Suggestion Herocraft losing its roots

[Recovery999]

Herocraft has a rigorous xp curve that encourages players to play long term and invest time into their xp and into personal skill at the combat system. The spawn and lore if the game are beautiful and promote design and architectural articulation from player's creations. The classes have dps roles, tanks, healers, crowd control, rangers etc to promote groups of 10+ active players partying up in warbands.

Kingdoms is a mod that is built for faction servers. My base cannot be anything other than a 200 block tall cobble cube covered in water to stop raids. The opportunity for beautiful buildings is lost with the kingdoms plugin and the lack of safe claims. Without safe houses all my work is lost the second a base is conquered. The conquering faction becomes even more stronger and wipes out all bases by monopolizing. Players quit because they lost all their hard work.

Your core systems promote long term gameplay. Kingdoms was designed for faction servers that have very high reset rates and low populations of vanilla combat, not complex mixing of classes partied up.

I played in 2011/2012 before pvp was a thing and the server was based off social activities and building nice homes on purchased plots from mayors. Tons of people were playing cooperatively and having fun pve and social building.
Then I played again in 2012/2013 when pvp was added. I joined communist collective, we built a base and I spent tons of time leveling my herocraft stats as an archer. The server's player base got very inactive and with 20-30 players online pvp went to only random 1v1 encounters. I quit because hunters cant compete in 1v1s. The bases were safe from enemies, but something wasnt working right to keep players online and I beleive it was due to the lack of a safe ring of pve and towny style socializing

I think the class system is great, but the model you are mixing it up with will make it worse than the pvp everywhere model, with kingdoms now nothing is safe at all!
The only way herocraft will thrive is if you have the spawn in the center, peaceful claimable land from around spawn out to 1500 coords to promote long term gameplay pve, towns, socializing etc,.. then dangerous pvp zone claimable land from 1500 to 2500, then maybe kingdoms style pvp past 2500. You need to layer in a pve peaceful social city building server between spawn and all this pvp shit. Pvp is too short term and doesnt fit with the long term xp and leveling. The functional ugly ass buildings that kingdoms raiding will force players to create will be ugly as fuck and not fit the herocraft lore and feel at all. Youre going to end up with a semi active kingdom that has a monopoly and kills all kingdoms. They are going to be super board because they caused everyone to quit, and then theyll quit and the server will be dead.

Your complex and beautiful class system designed for parties of 10-15 players will sit useless as there will only be 1v1s around 200 block high cobblestone towers covered in water. This is the future of herocraft without a buffer ring between spawn and pvp, a buffer that fills the much needed void for pve, safe towns, friendships, and socialization that promote long term gameplay.

2011 herocraft era pve socializing ring + safe claimable pvp ring + kingdoms pvp raiding ring would bring herocraft back to its roots while also evolving it the new model of kingdoms pvp raiding youve developed into a new and brighter chapter of herocraft.

 

[Pakeon]

well the thing is that in 2017 almost noone want to play only pve and lore/city build... the minecraft population has completly changed from that to "minigames" and shit. HC's only way to get more players imo, is to improve the pvp/raid system so newbies get early game succeses and then somehow binding them for long term playing...
The last two years were townies/townships enabled and we have had steadily less players then before. Maybe such a big change (town->kingdom) will get us more players

 

[Recovery999]

well the thing is that in 2017 almost noone want to play only pve and lore/city build... the minecraft population has completly changed from that to "minigames"

That doesnt mean remove the core of the game entirely and turn your server into a frenkenstein that doesnt know if its a giant minigame that is reset every 2 weeks or a long term mmorpg.

The game mechanics for this map arent compatible. This is far from a minigame its an mmorpg based in minecraft thats supposed to last for long stretches of time and not for 5 minutes like all minigames do.

Lower populated server developers are desperately infatuated with thse successfull minigame hubs so they are dropping everything that makes their server special including the traditional minecraft multiplayer experience, instead of adding onto what they already had with minigames.

I could totally see a capture the flag minigame working on this server, but there is no core minecraft to attatch it too. You cant have kingdoms plugin without also having the bread and butter of pve peaceful towny minecraft.

Administration should not assume their previous model failed because it didnt work, but look to other factors, such as improper advertising, being unlucky with it catching on, etc.

The only thing I am sure of is that the current game mechanics are incompatible. The server will be empty without the bread and butter.

All of this in addition to the many many issues I expressed in the original post of 200 block tall cobble functional only buildings, monopolizing kingdoms sitting around bored because they raided etveryone and made everyone quit, lack of 10+ player parties, short term game mechanics, etc.

 

[Kainzo]

I mean... just to put in bluntly, Herocraft's roots were "no protections, no locked chests, no mercy" .... we started out as a PVE server when there was no code to PVP with and there were no plugins to protect buildings..

So its not correct to state we're going away from our roots, maybe the additions YOU are used to (care bear style, infinite protection gameplay)

That being said... I think the stagination happens because everyone can get everything and theres no risk, loss or good game design.
@draconis99 has touched on this on his topics, we have too many positive loops in the system, negative feedback loops are needed to have a healthy "flow" of gameplay.

Right now Herocraft has a bit of an identify crisis, I understand that. I'm more than happy to have a safe zone around spawn where players can normally build and whatnot, but it may create a lot of confusion and chaos to do so.

 

[Recovery999]

That being said... I think the stagination happens because everyone can get everything and theres no risk, loss or good game design.
@draconis99 has touched on this on his topics, we have too many positive loops in the system, negative feedback loops are needed to have a healthy "flow" of gameplay.

The idea that there is risk and reward can be expanded upon by penalizing player's xp gain and their capacity to profit and build freely from building inside the safe buffer zone.

Inside civilian zone xp is halved, or even lower than half. Mob spawners don't spawn npcs so players cant make mob farms. Players could only have one half chest of items, or a custom chest accessed by a command that can only be opened from within their own city. All blocks within the safe buffer zone are protected, only inside cities can blocks be placed/broken. This prevents players from mining and gathering inside the safe zone. Normal players can't break blocks outside of their own city plot, only mayors and two/three promoted players could edit land within their city bounds.

Within kingdom zone players gain normal xp, the ability to place chests and lock them, find and turn mob spawners into farms, not to mention the perks of owning a kingdom like the passive xp generator you can buy with resource points.

Right now Herocraft has a bit of an identify crisis, I understand that. I'm more than happy to have a safe zone around spawn where players can normally build and whatnot, but it may create a lot of confusion and chaos to do so.

As long as its a system where players can only join a city (with the option to create one for a very high cost after three+ weeks of gameplay and grinding), not create their own plot among 500 other inactive player's individual eye sore plots. The system where a mayor can manage the town and destroy ugly stuff and inactive areas is healthier for the game and for promoting social interaction.

The buffer zone and winderness zone could be understood at the very start the tutorial in one or two sentances.

Around the center point of Sanctum lies the civilian plains, a safe ring of land with peaceful cities and restricted building. Outside this civilian ring are the dangerous lands of warring kingdoms where you can gather resources, plant your crops, and fight for glory!

 

[Recovery999]

Edited**

 

[Eldrex]

Some of these ideas might be good some might be bad. The real answer is there is no answer except that @draconis99 is the answer

Out of all honesty though I would love to see PvP remain but for PVE and trust between players encouraged more. Karma system pls

 

[Bob_de_Blastoise]

I'm not completely sure about the roots of Herocraft from the beginning since I started playing on Bastion but there were a few things that have changed since then that I think might be having an affect on the player base.

I think one of the bigger problems is related to new players joining and staying. It's more fun to play on a server with 100-200+ players online the majority of the time because it makes the server more lively. More random encounters happen as players go about doing different things. And these random encounters are fun whether they just be little social encounters or pvp related. Because new players aren't staying as long, older players slowly dwindle out because the population drops and it's just not as fun.

When I first started Herocraft all the plugins and systems were extremely overwhelming. Other players helped but it was still frustrating trying to learn all the systems. It's just so much thrown at you at one time. And when you're new, you get overwhelmed and leave. And I know this probably isn't a popular idea for the veterans but I think the server should bring back the warrior, rogue, mage, and healer classes that branch out to the wider selection. These classes help slowly introduce how the server works and, at least for me anyway, having a smaller amount of information and choices initially helped me learn the systems in a smoother less frustrating way.

Of course I'm sure there are many other variable's involved like the wide variety of other servers like mini-game servers that give people instant gratification. I feel like if the server could somehow slowly build people up they'll be less likely to quit from frustration and being overwhelmed and more likely to stay and see how gratifying the system can be when you learn how it works.

That's just my opinion though and I'd love to see what you guys think about this idea.

 

[Eldrex]

I'm not completely sure about the roots of Herocraft from the beginning since I started playing on Bastion but there were a few things that have changed since then that I think might be having an affect on the player base.

I think one of the bigger problems is related to new players joining and staying. It's more fun to play on a server with 100-200+ players online the majority of the time because it makes the server more lively. More random encounters happen as players go about doing different things. And these random encounters are fun whether they just be little social encounters or pvp related. Because new players aren't staying as long, older players slowly dwindle out because the population drops and it's just not as fun.

When I first started Herocraft all the plugins and systems were extremely overwhelming. Other players helped but it was still frustrating trying to learn all the systems. It's just so much thrown at you at one time. And when you're new, you get overwhelmed and leave. And I know this probably isn't a popular idea for the veterans but I think the server should bring back the warrior, rogue, mage, and healer classes that branch out to the wider selection. These classes help slowly introduce how the server works and, at least for me anyway, having a smaller amount of information and choices initially helped me learn the systems in a smoother less frustrating way.

Of course I'm sure there are many other variable's involved like the wide variety of other servers like mini-game servers that give people instant gratification. I feel like if the server could somehow slowly build people up they'll be less likely to quit from frustration and being overwhelmed and more likely to stay and see how gratifying the system can be when you learn how it works.

That's just my opinion though and I'd love to see what you guys think about this idea.

Agreee, agree, agree. I feel all the mechanics should be introduced slowly over a time and guide the player by having them complete tasks, not just give them a TON of info in the tutorial, and set them free. I'd like to see lostsoul > caster/warrior/support/rogue >> specialization of it progression come back. I'd also like to see professions and whatnot maybe introduced a bit later, and just for science, I personally would like to see how the server does without them at all. That's just me though.

 

[Kimsgrim]

Agreee, agree, agree. I feel all the mechanics should be introduced slowly over a time and guide the player by having them complete tasks, not just give them a TON of info in the tutorial, and set them free. I'd like to see lostsoul > caster/warrior/support/rogue >> specialization of it progression come back. I'd also like to see professions and whatnot maybe introduced a bit later, and just for science, I personally would like to see how the server does without them at all. That's just me though.

No professions = no economy. If everyone can do everything and craft everything, then there is no need for a market other then to quickly get stuff.

 

[Eldrex]

No professions = no economy. If everyone can do everything and craft everything, then there is no need for a market other then to quickly get stuff.

There's no economy as it is, and I didn't say it should be implemented I just said I'd be interested to see how works out