discussing the three worlds: FFA PVP ; HELL ; Main

[Ilsyde]

Here is my opinion (so far) and proposal on the multiverse after reading what Kainzo said in the meeting:

[size=large]FFA PVP world - the 'battle front' for all townships and players[/size]

We would have drops of gold / etc - in pvp areas so players would raid them or attempt to defend attack etc
The world of FFA will have the same basic rules - no hacking/exploiting/no MINDLESS grieving

Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? Since combat is very very simplistic in Minecraft (no skills, no stats, no combat moves - just left-click like mad) the only goal that drives people to kill others is the loot... and perhaps the town alignment. Now, the only players who would fit this description are town members fetching and carrying resources from one building site to another - or to sell it. They are the prey, this is why PvP can thrive. Are we expecting players to log in to the FFA PvP server so that they can lose the hard earned contents of their inventory? "Hey guys, I mined some gold and want to sell some iron that I have on me so I just log in to the FFA PVP server and get killed". As for players who're doing the killing - there are no rewards for them. People logging in to the FFA server won't carry much apart from weapons and armor, as it wouldn't server a purpose to have a fully stacked inventory. Your towns are on the main server and the stuff you have here will get stolen or looted by others. And really, why would anyone go to that world in the first place? Towns will still be on the main server, simply because it's more safe to build, mine and stack up on resources there.
I can forsee two or three players logged in at the same time, trying to chase each other down on a 2000x2000 map for no particular reason and getting bored real quick. Plus we hardly ever hit 100 online players at a time. Is it wise to split us up even more?

[size=large]HELL - the crossing of the two and hopefully death of everyone[/size]

Nether - if not used for traveling - is just as pointless in SMP as it is in SSP. However, this will be a great "get your rare materials then get the f*ck out of there" map as soon as players realize how volatile the world is and how easy it is to lose your stuff. Staying longer than absolutely necessary is risky and not to mention pointless, compared to the main map.

[size=large]Main world - base of operations for all townships and players[/size]

PVP in its current state - will not stay in the main map
If we get a professions system out in a TIMELY manner - we will have pvp on the main world - but its unlikely in the current state of bmod

Right, this will be a long one. An idea of mine that will be dumped (probably) but wanted to share it with you guys in any case. Imagine a map, similar to what we have now but like this:
Four kingdoms: Kingdom of North, Kingdom of West, Kingdom of East and Kingdom of South.
Each kingdom is a single city in itself, not towns merged together. That's it, four large rings on the map. Full stop.
Kings are selected by the players and kings select their mayors. Preferably three or more, for each kingdom. This means that at any time a player logs in, there will be at least one mayor available. These would be the guys to instruct their citizens on what to do and tell them where they can or cannot build.
All kingdoms would start as a kingdom already - no progress needed to attain this level. Players joining one of these four can build anything they want. No 10x10 plot bullshit. If someone wants to build a large castle for example (within town rings), he will need the approval of one of his mayors and pay a fee as his project will take up a fair amount of space within the kingdom - but he can do it. If the mayor or king is not pleased, the player can join one of the other three places. There would be a constant competition between kingdoms.
Just think about why we're having this problem with tons of official towns popping up (then get turned into ghost towns) on the current map. It's not really because townships are easy to get. It's because people like to build (hence they're playing MC) and they get told "if you want to build anything larger than 10x10 then get the f*ck out of my town and try your luck / start your own in the wilderness". Now with the system I described above, you can build large projects inside the kingdoms - the mayors will approve it if they think there is enough room (kings would be able to extend their rings as they do now, using coins) and don't want the player to go to one of the competing kingdoms and make their place prettier.
Kingdoms would still be free of PvP, mobs and stealing. However, if someone still wants to try his luck or make an evil empire of murderers, he can still do it - in the wilderness, as before. But the wilderness would be hardcore this time: stealing, killing, TNT and griefing allowed. Donors could still region their home to protect their belongings but without having access to the PvP flag. If you're not within one of the four kingdom rings, you will get killed.
Citizens of each kingdom could have a nametag (if available) to distinguish them e.g. KoN*Ilsyde where KoN would stand for Kingdom of North. Know your enemies!
Gold could only be banked in one of the four kingdoms (preferably in the one you actually live in though you can build in all four if the mayors allow you to).
The kingdoms would be connected to each other using roads that traders and everyone else can use. But after a while, those roads would end up dotted with guard towers, walls, mercenary camps and thieves' dens.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Kaliven]

Oh god I was going to get up and write a post completely similar to this one after getting a pastebin of last nights meeting... thanks!

You can't separate the population or pvp will become boring, Ilsyde said it best in another thread (paraphrasing)

PVP depends on builders to feed on, who will need pvp to protect them.

The system we have now is too care-bear-stare for my tastes, I wrote up this big proposal that reduced mod work, and made rules that were dangerous yet still fun, but what's the point.

But at least the system we have now, is my guys go torment some builders, and the good guys warriors come out and stop us.

PVP world? No thanks I'll go play doom.

Minecraft pvp isn't fun for the pvp its fun for building an empire against the looming thread of enemies.

I'll send you my proposal Ilsyde, see what you think.

 

[Ravebear]

It's ok to have another world for mining minerals with pvp enabled, but don't take away pvp from the normal world too. If there is no "danger" outside of townships there will be much less incentive to join townships and will bring with it a lot of problems such as not being able to get rid of pesky players hanging around. People will be able to build freely in the wilderness turning the map into a mess of abandoned houses due to players going inactive or building new ones much like a normal free build server, this will also cause griefing related incidents to rise which would be very hard to solve without evidence. I have heard that monsters are providing the risk to make the land outside of townships unsafe, but really, we can handle them in SSP and can handle them here. The PVP world will not be busy enough when the current main world still has all of the materials anyone could need and now much safer.

 

[Ilsyde]

@Kaliven yep I think you're referring to this:

PvP and PvE should be split down the middle by server ports(...)One map for the people who want to kill each other and cause mayhem and the other for the peacefull builders

Way I see it, the problem is that the two go hand in hand and you can't separate them. Murderers and thieves won't spend their time or creativity on building vast monuments and cities. They rely on their prey, the peaceful parties.

http://herocraftonline.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=259&pid=2060#pid2060

@Ravebear, just a small correction: Kainzo said that the current PvP system won't stay. However,

If we get a professions system out in a TIMELY manner - we will have pvp on the main world - but its unlikely in the current state of bmod

 

[Symbolite]

Yea i like the idea of PVP world just being a world to collect resources, if you encounter another player... kill him/her. Also idk any other details that were mentioned about the PVP world but i hope players won't be allowed to build towns and stuff here. The regular world were on now remains unchanged PVP allowed outide rings of cities. And lastly Hell... Hell is just Hell. Get your lightstone or whatever else you came from and gtfo as quick as possible!

 

[Fire3]

I really like your idea of four kingdoms in theory.. Could be an interesting idea for the next map after this one. However, in practise.. We would most likely end up with one overly populated kingdom and three ghost kingdoms. We could force people to join the worse kingdoms.. but that might just make people quit and/or whine alot.

As for the FFA pvp server, the same idea could be used on our current map. Create a few zones around the map (clearly marked) that will have valuable resources scattered around, the deeper you go the better resources.

 

[Kainzo]

I love the discussions! Also add to this - the PVP world will house most to all spells - so when we get those in - we'll be having a fun time planting them in pvp areas so people have to risk life and limb to get spells. At the current state - a new 'world' will be run on the SAME ip and the SAME port - a multiworld is doable from the new bmod implementation - all it requires is a portal to that 'map' - which uses the SAME x y z coords but refers to a DIFFERENT folder on the server DIR.

It is a VERY seamless transition - as if you were taking a /home or /warp.

So in theory...
This is how we sorta want the maps to work out in conjunction with one another.
A player starts out at sanctum - they travel to the Portal to the Nether (aka Hell).
Once inside of Hell - they'll have two choices to go to - back to Main world or PVP world.
The PVP world will have spells placed there, rare resources, among other goodies to make it attractive for builders and anti-pk'ers. It will have "warzones" where the townships from main world will set up bases to have battles with one another. With opposing towns able to take over the warzone (this will need some work).
The main world will have some form of PVP - I really want to release main world PVP with professions - seeing as you are very unbalanced at the moment - a builder has everything to lose yet a pk'er only has his diamond sword or armor to lose.

We want risk - however, not mindless stupidity. Which is about how the current system has gone - FAR too much whining and FAR too much bitching for my tastes - I honestly do not want to run a server that is used for a bunch of whiners. It's not hardcore to pick on builders that don't want to PVP or have no means of defending themselves - once or twice is great - but to the point of seeing a newly spawned person run out of DH Empire and immediately be killed - is bad for both players that want to PVP etc - more than likely that person will either join a town that doesnt want to deal with PVP or just quit the server.

More to come - I'm at work and hopefully will have some time to write more.

 

[Ilsyde]

We would most likely end up with one overly populated kingdom and three ghost kingdoms.

Ye but three ghost kingdoms are still better than what we have now lol.
Back then, my initial idea was to have only one enormous, ever expanding empire in the very center of the map. I posted it as well but forgot in which topic.

 

[McGreed]

Kain, I was wondering what will happen if you die in the PvP world? Will you end up in the Spawn in the main world, or by a special point in the PvP world? Because it seem more practical and friendly if you spawn in the world you die.

 

[Kainzo]

Currently, you spawn in the world you die. Though I believe we may be able to configure it.

 

[Spongiform]

Some thoughts here.

It's not hardcore to pick on builders that don't want to PVP or have no means of defending themselves - once or twice is great - but to the point of seeing a newly spawned person run out of DH Empire and immediately be killed - is bad for both players that want to PVP etc.

Builders only get picked on if they build a town BEFORE they get rings.

Here's a situation that happened a week or two ago.

After declaring our war intentions on Artemis & Friends I began patrolling their general vicinity. I quickly discovered a handful of builders building something in a nearby desert. 3 out of 4 of them were unarmored so a quick stealth attack took them down quickly and easily.

After that they sent warriors out. They ended up building a guard tower for visibility. I spent the day trying to sneak up on their builders while they had guards patrolling the area with a guard on the tower calling out locations.

I had so much fun trying to sneak past the guards and catch the builders working before the guards could stop me. I suddenly had a real, actual challenge with a legitimate risk vs reward (read up on game theory).

In fact, that day was one of the most fun days I've had on HC period. Reactions from them ranged from having awesome fun to "fuck you spongi I hate you".

Chronus is hands down one of the most legitimate cities in all of HC. It was forged from the fires of PVP instead of a free build carebare setting. Blasphemy went through a similar process, having been raided repeatedly prior to getting rings/realms.

From my perspective, my personal opinion and point of view being able to successfully defend and build a city at the same time is so much more satisfying & meaningful it's hard to put into words.

Right now the server is 95% carebear and 5% hardcore. There is currently zero meaningful pvp.

Between absolutely huge tracks of protected land and the fact that the world is a lot bigger then it needs to be(IMO) coupled with /spawn, /home and herogates then there's never any real risk unless you're stupid or lazy.

In fact the only time you truly and legitimately experience risk is when you mine for gold outside of rings and the chance of actually running into anybody in such a huge world is incredibly slim. In approximately 200 hours of gold mining I've done on HC I've run into exactly ONE person.

Even without herogates there is zero need to transport valuables across the map. If you had any significant quantity of gold you can run out to the location, /home set, run back and get your gold and then /home bac k to the bank. The only thing you risk here is wasting time running around. That's assuming you follow the rules and don't just bank at spawn, which to my understanding is illegal but not enforced at all.

I realized if I wanted to actually make a profit PvP'ing (right now it's an epic money sink) then I would have to catch people transporting gold.

Doing this requires 1 of 2 methods.

1: pay attention to who's spamming gold advertisements in chat then go camp the road to their base. With the current lag status and lack of blink it's REALLY hard to hide in a suitable location that's hidden from both directions, while giving good visibility AND place you close enough to the target to catch them. With lag people tend to blink 10 blocks at a time so chasing them is really, really hard and if they see you (again hard to prevent with lag) then all they have to do is /home or /spawn.

2: Locate the mining area's people use (and there's dozens and dozens of them...) then patrol them. After spending close to 30 hours doing this I realize that most people really don't mine much or for very long and they tend to be scattered randomly through out a huge map and on the off chance you do catch someone they rarely have anything particularly valuable. I think the most I ever got was about 20g worth of gold/diamonds combined. This typically takes me about 20 minutes worth of mining on average so it doesn't really justify the HOURS of patroling to achieve, unless I'm really bored and/or really, really out to get someone (stares at Mattrip).

Both of these methods are extremely time consuming with only a small chance of success. They're basically only useful if you want to piss off a specific city or kingdom, not for any tangible monetary benefit.

If you want a healthy, active, fun PvP system you're going to need to make some serious changes.

First is Risk VS Reward.

The rewards of going out into pvp areas needs to justify the risk of doing so both for the non-pvp'ers and the PvP'ers.

In other words there needs to be a tangible benefit's significant.

Example:

2 players in carebareland can don mining gear and go mine about 30g/hour apiece in perfect safety. (collective value of gold + diamonds averaged out) not including the value of coal, redstone, lapis, cobble, gravel, dirt.

Now when they can do that in perfect safety(and don't kid yourself saying there's not much gold left on the normal world, it's largely untouched)

Then the rewards from having the same two players go to the PvP world where one mines and one guards the miner (or some similar setup) needs to be significantly higher - otherwise, and i'll say this bluntly.. what the fuck is the point? Risk Vs Reward.

There's a ton of options and it doesn't necessary have to be mining gold.

One possibility is to remove(or provide as an alternative) a point system for cities/factions. Whenever a player kills a player in another faction they gain points and the opposing faction looses points. The values wouldn't be equal though. For example the killer gains 100 points while the killed looses 75 points which allows for a net gain over time.

The factions then spend these points to buy shit for their faction such as rings, banks, shops, portals etc.

You could then throw in arena's, challenges, events where winning nets points/gold for the winning team.

Could even automate it to some degree.

City A issues a challenge /challenge [challengesettings]

They could challenge a specific city/faction or allow an open challenge where anybody can accept.

Once a challenge has been set and accepted any members of the cities online have 5 minutes to opt-in and gear up and then they get teleported to the chosen arena and duke it out.

Only ranking members of a city could issue or accept.

Every sunday admins could host events involving different cities such as tournaments or specialized quests or whatever they can think up.

There's an absolute ton of options available to make PvP fun, rewarding and provide a solid risk-reward system. Because right now the current system isn't hardcore or rewarding.

 

[applelove]

I like the idea of a world where pretty much anything goes, where if you build a fort but let it get taken over, some rat can come in and fill it with boobytraps. But I don't really see a point in going to this world unless you're just going to have friendly skirmishes with a rival town. There's no reward to PvPing, unless it's to up your kill count, or your kingdoms kill count.

One idea would be a king of the hill approach, where a particular area is of great value to hold, and any forts and defenses there are free game. It could be that the area has a higher density of resources like gold or diamond, or just for scoring purpose (Kingdom X held the hill for Y hours.) At the very least, it would give a level of competition to pvp.

Editted:
I agree with a large part of your post spongi. However, Chronus only succeeded because they had an established member base to come help them out. Any other fledgling town would have just been killed over and over for having no resources or 30-40 allied players willing to help through out a given day. Bjorkgarr is a rather nice example, someone found their coordinates and camped them for hours, stole all their resources so even if they could get back to town, they had no way of preparing for battle.

As for the point system, as long as it is not the only way to expand or better one's town, I don't see a problem with it. There are towns out there that couldn't care less about pvping, and merely want to build. This may be a hardcore server, but it shouldn't cater to just one group.

 

[SquallSeeD31]

This is an old and simple concept, but it's worked well for them so far:

A simple browser game called Kingdom of Loathing starts all players off with PvP disabled. You cannot attack or be attacked. If you want to attack other players, you have to break your Hippy Stone first. The Hippy Stone is just a symbolic flag: once broken, you're an eligible combatant.

Hate the thought of PvP? Don't break your Hippy Stone.

 

[s3nse]

I hate long walls of text, so I'll keep my opinions/explanations short and simple.

I agree 100% with your take on the FFA PVP world.

The items that can be obtained from hell/nether are appealing, but yes I agree in that it's a simple "get your shit and then gtfo" server.

I disagree with your idea on kingdoms.

---

This is an old and simple concept, but it's worked well for them so far:

A simple browser game called Kingdom of Loathing starts all players off with PvP disabled. You cannot attack or be attacked. If you want to attack other players, you have to break your Hippy Stone first. The Hippy Stone is just a symbolic flag: once broken, you're an eligible combatant.

Hate the thought of PvP? Don't break your Hippy Stone.

Omg i love that game

 

[Solace]

Another example of what squal suggested is Pvp Flagging in WoW. If you play on a PvE realm you are giving the choice to turn your pvp flag on or off depending on if you want to pvp , with obvious limitations to stop people turning it off in combat.

 

[McGreed]

Let me remind you that PvP is a new (and was a temporary) addition to Herocraft, and haven't been the main objective as some of you new people says. Some of us has been here for a long time and though a couple of maps and seen the server evolve, and there has always been plenty of people coming on, and those who left was mainly because of irl or because they were banned. With PvP as it is, we have had people leaving because their game experience has been ruined and they got sick of it.

It seem that you think that the server is the same as it always been, but it has changed a lot compared to when it first started. PvP part is very new and still getting put together and there need to be made rules that make the game hard and enjoyable without 'griefing' on other people. There was said that mobs isn't any challenge, but the server is still adding things, and will add more 'hardcore' elements to the game. There is no reason for forcing PvP onto players, since its not the main objective of the original game. If you want that, go play counterstrike, because if its a problem with you that you can't PK players who don't fight back, then its your problem. The three maps solves the problem that we have with people who wants to build and people who wants to PK and again, its a concept in PROGRESS, and will be modified and changed to make interesting.

And yes, the PvP flag pr person is also something that has been discussed, I think there might be a coding problem, but its on the table as SUGGESTION, like most of ideas should be instead of "I dont like".

 

[Spongiform]

Let me remind you that PvP is a new (and was a temporary) addition to Herocraft, and haven't been the main objective as some of you new people says.

Originally I was looking for a server with the following rule sets.
(not necessarily in this order)
1: PvP
2: A working economy
3: "hardcore/legitimate"
4: A township system that allowed towns to be protected (primarily from griefing, not PvP.

I played on a few different servers before joining herocraft but was turned away for various reasons.

When I ran across HC it was listed as hardcore, with a working gold standard economy and PvP. It didn't say anything about it being temporary and at sunday's meeting was the first I'd heard of it being temporary.

 

[SquallSeeD31]

Sunday's meeting was similarly the first time I heard of this server's PvP being a temporary feature, and the SMP thread post certainly alludes to nothing of the sort. The SMP thread's "mission statement" sounds pretty hardcore to me; I don't know what the server was in the past, or what it's intended to be, but I'd love it if the vision were what's in that thread.

 

[McGreed]

It was a temporary as in the form it is now, I don't think it ever meant to be a global thing. The previous maps we had arenas where we could PvP, and people had fun with that as well. And until there is a way as perfect way to make this work, PvP is still an work in progress. Previously it might have been too little (limited to arenas), but the current system doesn't work either. So now this new one that Kainzo came up with and we are trying out now. Until we tried it and worked on it, you don't know if it works or not.

As to being the first time you heard about it, well, that is the problem with not having been here for longer then you have.

 

[elroy72]

My thoughts, gonna make them quick
FFA World: I want this for sure! sanctioned war games, points (maybe a points shop?), extra resources, Place to wage REAL war.
Hell: Hell is hell. what's there more to say? I would like to see nether gates in town for a quick transport method.
Main World: While at first I thought I would like no PVP, a lot of good points have been made. With no PVP why join a town that has nothing but restrictions? Keep PVP in the Main world, Just make the FFA world lucrative enough to go there too.