I never said I wouldn't do these things, you asked for my opinion which is what you got. I am not alone in the approval process and it was my intention to discuss it with the others and bring this up with the balance team.
So for your points, I'll address them with what I know of.
My suggestions:
- First and foremost, give the sand toys and the entire sandbox back to the players!
I agree, there are a few things that are missing that we need to properly introduce into the game.
- Bring back more Vanilla Minecraft to Herocraft! Mob spawns, natural structures, hoppers, and as much as possible of the things that are inherent to the game of Minecraft. Honestly, if lag still that much of an issue on HC that it cannot have all these things for 20 to 40 people, then something is inherently flawed with the server's technology....
The reduction in mob spawns was mostly just a byproduct of introducing dungeons and attempting to discourage usage of darkrooms via mechanical changes.
Not sure what your point is on natural structures those were generated and were never removed... i feel you're somewhat miss informed here.
Hoppers were removed for several reasons, and your argument about things lagging with 20-40 people online is flawed. The number of players aren't the only thing that hugely controbute to lag. There are two things which are usually the leading causes of lag and they are entities and block updates. Hoppers and what people usually do with them contribute HUGE amounts of them with all the item sorting systems etc people usually make and just saying "well make them illegal" is not a good solution as structures are not easy to police as there is not a good way of tracking these things. Additionally there are exploititive reasons why hoppers are removed.
Additionally not mentioned here which I have thrown the idea around which is something we've never done is introduce the end. That content has been around for a long time and in recent updates has been fleshed out significantly. It's something we should try to take advantage of at some point.
- TNT usage didn't help a thing long-term. Get rid of it being able to be used on towns and let towns be built and kept as a safe haven...OR designate a specific area of the map for non-TNT towns....OR at least give each town an option to opt out of TNT-on! I imagine that 90% or more of the towns (even those who are PVP-heavy TNT raider towns!) will have TNT-OFF. Create other capture points that can be blown up (perhaps as a re-purpose for the dungeons!)
Lets be honest if you give people the option to turn tnt off everyone will do it. I do disagree that TNT is a bad idea however I will say that our current implementation is not good. It mostly just encourages players to raid each other's bases when offline. As for your last point here that's an entirely pointless thing to implement as the tnt skills don't do damage and are only for breach and entry which all the castles have many entrances into.
- Remove dungeons as the sole source of leveling. Bring back mobs at night, and make them abundant, slowly scale them on health and XP based on how far they are from Spawn. Bring back Boss Mobs similar to how they were at the end of Bastion.
I feel you're somewhat miss remembering here, Bastion did not have boss mobs at any point. It was something we were working on and designing but they didn't get implemented until 1 or 2 maps after that. Regardless there is unanimous agreement that the current state of dungeons is not good. However I disagree that bringing back overworld mobs as a replacement is a good exchange, as minecraft's spawning algorithms are garbage. As more players log in the number of mobs will seem thinner and thinner as it has always been in herocraft's past.
- Provide more access to the Nether. Wipe and rebuild the nether once a month.
like the overworld the nether is mostly untouched there is still a vast amount of resources available there.
This is just a bad idea no offence. This will only serve to flood the market and make our current economic situation worse not to mention that you're not introducing soft build restrictions. Ontop of this regenerating that volume of terrain will require us to take the server down, download a copy of the current map (which is easily 20+ gigabytes) then open up the map in MC edit regenerate the terrain (which we use custom generation which MC edit won't have again this terrain won't be randomly seeded again it'll all be identical) this process will take about an hour or so, then re-upload the map to the server (which at my internet speeds would take in the ballpark of 11 ish hours.) after which you can then bring the server back up. Additionally strongholds aren't kept below layer 25 they can spawn anywhere below sea level so this idea won't even garuntee stronghold regeneration. You talk about giving the sandbox back to the player but in my opinion this idea works against that not for it.
- Increase the duration of Trade District shops from 1 day to 1 week for the same price.
This is something that can be easily done, there is no technical reason this cannot be done.
- Bring back Villagers. Figure out a way to limit the number that can be had in a chunk, and scale the rest of the armor/weapons to allow what villagers produce to not be anything overpowered.
The problem with villagers and the reason they're unobtainable is because of weakness potions. An interaction between mythic mobs and heroes causes weakness potions to completely negate left click damage and even prevents hitting people entirely even just to knock them back. The problem is not villagers but the method of creating villagers, I wouldn't be against introducing methods to obtain villager eggs however creating them using vanilla mechanics is not pheasible currently.
- Bring back the item cost to build a town and to upgrade a hamlet all the way to a kingdom. By doing this alone, you single-handedly create an economy.
Item costs are already in use again I feel you're very miss informed here. The only tier that doesn't require it is tier 1 because you don't have a town bank to deposit the items in order to create it in the first place.
- Reduce the number of class-based crafting restrictions on basic items (e.g. diamond tools, armor other than chain mail, etc.) keep the class-specific crafting items to very specific for their class (enchanting tables and bookshelves for enchanters; potions for alchemists; chain mail and anvils for blacksmiths); let the things that they can produce be exclusively things that they can make chests shops for, but make everything else be able to be sold by everyone else.
Again feel you're somewhat miss informed again regarding chest shops. There are NO restrictions on what chest shops you can create as the plugin we use doesn't even let us restrict them in this manor. Crafting recipes etc could be relaxed and in regards to tools I don't think this is a bad idea.
- Create money sinks (that aren't attached to town/personal regions/Trade District rents) that allow people to get temporary buffs for a fixed amount of time and for a fee (similar to what a beacon would do, e.g.)
I don't feel granting temporary buffs from the server for coin is a good idea, as 1 if we're talking potions buffs this takes away from alchemist
- Create a community *cash* jar in the HC store where people can individually donate a dollar or two (USD) to boosts, thus making them more affordable and enjoyable for all.
I don't believe this is a feature of our store front so this just isn't pheasible.
- Bring back spell animations in their firework display style.
Firework style animations were removed because of the minecraft update which made fireworks damage players. This means that any time firework animations are triggered it dealt damage to players, most skills have particle effects to distinguish themselves from each other and we're limiting the volume of effects for lag reasons (player client lag not server)
- Scout the top 20 current Minecraft servers and rip off their ideas! Imitation is the best complement...there are reasons why they are in the top 20 and HC is not.
You've got to remember that what we are is very different to what a lot of other servers are. Mechanically the things other larger servers offer are different from us thus the reason people play those servers may not be something that can be transplanted. However I do agree it is a good idea to look at your competition and see what they're doing and learn from what they do right as well as what they do wrong and attempt to improve based on this.
- **Create multiple upkeep-based incentives to play** for each realm of HC: Professions, Combat Classes, Economy, Building, Mining, PVP, PVE, and other parts of HC that can be incentivized**
We're currently working on systems that will help with this. We have a new custom item system that is mostly complete. We can create the items, spawn them as well as randomly roll stats and values on them. Currently the main missing feature of this plugin is connecting it to our item upgrade system.