Suggestion [General] - How to greatly improve Herocraft (personal observation)

[Danda]

A good idea would probably be to reinstate the old can't pvp players below level 10-20, and to combat the old exploit just make it so that profession is also accounted for, as well as any classes they may have switched from. If a vet still wants to stay level 1 in both crafter and combat to be exempt from pvp, then whatever, they'll be useless on all fronts anyways.

If memory serves that was already a thing and gta didn't level crafter either

 

[radicater11]

If memory serves that was already a thing and gta didn't level crafter either

Yes, but he did it to grab his team's deathchests, which will no longer exist. If it truly becomes an issue, we can just treat it like exploiting and hand out a punishment as such.

 

[Jrr_]

Yes, but he did it to grab his team's deathchests, which will no longer exist. If it truly becomes an issue, we can just treat it like exploiting and hand out a punishment as such.

+1

 

[Dewyn]

I think it's time we stop suggesting improvements to an existing system and start suggesting a new system entirely.

If we can't move forward, then that's it.

 

[draconis99]

What I had in mind was to completely redo the IPM system we currently have. IPM stands for Introduction, Practice, Mastery. The tutorial system at the start is horrid, non-immersive, and confusing for even a veteran like me. There is little direction and it is so boring that you simply want to leave.

We start the game with a proper IPM based around a theme - Herocraft. The player starts by wandering to a river with a broken bridge and an NPC with his dog. There is a ladder on the hero's side of the river to climb back out, and once the player talks to the NPC, the NPC tells the player that he will teach the player how to jump across the river-length if the player will send for help to repair the bridge. The player learns how to use /skill jump and then can decide whether to finish the quest and get the old man help or leave the old man stranded because he can't leave his dog behind and jump over the river himself.
From this iteration, we introduce a skill, dynamic quest options, and a theme of crafting your hero (herocraft) by getting skills from NPCs. We also give the hero a taste for high mobility skills so they can easier pick a class with such skills later that they might enjoy. After the bridge, we have a few more instances of learning skills for each situation. From these different types of skills, the player can better understand what kind of class he or she wishes to be. Once they finish the tutorial, a ship captain is impressed with all their work and offers to take them to a special continent free of charge.

The player is now in the main server.

Once there, the captain will have a quest of some sort to help give the player direction. The end of the quest will allow the player to choose between being a good or a more sinister player - one to show the player a more PVE side of the game, and the other to direct them more towards PVP content. They can easily pick up on the other aspect of the game in their own time. At the end of either the small PVP or PVE campaign, they are led to understand more about creating and joining towns - all the while, getting familiar with the main town hub locations such as the market, quick travel herogate port, and anything else worth mentioning.

While the player can completely ignore any of the main server tutorial and simply do what they want how they want, it gives new players the option of a direction to get them comfortable with the game and to feel some semblance of success and progress, thus a more desire to play some more after their first experience.

Now for the game. If we are going to have classes, we should have class trainers. This brings a lore and an RPG aspect to the game that also feels more rewarding when players earn an ability, thus solidifying the feeling of progression and delaying that feeling with anticipation for getting to your trainer to get said ability.
This part is purely a personal speculation. I hate levels. I feel that levels are a horrid system in any multiplayer game that automatically gives more active/older players not only a straight up advantage in experience (wisdom) of how to play the game, but an unfair advantage in simply being able to produce number outcomes in damage and healing that new players cannot. This often leads to abuse of these higher numbers and griefing of new players. I would propose that instead of levels, players earn tokens for the things that they do/accomplish. These tokens can be used to purchase skills from class trainers. Each token will be tailored for your specific class, but there is a currency trading vendor to swap out tokens for another class into yours - at a cost of course. This creates a currency, a money sink, and a reason for players to go out and gather these tokens even after they have all the skills they want; to help out their friends, allies, or even sell on the market.

Focus on class abilities should be tailored towards making the class feel as the theme of the class is. Druid should feel like a force of nature, Paladin should be a defensive knight, etc. Balance should be about making combat a battle of decisions at the right time to gain favor instead of giving random damage spells and abilities numbers to kill each other. We want players to experience the game, not make the game about players getting their jollies for killing someone quickly. Classes should have more action and situational passive abilities to reward the players for playing their roles - a paladin needs to defend a designated location to be at peak performance; a fire caster needs to prime their target with debuffs for a massive flame burst to achieve maximum damage; an archer needs to come up with strategy to manipulate their enemies to approach them from the most advantageous point for the archer. We also need for classes to have abilities that will suck for them individually compared to other abilities, but will be extraordinarily beneficial to a multi-class group.

The world should have different corners with different themes - each with a dynamic dungeon fitting that theme. One could be undead, while another is angry nature's fury, or a band of thieves, etc. How the dungeons will work would be fun and dynamic, but I don't want to reveal that here. Staff can talk to me about it if they are truly interested in making engaging repeatable dungeons with purpose.

There should be random repeatable turn-in quests where the players can turn in specific types of blocks or resources for favor towards their town or their own progress. They could even have the reward degrade over time so that the first groups to get their resources in to the location get maximum prizes. The resource turn-ins could be located throughout the map to repair either PVE defense nodes to quell incoming invasions or PVP objectives to be taken over after a timer once they are repaired.

There are plenty of ways to improve the game, I simply worry that changing too much will hurt the little group we have left and without proper advertisement, also not attract enough new victi- er.. players.

 

[MysticMight]

What I had in mind was to completely redo the IPM system we currently have. IPM stands for Introduction, Practice, Mastery. The tutorial system at the start is horrid, non-immersive, and confusing for even a veteran like me. There is little direction and it is so boring that you simply want to leave.

We start the game with a proper IPM based around a theme - Herocraft. The player starts by wandering to a river with a broken bridge and an NPC with his dog. There is a ladder on the hero's side of the river to climb back out, and once the player talks to the NPC, the NPC tells the player that he will teach the player how to jump across the river-length if the player will send for help to repair the bridge. The player learns how to use /skill jump and then can decide whether to finish the quest and get the old man help or leave the old man stranded because he can't leave his dog behind and jump over the river himself.
From this iteration, we introduce a skill, dynamic quest options, and a theme of crafting your hero (herocraft) by getting skills from NPCs. We also give the hero a taste for high mobility skills so they can easier pick a class with such skills later that they might enjoy. After the bridge, we have a few more instances of learning skills for each situation. From these different types of skills, the player can better understand what kind of class he or she wishes to be. Once they finish the tutorial, a ship captain is impressed with all their work and offers to take them to a special continent free of charge.

The player is now in the main server.

Once there, the captain will have a quest of some sort to help give the player direction. The end of the quest will allow the player to choose between being a good or a more sinister player - one to show the player a more PVE side of the game, and the other to direct them more towards PVP content. They can easily pick up on the other aspect of the game in their own time. At the end of either the small PVP or PVE campaign, they are led to understand more about creating and joining towns - all the while, getting familiar with the main town hub locations such as the market, quick travel herogate port, and anything else worth mentioning.

While the player can completely ignore any of the main server tutorial and simply do what they want how they want, it gives new players the option of a direction to get them comfortable with the game and to feel some semblance of success and progress, thus a more desire to play some more after their first experience.

Now for the game. If we are going to have classes, we should have class trainers. This brings a lore and an RPG aspect to the game that also feels more rewarding when players earn an ability, thus solidifying the feeling of progression and delaying that feeling with anticipation for getting to your trainer to get said ability.
This part is purely a personal speculation. I hate levels. I feel that levels are a horrid system in any multiplayer game that automatically gives more active/older players not only a straight up advantage in experience (wisdom) of how to play the game, but an unfair advantage in simply being able to produce number outcomes in damage and healing that new players cannot. This often leads to abuse of these higher numbers and griefing of new players. I would propose that instead of levels, players earn tokens for the things that they do/accomplish. These tokens can be used to purchase skills from class trainers. Each token will be tailored for your specific class, but there is a currency trading vendor to swap out tokens for another class into yours - at a cost of course. This creates a currency, a money sink, and a reason for players to go out and gather these tokens even after they have all the skills they want; to help out their friends, allies, or even sell on the market.

Focus on class abilities should be tailored towards making the class feel as the theme of the class is. Druid should feel like a force of nature, Paladin should be a defensive knight, etc. Balance should be about making combat a battle of decisions at the right time to gain favor instead of giving random damage spells and abilities numbers to kill each other. We want players to experience the game, not make the game about players getting their jollies for killing someone quickly. Classes should have more action and situational passive abilities to reward the players for playing their roles - a paladin needs to defend a designated location to be at peak performance; a fire caster needs to prime their target with debuffs for a massive flame burst to achieve maximum damage; an archer needs to come up with strategy to manipulate their enemies to approach them from the most advantageous point for the archer. We also need for classes to have abilities that will suck for them individually compared to other abilities, but will be extraordinarily beneficial to a multi-class group.

The world should have different corners with different themes - each with a dynamic dungeon fitting that theme. One could be undead, while another is angry nature's fury, or a band of thieves, etc. How the dungeons will work would be fun and dynamic, but I don't want to reveal that here. Staff can talk to me about it if they are truly interested in making engaging repeatable dungeons with purpose.

There should be random repeatable turn-in quests where the players can turn in specific types of blocks or resources for favor towards their town or their own progress. They could even have the reward degrade over time so that the first groups to get their resources in to the location get maximum prizes. The resource turn-ins could be located throughout the map to repair either PVE defense nodes to quell incoming invasions or PVP objectives to be taken over after a timer once they are repaired.

There are plenty of ways to improve the game, I simply worry that changing too much will hurt the little group we have left and without proper advertisement, also not attract enough new victi- er.. players.

Great tutorial idea! I seem to remember Herocraft having a tutorial something like this (or it may have been another server).
Choosing a class can be a hard decision, especially for new players. Something like this may help the player to decide, or at least learn some abilities and mechanics early on.

 

[Yeetrium2]

I've seen lots of good ideas here. Is somebody going to implement these? or are they going to be skipped over like most of the improvement posts.

 

[werwew19]

I think it's time we stop suggesting improvements to an existing system and start suggesting a new system entirely.

If we can't move forward, then that's it.

This. This has to be done, take older concepts that worked and rebuild the entire system with plenty of new ones. Reverting back to how DG, Bastion, etc. worked wont help anymore.

 

[Kainzo]

What I had in mind was to completely redo the IPM system we currently have. IPM stands for Introduction, Practice, Mastery. The tutorial system at the start is horrid, non-immersive, and confusing for even a veteran like me. There is little direction and it is so boring that you simply want to leave.

We start the game with a proper IPM based around a theme - Herocraft. The player starts by wandering to a river with a broken bridge and an NPC with his dog. There is a ladder on the hero's side of the river to climb back out, and once the player talks to the NPC, the NPC tells the player that he will teach the player how to jump across the river-length if the player will send for help to repair the bridge. The player learns how to use /skill jump and then can decide whether to finish the quest and get the old man help or leave the old man stranded because he can't leave his dog behind and jump over the river himself.
From this iteration, we introduce a skill, dynamic quest options, and a theme of crafting your hero (herocraft) by getting skills from NPCs. We also give the hero a taste for high mobility skills so they can easier pick a class with such skills later that they might enjoy. After the bridge, we have a few more instances of learning skills for each situation. From these different types of skills, the player can better understand what kind of class he or she wishes to be. Once they finish the tutorial, a ship captain is impressed with all their work and offers to take them to a special continent free of charge.

The player is now in the main server.

Once there, the captain will have a quest of some sort to help give the player direction. The end of the quest will allow the player to choose between being a good or a more sinister player - one to show the player a more PVE side of the game, and the other to direct them more towards PVP content. They can easily pick up on the other aspect of the game in their own time. At the end of either the small PVP or PVE campaign, they are led to understand more about creating and joining towns - all the while, getting familiar with the main town hub locations such as the market, quick travel herogate port, and anything else worth mentioning.

While the player can completely ignore any of the main server tutorial and simply do what they want how they want, it gives new players the option of a direction to get them comfortable with the game and to feel some semblance of success and progress, thus a more desire to play some more after their first experience.

Now for the game. If we are going to have classes, we should have class trainers. This brings a lore and an RPG aspect to the game that also feels more rewarding when players earn an ability, thus solidifying the feeling of progression and delaying that feeling with anticipation for getting to your trainer to get said ability.
This part is purely a personal speculation. I hate levels. I feel that levels are a horrid system in any multiplayer game that automatically gives more active/older players not only a straight up advantage in experience (wisdom) of how to play the game, but an unfair advantage in simply being able to produce number outcomes in damage and healing that new players cannot. This often leads to abuse of these higher numbers and griefing of new players. I would propose that instead of levels, players earn tokens for the things that they do/accomplish. These tokens can be used to purchase skills from class trainers. Each token will be tailored for your specific class, but there is a currency trading vendor to swap out tokens for another class into yours - at a cost of course. This creates a currency, a money sink, and a reason for players to go out and gather these tokens even after they have all the skills they want; to help out their friends, allies, or even sell on the market.

Focus on class abilities should be tailored towards making the class feel as the theme of the class is. Druid should feel like a force of nature, Paladin should be a defensive knight, etc. Balance should be about making combat a battle of decisions at the right time to gain favor instead of giving random damage spells and abilities numbers to kill each other. We want players to experience the game, not make the game about players getting their jollies for killing someone quickly. Classes should have more action and situational passive abilities to reward the players for playing their roles - a paladin needs to defend a designated location to be at peak performance; a fire caster needs to prime their target with debuffs for a massive flame burst to achieve maximum damage; an archer needs to come up with strategy to manipulate their enemies to approach them from the most advantageous point for the archer. We also need for classes to have abilities that will suck for them individually compared to other abilities, but will be extraordinarily beneficial to a multi-class group.

The world should have different corners with different themes - each with a dynamic dungeon fitting that theme. One could be undead, while another is angry nature's fury, or a band of thieves, etc. How the dungeons will work would be fun and dynamic, but I don't want to reveal that here. Staff can talk to me about it if they are truly interested in making engaging repeatable dungeons with purpose.

There should be random repeatable turn-in quests where the players can turn in specific types of blocks or resources for favor towards their town or their own progress. They could even have the reward degrade over time so that the first groups to get their resources in to the location get maximum prizes. The resource turn-ins could be located throughout the map to repair either PVE defense nodes to quell incoming invasions or PVP objectives to be taken over after a timer once they are repaired.

There are plenty of ways to improve the game, I simply worry that changing too much will hurt the little group we have left and without proper advertisement, also not attract enough new victi- er.. players.

This.

 

[Kainzo]

I've seen lots of good ideas here. Is somebody going to implement these? or are they going to be skipped over like most of the improvement posts.

Good ideas usually take time and coding.

Its something we're definitely working on - I think we'll draw up a post first about the changes in the short term and then a "long term" plan.

@Danda will help faciliate this as well.

 

[Kainzo]

I think it's time we stop suggesting improvements to an existing system and start suggesting a new system entirely.

If we can't move forward, then that's it.

To a certain extend, I agree.
However, reinventing the wheel this late into a Minecraft game / server.. probably isnt the best use of time.

Heroes has a LOT of work put into it and even more testing. We can gut the current setup and still make it very VERY different and expansive.

Going back to the past and doing exactly what we did in Bastion days wont fix or bring players back.

 

[pocketemu]

I think it's time we stop suggesting improvements to an existing system and start suggesting a new system entirely.

If we can't move forward, then that's it.

I tried suggesting different systems and trying to get people thinking about it when I voiced my opinion that the server needed a complete reboot, nobody seemed to be interested or even care lol

I think the bigger problem is it doesn't matter if a new system or improvements decided upon at this point, there isn't enough man power or people doing their jobs (no clue which it is, most likely a little of both) to implement them correctly.

Just look at the wiki...

 

[Dewyn]

I'm just gonna work on my own game, maybe HC should try that.

Minecraft is dying. Period.

 

[Fayke]

I'm just gonna work on my own game, maybe HC should try that.

Minecraft is dying. Period.

I strongly disagree.
https://minecraft.net/en-us/stats/

Edit: Also, why the hell isn't draconis99 staff? Like seriously... this guy is a freaking wizard

 

[Kainzo]

I strongly disagree.
https://minecraft.net/en-us/stats/

Edit: Also, why the hell isn't draconis99 staff? Like seriously... this guy is a freaking wizard

He wants to play on the server as well, he currently holds the developer position.

 

[Fayke]

He wants to play on the server as well, he currently holds the developer position.

Ah, I see... Yeah I can understand the whole not wanting too much responsibility and just wanting to play...

What I meant was developer though, he just didnt have the forum tag so I wasnt sure

 

[draconis99]

Ah, I see... Yeah I can understand the whole not wanting too much responsibility and just wanting to play...

What I meant was developer though, he just didnt have the forum tag so I wasnt sure

Kainzo has been all but compliant with me helping out in any way. I take the blame for limiting my access to Herocraft, not Kainzo. I just moved, am the only means of transportation for not only my wife but also my roommate, and we are trying to get our lives in order here. We are all getting new jobs on top of designing and developing for three game projects already in the works, and I do not have the time to be a full staff member and put in the hours I should as staff to make an impact and feel I am worthy of the title. I haven't had AC for the last week and a half and the sweltering heat has led to lack of sleep and other things, so I have not been as diligent as I could have been, but I plan to go through the code, figure out what Spigot API hooks we have to work with, and see what I can do from there. Once I have a grasp on what is and is not capable, I can better plan how to accomplish the goals we want without damaging the already existing community beyond repair.

I've spoken with several of the other developers and am teaching several of them new ways of thinking and approaching the problems at hand. This needs to be a full team effort with everyone on board and heading the right direction - not a one man telling everyone what to do and to trust him because he has a piece of paper saying he's a game designer. Once we have everyone seeing the same vision and being on board, we can make Herocraft an even more amazing experience for players together.

It just takes time. I apologize for the wait, but we'll do our best to make it worth it.

 

[Fayke]

Kainzo has been all but compliant with me helping out in any way. I take the blame for limiting my access to Herocraft, not Kainzo. I just moved, am the only means of transportation for not only my wife but also my roommate, and we are trying to get our lives in order here. We are all getting new jobs on top of designing and developing for three game projects already in the works, and I do not have the time to be a full staff member and put in the hours I should as staff to make an impact and feel I am worthy of the title. I haven't had AC for the last week and a half and the sweltering heat has led to lack of sleep and other things, so I have not been as diligent as I could have been, but I plan to go through the code, figure out what Spigot API hooks we have to work with, and see what I can do from there. Once I have a grasp on what is and is not capable, I can better plan how to accomplish the goals we want without damaging the already existing community beyond repair.

I've spoken with several of the other developers and am teaching several of them new ways of thinking and approaching the problems at hand. This needs to be a full team effort with everyone on board and heading the right direction - not a one man telling everyone what to do and to trust him because he has a piece of paper saying he's a game designer. Once we have everyone seeing the same vision and being on board, we can make Herocraft an even more amazing experience for players together.

It just takes time. I apologize for the wait, but we'll do our best to make it worth it.

Yeah I didn't mean to blame anyone so sorry if it came off that way. I personally think you're brilliant and as more people come to see things as you do, herocraft will continue pushing in the right direction.

Good luck with your game projects, AC, getting your life together, and learning Spigot. I tried learning and got too frustrated while learning Spigot and the likes, even though I picked up a good deal of Java very quick.

 

[draconis99]

Yeah I didn't mean to blame anyone so sorry if it came off that way. I personally think you're brilliant and as more people come to see things as you do, herocraft will continue pushing in the right direction.

Good luck with your game projects, AC, getting your life together, and learning Spigot. I tried learning and got too frustrated while learning Spigot and the likes, even though I picked up a good deal of Java very quick.

Well thank you Fayke! It feels good to have someone rooting for me.

 

[Fayke]

Well thank you Fayke! It feels good to have someone rooting for me.

Hmhm, I try to root for everyone... I've been a bad person to too many individuals, so yeah...