Townships 3.0: past, present and future

[Multitallented]

So, Townships used to be a plugin called HeroStronghold that I built from scratch over a year ago. I ran it successfully on my server for a long time until I eventually closed the sever over 6 months ago. Since then I kept in touch with the minecraft modding community every now and then--only updating HeroStronghold and a few other mods every once in a while.

For a long time I have been developing skills for heroes. I followed the herocraft development team for a while and attempted to help from the outside as an unoffical member. I pitched the idea of HeroStronghold to Kainzo a long time ago while I was playing on herocraft. He put it on the test server, thought it was fun, and that was all that happened.

Recently, I heard about bugs with the current Townships 2.0 and offered to use HeroStronghold again. Kainzo at first wanted me to work on Townships 2.0, but soon realized that using HeroStronghold would be much better. He gave me a the go-ahead and I began working for about a month to add features such as graveyards, rebuilding, activity checks, combat flagging, etc.

When I was done, I came up with a grand plan of engaging, involved townships. Agedbear and Phoenix helped me write some of the configs. Witchy worked with me on the wiki. Other than that I had no help or feedback from the staff.

============The Plan=============

Towns were now going to require structures in addition to money, people, and items. All of the structures would do something. Some would make or sell items, some would increase the max population of the town, and some would help defend the town. Structures were limited and some could only be built in certain biomes, town levels, or altitudes. For raiding, I planned to allow multiple ways to get into a town using tunnels, limited space, short range teleporters, catapults and tnt cannons other things. For defense there were turrets, pvp-safe houses, and defensive tnt cannons.

Players could also destroy towns. If a town ran out of money, or was sieged by tnt cannons for too long, it would gradually peel away at the edges until it was completely destroyed. The idea is that towns would still be largely safe from enemy attacks inside, but sieges could force them to come out and fight. Raiding was still encouraged, but limited to smash and grab type runs.

================What Happened================

The first event was launched at the same time as a zombie apocalypse event. The resulting low turn out caused only a few structures to be made. A tier 3 town was created and a tier 2 town was destroyed (do to inactivity). Feedback from players was all around good.

The second event was launched with much anticipation. We decided to use a balanced team structure to test town vs town combat and sieging. The start was chaotic and lead to one side gaining a quick advantage. The situation only got worse and lead to one side camping the other. Players were unable to build in their town and either quit or scattered throughout the map. I stepped in gradually to aid the side that was getting camped to see what changes I could make to improve the situation. The intention was never for enemies to be allowed to stay in towns indefinitely. I eventually called a ceasefire and re-balanced the teams. This did not fix the root problem, but the camping decreased. One side built a siegecannon which was destroyed. One of the two towns discovered a flaw in the user interface which lead to their town being destroyed without meeting one of the win conditions. The event was over within 24 hours of it starting without getting critical test data on sieges.

It was decided that we needed a third test event. This time we gave everyone max levels to get better test data on townships. We also balanced the teams better and provided a tutorial at the beginning. The launch was well planned and lead to good gameplay and we got very useful feedback.

One side began to camp the other. To be more specific, they were killing people very rarely and not making significant progress to destroying the town or even getting loot. So, I started to do what I did the last time this happened. I began increasing anti-camping measure. I enabled combat tagging so that players in pvp-safe structures would not be protected while in combat. This stopped all fighting and just lead to pure camping. Occasionally one side or the other would make a move, but the end result was not changed. Then I added a 25% damage increase for town members in their town. This did not help either. Finally, I added a poison effect that can be bought for 400s. This effect would last for 30 minutes and would deal 30 damage to all non-town members in town every 2 seconds.

This last change was the first one to have an impact on the problem. It did not fix the problem, but it did make it harder to camp. The feedback from the campers was a gross over-reaction. They were not constructive, but instead accused me of abusing my responsibilities as a coder. The same people that worked with me earlier and gave positive feedback suddenly were calling for me to be removed from herocraft.

=============What's Next============

Well, I feel rather alone. I don't quite know what to do moving forward. Seeing as camping is still a problem, I'll likely decrease the cost of the poison effect. I am unlikely to get any more useful test data out of the third test due to most of the camped players leaving. If things continue like this, there will not likely be a Townships 3.0 release as I am the only one who knows enough to code and config for it. One of the reasons I left minecraft over 6 months ago was because of the age demographic. Especially in pvp survival servers there existed an inherent ability of one group of people to bully another. Herocraft is no different. Today I watched passively as kids repeatedly bullied other kids who could do very little about it. Graveyards and houses were camped. People were unable to explore Townships 3.0. The event was not successful because of it.

The event is still ongoing. The camped players are winning because they have managed to build a tier 2 town. The campers have done nothing but disrupt the event. They have no points towards winning and have no significant progress towards destroying anything. I will see what happens. Only minor testing, enter/exit messages and transient town owner permissions need to be coded. Other than that, the plugin is largely ready to be released.

 

[peterpunx]

Hi, i guess for the test purpose nonstop raiding doesnt help. Why dont you try disabling pvp on the entire map for a couple of hours, to allow towns keep growing, when you feel like the raid has been enough. Trying to stop the raiders with offensive mesures is what piss them off because its just god power helping one side.

If it was in aegis map, since there would be more than 2 towns, the raid wont focus in the same town all the time. Also there would be alliances to defend.

 

[MalaWolf]

As someone in charge of the 'players who where camping' I feel it necessary to respond from our point of view, and noting some serious flaws within the township 3.0 system, that lead to increased toxicity in the form of camping.

However, I'd also like to clarify a misnomer, We where not doing this for limited gain or for pointless reasons. While yes, our a main factor to our assault on your town. (And I'm saying your, because you as admins of the server had a large amount of participation in the defense of the town.) was that we enjoy pvp, our main reason for this assault is to lower the the towns power using 1 of the 2 ways to achieve this.

Currently with the system there are two ways to lower a towns power so that you can eventually destroy the region and destroy the town. The first is obvious, kill the players to lower the power. This is what we were trying to achieve, and due to 'anti-pvp' measures such as safe-zones, arrow turrets, damage boost and eventually the "notorious" DOT prevention, it was a lot harder to do this and actually kill town members. I would go as far to say as, in my opinion the no-pvp zones actually encourage camping, as we would go to their town to secure a few kills and lower power whilst being met with people abusing the no-pvp zone shooting arrows at us, running back in and even doing things that would totally prevent kills such as lwc'ing the arrow turret (which is a defensive turret dealing 3 hearts per hit) preventing us from disabling it. If we were able to get kills, and players were not as protected, power would drop faster and we would leave. We would also feel more satisfied as pvpers knowing that the people we fight we can actually kill and will not just run to no pvp zones while abusing this. (Similar to border hopping on a previous map that was very unpopular among the players). This would mean less camping and more pvp.

Now the second way to lower power is to build an outpost, command tent and then a siege cannon which would slowly lower power and force the players to come out and defend the town, seems like a perfect solution for us right? Creating a siege cannon is very costly. Our first siege cannon would cost 3700 souls to set up including all the rare materials to create a region and command tent. We would also need to be overzealous in our defense of it, because if the defending town breaks just 1 block of it, we would have to spend more money again. This is to expensive for simple pvp raids (which turn into extended ones due to the pvp safezones) and also are very inefficient (I think it's 1 power every 10 minutes). The final nail in the coffin for this idea is that we want to test township plugins to, we are also building a town and any and all money that we generate through mining, pvp, leveling goes towards this town and not being wasted on an inefficient tnt cannon. Perhaps if it was cheaper or easier to do this, it would prevent camping even if it changes the entire role of 'raiding' compared to what it is now.

The Final thing I would like to stress. Is that there was blatant admin abuse against myself and members of the 'toxic pvp group'.
http://imgur.com/YXYedbo,bx4zbJ5#0 - this is an imaging displaying the /money top difference for @Phoenix_Frenzy an admin and developer of the plugin. This is within half an hour of the DOT prevention being implemented. It is my opinion that this money was used to fund the very expensive protections that prevented us from even entering the town, or pvping effectively. (As said by my team, I was not involved in the raids at this point, but according to pvpers such as Jupiter, Munch, White, Jrr, Chazza ect, it was to overpowered and prevented not only 'camping' but any action in their town). If this DOT protection is so expensive (400s every half hour, which is alot for a developing town) then why was is up not only instantly, but constantly.

There where also several other issues with admin abusing including god-mode pvp (shooting arrows at us), teleporting us away from fights or to random locations (out in the middle of an ocean) that was not only preventing us from pvping, but was preventing us from acting as players. Also, if @Multitallented and @Phoenix_Frenzy where 'overseeing' this event, why where they a part of a town?

tl;dr This system need fixing, as it encourages camping, is going to ruin town raiding/pvp, and requires constant admin attention and abuse.

@JupiterRome @munchlaxhero @Irishman81 @MariusAbyssal @Trazil @Dutchgirl619 @Jrr5556 @ChazzaMaGazza @whiteninja1970 @devotedworker @Jreems @Kainzo @gtastuntdude

 

[Ahrall]

If things continue like this, there will not likely be a Townships 3.0 release as I am the only one who knows enough to code and config for it. One of the reasons I left minecraft over 6 months ago was because of the age demographic. Especially in pvp survival servers there existed an inherent ability of one group of people to bully another. Herocraft is no different. Today I watched passively as kids repeatedly bullied other kids who could do very little about it. Graveyards and houses were camped. People were unable to explore Townships 3.0. The event was not successful because of it.

In the past few months that you have been working on Herocraft you have posted many well thought out, calm, collect, and thoughtful ideas. You have weathered the shit storm that is a competitive multiplayer game thats targeted demographic is teenage males like a champ which a feat not many can attest to. So I can tell you from my years working in the game industry (both professionally and for fun)

Don't. Stop. Now.

You seem to have forgotten that which the "campers" and all the "ragers" have also forgotten in that: it's a test. The point of these tests is to see what happens, what players do, how they react to things, etc etc.
So lets talk data.
The campers are currently complaining about the numerous features that townships have access to to defend themselves. Arrow turrets, PvP flagging, damage buff, and the poison field compared to the lack of similarly powerful offensive options.

Spoiler: Suggestions and Translating the Fury

Arrow Turret: Current complaints are the high damage and being able to LWC the turret. As far as the damage goes (from what I've seen it's around 3 hearts) that is a bit* steep considering it all comes from a single shot. An idea that I have seen used to success in other similar systems is to double the fire rate but cut the damage in half. This allows for the same amount of damage to be output by the turret, but more opportunities for the person being fired on to take cover, swap aggro, dodge the shots, etc. All in all creating a more enjoyable experience for the person being fired upon while still maintaining the turret's deadly damage.
The next issue that has come up with these things is the issue of putting a LWC on them. Which is an ugly beast to tackle. On one hand any class with a mobility skill can render a turret useless extremely quickly, but on the other hand the ease of just slapping on a LWC (which most players have at least one free LWC) make the turret an invulnerable death machine. This is tricky and I don't really have any viable solution to this other than just watching how people deal with turrets and going from there.

Safe Zones: It really really really really sucks to be chasing someone, keeping them in combat, only to have them run into a house and becoming invulnerable. Getting mixed results here. Are they still implemented? (some people are saying they still are, some are saying they are gone) If so, take them out! The walls of your structures should be what keeps you safe not the magic room of invulnerability.

Damage Boost: On paper this seems like a great idea. Give the besieged town some extra damage to fight off the bad guys, why not? In practice however, giving player B 25% more damage is not going to make or break a fight against an experienced PvPer. Will it help? yes, but it feels like cheating and the veteran will know that they only lost (if they lost) because of a silly mechanic. Good thing to try out, but ultimately best to be away with. (you already acknowledged this though)

Poison Field: Now this is actually a really cool concept that I could see being a very fun addition to the plugin. From talking with people and reading the rage, the issue is that the town can just turn it on without repercussion allowing defenders to not only push out any raiders, but move around freely and attack those raiders as they retreat. Waaaaaaay too much poer for just a single command. What if the poison field required a specific structure (call it Chem Lab) and could only be activated from said chem lab (putting rotten flesh in a chest for example.) This would create the strategy of the attackers attempting to play football lineman and keep the defenders from reaching their chem lab while the defenders desperately tried to run someone to the lab. Interesting interaction from both sides, everyone wins. Additionally what if the poison cloud affected ANYTHING in its radius but ONLY in unregioned areas. Friend, foe, animal, mob, everything would take damage, but if you sat in your house you were fine to go about your daily life. This would prevent the gas from being used offensively but still keep its intended function as a method to temporarily push people out of your town.

Siege Cannons: MalaWolf hit things spot on with his issues with the cannons. At the moment they are not worth it. Too expensive to create, too easy to dismantle. Any class with decent durability can tank a few players long enough to destroy a single block with their god pick. Or a ninja could walk right up to it and hit the smoke button. If they are to be this frail perhaps an increase in damage is in order? 5ish damage per shot? Dealing one damage every 10 minutes is pretty low especially if towns can pull a couple hundred power. However if the damage is too high then a trio of Australians could wipe out your town before you pesky east coast people even wake up. So take this slow and test test test

In the end you are doing fantastic work here despite what all the ragers and 16 year old drama queens will say. Stay above them, the campers will continue to camp (no idea why) and the ragers will continue to post ridiculous garbage on these forums (and be promptly ignored) You have an excellent and innovative system in development here, it just needs a few more tweaks and adjustments before it is ready to roll out. Keep on testing, gather data, see what works, what doesn't, explain your though process, keep a log here on the forums of what you changed, when you changed it, why you changed it, and most of all. Keep up the good work

Edit: Forgot to mention: Kids will be kids, they are going to bitch and moan about every single change you will ever make. Welcome to the game industry

 

[MalaWolf]

Thank you @Ahrall for clear points, and "translating the fury"
I'll have a go at it myself.

Arrow Turret; From playing against one, it's fun and awesome. Seems a bit steep at 3 hearts but it's perfectly fine as it is now, would NOT recommend having any upgrades for it, as how it is now is 100% fine. (Also would note that it pretty much requires you to have classes with skills such as blink/jump in order to reach them, making it somewhat hard to pvp against in some situations)

Safe Zones; These have got to go, I 100% agree with Ahrall, and believe that these also encourage camping. We need to kill you to lower power but we can't because you are in pvp free zones attacking us with arrows. Of course we are going to stay and pvp, this will help end camping and make things better for everyone.

Damage Boost; Ahrall hit this one on the head, also if you have a case where two towns are reasonably equal in skill, it will basically stop them from pvping in towns. (I won't attack him because the boost means he will always win, and vice versa)

Poison Field; This is way to over-powered, not only the damage, but it's constant and preventing us from eating food or regenerating health and as it is now it is impossible to get to the council room to disable it. It's broken and caused mass rage among my team, remove it.

Siege Cannons; What Ahrall said.

 

[Salary22]

I wouldn't care if there was another 2,3,4 Siege tests as long as your getting closer to the ideal situation with Townships 3.0

 

[peterpunx]

As i said before, its only a test, if the admins want to see how the town grows and then how it works with pvp raids. Just time the attacks. Some hours for free building and some for full pvp without having to stop the raiders with heavy mesures.

Please stop crying about bullys, if it is a 1vs1 competition, there's no mercy, every move you can do to stop their progress should be done.

 

[LightningCape]

Don't. Stop. Now

You seem to have forgotten that which the "campers" and all the "ragers" have also forgotten in that: it's a test. The point of these tests is to see what happens, what players do, how they react to things, etc etc.

@Multitallented This

I would personally be heartbroken if you left this project. Stronghold is one of the coolest ideas when it comes to unmodded mc I've ever seen. Not to mention on hc. I would like to believe also that people would act differently if this was released on live considering they'd need a place to store loot and whatnot. Sadly the graveyard camping isn't new and has been a thing since I joined hc. Maybe it can be changed.

Also I hope you don't let a toxic minority color your views about the entire community.

Please stop crying about bullys, if it is a 1vs1 competition, there's no mercy, every move you can do to stop their progress should be done.

This is probably what he wanted to point out with his post. You probably mean well but this isn't constructive.




Edit-
For the record I don't condone admin abuse though. PvP or observe. Gotta pick one

 

[JupiterRome]

I feel like the group I was part of is like being made out to look like assholes who just started camping for fun, Frankydemon and Da_Burg did attack us so we did attack back....

 

[LadyDutch]

I was going to never reply here as I felt no need to. But certain conversations and rereading through this forum post has made me rethink that. I am not here to attack anyone but to simply state my side and Amorias side of this siege test.

I came into siege #3 as a team captain never having participated in a past siege event. Ill admit I did not care for the idea of a different township plug in. I preferred what we have now due to undercuts and free builds. However I felt multis township 3.0 was a very well thought out plug in. So I decided id try it out to see how it really was if it was as hard and difficult as it sounded.

The test started and as i was late to the event I had no control over who went after who first. I took it upon myself to go out and look for the ruins that multi and phoenix said would be scattered through the world. I found one and I directed my team to go mob grind and mine for souls. Theydid as they asked and when souls were turned in they were iimmediately sent to me so I can start building the town. The council room came from my bank. The tribe came from malik. All shacks came from either me, malik or da bur. Da bur was a big help when it came to gathering souls for the town. My money nor any of my townies money came from multi or phoenix. They were simply there to help defend the town thats soul purpose was to help test out the township plugin.

We had our tier 1 town set up and I remember asking multi if the other team had completed achieving building a second town and he said no they were still living in their premade town. I figured it was just the first day and they'd catch up eventually give us a run for our money. I continued to build and upgrade the only assistance I recieved from multi was guidance. I asked him what was to be done next. Phoenix was never in her god mode during any PVP fight/Raid. She only assisted us in the fighting never giving money to the town.

Now when Multi implemented the DOT from the council room it didnt matter who put the Redstone in the chest the 400s would automatically come from the owners (me) bank. I saw my money depleting rapidly from the use of my guys throwing in redstone every thirty minutes. But thanks to my guys they made up that money fast by mining and mob grinding.

I understand PVP is an important part of this server. Im not much of a PVPer myself (you all know that) id rather build and gather resources. I dont mind the PVP at towns but when its a constant camp to where all of my team is now sitting at the graveyard waiting for the others to leave and get bored is kind of sad. There was one discussion I had with two individuals who were camping my town and I asked why they were doing it. They simply stated that they were bored and felt left out because Amoria changed theirTS password and kicked them from the channel. It was for strategy and we didnt need people in the channel who didnt belong there. I mean we did have about 10-15 people in our channel at one point and thats just a headache hearing multiple conversations and everyone talking over one another.

Im sorry to those who felt left out in teamspeak but camping because you were bored and halting a test for a future plug in wasnt the right answer to that.

This is a test server so of course things arent going to be perfect. Its why people signed up for the event. To help make plug ins fun for all and offer their input. Its going to take some time to make this happen. Yes some wont like what will be implemented or removed and others will. Its how all games go.

From Amorias stand point and im sure multi and phoenix as well (I cant speak for them but I could hear their frustrations) it looked like the other team wasnt interested in building a town and testing the plug in. It simply looked like they went to the server with the most people for a good round of PVP simply because they werent getting any on Aegis. This may not be what was intended but like I said im simply stating from Amorias view of this test.

I want test number three to continue im ok with PVP but at some point you guys need to build a town because the current one youre in will be destroyed in approx 1.5 days.

 

[Multitallented]

Arrow Turret: Current complaints are the high damage and being able to LWC the turret. As far as the damage goes (from what I've seen it's around 3 hearts) that is a bit* steep considering it all comes from a single shot. An idea that I have seen used to success in other similar systems is to double the fire rate but cut the damage in half. This allows for the same amount of damage to be output by the turret, but more opportunities for the person being fired on to take cover, swap aggro, dodge the shots, etc. All in all creating a more enjoyable experience for the person being fired upon while still maintaining the turret's deadly damage.
The next issue that has come up with these things is the issue of putting a LWC on them. Which is an ugly beast to tackle. On one hand any class with a mobility skill can render a turret useless extremely quickly, but on the other hand the ease of just slapping on a LWC (which most players have at least one free LWC) make the turret an invulnerable death machine. This is tricky and I don't really have any viable solution to this other than just watching how people deal with turrets and going from there.

Safe Zones: It really really really really sucks to be chasing someone, keeping them in combat, only to have them run into a house and becoming invulnerable. Getting mixed results here. Are they still implemented? (some people are saying they still are, some are saying they are gone) If so, take them out! The walls of your structures should be what keeps you safe not the magic room of invulnerability.

Damage Boost: On paper this seems like a great idea. Give the besieged town some extra damage to fight off the bad guys, why not? In practice however, giving player B 25% more damage is not going to make or break a fight against an experienced PvPer. Will it help? yes, but it feels like cheating and the veteran will know that they only lost (if they lost) because of a silly mechanic. Good thing to try out, but ultimately best to be away with. (you already acknowledged this though)

Poison Field: Now this is actually a really cool concept that I could see being a very fun addition to the plugin. From talking with people and reading the rage, the issue is that the town can just turn it on without repercussion allowing defenders to not only push out any raiders, but move around freely and attack those raiders as they retreat. Waaaaaaay too much poer for just a single command. What if the poison field required a specific structure (call it Chem Lab) and could only be activated from said chem lab (putting rotten flesh in a chest for example.) This would create the strategy of the attackers attempting to play football lineman and keep the defenders from reaching their chem lab while the defenders desperately tried to run someone to the lab. Interesting interaction from both sides, everyone wins. Additionally what if the poison cloud affected ANYTHING in its radius but ONLY in unregioned areas. Friend, foe, animal, mob, everything would take damage, but if you sat in your house you were fine to go about your daily life. This would prevent the gas from being used offensively but still keep its intended function as a method to temporarily push people out of your town.

Siege Cannons: MalaWolf hit things spot on with his issues with the cannons. At the moment they are not worth it. Too expensive to create, too easy to dismantle. Any class with decent durability can tank a few players long enough to destroy a single block with their god pick. Or a ninja could walk right up to it and hit the smoke button. If they are to be this frail perhaps an increase in damage is in order? 5ish damage per shot? Dealing one damage every 10 minutes is pretty low especially if towns can pull a couple hundred power. However if the damage is too high then a trio of Australians could wipe out your town before you pesky east coast people even wake up. So take this slow and test test test

Arrowturret: LWC should not be allowed to be used on the turret chest. The plugin conflicts with Townships in several ways. I would like to see it removed as private residences and towns already fill that role. Everything else about arrowturrets is fine. They are disabled often enough. On their own they can not defend the town. Increasing the rate of fire is not easily done as it involves more cpu cycles. Herocraft developers are very concerned about lag so I chose a very cautious and reserved approach to features like this for that reason. The reason HeroStronghold wasn't implemented months (years?) ago was because region checks were not chunk based. They couldn't be because of the individual structures, but the actual impact on lag was never explored.

Safe Zones: This has already been fixed. Players in combat are not safe anywhere.

Damage Boost: ya that was pointless.

Poison Field: There are very severe repercussions for using this. 400s is no small amount for only 30 minutes of protection. Raiders were still able to run in and kill people during the poison. Also, any people who are friendly but not members of the town are doomed while the poison is on. Players have to run to the councilroom with redstone to turn the effect on. Also only people the town owners trust are allowed to open the councilroom chests (where usually a lot of other valuables are). I'm sure the effect could be improved somehow. As it is the only effective change I've made so far, I don't think removing is an option until something better can replace it.

Siegecannons: Malawolf doesn't know much about them. No one does because no one bothered to make them (which was the main point of the last two tests).

1. Siegecannons are not so squishy. The outpost protects against god picks and other means of breaking the siegecannon. Players can attempt to get into the siegecannon and steal the items that make it run, but in doing so they trap themselves inside. Siegecannons can only be destroyed by vanilla tnt cannons (which you can protect by building obsidian or water walls) while the outpost has power.
2. Siegecannons are expensive because towns are expensive. Destroying a town should not be easy. It should take time. That said, siegecannons upgrade themselves as they fire, dropping the rate of fire from 1 power every 10 minutes to 1 power every 6 minutes. Ammodumps can be created to help make TnT that the siegecannons need to operate. If this is too slow, you can always make more outposts and siegecannons.
3. Killing players is not a way on it's own to destroying tier 2+ towns. Towns have too much power and power gain daily for that to work by raiding alone. That's why siegecannons are necessary. Players put a lot of time and money into making towns. Often many people are needed and a lot of planning takes place in their construction. I wanted war and raids to require the same effort or more. This is the root cause of the complaints from attackers like Malawolf.

===========================

The intended behavior is that raiders can not stay in an enemy town for prolonged periods of time. It leads to harassment. I want town members to be able to have a safe place they can build without having to go underground or sacrifice the look of the town to do it. They should have to build defenses and plan the layout of the town (walls, turrets, bunkers, defensecannons, etc). If they do this, then they should be mostly safe against raiders. Raids should still be possible, but should be risky and quick. They should kill and steal what they can and then leave. If they want to do any more than that, then they should build siegecannons.

I can't take any feedback from anyone on the poison or siegecannons seriously right now because no one has given it enough testing.

I've asked for feedback/guidance from other staff. Currently I have a situation where progress is not being made and bullying is rampant. It is not my job to enforce the rules, but it is my job to ensure that Townships is tested as best as it can be.

===========================

I'm hereby issuing a warning to @MalaWolf @Irishman81 @whiteninja1970 @JupiterRome @Trazil @ChazzaMaGazza @dylandadon123 @Jrr5556 and anyone else who kills players who don't fight back for no reason other than "prevent them from building" or otherwise testing Townships. I don't want to see any more graveyard camping. I don't want to see any more blockades preventing recently spawned players from entering their towns. You will be banned from the event if I see this continue.

 

[JupiterRome]

Arrowturret: LWC should not be allowed to be used on the turret chest. The plugin conflicts with Townships in several ways. I would like to see it removed as private residences and towns already fill that role. Everything else about arrowturrets is fine. They are disabled often enough. On their own they can not defend the town. Increasing the rate of fire is not easily done as it involves more cpu cycles. Herocraft developers are very concerned about lag so I chose a very cautious and reserved approach to features like this for that reason. The reason HeroStronghold wasn't implemented months (years?) ago was because region checks were not chunk based. They couldn't be because of the individual structures, but the actual impact on lag was never explored.

Safe Zones: This has already been fixed. Players in combat are not safe anywhere.

Damage Boost: ya that was pointless.

Poison Field: There are very severe repercussions for using this. 400s is no small amount for only 30 minutes of protection. Raiders were still able to run in and kill people during the poison. Also, any people who are friendly but not members of the town are doomed while the poison is on. Players have to run to the councilroom with redstone to turn the effect on. Also only people the town owners trust are allowed to open the councilroom chests (where usually a lot of other valuables are). I'm sure the effect could be improved somehow. As it is the only effective change I've made so far, I don't think removing is an option until something better can replace it.

Siegecannons: Malawolf doesn't know much about them. No one does because no one bothered to make them (which was the main point of the last two tests).

1. Siegecannons are not so squishy. The outpost protects against god picks and other means of breaking the siegecannon. Players can attempt to get into the siegecannon and steal the items that make it run, but in doing so they trap themselves inside. Siegecannons can only be destroyed by vanilla tnt cannons (which you can protect by building obsidian or water walls) while the outpost has power.
2. Siegecannons are expensive because towns are expensive. Destroying a town should not be easy. It should take time. That said, siegecannons upgrade themselves as they fire, dropping the rate of fire from 1 power every 10 minutes to 1 power every 6 minutes. Ammodumps can be created to help make TnT that the siegecannons need to operate. If this is too slow, you can always make more outposts and siegecannons.
3. Killing players is not a way on it's own to destroying tier 2+ towns. Towns have too much power and power gain daily for that to work by raiding alone. That's why siegecannons are necessary. Players put a lot of time and money into making towns. Often many people are needed and a lot of planning takes place in their construction. I wanted war and raids to require the same effort or more. This is the root cause of the complaints from attackers like Malawolf.

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The intended behavior is that raiders can not stay in an enemy town for prolonged periods of time. It leads to harassment. I want town members to be able to have a safe place they can build without having to go underground or sacrifice the look of the town to do it. They should have to build defenses and plan the layout of the town (walls, turrets, bunkers, defensecannons, etc). If they do this, then they should be mostly safe against raiders. Raids should still be possible, but should be risky and quick. They should kill and steal what they can and then leave. If they want to do any more than that, then they should build siegecannons.

I can't take any feedback from anyone on the poison or siegecannons seriously right now because no one has given it enough testing.

I've asked for feedback/guidance from other staff. Currently I have a situation where progress is not being made and bullying is rampant. It is not my job to enforce the rules, but it is my job to ensure that Townships is tested as best as it can be.

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I'm hereby issuing a warning to @MalaWolf @Irishman81 @whiteninja1970 @JupiterRome @Trazil @ChazzaMaGazza @dylandadon123 @Jrr5556 and anyone else who kills players who don't fight back for no reason other than "prevent them from building" or otherwise testing Townships. I don't want to see any more graveyard camping. I don't want to see any more blockades preventing recently spawned players from entering their towns. You will be banned from the event if I see this continue.

Just Reading my Warning, I just logged in was afk and 3 of your town ganked me so I don't give a fuck about your warning

 

[Kainzo]

Its important that these things are discussed for the betterment of the community. I'm glad that this thread was created and people are weighing in and giving their views.

In regards to admin abuse / favortism etc. I'll nip this in the bud. As Lightning stated, in Minecraft you can really only "play" or "watch" -- doing both leads to bad times, which is why our admins never "play' -- even if its untrue about abusing powers, players will always feel slighted about it.

 

[Irishman81]

I understand staying at the town for almost 3 hours was too long, but to think that this kind of behavior isn't going to happen on the live server when it is released wishful thinking. I know for a fact that several groups are going to try their hardest to deter people from building their towns, even if it involves camping. The remaining people who play on the pvp server really like to pvp, and I don't think really care about the repercussions of camping a town, they think its fun.

Even so, I understand that Sanmak-kol people have been annoying, so We will try to lay back a bit.

 

[JupiterRome]

I understand staying at the town for almost 3 hours was too long, but to think that this kind of behavior isn't going to happen on the live server when it is released wishful thinking. I know for a fact that several groups are going to try their hardest to deter people from building their towns, even if it involves camping. The remaining people who play on the pvp server really like to pvp, and I don't think really care about the repercussions of camping a town, they think its fun.

Even so, I understand that Sanmak-kol people have been annoying, so We will try to lay back a bit.

I think due to me being banned for no reason that sanmak will not lay back *HINT HINT @munchlaxhero *

 

[Trazil]

@Multitallented you gave this a factions aspect with the power so of course there will be killing and there will be camping to even a higher extreme than normal. From what you said about siege- Water walls are illegal, and we were lowering their power just fine by killing them when we left it was below 100

 

[Trazil]

we have been testing this plugin, except we focus more on the pvp side of it because that is what we are good at, we have been doing what you said and sieging towns but not with your overpriced siege weapons. the siege weapons are cool I guess for someone that doesn't enjoy pvp as much but they aren't the same as actually fighting someone. I really don't think you know at all what kind of impact this will make if it is put in, There will NOT be admins saving your ass when you are being camped, or your town is being demolished. There will NOT be forced ceasefires. and lastly not everyone will be max, the weak towns will fall first then the other until lastly only a few towns remain and are constantly camped or nothing will

 

[Multitallented]

I understand staying at the town for almost 3 hours was too long, but to think that this kind of behavior isn't going to happen on the live server when it is released wishful thinking. I know for a fact that several groups are going to try their hardest to deter people from building their towns, even if it involves camping. The remaining people who play on the pvp server really like to pvp, and I don't think really care about the repercussions of camping a town, they think its fun.

Even so, I understand that Sanmak-kol people have been annoying, so We will try to lay back a bit.

What you guys are doing is fine. NeoAmoria is lacking defenses. They have no wall and only 1 turret. Sanmak-kol was able to subdue the new town because of this and that is fine. The poison effect gave them some breathing room to build more defenses but they did not take advantage of this. Also, Sanmak-kol was not at war with NeoAmoria @Trazil . No power was lost and no siegecannons were created. So that 3 hour siege you just did was fun, but did no damage. I tried messaging @Irishman81 to help him but he was unresponsive. Is the someone else I should contact next time?

Again I repeat, this latest battle was fine. I would have liked to see some siegecannons or at least a declared war

 

[Multitallented]

@Multitallented you gave this a factions aspect with the power so of course there will be killing and there will be camping to even a higher extreme than normal. From what you said about siege- Water walls are illegal, and we were lowering their power just fine by killing them when we left it was below 100

I did not know that water walls are illegal. Maybe I'll have to think of something else. I'd like to see some siegecannons before I make any changes though

 

[Multitallented]

we have been testing this plugin, except we focus more on the pvp side of it because that is what we are good at, we have been doing what you said and sieging towns but not with your overpriced siege weapons. the siege weapons are cool I guess for someone that doesn't enjoy pvp as much but they aren't the same as actually fighting someone. I really don't think you know at all what kind of impact this will make if it is put in, There will NOT be admins saving your ass when you are being camped, or your town is being demolished. There will NOT be forced ceasefires. and lastly not everyone will be max, the weak towns will fall first then the other until lastly only a few towns remain and are constantly camped or nothing will

Siegecannons will bring the fight outside of town where there are no turrets or poison. It doesn't matter if they are cool or not. I created them so you that you don't have to fight in a town to destroy it, which should make pvp a lot more fun for attackers.