP will last forever, if it last 6 months, thats awesome.

Ogarci summed up pretty well what went wrong with the release, and we lost a lot of players from that.

He also summed up some issues with the fundementals of LoP itself, which I also agree on.

There is not too much to do on the server, expect building, it simply has a lack of features.

The server relies heavily on PvP, and PvP is not going too well, a large reason for this is locks, and the possibility to raid other clans. Not too much to do about it at this point. Changing lock rules wont make anyone happy when we have 4 regular players.

We do however have some plans:
The CTF plugin is 90% done, (thanks comp!) This will be announced as soon as its ready.
A dungeon is also finished, except boss, we are trying to release that as soon as possible too.


Any straight up suggestions for what to do with the server, both in terms of features and changes, are appreciated.

 

[Catcocomics]

My biggest thing was that in order to actually have ice magic, I had to give up ever having the hope of winning any fights at all (with the obvious exception being a citizen, because they can't exactly deal with high damage at all).

Other issues were:
*no dungeons at all
*no story
*giant empty world
*nothing to progress to that didn't revolve around grinding

Enclosed is an idea I have for an SMP that I would like to try out:

Spoiler

We have one kingdom, and players can make and run guilds.
Guilds are to have an upkeep, one that is easy to deal with just by playing every now and then, but still in place to keep clutter guilds from being an issue.
The kingdom consists of a walled in area with a palace, some decoration houses, and farms, markets where people can trade with player shops and npcs alike (easy to afford rent for a stand), and a large "guild district" that consists of plots which are tied to the different guilds (maybe have a thing where bigger plots require more players in the guild in order to purchase and have higher rent than smaller plots?).
Kingdom also has pvp arenas (I think a big one and a few little 1v1 arenas) and a palace.

People and guilds may choose to live outside the kingdom (perhaps have a thing so that guilds outside the kingdom can put down a central thing that provides a radius of block protection based on how big the guild is), and may even choose to turn against the kingdom (in which case, they may raid kingdom guilds).

Have a plot involving some evil force (kind of like in DoD, but better if possible) with a dark lord, dungeons, and adventure.
Maybe also give the kingdom some dungeons for anti-kingdom guilds to do.

Maybe have an ability/leveling system that avoids grinding (perhaps have things in dungeons that permanently increase a player's abilities slightly?)

 

[Psycho]

There's good insight and input that you guys provided. Hopefully the current and future SMP staff can make good use of it.

Aside from what has already been mentioned, I think it's the Family/Clan aspect of the server that should have been nerfed. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Clan bit and seeing people work together and then arguing, but somehow I think it limited what players wanted to do on the server for their own personal gain. To put it into perspective, you get someone that wants to do something, but the rest of the clan wants to do something else - so it creates tension when there shouldn't be any.

Ogarci briefly brought up removing Clans if he had another chance. Though I disagree with some of the details that he mentioned, I think that having people claim their own land would have been a better option instead of being forced to join one of the Four Clans in Primordia. GriefPrevention is a good plugin for land claiming and anti-griefing - I remember using it during a temp-smp server so players could check out a new version of MC and it seemed like they faired well with it.

I definitely think that the Spawnworld wasn't user friendly especially for the new players. Granted that it did look nice, it just seemed clunky and confusing for new players. First they had to find the four clan signs to choose their allegiance then they had to run back to the other side of the map to get into their portals. I think that most new players never even found the portals. It should have been progressive from Point A to B to C instead of Point A to B to A To D. If anything, keep that Spawnworld for something in the future such as for a main Lobby replacement or something special in a future SMP.

Catcocomics has some nice ideas for a future SMP.
If a new SMP were to take place that made people claim their own land without choosing a family, then maybe a block/item shop would be suitable.
And terrain regeneration would be nice too.
A PVP Arena would have been perfect for players to /warp to as well.

Honestly, I'd like to see what the plans for CTF and Dungeons will bring for LoP, but I'd rather see those things released ASAP instead of waiting for another month to see if things will get any better. Though, during that time, I think it would still be nice to see ideas for another SMP to be discussed and possibly started on.

 

[Gameprochampion]

This community tries to make everything too perfect. It's better to have rough edges than to be so rigid and specific that the game is no longer fun. Ditch all the fancy stuff and make a very basic server that allows griefing and has minimal rules. The insane locks and base setups, that make it impossible to raid, makes the server almost unplayable for people who want to do something other than building. Going forward, just try a faction server out or a PVP based one that has rules that don't take a PHD to interpret.

On top of that, this community tries so hard to bring in new people by using fancy visuals and all these weird metrics when, in reality, none of that has worked for us for many years now. The reason we had so many players playing Classic was the simplicity of it all. Those were certainly the golden days of Blocktopia.

 

[cheatyface]

There's good insight and input that you guys provided. Hopefully the current and future SMP staff can make good use of it.

Aside from what has already been mentioned, I think it's the Family/Clan aspect of the server that should have been nerfed. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Clan bit and seeing people work together and then arguing, but somehow I think it limited what players wanted to do on the server for their own personal gain. To put it into perspective, you get someone that wants to do something, but the rest of the clan wants to do something else - so it creates tension when there shouldn't be any.

Ogarci briefly brought up removing Clans if he had another chance. Though I disagree with some of the details that he mentioned, I think that having people claim their own land would have been a better option instead of being forced to join one of the Four Clans in Primordia. GriefPrevention is a good plugin for land claiming and anti-griefing - I remember using it during a temp-smp server so players could check out a new version of MC and it seemed like they faired well with it.

I definitely think that the Spawnworld wasn't user friendly especially for the new players. Granted that it did look nice, it just seemed clunky and confusing for new players. First they had to find the four clan signs to choose their allegiance then they had to run back to the other side of the map to get into their portals. I think that most new players never even found the portals. It should have been progressive from Point A to B to C instead of Point A to B to A To D. If anything, keep that Spawnworld for something in the future such as for a main Lobby replacement or something special in a future SMP.

Catcocomics has some nice ideas for a future SMP.
If a new SMP were to take place that made people claim their own land without choosing a family, then maybe a block/item shop would be suitable.
And terrain regeneration would be nice too.
A PVP Arena would have been perfect for players to /warp to as well.

Honestly, I'd like to see what the plans for CTF and Dungeons will bring for LoP, but I'd rather see those things released ASAP instead of waiting for another month to see if things will get any better. Though, during that time, I think it would still be nice to see ideas for another SMP to be discussed and possibly started on.

I think I remember that grief protection, the one where you could pay currency to protect a chunk? I thought that was great, and I remember a lot of players liking it. I also agree with the clan idea here. The original LoP allowed players to be non-family. I think it would have made sense to shrink the family lands on this server a bit, and allow people to choose whether to join a family or do their own thing.

In any case, here are the things that I really like about this server and hope will be used in future servers:
- Heroes. Yes, it was broken and dumb and broken and dumb. I still love the look and feel of it. Maybe we don't go for a full class system next time, maybe we just have some tier 1 shits. Or maybe we literally make a thousand classes with 1 dps ability and 1-2 passive/utility effects, and let people pick from that. Either way, it really made the combat on this server feel different, and I don't even pvp. Also, since we apparently paid for some packages, we may as use the shit out of them to get the monies worth.
- The currency. I really like seeing it drop on the floor, and knowing that I have to pick it up. Good visual representation.
- The shops. On demand, just spend a bit of money and it's up. I really liked this, and think it would be great for future server economies to use player shops much more than server shops.
- The terrain. I'm 50/50 on this one. I really like it above ground. The swiss cheese infinite caves underneath? We can do without those. But again, above ground level is 8/8, I fucking love it.
- The spawn world. This is just nostalgia, because it does look similar to the original LoP spawn world. It's not entirely practical, I admit. But I think we could use it for a dungeon instead, or something.

 

[les_morts_vivants]

This community tries to make everything too perfect. It's better to have rough edges than to be so rigid and specific that the game is no longer fun. Ditch all the fancy stuff and make a very basic server that allows griefing and has minimal rules. The insane locks and base setups, that make it impossible to raid, makes the server almost unplayable for people who want to do something other than building. Going forward, just try a faction server out or a PVP based one that has rules that don't take a PHD to interpret.

On top of that, this community tries so hard to bring in new people by using fancy visuals and all these weird metrics when, in reality, none of that has worked for us for many years now. The reason we had so many players playing Classic was the simplicity of it all. Those were certainly the golden days of Blocktopia.

Honesty I think this could work if given a chance

 

[Danni122112]

Honesty I think this could work if given a chance

It would most not be for PvPers, as builders get their stuff griefed. it would get boring and be dead within a month by all previous experiences.

It's great fun for an event though, but this ain't a permanent solution.

 

[digi]

This community tries to make everything too perfect. It's better to have rough edges than to be so rigid and specific that the game is no longer fun. Ditch all the fancy stuff and make a very basic server that allows griefing and has minimal rules. The insane locks and base setups, that make it impossible to raid, makes the server almost unplayable for people who want to do something other than building. Going forward, just try a faction server out or a PVP based one that has rules that don't take a PHD to interpret.

I've enjoyed the Solitude servers, where there'd be all out hunt/kill/grief parties. Little to no rules, no holes to look for in Swiss cheese caves or difficult locks to fiddle with. However, Danni said what I was thinking, those type of servers don't last long ( in my experience they seem to last a good month or so) and only cater to the PvP'ers.
There has to be a balance for the builders and the PvP'ers to coincide, or else it's just boring.

 

[Gameprochampion]

It would most not be for PvPers, as builders get their stuff griefed. it would get boring and be dead within a month by all previous experiences.

It's great fun for an event though, but this ain't a permanent solution.

The main thing is the fact that there would actually be motivation to get on. The problem right now is that you can just continually get better and better and eventually you reach a cap where you have uraidable loot. Besides, after the main bases are built and walls are put up, nobody really builds anyway. The builders and the PVPers all leave. On top of that, it's ridiculous that it takes so long just to plan a raid and actually make it worth your time. This is far more marketable than a build server with no PVP or any activity; we have Buildbox anyway.

I've enjoyed the Solitude servers, where there'd be all out hunt/kill/grief parties. Little to no rules, no holes to look for in Swiss cheese caves or difficult locks to fiddle with. However, Danni said what I was thinking, those type of servers don't last long ( in my experience they seem to last a good month or so) and only cater to the PvP'ers.
There has to be a balance for the builders and the PvP'ers to coincide, or else it's just boring.

Solitude is specifically made to be an event server. It has pre-made buildings, pre-made teams, and introduces a whole host of other things that makes it - purposefully - harder to play. In an SMP server, players themselves would be responsible for making all of this happen. This wouldn't discourage building, it would, however, discourage the very grand and intricate building that is more fit for a Build server anyway. I agree with you that there is a balance, but our view is so build-leaning now that anything else seems unbalanced. I'd urge you to look at popular servers and empires in the past such as MCPVP.



We've tried the same things for way too long when it comes to Minecraft. The community spends months making these beautiful servers with all these cool options and buildings. The servers are ridiculously popular when they first begin, mainly due to PVP being rampant. Then, after a few months when walls are put up and 10x10 vault locks are built, the activity drops almost as if on cue. Nobody wants to get on an SMP server just to build. It seems like every server we release, we try to do the exact same thing and we always get the exact same results. Primordia when it first came out worked incredibly well. It did have many complicated plugins and complicated specifics, but when you actually look at the gameplay it was fairly simple. On top of that, it retained popularity because loads of new members were joining the community. Escaperestart, since its inception, has failed to acquire a dedicated new community.

 

[Psycho]

Forgot to mention the Alliances aspect of the server. Alliances are nice and all, but I think the Dagon and Primus alliance kinda made the server less PvP-ish seeing that the majority of the players were situated within those two clans. There weren't any requirements to maintain the Alliance either and I think that if there were, it would add some depth to the gameplay such as requiring both alliances to pay a certain amount of money or a certain amount of items/blocks. The Dagon/Primus alliance essentially became "hey, we're cool if you're cool".

Which brings me to another point. Leaders. Yeah, sure they were okay, but that's pretty much it. I'm on the fence with leaders being required since everyone has their own way of doing things, but somehow I think the leaders should have been Staff/Mods (not Con or Admin) since the Mods would have to be required to get on the server to staff anyway, whilst player-type leaders (as nice as they may be) wouldn't be required to get on from time to time to maintain their clan stuff.

Is there room for another SMP?

 

[_ChoasLego_]

Time to vent:
As a main PvPer, I find my opportunities to raid being very limited. Spending 30-45 minutes wandering around in caves even with the help of information from acquaintances is simply not fun. (I'm looking at you, Primus) Once I manage to get past the walls, I have to search for a vault. If there even is a vault, which comes with its own set of combinations of locks. No way any person who wants to PvP is going to spend at least an hour on Minecraft to do all of this.

Perhaps events such as CTF or even family wars will help boost the presence of PvP in this server. But right now? It's almost nonexistent save for a few skirmishes here and there.




With the recent nerf to trades, I would like to address the neglected economy on this server. Say I want to buy something expensive like wither skulls (2000) or an Elytra (2500). If you're going to take away profitable trades, at least add diversified kinds of trades to the economy. What about the millions of useless enchanted mythicdrops that we get from the darkroom. Are you just going to suggest we burn those to make more room?

"But Choas, you do realize you can farm nether darkrooms for skulls and shillings right?" I do realize that, but since the spawnrate in nether darkrooms is abysmally low (Like I waited at least 5 minutes for only 1-3 skeletons to spawn), it is a very tedious task and adds to my growing disinterest in this economy feature.

 

[digi]

The main thing is the fact that there would actually be motivation to get on. The problem right now is that you can just continually get better and better and eventually you reach a cap where you have uraidable loot. Besides, after the main bases are built and walls are put up, nobody really builds anyway.

A lot of people do take pride in their builds on SMP. Take a moment to look at Dagon, Primus and Gaia.

We've tried the same things for way too long when it comes to Minecraft. The community spends months making these beautiful servers with all these cool options and buildings. The servers are ridiculously popular when they first begin, mainly due to PVP being rampant. Then, after a few months when walls are put up and 10x10 vault locks are built, the activity drops almost as if on cue. Nobody wants to get on an SMP server just to build. It seems like every server we release, we try to do the exact same thing and we always get the exact same results. Primordia when it first came out worked incredibly well. It did have many complicated plugins and complicated specifics, but when you actually look at the gameplay it was fairly simple. On top of that, it retained popularity because loads of new members were joining the community. Escaperestart, since its inception, has failed to acquire a dedicated new community.

I feel that Primordia catered heavily to the PvPers. They were basically hand fed these plugins, but got too lazy trying to figure out locks. So I agree with you when you say that there's where one part of the imbalance lies.

Iggy made a pretty good suggestion in another thread.

1. No Redstone Locks / Combos.
2. The entrance has to be within 50 blocks of the walls.
3. A limit on cobweb water entrances. (If anyone remembers old aeres it took 40 mins to get in)
4. No making the player go below y 25 (can be changed but this is just to avoid an abuse of cavesystems)

Yeah so anyway, with these rules, it will be easier to raid and it would bring more people back on. Clans can think up hidden entrances within 50 blocks of the walls. With these rules it will still be challenging to get into the bases on clans, but doable.

In terms of clans -- there's also an imbalance in that. I feel like there should be two teams and a random button. Then let the chaos begin.

 

[les_morts_vivants]

Time to vent:
As a main PvPer, I find my opportunities to raid being very limited. Spending 30-45 minutes wandering around in caves even with the help of information from acquaintances is simply not fun. (I'm looking at you, Primus) Once I manage to get past the walls, I have to search for a vault. If there even is a vault, which comes with its own set of combinations of locks. No way any person who wants to PvP is going to spend at least an hour on Minecraft to do all of this.

Perhaps events such as CTF or even family wars will help boost the presence of PvP in this server. But right now? It's almost nonexistent save for a few skirmishes here and there.




With the recent nerf to trades, I would like to address the neglected economy on this server. Say I want to buy something expensive like wither skulls (2000) or an Elytra (2500). If you're going to take away profitable trades, at least add diversified kinds of trades to the economy. What about the millions of useless enchanted mythicdrops that we get from the darkroom. Are you just going to suggest we burn those to make more room?

"But Choas, you do realize you can farm nether darkrooms for skulls and shillings right?" I do realize that, but since the spawnrate in nether darkrooms is abysmally low (Like I waited at least 5 minutes for only 1-3 skeletons to spawn), it is a very tedious task and adds to my growing disinterest in this economy feature.

honestly, this is my problems with lop also if I do raid a family there's a good chance that that family will yell illegal until a mod comes on and checks at that point my time to raid is gone due to me talking to a mod and if not then they usually in the vault and are untouchable

 

[Danni122112]

Regarding a PvP on Primordia.

I know its not good, it never really was because of the rules, the only thing that can change this on this server is a rewamp of rules amongst other things.

Is this something you are all actually interested in?
Will it bring back players?

Changing redstone rules will make them even more complicated, a pain for both players and staff, there has to be a huge support behind this, along with players that will actually want to play and spend hours fixing their now illegal locks. A simple ruleset may work, for an example: "You have to use your legal entrance as an entrance every time you leave/enter your base". This is less complicated, but people will again have to change their locks, and it's gonna be a bit of a pain to enforce.

Gameprochampion
Regarding spending time on making a server, a lot of time spent on a server makes it better, not neccesarily worse. If the concept is flawed either in planning or execution it wont work, no matter how much time you put into it. JtE, for an example, had some flaws regarding PvP, but was largely succesfull.

The argument you make of that huge builds should be built on Create is as bad as that PvP-ing should be done on AoD. SMP is something for both, and needs to be balanced for both. I do of course see, as stated earlier, that PvP is not in a good point, but that doesnt mean we need to go in the compelte opposite direction, and put building in a bad point.

Your suggestion for a server seems very much like or vanilla SMP's which die quickly. An event server/SMP do of course not have to be like solitude, but if griefing is allowed, people will try to hide, until they are found, and get all their shit griefed. That makes players quit, and is not sustainable for a server lasting much more than a month. I'm not saying we can't do a server like this, but it would be much closer to solitude than any other servers we have had.

_ChoasLego_
The economy was not something that was planned out and ready from the start of the server. However, I spent, along with Freaky a, significant amount of time on creating it. A working economy is very much work, that I did not have time to monitor every day for a month after release, and after almost no one used it much the first weeks, it was not prioritised.


I am aware that Primordia has several flaws, most of the flaws that are stated here am I already aware of, and agree with. The problem is that there is often nothing or little do with these at this point.

I am of course happy with suggestions on how to change things, so those are appreciated.