Proposal from an on and off regular

[BrentwoodBay]

Well I've recently returned to play on SIMPVP in the last few weeks, and I've noticed that the server is dead almost all hours of the day. Nothing compared to when it was in its prime of always 10+ players on at peak times.

With the possibility of many regulars being stuck with real life obligations, it would seem a good idea to encourage more players to join for all time frames.

Myself and others whom with I have discussed this all wish there would be more regulars and just noobs in general to interact with.

From my discussions with other regulars and noobs alike I have reached the decision that I believe there needs to be more factors implemented towards encouraging new / old crafters to play more often / stay with this server.

Some of the ideas that myself and others have come up with include:

Some sort of automated chat input that encourages voting for the server with links to vote,

Automated and easy to join regular events for players to join and participate in,

and

Perhaps a more aesthetic spawn with easier access to ender chests or nether portals,

This of course is just a suggestion supported by a small number of SIMPVPer's, so I would personally be glad to recieve any input towards this proposal.

Here's to moving forward and making this a busy server again!

-Brent

[Yukar9]

This isn't the first time this has been discussed, I think we could try to get some of the old suggestions out and look at them. One of those suggestions was the pvp world.

Some of my own ideas from brainstorming with Mr_Hole_Digger, note that this was mostly just brainstorming so it might be a bit rambling.

There seems to be two problems keeping people away: Lack of advertising (voting), and a desolate/hostile environment.

With regards to advertising, we're on every server list I know of. We could go premium, but I'm not personally willing to begin spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on advertising this server (seriously, front page listings are now several hundred dollars each.) There's voting, when I made the server lists page on the wiki, that did actually increase voting. All the listings have a least a dozen or so votes, but still nothing near as the thousands some servers have. People have suggested that I begin spamming links to it ingame, but I just think that ruins the experience of the game (to me at least it adds a kinda fake feeling I can only describe as cheap and plastic-y.) Adding it to the MOTD would be an option, although it couldn't be displayed quite as prominently as the ad for hc.simpvp.net, which leads me on to the next point.

I think the hc server is great, as far as I know there are no other servers with that kind of gameplay. I really think the hc server can grow really big and great, and thereby also increasing the population on simpvp.net. The problem though is that it's empty, there are currently 0 players with kills on there. Last round was won with just 3 kills, and the one before that with 1 kill. That's not very competitive at all. This is a catch-22 problem, it needs players to become great, but new players are unlikely to join until it is great. Therefore I think it would be a good idea to focus a lot of our energy on the hc server, to get the ball rolling. Get the current players here on it as much as possible. Perhaps loosen it up a bit (maybe allow alts?, or decrease difficulty (but still keeping it hardcore, of course)) to just increase the player count on it. It's absolutely no fun if you're the only person on it, but if there are 10 other people, it becomes very exciting (killing kickem this round was some of the best pvp I've in for a long time, simply because I was legitimately scared of losing to him, not knowing how strong he was.) But that's just not possible when it's empty.


Back to this server, and hostility. Most people live 100k+ from spawn. Spawn is empty most of the time, it is no longer the gathering point where everybody goes. A big problem is that people tend to prefer safely building massive aboveground places, while the hidden and trapped underground bases of the past simply are no more. With regards to this, I would recommend as many people as possible to move to within 5k of spawn, and live life a little. Sure your base might get griefed, but that's the fun part. Wouldn't it be cool to see that a griefer was killed by your trap? Or perhaps find out who griefed you and hunt them down? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to roam around and actually explore other bases? Actually be able to meet, or even run into by accident, other people? And you don't even have to risk your most valuable assets, we have ender chests now. Which we ironically did not have back when people actually lived near spawn.

The world border was good at encouraging interaction. Sure, I think people should have the option of building the awesome and massive buildings we've seen if they so choose, but I also think a completely antisocial server where people never meet sucks.

Let's look at this server from a newb's perspective: I join the server, spawn is nice, I go outside spawn, and see a complete and utter mess. Some people will instantly quite (and we'll never get those people anyway, so let's not bother,) but let's say I'm curious and ask what's up. Somebody responds "griefing's allowed here and it's an old map, so it's naturally turned to the cobblestone-filled shithole it is now." More curious, I ask where everybody is. "We live about 400k from spawn. Everybody else also live very far from spawn and the chances of finding somebody else are practically nil." Okay, 400k sounds a bit far, but it looks like an interesting server, you ask if you can join them. "No, it's too big a risk. Go play around spawn for a couple months before you have any chance of anybody trusting you." And almost anybody will quit at that point.

Honestly, does that sound at all appealing to new players? Even if you've got a lot of experience on anarchy servers, having to play for months before you can even see a serious team just sounds like a pain in the ass. There are thousands of anarchy servers, you've no attachment to this particular one, so you have no reason to stay. I've been thinking about any new players we've got within the past 6 months, and the only person I could think of was iQuint. Seriously, every single other regular has been here for over 6 months. I'm looking through yesterday's logs, excluding people who joined within 500 blocks of spawn, I see: OdinFire, nickmuzi, morl0ck, Diedie, CrackyJoe (when did he join?), Antzakes, miniwimi, Deflow, Mattias, Melvin, Jezdziec, Infam0us, snowfrog (Note: I haven't analyzed it, just glancing through it, there are probably plenty other players.) All of them have been here for a long time by now, we're quite simply just not getting new players.

Some more solutions:

We could make spawn nicer by going back to having the 200x200 protected area with pvp on.

More people living closer to spawn.

We could up the size of the pvp world, and create a protected spawn in it. Have new players join there when they join for the first time, and then reset it regularly. Giving new players a starting-ground so to say. Although this may just further fracture the server, and wouldn't really be compatible with having people live closer to spawn. As such I think it would be more appropriate as a backup solution in case people really really just refuse to move closer to spawn.

We could add some kind of "punishment" for living far from spawn. This was also discussed as an alternative to the world border back in the day. One way would be that for every 10k you travel from spawn, your max health decreases by one point (half heart.) Or perhaps a punishment in mob drops, or speed, or really anything else. But again this should only be used as a backup.

Capture-the-sign near spawn?

Spawn-events (you have to be at spawn to play.) This probably wouldn't work well though, as it would require there already being a good amount of players at spawn.

That's all I got for now, might add more later though. I think it would be good to have bonuses for living near spawn (doesn't even have to be a plugin based.)

[morl0ck]

Like some suggestions, dislike others.

There ought to be a flashy and noticeable reminder to go vote for the server. There should also be some kind of "vote count" on the forum to let you know how many times a particular person voted. There doesn't have to be a reward for voting, but this might make people compete- sort of like how they do for their post count, even though there is no reward for having a lot of posts.

I like hardcore singleplayer personally, but I think there should be one major change. When you join for the first time, and after you die, you should spawn in some sort of "lobby", a protected, inescapable area where you can still chat with the players in the server. It could say [DEAD] before your name to prevent trolling. If you spawned for the first time, you could also see if it is daytime and type /join to be teleported to a random location on the map. I think something as simple as this would increase traffic on the HC server as there would be more social interaction.

As to the distance problem. Back in the earlier versions, bases were simple because the game was simple. They were piles of blocks. Nowadays, due to the updates, bases are much more complicated and time consuming to build. There are redstone mechanisms that can take 3-20 man hours to build, or more. There were tons of new ways to farm items added, all farms which are time consuming to build. New enchantments take many hours of sitting at a grinder to enchant. Back in the old days, there were only a few valuable items, which you could hide easily. Nowadays, you could have 15 diamond enchanted diamond chestplates, 20 different swords, etc. Everybody wants to keep this stuff safe, so they build insanely far out. I doubt putting in place a penalty for being far out will really stop anybody from doing so and will just serve as an anarchy/ vanilla breaking annoyance. Especially people who have already put in 1000+ hours into their paradise base.

I like the "spawn introduction" world. However, when a noob finally joins the main server, they should be teleported to a random location on the map (maybe within 1kx1k) so that the griefing is spread out a little more and it's not so much of a hellhole.

When I was a noob, I think I remember spawn being nothing but a bedrock platform and some kind of pig spawner, where cooked porkchops would randomly fall onto the platform. Maybe we could bring this type of thing back to encourage noobs to spread out and explore.

[KennyKatsu]

Personally I'm against automated messages and events. I wouldn't mind the voting stuff being in the MotD.

And about the spawn area. Aren't Pippenger and Mr Hole doing some stuff at spawn?

Well I don't excactly live 100k from spawn, but the reason I live somewhat far from spawn is to be able to easily gear up on food, tools, weapons, potions and stuff like that. And because of spawn and the server in general being pretty empty. And I can just as well roam with speed potions and try to find those aboveground bases.

A world border or a penalty could either bring them closer to spawn or just make them rage quit making it even worse.

When I joined the spawn was already quite bad, but there were random noobs and others pvping at spawn. Xestia slaughtering some noobs. There was way more activity even though there was no world limit or penalties. I would come asking to team up with somebody that has Skype and I met Severate and so on.

[LoneSoldier55]

Alright, let me sum these posts up:
Firstly, for Brent:

• 10+ Players on at peak times is nothing compared to what it was pre-beta 1.7.3, so I've heard.
• Cannon fodder joining the server is great, but unless they keep joining the server they don't serve a purpose besides asking where trees are then leaving.
• Personally, I think automated advertisements are trash, and if you shove something into someone's face that says VOTE FOR US PLEASE every 60 seconds, it gets tiresome and annoying, and generally has the opposite effect.
• Spawns that look nice are fine -- but they contrast with the anarchy theme of SimPvP and leave people who are stuck in spawn nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs and wait for daytime. Spawns that are functional and fun are far better then spawns that just look nice. Anyone can make a spawn look nice. Likewise, you should not make spawn a carebear giveaway of enderchests and portals. Portals are easy enough to find within 100 blocks of spawn, there's almost always at least two up somewhere, and there's Ender Chests about - you just have to be able to reach them.
  Also, why are you signing your posts?
  
  Yukar:
• If I recall, the PvP world was a compromise between the restrictive world limit that Pianiseemo and YoungsMC forced on us and an open-boundary world. It was merely to make it possible for people far away to interact.
• The HC Server is great, however it reminds me too much of NoXious Net's Space Station 13 server -- It used to have 60 or even 70+ Players every day at peak time, every job was filled and there was anywhere from 5-15 assistants running around. After the server changed map for no particular reason and other competitors started DDOSing the server, once the server was empty there was no starting it back up, simply because you cannot play SS13 without many other players in the same way you play alone. The same goes for HC.simpvp.
• The only issue I have with people getting killed by traps, ect is this: 1)Rarely would you ever kill someone with a trap. And even if you did, it would have to be blind luck or in a very frequented or important place, which makes it all the more likely that you accidentally trigger it yourself. 2) Most of the game's traps you can make are easily avoidable unless they are heavily disguised or fit in with the surrounding theme. I.E. Wooden doors with pressure plates are your norm for transferring rooms, however one is rigged with TNT. This will obviously catch the player off-guard, but the telltale "Tick, TTTTTTTTtttttttssssssssssssssssssss" will give away instantly the fact that they need to move. You also require a tremendous amount of TNT to effectively kill someone armored, unless they are at the epicenter of the explosion. Finally, 3) Just because you've killed someone with the trap does not mean the threat is over. They still have your coordinates, and that means you still have to up and move everything and start a new base. They can come back to your base at any time or tell other people to go there and break the shit out of it when you're not online.
• Exploring other bases is fun, but short of using X-ray they are difficult to find unless they've been built above ground, which is why it's more appealing to search far out for bases which are much easier to notice and are generally much grander.
• We can all agree that the Enderchest is a broken piece of shit, and ruins any sense of making a cache of valuables hidden somewhere, unless you have too many to fit into one chest.
• There's two sides to the community -- People who want to build bases in multiplayer with other people, I.E BoxOfEmo and BoxyLiz were two excellent examples. They held not much interest in killing people but rather maintaining a base and community. Then there are those that want to use their resources offensively and see if they can gather more through risk/reward. There is no easy way to cater to both sides, because both sides are polar opposites. Likely anything you implement will harm one or both sides.
• Again this paragraph comes with the issue of Coordinates being power. If anyone so much as singles out your base to a 10 Km^2 area, you are utterly fucked and have to start over. Thus, why nobody will ever trust anyone without knowing them personally or having trusted them for a long enough time, which is still quite foolish. If this were like real life, where you could kill someone and they couldn't do shit about it afterwords, there would be zero issue with letting people in the base.
• A protected 200x200 with camping brings the issue of spawncamping or people getting trapped inside that area AND getting killed.
• I still don't like the idea of catering to new people because "itz 2 hard 4 me". Minecraft at it's heart is about as casual as Angry Birds when you play with the general community, so this unfortunately cannot be helped.
• Notch once said in an early beta that you didn't want to punish people for playing the game or being good at it -- only when they fucked up. Decreasing someone's maximum health or speed expodentially should not even be considered.

will continue later.

[Yukar9]

I'd like to get back to you all in a longer comment, but now I just want to say one thing.

Both morl0ck and Lone seem to think I mean people building proper bases near spawn. I don't. I'm not suggesting people build bases they expect to last for years. Rather than try to prevent failure, which is impossible, you should try to minimize the damage of failing. Have multiple bases, keep storage separated, traps etc. And sure, you won't be able to have a mega mob farm or whatever, but you can quite easily enough get everything you need to pvp, and what else do you need?

To me it just seems the problem is that everybody is pretending this is a survival/build server. While I think it's fine that not everybody plays like it's anarchy, I do find it boring that nobody plays that way.

[morl0ck]

To me it just seems the problem is that everybody is pretending this is a survival/build server. While I think it's fine that not everybody plays like it's anarchy, I do find it boring that nobody plays that way.

Isn't that a contradiction? Doesn't anarchy just mean playing in whatever way one sees fit?

[mitte90]

easy sulution: disable beds all together. that will bring players closer to spawn

[Yukar9]

Anarchy meant as minecraft-anarchy. People living in underground bases and fighting a lot.

[snowfrog43]

If you have experience this is not that hard of a server to play on; if you are new to Minecraft it can be a little rough. Spawn could be redone or not; maybe there could be an alternate spawn? I don’t see why people join and leave. Yes we have people way out there however we have people pretty close to spawn I know of a few other bases within 4k that help new players. I try to as much as I can.. I do get screwed over a lot but I guess that’s just how it goes. Fix rebuild clean up and continue on.