[suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room  (Read 2959 times)

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mrfloris

[suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« on: 5 May 2018, 21:20:03 »
Hi there,

Today we've had various questions from various players about the old v4/v5/v6 features and how none of them are basically there now in 1.12.2, the response from team that I got kinda got under my skin. But nothing against the person, but I feel the urge to at least point out there's some validity to my irritation. So let's turn that around and instead post here some 'friendly suggestions for things that we've been missing and were hoping the see return in the last six months that I've been back and played daily again. Some are interesting to me, some not.. but people that come back and try to play beyond survival are asking .. so here's the list of the obvious things.

Build a dark room: We cannot: The mobs are so ridiculously nerfed that the game runs in peaceful mode, nothing spawns anymore. There's no dark room on the server that spawns more than 5. Want a screenshot from Dracomere from few years ago vs today? #chernobylEmpty

- ok -

The questions from the last week or two have been:

- Where's the casino
- Why can't I ride a horse
- Why do my mobs despawn
- Can I breed animals
- Why do my grinders not work
- Do they still have the cube
- Is there still the sandpit
- Anything to explore at spawn
- Where is the market at spawn
- Will there be another archeology month
- Do we still do boat races
- When's the next horse race
- Where's the pvp arena at spawn
- When will mob arena be back
- Can I have a drop party for my town
- Can I fish at spawn area
- Fishing tournament with mods
- What happened to the v5 museum
- Did they celebrate 7 years noobscraft and did i miss it
- My pet does not work
- I can't name tag mobs, they despawn
- When is the next quest
- What about chunk of the month
- Why does the /h randomly despawn, can't i just tame horses

I am sure I forget quite a few. I know the answers to these questions, and I keep trying to tell players and I keep hoping that stuff comes back.

But right now the server is basically survival and mining for hours to pay for 20k/ town plots (after 32% nation discount)  so you can pay for plots and work hard on making things pretty because you're fighting with 45 other abandoned towns to get the 1 new player a week.

I hope these questions get a generic response of: I hope to introduce more rpg/mmo features (back) into the game this big summer upgrade. Because we understand that variety in game play as well as offering team-work features can bring players together and online more often, which helps the server grow. And that's really what we want here. Build a community.

Standing alone in an empty dark room hearing crickets isn't going to cut it.

Please note this is me posting after constantly telling players to make the effort to not ask me this stuff, but post these questions/suggestions on the forums - and seeing that not really happening a lot. So might as well make a post to bring it to staff attention. It's an accumulation of weeks of FAQs

« Last Edit: 5 May 2018, 21:22:51 by mrfloris »

Tweeked_out

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #1 on: 6 May 2018, 03:20:19 »
I have been asking my self those same questions, Well I cant speak for the admin himself, but as a lot of people see, He is the only one we have. Sure we have mods, but their abilities are limited. I miss all the fun stuff this server had and did, the people that went and had mining parties and everyone made money by keeping all the cobble and selling it. Doing the horse races and the boat races were just epic, Drop parties were a blast and the people we had on.. I can remember 80-140 people on at one time. if we had a few more admins, Im sure that all this stuff could happen again. I for one would love to do that stuff again... But only time will tell

Panemophobic

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #2 on: 6 May 2018, 04:52:02 »
Actually we should have some more Contents so they could do things like quests

And BTW I'm having monthly events for my town https://www.noobscraft.com/towns-nations/tombstones-event-center/ but ironically enough its in a dark room XD

KilljoyDivine

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #3 on: 6 May 2018, 11:28:48 »
Actually we should have some more Contents so they could do things like quests

The continuation of The Royal Cure quest is in the works, for what that's worth. ;D Soon!

ItsLawrence

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #4 on: 6 May 2018, 14:54:07 »
I can understand your frustration with some of these things, it is only a small team with people asking a lot. I am trying to work on things to improve gameplay for the current features we have currently got working rather than adding (or re-adding) features. I feel as though a smaller number of great features is better than loads of things that don't quite work properly or aren't up to a great standard. Maybe I'm taking the wrong path, but it's the path I decided to take, if you think this should be re-thought and can express good reasoning then I'm open to change.


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Build a dark room: We cannot: The mobs are so ridiculously nerfed that the game runs in peaceful mode, nothing spawns anymore. There's no dark room on the server that spawns more than 5. Want a screenshot from Dracomere from few years ago vs today? #chernobylEmpty
...
The reduction in mobs was part of the attempts to try and combat lag on the server. This is something that should now be solved in other ways hopefully; I've therefore adjusting the spawning rates back to their previous settings. This doesn't necessarily mean there will be similar levels of spawning to previously, because of the way spawning works has changed in the game itself, but if it's still no good I can adjust things further. Let me know how it is.


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- Where's the casino
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The casino was removed as part of our previous jump up from 1.8 to 1.12, it was decided that it was more sensible to simply remove certain features that would have delayed the update, rather than waiting. This is something that I would like to re-introduce, but the previous system we used hasn't been updated to work properly with 1.12, and as such it's something I'd have to make from scratch. I've created a work item for this at: https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/reintroduce-casino/


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- Why can't I ride a horse
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- Why does the /h randomly despawn, can't i just tame horses
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I'm not aware of reasons as to why you can't ride horses, you should be able to spawn using the /horses command, and ride those? I'm aware of the issue with them disappearing once you dismount them; this is no longer an intended feature and is something I am going to stop happening. I have created a work item to work on this: https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/stop-horses-despawning-on-dismount/



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- Why do my mobs despawn
...
Mobs despawning is a part of the game, it's just what happens to them to prevent the world becoming cluttered with them and to allow further mobs to spawn. You can read more about it here: https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Spawn#Java_Edition_2. The despawning that happens on Noobstown is again following that, but we also limit things per player/area to further ensure that mobs will fairly spread out for all players. As explained about though I have now adjusted the spawning limits so this should be nicer than it was before.


...
- Can I breed animals
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Yes, as long as you don't have too many other animals right nearby. There is a limit to the number you can have in an area, once that limit is reached you won't be able to breed anymore. To combat this you can move the animals further away or kill off some of the others nearby.


...
- Why do my grinders not work
...
As explained above I have now adjusted the spawning limits and rules so they should work slightly better than before now. There were however changes made to the game itself which were designed to adjust how mobs spawn, including reductions in mob grinders working. It's more fair for everyone if mobs are able to spawn freely around the world, rather than like crazy in a small spot where no combat is required.


...
- Do they still have the cube
- Is there still the sandpit
...
- Do we still do boat races
- When's the next horse race
...
These games which used to be ran by the admins can still exist, they just haven't taken place for a while. I have no direct issues with doing them again, and during previous events last year we did do some. I will admit we've been lacking in staff ran events recently, but this is because I've prioritised features which can improve gameplay for all, over running events which impact only those online at the time. With the lower player numbers it is also difficult to arrange events to happen at a time when we can get enough people for it to be competitive. So while we aren't doing them consistently like we have previously, they're definitely not gone forever, and will happen again during some of the bigger events of the year.

Things like the boat races or horse races could be done by yourselves though, there is nothing preventing you from using the boat and race tracks in the Town World spawn at /warp town or even building your own tracks.


...
- Anything to explore at spawn
...
The area you spawn in now has changed to make it easier to quickly get where you need to be, and to be less confusing for new players. It was purposefully changed to have less exploring options. You can still explore the old spawn in the Town World at /warp town though.

We've also got loads of towns with great builds to explore, that you can freely go to and look around.


...
- Where is the market at spawn
...
The spawn doesn't have a market area, it's simply a place allowing you to get to other worlds. The old spawn in the Town World does still have its market area with villager trades, that hasn't moved.

It's recommended that you trade with other players directly though, you'll get much better deals.


...
- Will there be another archeology month
...
The themed months will happen on occasion again, it's again another question of focusing on features which only exist for a short period or working on longer-term things that'll be around for ages. I agree that the months such as archaeology were great fun though. We've still done things like this, if you go back just a few weeks for example we did the Easter Egg Hunt. Was there something about the archaeology month you specifically liked that wasn't achieved in the Easter Egg Hunt? 


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- Where's the pvp arena at spawn
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The spawn doesn't have a PVP arena. You can PVP almost anywhere now, including if you were to build your own arena.


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- When will mob arena be back
...
This is a question I get a lot, and unfortunately there isn't a positive answer. We don't and never did make the system which allowed for mob arena to happen, the maps were made for Noobstown and we produced the ranks, etc., but the system which allowed it all to happen together wasn't made by us. The team behind the system don't update it as frequently as I'd like and has been known to have major bugs again and again, I don't want to introduce features which aren't stable enough, and as such I've held off on reintroducing this. It will come back either once it's considered stable enough, or once I have the opportunity to produce our own system which can be properly locked down.


...
- Can I have a drop party for my town
...
I've not heard this question before. You could create a system to do a drop party in your own Town quite easily using hoppers and droppers.



...
- Can I fish at spawn area
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I wasn't aware that fishing wasn't possible in the spawn world. This is something I will have to look into, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to fish there.


...
- Fishing tournament with mods
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There's no real reason why these can't happen at the moment, it just requires some organisation to get them going. I will see how we can work towards getting the events which mods can organise more regular.


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- What happened to the v5 museum
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The world was removed almost two years ago now, it was always planned to be a temporary feature, and the usage when it was removed was minimal.


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- Did they celebrate 7 years noobscraft and did i miss it
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Unfortunately we didn't, due to other commitments I was unable to do our annual celebrations at the right time. It is now my plan to do an extra big celebration relating to this during the Summer to try and make up for it.


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- My pet does not work
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This is something you've brought up previously here: https://www.noobscraft.com/idea/suggestion-pets-and-horses/. As I explained there I aware of the issues with pets, and have created a work item to work on solving them: https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/fix-pets/


...
- I can't name tag mobs, they despawn
...
You can put name tags on mobs and animals, but they do despawn, that is correct. There would be no sensible way for us to allow you to keep mobs if they had a name tag, it would be extremely unreasonable to guarantee that any named mob or animal will never despawn. We try to be fair to all players, and ensuring that there is the possibility for animals and mobs to spawn for everyone is something I want to maintain. Mobs and animals which are named still contribute to the server's mob cap, we can't have the world being filled with mobs and animals that can never despawn because it would block the spawning if new mobs and animals for other players. There isn't some sort of evil option that we will always despawn your named mobs/animals though, it is based on loads of factors when the server decides to despawn an entity, and this will occasionally hit named ones.

Again if you maintain a lower number of animals and spread them out over a bigger area this will reduce those chances, but there is no way to guarantee it unfortunately. If you've got any ideas to combat this in a way that would be fair and couldn't be abused I'd be open to hearing it though.


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- When is the next quest
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As KilljoyDivine explained, the next part of the Royal Cure quest is in the works.


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- What about chunk of the month
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Chunk of the Month has become quite an issue for me to consistently keep going. I will admit it's been handled poorly by myself, and as such I feel like it would be unfair to keep it up in its current state at the moment with the possibility for it to go on like it has in the past. I am logistically working out on a nice way that the rest of the staff team could judge the entries and impartially pick a winner; once that has been sorted I would like a building contest of some sort to return.


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But right now the server is basically survival and mining for hours to pay for 20k/ town plots (after 32% nation discount)  so you can pay for plots and work hard on making things pretty because you're fighting with 45 other abandoned towns to get the 1 new player a week.
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I can understand your feelings about this, you can focus on whatever you want to on the server; you're choosing to go down the town route, and I appreciate the work involved though. There are changes in the works to try and reduce the number of inactive Towns including your suggestion about taking over them (https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/takeover-inactive-towns/); but like everything, the improvements won't happen overnight. Your goals for town gains need to remain realistic with the current player numbers though; I appreciate that might not be the most diplomatic answer, but it's the honest situation at the moment; there are lots of towns competing for the players, that's part of the game. For now just work as best as you can on what you want and hopefully we'll all see things improve.


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I hope these questions get a generic response of: I hope to introduce more rpg/mmo features (back) into the game this big summer upgrade. Because we understand that variety in game play as well as offering team-work features can bring players together and online more often, which helps the server grow. And that's really what we want here. Build a community.

Standing alone in an empty dark room hearing crickets isn't going to cut it.
...
I have always tried to provide useful, honest and open answers to questions and suggestions, I'm sorry if you don't feel like that's happened as well as it could have.

I believe we do still have a community at the moment; it is my intention to bring back a bigger sense of it back though, and I have seen recently you've been pushing towards that, I appreciate your contribution to it. The work moving forwards isn't going to happen overnight or even in a few weeks, they're long term goals. Noobstown is great fun for me to work on, I am not going to purposefully try to ruin things; and because of this I don't want to rush things through just because it might increase player numbers in the short-term.

mrfloris

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #5 on: 7 May 2018, 00:48:25 »
I have been asking my self those same questions, Well I cant speak for the admin himself, but as a lot of people see, He is the only one we have. Sure we have mods, but their abilities are limited. I miss all the fun stuff this server had and did, the people that went and had mining parties and everyone made money by keeping all the cobble and selling it. Doing the horse races and the boat races were just epic, Drop parties were a blast and the people we had on.. I can remember 80-140 people on at one time. if we had a few more admins, Im sure that all this stuff could happen again. I for one would love to do that stuff again... But only time will tell
I am not sure if more staff is the solution, giving someone admin rank is pretty serious and seeing how some mods have backfired in the past I am not sure that's an easy trust to give. The staff currently is there, but 50% are involved with real life stuff obviously. Looking forward to seeing an old fashioned senior staff like Duelcon make his return for example. He has always been there during events as well and very helpful in disputes between players.

The mining party, we will have one in May in townx probably, we of course allow everybody to join in. I will make a post on the forums about this in May to see if we can all get together in the weekend to mine out a 3x3 area with a beacon in the middle while we're in a /party and help eachother level up.

Maybe when doc_engie is back and has time, he and I can have an old fashioned drop party area - or at least start one. Maybe the area at TheLynx74 lends itself for this (with a bit of redesigning) Doc, let's talk when you're back :)

Personally I was hoping we'd /warp party and use the drop party system, but it hasn't returned and I think larry explains this in his recent reply to this thread.

80-140 people, yeah. version 5 <3 for lyfe .. Those days are gone I am afraid. Without multiple vote links to help advertise the server, and without old mods sniping away players, and without any money going towards advertising, I am afraid with the lack of rpg/mmo features the server just won't grow. It's getting there, we went from near dead activity to few players online to a peak of 18 last night. Let's aim for 20 during the weekends and take it from there!

Invite your friends :)




Actually we should have some more Contents so they could do things like quests

And BTW I'm having monthly events for my town https://www.noobscraft.com/towns-nations/tombstones-event-center/ but ironically enough its in a dark room XD

Contests and contents? :) Both! There's a content mod warriorben, while it kinda escapes me what that title entails, but perhaps he can help killjoy (see below) to finish the upcoming quest(s). And together with their [builder] magicman I am sure some custom builds can spice up the adventure elements on the server, for quests and events, etc.

I like your idea that more towns can have their own contests and events, I hope with a bit more people online now that it's also worth doing a few events once in a while. Let's at least coordinate so we're not all doing 500 things together in the same weekend for example (and use eachothers areas for events too) :) Mayors unite!




The continuation of The Royal Cure quest is in the works, for what that's worth. ;D Soon!

That's exciting news, I've heard about the quests for a while and keep getting teased with it, but it's almost Summer, best of luck finishing it and I hope this also means there's perhaps a part 3 around Christmas?

Is it perhaps an idea to re-think the way quests are? There are plugins that let a content-rank builder or whatever setup quest points and quest rewards in quest npc's and all it takes is locations, and a story line. That way maybe it's easier to have mods set something up instead of an admin maybe? Is it an idea to have shorter stories and quests so you could actually prepare for say 3 things, and run each for 3 months (seasonal quests)?

Just something to think about perhaps? Friendly suggestions!

mrfloris

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #6 on: 7 May 2018, 00:48:56 »
I can understand your frustration with some of these things, it is only a small team with people asking a lot. I am trying to work on things to improve gameplay for the current features we have currently got working rather than adding (or re-adding) features. I feel as though a smaller number of great features is better than loads of things that don't quite work properly or aren't up to a great standard. Maybe I'm taking the wrong path, but it's the path I decided to take, if you think this should be re-thought and can express good reasoning then I'm open to change.
My frustration was more an irritation. The mod didn't say anything wrong - it just got to me, and that's my problem. But reality is that I get those questions once in a while, especially from new members who want to learn what they can do besides joining a town and building a house (and get bored and leave the server). And especially when old skoolers come back and ask where everything is .. and then reconsider coming back because besides new blocks in 1.12, there's just not a community (when it's super quiet) to motivate them to stay.

Just build a darkroom .. to paraphrase, is resolved, I read that mob rate limits are easier to adjust now and this should help. So let's build one! Glad that we're not ignored (and I will get to that too in a sec)

Yeah the team is small, with foob and long_cat and water all stepping down and the regular mods in the last few years not really being the nicest with taking players away as they decided to give up on this great community and their friendships .. I can understand it's quite the workload. But to be blunt: While bug fixes and feature fixes are important, sometimes having a feature is just as important. I hope you find the balance between real life and the server, as well as the staff that say they have time (and then don't show up because they actually do not have this free time). It's super awesome to see the regulars that are active to get promoted to mod status like doc & kill, because that means we can continue with our towns and unlock stuff, get help, and sort things out and learn. They learn, we learn, residents learn, new players see more friendly faces.

I can't say I disagree on the part where you mention that you rather have a stable core and build from there, than a bunch of stuff and knowing 50% of it just doesn't really do what we want - that indeed will only lead to worse frustrations that aren't needed. mhm

"Maybe I'm taking the wrong path, but it's the path I decided to take"

Despite what I think, my opinion is. Or in the case of this thread: a consensus between regulars (and to be honest: team old and new included) .. at the end of the day it doesn't matter really what we think. It IS your server, you can do it in the way that you want. We're here daily or weekly for a reason, and that's because loads of stuff IS going right. It's just easier to post a thread like this than post the two thumbs up thread about the stuff we do like. I just am glad to read in threads like these that this constructive feedback and/or complaints that we have is not ignored, that things are done when you can and that it's slowly moving forward. I appreciate it that you say this clearly, there are enough servers who do everything that players want all the time, and they change things up way too fast and reset worlds etc, and while they have a peak in traffic: they die in the end - hard.

"if you think this should be re-thought and can express good reasoning then I'm open to change."

I think players to team, team to staff, and players like me posting here .. at least gives a good impression what we run into daily, both good and sometimes the stuff we mention in this thread. I wish more players than just me would publicly express this stuff; I know it makes me come across like the whiny dog .. they say it, agree, but then don't post usually. Without good communication in the team, or team and players.. nothing will happen. I mean, we can be quiet and just leave if we don't like it, again.. nobody wins then.

The reduction in mobs was part of the attempts to try and combat lag on the server. This is something that should now be solved in other ways hopefully; I've therefore adjusting the spawning rates back to their previous settings. This doesn't necessarily mean there will be similar levels of spawning to previously, because of the way spawning works has changed in the game itself, but if it's still no good I can adjust things further. Let me know how it is.

Thanks for the explanation, that's what I heard too, and while I understand it fights lag it turns a survival server into a run around as a creative person without creative mode. I mean, the only top 10 listing I am not in is death by angry mobs, .. I die from clumbsy falling to my death or hugging lava without paying attention. Not from being challenged by mobs in the mining world, etc.

Is it perhaps an idea to keep the busy worlds semi limited, but open it up a bit more in the mining world for example.. spread the load a bit. So if we specifically wanna go make friends with creepers for gunpowder that we know the mining world might have more than the regular worlds?

I think it's more than fair that concentrated spots are avoided, while it's nice to have a mob-grinder, it's nicer to have the overal survival feeling (gameplay in my personal opinion always wins over a level grind - dunno how others feel about that, but just sharing my opinion).

Thank you for reviewing and reconsidering this situation. And I am happy to hear that the result is that we have more spawny spawns again around us because the new 1.12.2 setup on paper and your plugins etc help resolve some of the lag issues.  And yes, it's been terribly wonderful since the update. There's a bit of normal noobscraft lag we've always had, but it's comparable to other places, and that super horrible nightly lag is gone it seems. So thumbs up on all of this. Everybody wins.


The casino was removed as part of our previous jump up from 1.8 to 1.12, it was decided that it was more sensible to simply remove certain features that would have delayed the update, rather than waiting. This is something that I would like to re-introduce, but the previous system we used hasn't been updated to work properly with 1.12, and as such it's something I'd have to make from scratch. I've created a work item for this at: https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/reintroduce-casino/

Since I cannot advertise I will refrain from mentioning one that I recommend, but let's generalize.. Perhaps it's worth checking the spigot community for alternative casino types for 1.12.2? Even if it's not the same casino setup as it was, maybe some are open source or customizable enough to do it in a way that you like? A few popular ones I found on the spigot site (that seem to work with paper) are https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/casino.26595/ (free) - https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/ultimatecasino-cs-go-style.25234/ (premium) - https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/vcasino-1-7-1-12-gamble-anything.47334/ (free) .. their resources > search > page has loads of slot machine and casino stuff worth a visit.

It sucks that developers don't keep up with their source code, I really wish they'd do a better job. I hope you find a way to make it work with 1.12.2 code and that it gets re-introduced. It's good to hear it's something you also kinda want, it's better than a 'no sorry, that wont be back at all anymore' reply. Thanks.



I'm not aware of reasons as to why you can't ride horses, you should be able to spawn using the /horses command, and ride those? I'm aware of the issue with them disappearing once you dismount them; this is no longer an intended feature and is something I am going to stop happening. I have created a work item to work on this: https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/stop-horses-despawning-on-dismount/

You can't ride them in the wild, sorry, you have to use the /h feature. But as mentioned in the other thread about it - it's not intuitive. Players don't know what's what. My dismount mention was more that if you ride them and you go up and down over slabs or stairs or hit a leaf, that sometimes you just suddenly am off the horse. And you have to spawn it again. It's not really stable behavior. Get it.. horse .. table.. ok, just trying to keep this positive. It would be nice if my donkey's chest content wouldn't disappear for example, but I understand it's a feature.. but i rather it then have only a visual chest that i can't use, than knowing players can put stuff in it and then the stuff disappears on accidental despawn, etc.

Thanks for explaining and for putting up a work item - fingers crossed we can ride into the sunset this summer on our steads.

Just a thought, .. is it perhaps an idea to have a horse in /pets instead, and just have /horse and /h link to /pets where they can buy one or more horses and spawn/despawn+ride them? Saving a plugin? Just a friendly thought.

By the way, it seems deebles, ohlookawall and me dont see our villager pet anymore? I checked page 2, but it's not there either. Just an offtopic note btw.




Mobs despawning is a part of the game, it's just what happens to them to prevent the world becoming cluttered with them and to allow further mobs to spawn. You can read more about it here: https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Spawn#Java_Edition_2. The despawning that happens on Noobstown is again following that, but we also limit things per player/area to further ensure that mobs will fairly spread out for all players. As explained about though I have now adjusted the spawning limits so this should be nicer than it was before.

Bummer, it kinda sucks we can't put a few mobs on our area or plant a couple of rabbits in a boat to keep us company during fishing. I have loads of spawn eggs and wouldn't mind using them, but seems they're kinda useless now I guess. You spawn them, tag them, whatever.. you /t spawn and /back, and they're all gone.

Maybe with the new spawn ratio stuff we have some more friendlies around too again.

Thanks for explaining!



Yes, as long as you don't have too many other animals right nearby. There is a limit to the number you can have in an area, once that limit is reached you won't be able to breed anymore. To combat this you can move the animals further away or kill off some of the others nearby.

Ok, I understand this now. We just have to stay in the plot if we want colored sheep breeding etc to get some wool for our builds, instead of tpaing away etc.  (for example)


As explained above I have now adjusted the spawning limits and rules so they should work slightly better than before now. There were however changes made to the game itself which were designed to adjust how mobs spawn, including reductions in mob grinders working. It's more fair for everyone if mobs are able to spawn freely around the world, rather than like crazy in a small spot where no combat is required.

In a way it's a real shame the towers we made and spent time and money building an mcMMO area for our town residents and /party people is basically useless in that regard. I guess we at least have it and it looks pretty, but with the new way of spawning we can move on to a dark room I think. mcMMO grinding is a thing in the mc world, and an offered feature. Town residents ask if we have grinders, if we don't: they move on. I was happy to offer this location. (Just explaining!)  I understand the new situation, and I will explain it as such to those who ask in game now. And work on a dark room in the meantime to replace the area (ish).

Anyway, the new spawn rate thing is an improvement, we can first see how all that goes.


These games which used to be ran by the admins can still exist, they just haven't taken place for a while. I have no direct issues with doing them again, and during previous events last year we did do some. I will admit we've been lacking in staff ran events recently, but this is because I've prioritised features which can improve gameplay for all, over running events which impact only those online at the time. With the lower player numbers it is also difficult to arrange events to happen at a time when we can get enough people for it to be competitive. So while we aren't doing them consistently like we have previously, they're definitely not gone forever, and will happen again during some of the bigger events of the year.

Yeah, .. that's true, they require staff involvement to be run. Hmmm.. Is it perhaps a thing just like a seasonal reset, that there's time set apart for an event each season as well. That way we have 4 per year basically. And at the beginning of the month when you reset a world, you can also announce the end of the month has an event weekend on a fri/sat evening? Then it's ahead of time, and ppl who can be there .. can be there! And it can be one thing once, and another season something else? If there's a quest going: maybe an event isn't needed.  If that lowers the workload of staff involvement a bit, but increases 'variety in gameplay' on the server, .. might help? Just thinking outloud.

Glad to read that you have no issue with doing little events again. Looking forward to it. I hope IRL / MC life etc balances out, like I said before. Is it an idea to perhaps have an admin on board who has enough (more than mods) perms to do an event, but isn't like a community moderator or a server admin.. But can have temporary event-privs once in a while to help with events?

I will come back to this about mayors and towns and fishing contests, etc. in a sec.. btw.

In regards to the low player numbers, I am surprised by the low outcome on friday evenings, though late at night like 4 or 5 am it peaks a bit. And that sometimes the peak is un Sunday evening. Do you perhaps have stats on this? A graph perhaps that shows on average when the peaks are?

Hopefully just like with double xp events and maybe a seasonal newsletter or something to inform players that played this year that there's an event a few weeks in the future that we can push those numbers up?

Yeah, no use having a contest for 3 ppl with 3 winners.. It's only realistic to say: we're doing an event that weekend if at 9pm UK time there are 15+ players online that want to participate. Maybe this motivates people to invite their friends and new players might just show up to check things out. If only 5 people show up it's more than reasonable to say: Sorry.. let's try again next month. Just sayin. (ppl hate me for saying this probably)

mrfloris

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #7 on: 7 May 2018, 00:49:28 »
Thanks again for saying they're not gone forever, it's nice to know that when things line up that it's possible to perhaps do this more often than 0 times per year. I do not expect it to be a weekly or even a monthly thing. Is it perhaps an idea to better schedule something, let us know the gist of things?  Ala: Hey guys, this year we're aiming for a bigger summer update, after the spring-maintenence update. We hope to roll out the next quest this summer too, and start autumn with a boat racing event before the water freezes over and we go back to bug fixing until Santa possibly shows up around Christmas in our towns.

Just a friendly suggestion.


Things like the boat races or horse races could be done by yourselves though, there is nothing preventing you from using the boat and race tracks in the Town World spawn at /warp town or even building your own tracks.

Fair enough! Is it perhaps possible to poke a moderator and ask them to sorta help oversee the event so the participants feel the pressure of staff looking and hopefully avoid cheating and keeping it fair-play? Is that something we can do and bother the staff for (and then it is up to the staff to say yes/no of course).

Thanks for reminding us.


The area you spawn in now has changed to make it easier to quickly get where you need to be, and to be less confusing for new players. It was purposefully changed to have less exploring options. You can still explore the old spawn in the Town World at /warp town though.

So the old town spawn isn't just there until warps etc are updated, it's there to stay? That would be a nice thing to be honest. That it remains a valid town that we can use and explore.



We've also got loads of towns with great builds to explore, that you can freely go to and look around.

Okay, fair point. When ppl ask ill tell them that too.
About loads of these towns. Is it perhaps an idea (i go offtopic again) to reconsider some of them? There are old mod towns that are complete dead now but have like 150 to 250 residents in them (all gone ..) the ones that do join they spawn in their plot and see what the state of town is and just leave again. is it an idea to reconsider what to do with these towns? Either hand it over to someone who wants a town and has the money to take one over, or like we mentioned to let active towns buy their area as an outpost or maybe just regen the land and call it a loss and if players do come back let them join an active town. Kinda 'clean up' .. i see loads and loads of towns in the /t list but with staff that hasn't joined in 1 or 2 years. I am trying to think of a few ways to make it more appealing to the residents who check the server out again to keep them on. Maybe worth a separate discussion one day?


The spawn doesn't have a market area, it's simply a place allowing you to get to other worlds. The old spawn in the Town World does still have its market area with villager trades, that hasn't moved.

It's recommended that you trade with other players directly though, you'll get much better deals.
Would we be allowed to perhaps have a global market for the server that's perhaps a bit different, maybe even call the town 'market' or get a /market command so we can just put up plots for everybody to buy who want shows. Kinda get the old v5 market back then? When I said market, I meant the visual builds at vip spawn and old spawn, as well as the npc traders at the noobstown spawn. Not perse a real market like the one we had in v5 (i miss that market, even if it was laggy).

Yes I know we can have town shops, we're all building these. But it's quite spread out and figuring out even with the site who has what where (plus the site lists out of stock chests too). A central point with affordable towns wouldn't be a bad thing. Especially if the command is a bit simpler then /t o icehaven market etc. Maybe a town can pay 5 or 10 million (first come first go basis) for the /market command and have a headsup on everybody else? I dunno, just thinking of ways here. Economy is part of the gameplay and there's the auction house and /shop, but .. erhm.. i forgot how we called this on a teamspeak conversation we recently had. I might get back to this at some point.


The themed months will happen on occasion again, it's again another question of focusing on features which only exist for a short period or working on longer-term things that'll be around for ages. I agree that the months such as archaeology were great fun though. We've still done things like this, if you go back just a few weeks for example we did the Easter Egg Hunt. Was there something about the archaeology month you specifically liked that wasn't achieved in the Easter Egg Hunt? 

Yay, themed months :) That's exciting to hear. I think i missed the archeology month. But I really like it on eh.. single player.. that when you're mining that you can hear a pop and you dug up an old bone.. And that you continue mining and randomly could get ancient exp magic bottle (enchantment bottle) and with say 64 of those you can go to town spawn and trade those in for mining benefit things like fossil finder pick, or a fossil cave shovel. Something that has say an effect of night vision on it for 15s once an hour or whatever. Things like that. Making mining and shoveling a bit more interesting. And items that are unique to archeology interesting to find and collect. And then trade (or keep) against usable items that do a bit more to make mining more fun too.

Maybe we can have common and rare items dropped. And maybe archeology papers that we need to use to trade against enchants that we can use. Like a repair dust for special picks. So those special picks can only be as they are given. Without ability to add normal enchants to it or fix with mcMMO etc, we need to mine to get the repair dust. You put item + dust in furnace and it repairs the tool a bit.

As a miner or digger, getting fossils, scrolls or artifects, .. would be cool. Or a common/rare type. Scrolls can be used to buy spells, Artifects could be combined to get rare relics for example to build up a collection.

So unlike easter eggs, it's not just a head-hunting game. But over period of months if you're shoveling and mining you can start building up a- collection, b- items to combine, c- trade for rare relics and repair them with your repair dust, etc.

Since these should be rare, buying and collecting, trading and working together with friends is perhaps one nice way to get teams and towns to work together to finish collections, etc.

I hope this example makes sense.


The spawn doesn't have a PVP arena. You can PVP almost anywhere now, including if you were to build your own arena.
People say in game that it did, I think we're remembering the arena at v5 spawn or something? The downside of pvp anywhere is that players can cheat easily with access to certain commands. Fighting a newbie [player] as [vip] means you can /j behind them and win the fight with a back stab and just say 'must have been lag', .. it would be nice if perhaps  (suggestion time)  we could have a towny set plot as pvp and then those commands don't work? Would that perhaps be possible? Or since we also want parcour plots, maybe a towny command like /plot set commands on/off so things like /home /j /back etc do not work when you're in that plot. But they can still /spawn for example. Dracomere has a parcour setup like that btw. If that's still the case.. now that i think of it - it's been a few years.

A pvp arena could also mean that if it's controlled by a plugin that you can enter the arena, the other person enters arena and after 10s it starts. You spawn on the other side of the glass in random spot with a kit that's equal to the other player and you play. The death means you get teleported back and the winner gets a /gift with some loot (and to avoid cheating with alts, perhaps only fight a player once an hour or some restriction along those lines).

By the way, to avoid 'conflict' with players, could we have a /pvprules command perhaps so when we have /pvp on, that we can say; ok let's play, but type /pvprules first, so you know that it's no items back, no cyring about it , and that sorta stuff? .. This way we also dont need mods around and can just refer to the global pvp rules.

I like the idea of starting our own pvp arena in town, this will be fun to fight with other towns as well in each others arenas. If only we could buy a zombie and creeper spawner to place (that doesn't give items and exp just player damage) so we can build our own mob arena.

Again, just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.


This is a question I get a lot, and unfortunately there isn't a positive answer. We don't and never did make the system which allowed for mob arena to happen, the maps were made for Noobstown and we produced the ranks, etc., but the system which allowed it all to happen together wasn't made by us. The team behind the system don't update it as frequently as I'd like and has been known to have major bugs again and again, I don't want to introduce features which aren't stable enough, and as such I've held off on reintroducing this. It will come back either once it's considered stable enough, or once I have the opportunity to produce our own system which can be properly locked down.

What about an alternative system? The players that played a lot in the beginning aren't here anymore, and I am sure nobody objects against scores they dont even remember. Would a new system perhaps be worth testing? Even if it is up in a limited form? Just call it the noobstown summer mob arena 2018, implying it might not be there in winter anymore. There's an advanced mob arena mod for 1.12.2 that's actively being developed by the way. If you guys aren't using that one, perhaps consider using that one? I don't quite remember if it's a premium one.

Most mob arena plugins these days support custom maps and ranks. It's a matter of hitting selection points and linking them up in the config yml files. But I am sure you are familiar with that. Again, i wish i could express myself more about this :0

I understand glitches, abuse, needing a lock down, integration with current plugins and all that stuff might be an issue. I am just saying that there's not just one plugin for 1.12.2 paper ;)

We're all hoping to see it back one day, like you said: a request we get a lot.  I miss playing healer and tank with mistic_ice and grinding those waves of zombies down to 0. Man the extra hours we were all online with 5+ ppl and double that in the weekend.

If only noobstown had the pit, the mobs, the waves, the bosses, the .. ssh floris, everything will be alright.

I've not heard this question before. You could create a system to do a drop party in your own Town quite easily using hoppers and droppers.

We have :)

I am looking forward to talk with doc about an area that we can let other people use as well.



mrfloris

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #8 on: 7 May 2018, 00:49:49 »


I wasn't aware that fishing wasn't possible in the spawn world. This is something I will have to look into, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to fish there.

I think it is. Sorry if I miscommunicated this. The docks etc are are just not at /spawn anymore, and I think with fishing we can't do tournaments unless we just trust people from cheating. There's no duelcon anymore to /invsee and make sure we don't use lure3 maxed out special fishing rods and have clown fish in our /echest etc to try and cheat. Players could easily /back to pick things up and we don't have access to console to check up on this. Giving away unique expensive items and prize money is erhm.. i dunno.. and telling players they get perhaps a bit of cash and some diamonds.. just doesn't motivate them to show up.

Hence why we prefer staff run tournements. I hope that makes more sense.

Maybe this is again an exmaple of where a /plot set commands no, might solve this? Players can't /echest and /back etc, and maybe if a mod is online who has /invsee could keep an eye on the players in a town run tournament, maybe that would work?


There's no real reason why these can't happen at the moment, it just requires some organisation to get them going. I will see how we can work towards getting the events which mods can organise more regular.

That sounds really cool, nice to hear that it's on the table. Looking forward to hearing more about this when it's the right time to do it. We in the meantime will do our best to stay playing, and get more old/new players online and grow the server from our end.

I appreciate it that this is considered. Always nicer then : can't do it, sorry.



The world was removed almost two years ago now, it was always planned to be a temporary feature, and the usage when it was removed was minimal.

Oh, when I asked foob it was a perm feature, hence why it was called museum, sucks. While minimal visits, it was fun to show others once in a while, to get our builds to copy to v6, and to get inspired by what others made to try and get that style back into the current towny world. I have an offline copy of my builds, but not that of others of course. I notice others who come back from v5 to also quite miss it. Ok, at least we know it won't be coming back as an adventure map or something. #v54lyfey0 #never4get

Thanks for explaining.


Unfortunately we didn't, due to other commitments I was unable to do our annual celebrations at the right time. It is now my plan to do an extra big celebration relating to this during the Summer to try and make up for it.

That's pretty cool to hear that you were moving, if I understand that correctly. I hope you're all settled in and it's nice to hear that a summer celebration is considered. I hope time and features allow it and that there are enough players by then to make it worth it. Sounds very positive. Can't get to 8 without 7. Wait, there will be a year 8 right?


This is something you've brought up previously here: https://www.noobscraft.com/idea/suggestion-pets-and-horses/. As I explained there I aware of the issues with pets, and have created a work item to work on solving them: https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/fix-pets/

If I think you're running the v3 of the pets plugin i think you're running, there's an unofficial release for version 4 on the authors discord that fixes mobs going invisible, and i think it has the features for perms on naming them and riding them etc fixed as well. And better 1.12.2 support. Since i am not sure it's the right one, maybe you could check him out on spigotmc community and see where his discord is and look into that? Who knows, .. might get lucky and maybe it's worth testing/upgrading to. Would be awesome!

Oh, did i meantion earlier that we noticed our villager mobs are gone? We also can't seem to name them anymore at the moment, or at least, nobody seems to figure it out.

Thank you again for explaining the pets situation. And making a work item for it. I see people try daily, especially when we wanna show off our super big magma bouncing around or scare someone with a charged creeper. It's fun gameplay.


You can put name tags on mobs and animals, but they do despawn, that is correct. There would be no sensible way for us to allow you to keep mobs if they had a name tag, it would be extremely unreasonable to guarantee that any named mob or animal will never despawn. We try to be fair to all players, and ensuring that there is the possibility for animals and mobs to spawn for everyone is something I want to maintain. Mobs and animals which are named still contribute to the server's mob cap, we can't have the world being filled with mobs and animals that can never despawn because it would block the spawning if new mobs and animals for other players. There isn't some sort of evil option that we will always despawn your named mobs/animals though, it is based on loads of factors when the server decides to despawn an entity, and this will occasionally hit named ones.

Okay, I understand this better, and I think that's something we can also explain better in-game to players. Alternative ways perhaps? Would it perhaps be an idea to consider allowing /animals for our town plots; giving us a gui where we can collect a couple and spawn a couple? That way they're not really in the game, until we need them, we can then breed them and get from them what we want. And then when we get back, they're despawned, but since we've previously collected them: they're still in /animals as a mob we can spawn. Again, just thinking outloud. I know we can get town spawners,I have those, but we can't place those on every player plot and they're like 3m each still and don't cover things like llama and other new mobs. A friendly suggestion to perhaps consider alternative system for this? Very low priority, on my personal list, but .. it's a weekly question why they work on a area to keep their mobs, they draw them in with food, they go get something and /back and their hard work was for nothing.



Again if you maintain a lower number of animals and spread them out over a bigger area this will reduce those chances, but there is no way to guarantee it unfortunately. If you've got any ideas to combat this in a way that would be fair and couldn't be abused I'd be open to hearing it though.

Same as above I guess.


As KilljoyDivine explained, the next part of the Royal Cure quest is in the works.

Thumbsup!
And I made an earlier suggestion to killjoy perhaps to rethink how quests are done a bit? A few more, but shorter ones (work wise), so instead of many months in between them, that it's possible to do them per season?



Chunk of the Month has become quite an issue for me to consistently keep going. I will admit it's been handled poorly by myself, and as such I feel like it would be unfair to keep it up in its current state at the moment with the possibility for it to go on like it has in the past. I am logistically working out on a nice way that the rest of the staff team could judge the entries and impartially pick a winner; once that has been sorted I would like a building contest of some sort to return.

Well, handled poorly is too harsh, it's just not happening due to moving and focussing on higher priority items. I guess that's logical. But the question comes up. Is this something that perhaps a second admin could do? like an [event] staff? Someone who you can /event up to give them temp perms for that event and have it expire 36 hours later or whatever.. So they dont get full admin perms, but have a bit more than a mod to help achieve things like post on the announcement forum with the winner, or announce ingame that it's active .. or review cotm plots and pick winners? Or a senior mod or something? Delegate larry! :D :)

A quick build contest in a temporary world with creative would be cool, and then have the winner's build up for voting? And the picked winner's build could end up at /warp town or something interesting like that? (obviously certain commands like /ah and /echest shouldn't work, and inventories don't share between those worlds).

I can understand your feelings about this, you can focus on whatever you want to on the server; you're choosing to go down the town route, and I appreciate the work involved though. There are changes in the works to try and reduce the number of inactive Towns including your suggestion about taking over them (https://www.noobscraft.com/work/full/takeover-inactive-towns/); but like everything, the improvements won't happen overnight. Your goals for town gains need to remain realistic with the current player numbers though; I appreciate that might not be the most diplomatic answer, but it's the honest situation at the moment; there are lots of towns competing for the players, that's part of the game. For now just work as best as you can on what you want and hopefully we'll all see things improve.

Yeah I focus on the towny, because it's a towny server, and the survival part is in the wild. We do both.. can't just survive all the time :) Hence why there are features like mcmmo to keep us busy when the grind of building gets to us. Variety and teamwork really helps keep people be online. Plus, making money means: find reasons to spend it. (You hear that warriorben, spend some of that monay once in a while haha). But it /is/ expensive. While the end-game of having approved towns is semi affordable for active towns. It's still 20+ million, of which 200k per person just for a dozen of plots. Between four people that is. Things can add up really fast.  (just explaining)

Yeah, improvements won't happen overnight, we get that. It's cool that it's being looked into. I hope it's possible. Honest awnsers are needed :) I appreciate that you take the time to even reply and answer. It is nice to not get ignored by staff. Other servers just ban you for even bringing up improvements and stuff.  But while the situation is that there's low player count, it will stay low if there's no progress towards gameplay. I am happy to read in this thread there's more than plenty to be done that can be done, that's something you all want to have done. Time, resources, irl, etc.. it's in the way. We're not blind to it. Sometimes when 6+ months pass you just think 'when then'. That's all, and we end up with threads like this. #fairnuf


I have always tried to provide useful, honest and open answers to questions and suggestions, I'm sorry if you don't feel like that's happened as well as it could have.
Actually, I do feel that's what's been happening. You've replied to my threads, some took a while, but it wasn't ignored. It's a two way street, and there's loads of value in that.


I believe we do still have a community at the moment; it is my intention to bring back a bigger sense of it back though, and I have seen recently you've been pushing towards that, I appreciate your contribution to it. The work moving forwards isn't going to happen overnight or even in a few weeks, they're long term goals. Noobstown is great fun for me to work on, I am not going to purposefully try to ruin things; and because of this I don't want to rush things through just because it might increase player numbers in the short-term.
I do too, we just hit a peak of 18 users last night and we're averaging at times with 5+ players, this wasn't the case some months ago. We're even seeing some old faces return, and not just to say hi, but actually play. So awesome.  knowing the staff is also working on getting people back, and not just because we're playing that others come back and play.. is really nice to hear too. Your honestly in explaining how things are: and i really mean this: is much appreciated. It all sounds logical and realistic and positive.

i am glad the conversations between members in-game, and me buttin' in on them, and talking to staff and regulars, and people that came back here, on skype, facetime, etc have all resulted in a bunch of threads with bunch of feedback and suggestions and that we have something to link to and it's nice to know the server isn't left to 'it will just run, things are fiiiiine', but that there's more than bugfixes and good intentions. I think that's something we can certainly make an effort for to project towards players who have those questions. Always better than staff / mobs going in the chat: yeah i dunno.. haven't seen x y z for a while.

KilljoyDivine

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #9 on: 7 May 2018, 10:36:57 »
That's a lotta text to quote and then try to reply to, so I'm just gonna jump in and you can guess what I'm referring to if you don't know. :P

Re: COTM voting etc. I keep meaning to propose a team of staff to judge, or an agreed upon team, to judge, then submit the best of x number, maybe top 3 builds. Maybe 2 and 3 get some more coin, and number 1 gets a head. That way the work load is spread out, and it'll get done quicker. Also maybe when they are judged, within that group they talk about why the votes went a certain way, like what was appreciated about each build- this way even if you don't win a prize, you win some feedback, which thus builds (har har) (even) stronger builders.

mrfloris

Re: [suggestions] Let's NOT build another dark room
« Reply #10 on: 7 May 2018, 15:15:33 »
That's a lotta text to quote and then try to reply to, so I'm just gonna jump in and you can guess what I'm referring to if you don't know. :P

Re: COTM voting etc. I keep meaning to propose a team of staff to judge, or an agreed upon team, to judge, then submit the best of x number, maybe top 3 builds. Maybe 2 and 3 get some more coin, and number 1 gets a head. That way the work load is spread out, and it'll get done quicker. Also maybe when they are judged, within that group they talk about why the votes went a certain way, like what was appreciated about each build- this way even if you don't win a prize, you win some feedback, which thus builds (har har) (even) stronger builders.

One thing about COTM is that players get together and work on a project like building those chunks. They check each others builds out, their towns, become residents, or switch towns. etc. It's gameplay - rather than: what you up to 'mining', oh ok..  and life goes on. We saw how we had an area for the easter eggs and everybody was teleporting to eachother and helping eachother out. It was fun. I think something like COTM is important. I hope you guys figure out something that matches the amount of users playing, vs participating, etc.

Yeah, a lot of text. But it's a conversation :)