Some thoughts on where we are going...

[Dr_Vesalius]

So, there are people complaining about the low number of regular players, and low levels of activity (this is not the same thing). I too am concerned about the feasibility of the server at present – partly few people to interact with, plus there is the risk of all my work vanishing if the server folds – which appears to be about to happen.

Gira’s post expresses similar concerns. I too have noticed that a number of people log on, see no one else is on or there is little to do, and they leave again. Certainly, things like Spawn need work – but we need to look past that for a minute, and examine the CORE mechanic that we want from the server.

I should add at this stage, as it was suggested on Gira’s thread, to be honest, if the server closed / map reset – I would be annoyed and would NOT return. I had been assured this was not going to happen, else I would have left sooner. Having ones work deleted is not fun – unless of course my constructions were ported to a new map and items moved over. Plus, even if you did port across 3 months later, I will have found something new by then! Others may feel the same.

There are several aspects to a potential server: PvP, PvE, Building, Raiding, Territory, War, Economy, Roleplay, Protection. Those we choose define the server gameplay style, the people who play, and their activity levels.

So, the question is what to do. Firstly, we need to decide on WHAT people want, before the HOW. I think some HOWS are in motion, but the WHAT has never really been addressed. So, I am going to comment on all of the aspects, and invite feedback. I am not asking for comments necessarily on HOW – that comes later.


PVE & Building
Now, while PvE and Building are essential aspects – you can get these from single player on your own local host, why go to a multiplayer experience, so this by itself is not enough. That said, they are still important aspects, which is one of the reasons Kiwike is attractive because it’s not an anarchy server – you don’t need to worry about someone just destroying what you built.

However, Kiwike is Vanilla. Having to grind your way through miles and miles of rock mineshafts to get ore and materials eventually gets very tiring and repetitive. I think that’s what drives people to try and cheat. And there are only a few types of ore and material in vanilla, and only so many ways you can build castles / houses etc. It all gets dull after a while.

There are 100’s of mods. Big ones like Buildcraft, Industrial Craft, Railcraft etc all add many new materials and craft recipes, and let you build all sorts of extra stuff AND automate some of the 'boring' aspects. So, it takes much longer to get bored. There are also redstone and computer mods that let you build more versatile and whacky creations and defences. And so on.


PVP & Rivalry / War
For me, PvP is an important part of multiplayer, but I don’t think it should be the SOLE focus - but woven into the OTHER aspects.

Combat is not that complicated in Vanila minecraft (this is not, after all, Battlefield 2, or Counterstrike etc). Basically, you make potions, enchant items, and then click really fast. There are not that many successful combinations. If that was all there was in the game, then for many, it would get old real fast, so there needs to be other things to do in game (see other sections).

However, all that said, I would NOT be interested in playing on a non-PvP server. Simply building stuff and walking around, knowing that no one could ever threaten me, is little different to the single player game. I could just build stuff in creative mode, and email screenshots. It’s all pointless. I like the idea of building traps and defences.

I think one of the MAIN attractions for me and others of Kiwike, is that unlike many PvP servers, it is not an anarchy server. Whilst there is PvP, there are rules on griefing, vandalism etc.

Problem #1 is, as I said above, is that vanilla combat at the moment is quite limited (few winning setups, and click lots up close), especially when advertised as a controlled PvP server. If you want to attack a town, the best you can do is build a TNT cannon. Which you cannot prepare in advance, and you have to manage to build on the front line during action, and it is extremely limited. It generally only fires along x or z. You could be clever about it, but then it grows into a monster the size of a town on its own!

There are all sorts of mods out there, with guns, artillery, cannons, mortars etc. This all ties in with the territories category, but a range of static defences, mobile weapons (artillery pulled by pig etc) and guns, one could rage proper battles and sieges.

Problem #2 is that there needs to be a POINT to violence. Just killing person X for the sake of it, gets old very soon. Going around dominating combat for an individual may be fun for them until their prey just rage quits. And perhaps a feud can add a point to some 1vs1 fighting.

However, the main form of combat at the moment is group from a town trying to overwhelm another town. At most, they may gain some bounty in the raid. But what happens is group A raids B, later group B raids A. That is a very limited scenario, which quickly gets very old!

For true point to combat, you need CONQUEST. Most games, of most genres, are based on the historical fact that humans fight for GAIN. Be that power, or resources. Kiwike currently lacks this. Partly because all resources are uniformly spread across the world. If more important resources were in smaller areas, and there was a way of locking off chunks to others through some sort of territories. People would have to FIGHT for access (or trade - see economy).

Perhaps you would have to build control towers, which need to be held for several hours to be taken or destroyed? I am thinking how Planetside worked.. This would also stop any group getting too powerful - if it an empire gets too big, they cannot hold it.


Economy
Personally, this is of limited interest to me unless it ties into territories (as above). At the moment, in most cases, the effort required in making / getting cash to buy something, is the same as getting the actual item for myself. In minecraft, almost all materials are in abundance and roughly equally spread over the map. No groups have monopoly on a certain items, so there is no reason to trade. (This is one thing that makes Civilisation 5 better than 2 – you had to hold parts of the map to get certain goods, or trade to get them, and it worked both ways).

Plus, at the moment the economy is a mess. We have adopted emeralds as currency, with a certain number of players having exploited prior bugs that are sitting on massive amounts of cash, so the economy is hyper-inflated and out-priced many.

To me, an economy could only be made more attractive, if it somehow became necessary or a real time-saver. Perhaps, if we introduced things like industrial craft / buildcraft mods then that would generate an industry which could then trigger more of an economy. Plus, give people who are into building and crafting more to make – especially weapons (see PvP). And the PvP’ers more toys to buy then play with? And town people more to defend with?

Is it possible to limit certain more advanced ores / materials to move limited areas of the map – so territorial control gave people control over certain goods – forcing trade?


Roleplay
Roleplaying, I’m indifferent to. I have no objections to there being a plot / history to the world. But, it would only ever be window dressing. It doesn’t change the fact that the core workings of the game need to be there to keep people interested in the long run. Otherwise, once you have explored the castles and the story, you go.

I think lite-RP is a great way to draw in new players. Heavy RP will scare them away. All told though, if the server is empty or boring, the RP will not keep them for very long at all.

That said, I am very concerned by the creation of a new Kiwike-RP server. I think spreading an already thin player base will just lead to one of the servers being abandoned, or both failing.


Protecting Stuff – Locked Chests
I can certainly see why it is important to be able to protect your stuff. Sure, you can bury your stuff randomly around the place, scattered across the world and hope the X-ray police keep it safe. However, that’s hardly convenient for some items that you want to keep close at hand. You don’t want on every new spawn to have to go digging for kit in several places. It's not a fun way to "live".

But at the same time, raiding and PvP are a fun part of the game. It’s a balance. Nothing promotes a rage quite like having your entire stock stolen. But in moderation, it’s fun to engage in a battle of wits against thieves! (Providing we can stop cheats).

One part of the problem, is being able to protect your stuff whilst offline. No one is ever able to be online 24/7. However, this introduces a new problem in that it actually encourages inactivity at peak times. Why play when lots of people are around who could rob you? Better play when they are not on, so your stash is safe. If someone comes near your base, just log off. Etc.

Also, it means it doesn't encourage activity. Why log on to check on your stuff – it’s safe. It’ll be there in a week or a months’ time if you ever log back on. You don’t have to guard at all.

As an aside. Not sure I like that you never know who locked the chest. So you find some – you don’t know who owns them. Which, I can see the good side to. But, it means I don’t know if I should come back – if I knew who owned it, I may know that they are no longer playing. Or indeed have been banned – and it is locked forever. Perhaps you should be able to identify the owner – which later alerts the owner that person X has looked at your chest when they come online. There would be scratches on the lock from trying to pick it...Also, I’m not clear on how locking picking works. Does the owner get a warning message when someone picks it while they are online?



Protecting Stuff - Towns
Towns are in many ways a bit OP. One can’t break blocks, or place blocks. You can’t lay down TNT – you have to project it from outside the town. They require ender pearls and some thinking to break into. This does risk a bit of a two-tier system, in that those who are loners are at a huge disadvantage. Once found, they can be raided, and they have no hope of raiding back. This may frighten away some players. However, there does need to be an advantage to towns. So, I am on the fence.

As with the chest locks, it’s a case that once built, the protection of a town requires zero activity or upkeep. If resources AND activity were required and perhaps rare resources, to keep a town safe – then people would need to be active to get these, and with a territory scenario, would need to hold land in order to get these.

One option, may be to port in the forcefield mod. Instead of the current block protection system - one can then shield off a base.

This uses fuel, and so, if the people are inactive, the power runs out and the base is open. Also, the shield has a recharge rate, so if hit with huge amounts of TNT it could be overwhelmed. Or at least burn through the fuel much much faster – so town designers would want to design reserve power systems etc.


Towns & Territory
I am not currently hugely thrilled with the current town system. Sure, I am planning to apply for one soon, because I am one of the very few not to be within one, and am feeling vulnerable – I am relying on no one using x-ray or other methods to find where I am based. However, I’m not convinced that towns are currently an asset to the server, and may be detrimental in their current form. I wonder if they make newcomers feel too threatened?

It just seems very limited and dull. Towns just raid each other and generally ignore the rest of the map (except deep underground mining). If they were capitols for territories, I would see a point. But at the moment, they can be ignored by non-town players and it doesn't affect them. With a territories system, everyone could get caught up in the wars etc.


Last Thoughts
In terms of making good defences etc.:

It would be nice if a special block could be made that sends a redstone trigger when a portal is entered / exited.

Likewise, a block that records all the people who walk over it.

[Gira]

This is genius. - But to have resource generation in places we need to reset the map.

[yottabyte]

Most of your proposed solutions include using client mods like IndustrialCraft, Buildcraft, Forcefield etc. This is something we try to stay away from. Requiring people to install mods to join the server is a bit of a hassle and I'm sure it would cause us to lose a lot of potential new and old players.

Locked chests can be picked if the owner hasn't been online for a certain time. I think it's 2 weeks normally. I do agree that it's a bit of a paradox when you don't want people to only get attacked when they're offline but at the same time that wouldn't encourage them to come online if they can only be attacked when they're online. We've been having the same struggle when trying to come up with a good way of doing town raids/battles which leads to the next point.

We can all agree that the town protection at the moment is kind of stupid. We had an idea from the start of the server but it proved to be full of issues so we eventually scratched it. Ever since then we've been trying to think of feasable ways of doing the wars/battles between towns. Actually, it has been more than a year since we first started to brainstorm ideas for it. I'm starting to feel like there just isn't a perfect way of doing the raiding, wars, whatever you want to call it.

I believe that the emeralds economy will be of great use once we get a better NPC trading system and player shops. We still only have vague ideas on how we're dealing with this so unfortunately the economy is pretty stale at the moment.

We have been discussing some ways of improving the server. What we need is a goal for new players. One idea that we discussed was that we let towns (factions) battle to control this huge fort somewhere in the map. The fort would have a constant flow of supplies and therefore the faction that controls it would have an advantage in defending it. A problem with using player built towns instead of a special area for the battles is that players have to risk getting their hard work destroyed so no one really wants to have a battle in their own town.

Again, this is just a small idea that we've discussed for a bit and there's still a lot of details to be covered but it would give players a goal on the server and I think advertising could be done a whole lot easier.

[Gira]

But just some fort? We need more shit >_>

[yottabyte]

But just some fort? We need more shit >_>

Again, it's just a really vague idea still. But I like where it's going. I'm not sure what you mean by "we need more shit"

[Dr_Vesalius]

This is genius. - But to have resource generation in places we need to reset the map.

Thanks. I agree would need a map reset - but if we all agreed to this - we could use the same seed so the topography should remain, and Yotto could cut and paste in our main builds and items.

Most of your proposed solutions include using client mods like IndustrialCraft, Buildcraft, Forcefield etc. This is something we try to stay away from. Requiring people to install mods to join the server is a bit of a hassle and I'm sure it would cause us to lose a lot of potential new and old players.

I think client side mods are not necessarily a problem - look at Tekkit success!!? And how many people have been caught having modded their client to X-ray and such.

I think limiting yourself to only server side is going to kill any hope you have of making the server special.

The main problem that you touched on is asking people to install their own client mods could dissuade some people. Given many other servers don't seem to have problems with this, I don't think this a total no no. But, I agree it can be a real pain in the buttocks and can dissuade those less nerdy.

However, you ALREADY have an application process to join the whitelist. As part of that, you could provide a download to a modded .jar file for them to just drop in - I really don't think it would be an obstacle.

I believe that the emeralds economy will be of great use once we get a better NPC trading system and player shops. We still only have vague ideas on how we're dealing with this so unfortunately the economy is pretty stale at the moment.

I think my suggestions above would create an economy. NPC trading will just be another step in crafting / grind. Zero appeal to me.

One idea that we discussed was that we let towns (factions) battle to control this huge fort somewhere in the map. The fort would have a constant flow of supplies and therefore the faction that controls it would have an advantage in defending it.

It's a neat idea. But, the problem is again it concentrates all the players into only one tiny part of the map. We need a solution where the WHOLE world become relevant, or people can selectively decide where to pick their battles and make their stands etc.

Plus, during quiet periods, one player could amass a fortune... Not necessarily, a team / faction effort.

A problem with using player built towns instead of a special area for the battles is that players have to risk getting their hard work destroyed so no one really wants to have a battle in their own town.

True about protecting your work.

But then, what reason is there for building things? The fun of building defences, is making ones that work etc. If its just to look pretty, that gets old real fast - and best done on creative mode.

[yottabyte]

Tekkit doesn't build a stable community. If you look at the large Tekkit servers there are, it's pretty much just people new to the modpack who want to try everything out. Once they have the best armor, stacks of diamond blocks etc they get bored really quickly (quicker than vanilla I'm sure) and quit the server. By that time, new players have joined due to the server's popularity. It's not as simple as to just include a .jar file as you're not allowed to give out any client files. That's why client mods are often a mess for people to install.

The problem isn't the fact that we stay with server sided mods. Have a look around at a lot of successful servers today like GhostCraft, MineZ, Project Ares just to name a few. They all make large changes to how the game works and create a unique experience without any client mods.

The fort idea wouldn't concentrate all the people around one area. People could still build their towns peacefully or gather resources far away from the fort area. I agree that it has flaws but I believe they can be worked out.

Not all buildings are traps and defenses. Traps and such are fun but if you face it, they're pretty worthless. One could build a huge lava moat with big obsidian walls and guard posts but people could just enderball over the defenses.

With this new fort idea, the traps and defenses would go around the fort you desperately want to protect. They'd have to be quick builds, probably less than an hour. Yeah, I'm thinking siege warfare like Guild Wars 2 WvWvW.

[Dr_Vesalius]

Tekkit doesn't build a stable community. If you look at the large Tekkit servers there are, it's pretty much just people new to the modpack who want to try everything out. Once they have the best armor, stacks of diamond blocks etc they get bored really quickly (quicker than vanilla I'm sure) and quit the server. By that time, new players have joined due to the server's popularity.

You missed the point. I was not singing the virtues of Tekkit per se - as it has many flaws, as you pointed out. I was only using it as an example of non-vanilla style of server and that MANY people DO make the effort to TRY custom clients.

I do NOT propose Tekkit, or anything of the sort. Enabling mass quarry's will remove all harvest requirements, and everyone would be super rich too fast, at least without careful implementation and customisation. I built my own custom bukkit in 1.2.5 - you can be very selective.

It's not as simple as to just include a .jar file as you're not allowed to give out any client files. That's why client mods are often a mess for people to install.

Not allowed by whom? I don't think this is true, but even if it is, I REALLY can't see anybody stopping you giving out a .jar in practice if you did it - especially if you give the instructions to self mod, and a link for lazy / inept people.

However, there are tons of pre-tweaked .jar files out there. That's what Tekkit is!? And Bukkit?! And Forge!? etc etc

But clearly that is a route you are ideologically opposed to, and these are more just excuses to not do it. Which I think is the killer point, and kills most options for making the server succeed.

The problem isn't the fact that we stay with server sided mods. Have a look around at a lot of successful servers today like GhostCraft, MineZ, Project Ares just to name a few. They all make large changes to how the game works and create a unique experience without any client mods.

For me, I think any drastic changes you do with the server side only, as the examples you have cited, will skew the server strongly in one method of playing, rather than an enhanced balanced experience. I don't think I would want to stick around for such a server.

The fort idea wouldn't concentrate all the people around one area. People could still build their towns peacefully or gather resources far away from the fort area. I agree that it has flaws but I believe they can be worked out.

This really isn't thought through. Either the fort is a real advantage and worth fighting for. Or if it's so little of an advantage that its fine just to carry on out in the wild, then there would be little point in fighting for it. I think concentrating certain ores in certain areas and controlling them would be better.

Not all buildings are traps and defences. Traps and such are fun but if you face it, they're pretty worthless. One could build a huge lava moat with big obsidian walls and guard posts but people could just enderball over the defenses.

With the vanilla tool set, correct. That was why I suggested technological and weaponised defences!

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I will come and check the post later. But I think for now, I am going to cancel my town building plans (which were awesome and invincible) and give up on Kiwike. I think I have wasted enough time, far too much, and I don't really see it going anywhere worthwhile or interesting for my personal perspective. The server is too limited by vanilla and the current custom server mods, and it is a ghost server nowadays (I think there are only 2 others voting..), and I am yet to be convinced that any new in-house server mods are going to be thought out or created in a timely manner.

[yottabyte]

Don't have time to reply to all your post but it's not allowed to give out jar files according to Notch and Mojang. Like, not legally allowed. Bukkit can be distributed because the server jar is already public. Mods like Tekkit and Forge only inject new class files into the existing jar files. You can't get Tekkit unless you already have a copy of Minecraft.

Anyway, just clearing that part up.

Oh also, if you don't like the ideas I'm proposing in this thread, feel free to share your own ideas on how to improve the server (except for client mods though!). It's really just an open discussion at the moment, nothing is set in stone.

[sethd13]

Chronic kiwike problem: "Wait for it"