Luoji
First Step
So at this point I think it's obvious that an early reset may be necessary to try and revive the player base a bit since a number of players either quit because of the flat overworld, lack of competition (in stark's case), or because of issues during the peace period where people would enemy one another and sit in the claims of others to deny them the ability to fly or place gen blocks, thus severely reducing the rate at which any base could be made.
Some suggestions I'd like to make (not all of which need to be added in) would be:
- Make the overworld a normal world and not an eye-sore of a flat world
- Somehow create a way in which there is value in mining. As of right now the only merit to mining is by grinding for a high level keygreed and grinding for those keys. Given that caverns is way too good for earning money though, the rate at which you get legendary keys, and the selling rates that they have themselves, caverns completely knocks this method of making money out of the ball park. Currently the keygreed rates are fine as they are I'd say though since it's not too frequent, nor would it take too long to receive a key so I don't think that needs to be altered itself.
- Nerf caverns or somehow create a way to balance it a bit better so that whatever faction controls it for grace period won't be able to completely roll over everyone else. This was seen with stark when they all had a number of gsets and spent their time in grace period harassing people in their own bases as they tried to build.
- An alternative to nerfing caverns, could be instead to introduce other methods of making money that may be somewhat profitable, i.e. re-adding certain crop hoppers such as pumpkin, melon, sugar cane and so on. This would help people safely make money in their own claims. This obviously shouldn't be on the level of tier 2 caverns, but it could be somewhat close to tier 1 at the very least considering the massive amounts of xp and faction points you'd get for farming caverns instead of sitting/manually farming in your base.
- This point is a bit of a grey area since I don't know the reasoning, but if possible, to enable slime blocks ability to be pushed by pistons again. I'd assume that this was stopped so that no redstone monsters could be created with observer's, but since observer's aren't enabled (as proven by the cannon server where they will turn to stone the second you grab one into your inventory), I think this would help create automated farms that could run without the need for the compact, automated spamming design that was breaking the server originally. I'm aware the maarten mentioned that the farm wasn't the main cause of the tps lag, but the fact that it spammed each row multiple times for 1 block of pumpkin, causing over 2000 redstone updates a minute roughly, it would definitely not help.
Otherwise if the observer's could be enabled that too would greatly assist with farms that can be made and be as lag free as possible.
Of course I don't know what version the server fully runs on so if observer's aren't in the server's version of minecraft then that makes sense in itself. Also, if either of these were causing dupes to be produced then that also is understandable as to why they are disabled in their own ways right now.
- I don't know how the custom enchants work but if it's possible to buff inquisitive then that too would be a really nice change, mostly due to the fact that xp from caverns is completely insane compared to a days worth of grinding yourself. This is also an issue with the whole mob stacking bug issue where the entire stack can magically disappear after killing 1 or 2 of the mobs (at least for a select few mobs that would normally be farmed).
- If things are to stay as intended for rewards from caverns, due to the sheer amount of xp, gold and faction points, I would say that it's fair to allow the mobs to attack players again, and even buff the mobs so that they can be deemed rewarding for killing some mobs that could potentially kill a player. If possible, a 3rd layer could be added in for this and the tier 2 rewards becoming that tier 3 layer's rewards whilst tier 1 moves to tier 2, and a new, less rewarding layer takes the place of the 1st one, as this layer can have inactive mobs like they are currently (Not sure if this is possible, just putting an idea out there from an outsiders perspective). An example of the newest tier's layer could include prot 5 mobs which sharp 5/6 weapons which will seek out and attack players. Bows are almost completely useless against protection 5 sets which immortal ranks have easy access too, even with archery rank 1000 when you daze the opponents using a power v bow with armour piercing 4. Of course the difficulty should match the reward a bit better so it wouldn't have to be this extreme, but anything for it to be a little more worth-while to slow down the aggressive rates at which players can currently print $, f-points and xp with what is near enough a 10/10 reward, 0/10 difficulty farming method given you have the numbers for it.
If possible, this new layer could instead add in chances for legendary-mythic tier enchantment books to be dropped by the mobs, or something else that would give an incentive for players to take on what could be a challenge with an equal reward to match.
- This is a bit of an issue with some of the players more so a server issue, but if it's possible to increase the distance from 1 caverns layer to the next, this would probably assist with reducing the amount of players that get ganked by people who are geared up and are abusing playerESP. This is an issue that I have constantly heard about since I first started playing on the server, with lots of PVP focused players even admitting to using such cheats along with ESP's that allow them to see people's enchants and such. Having the layers so close together easily allows these players to locate and jump on an unsuspecting newbie.
- Buff the Koth rewards/Fishing contest rewards. Both of these are nice to have, but there is almost no incentive to compete in the fishing contest due to the $ made is so horrendously low, and koth rewards after a period of time being mostly focused on the chest that you can open. Of course this could be something that is scaled throughout the map, whereby the winners of the koth obtain the current rewards for the first 2 weeks, but after a point where players have lots of different sources of income, the koth reward could increase the $ made to 10mil or something that is worth fighting for, not just the potential low % to obtain gear that you may want from the chest.
- If it's possible to add in lava source buckets to greatly reduce the time at which it takes to place all of the individual lava that would be greatly appreciated. For someone like myself, spending all day in a 1x1 area placing large amounts of lava gets quite disorientating after a short period of time so for myself at least, I struggle a lot to get through these during a grace period. Of course since these wouldn't be too necessary in masses, but would be extremely useful, this could for instance, be 4x the price of obsidian gen buckets (just an example).
MCMMO:
- If it's possible I'd love to see fishing receive custom drops so that it could be another cool, niche thing to do on the server such as farm for keys using keygreed. Obviously this would be aiming to give better rewards for those that willingly put in the time to grind the rank up of this stat. This could also merge into the idea of creating fishing as a potential income source that could be around the same as mining whereby it won't be anything amazing but would at least be worth doing for those that don't want to compete in the warzone for koth's, bosses or caverns loot.
- Taming would be nice to buff a bit since it's currently one of, if not the most tedious offensive stat to farm, where you can reach rank 1000 just to watch a basic sharp V sword 2 hit a wolf that wouldn't even need to force the opponent to gapple versus 10 of them (Tested this a few times with Loganaitor in the last map by giving him my immortal kit and having him fight a number of wolves at once whilst my mcmmo for this was at 1000). Whether it's a buff to thick fur (somehow) to allow the wolves to tank a bit more or to their Gore effect so that they actually pose some form of a threat in combat, anything would be a nice change, especially since you physically cannot summon wolves using the bones in warzone or with eggs, forcing players to run outside of the warzone, spawn in their wolves, and run back in, since teleporting long distances doesn't always work.
- Not sure if it's possible since there are no varying levels for this, but if excavation could get custom drops too, then this would be another cool addition.
- Archery can't compare to anything else in PVP as of right now, even at rank 1000, so if it's possible to either buff the damage from skillshot or daze, it should help it out more, even if it's a very minute amount to avoid it becoming the best PVP style. Of course, since daze has a % chance to work, if it's possible to change the bonus damage this can do, you can easily balance the % chance to daze around the additional damage.
- I don't know what's happened with the actives of the swords and axes, but if they are brought back then it could be a nice addition too, just obviously buffing and nerfing their scaling damage where necessary.
Basically put, caverns is a bit too strong compared to pretty much any other method for xp unless you are spending 5mil+ on xp bottles to use an automated xp dispensing redstone machine, faction points, and $, which is mostly op in the early game as things will balance out later in the map once factions start to obtain a large sum of spawners.
Obviously having a farm based economy is a fairly boring way forward but to at least make it an option in the early game, along with mining could be a different way of allowing smaller/less experienced factions to try and keep up and not fall completely behind with some of the top factions right off the bat during grace periods.
Some suggestions I'd like to make (not all of which need to be added in) would be:
- Make the overworld a normal world and not an eye-sore of a flat world
- Somehow create a way in which there is value in mining. As of right now the only merit to mining is by grinding for a high level keygreed and grinding for those keys. Given that caverns is way too good for earning money though, the rate at which you get legendary keys, and the selling rates that they have themselves, caverns completely knocks this method of making money out of the ball park. Currently the keygreed rates are fine as they are I'd say though since it's not too frequent, nor would it take too long to receive a key so I don't think that needs to be altered itself.
- Nerf caverns or somehow create a way to balance it a bit better so that whatever faction controls it for grace period won't be able to completely roll over everyone else. This was seen with stark when they all had a number of gsets and spent their time in grace period harassing people in their own bases as they tried to build.
- An alternative to nerfing caverns, could be instead to introduce other methods of making money that may be somewhat profitable, i.e. re-adding certain crop hoppers such as pumpkin, melon, sugar cane and so on. This would help people safely make money in their own claims. This obviously shouldn't be on the level of tier 2 caverns, but it could be somewhat close to tier 1 at the very least considering the massive amounts of xp and faction points you'd get for farming caverns instead of sitting/manually farming in your base.
- This point is a bit of a grey area since I don't know the reasoning, but if possible, to enable slime blocks ability to be pushed by pistons again. I'd assume that this was stopped so that no redstone monsters could be created with observer's, but since observer's aren't enabled (as proven by the cannon server where they will turn to stone the second you grab one into your inventory), I think this would help create automated farms that could run without the need for the compact, automated spamming design that was breaking the server originally. I'm aware the maarten mentioned that the farm wasn't the main cause of the tps lag, but the fact that it spammed each row multiple times for 1 block of pumpkin, causing over 2000 redstone updates a minute roughly, it would definitely not help.
Otherwise if the observer's could be enabled that too would greatly assist with farms that can be made and be as lag free as possible.
Of course I don't know what version the server fully runs on so if observer's aren't in the server's version of minecraft then that makes sense in itself. Also, if either of these were causing dupes to be produced then that also is understandable as to why they are disabled in their own ways right now.
- I don't know how the custom enchants work but if it's possible to buff inquisitive then that too would be a really nice change, mostly due to the fact that xp from caverns is completely insane compared to a days worth of grinding yourself. This is also an issue with the whole mob stacking bug issue where the entire stack can magically disappear after killing 1 or 2 of the mobs (at least for a select few mobs that would normally be farmed).
- If things are to stay as intended for rewards from caverns, due to the sheer amount of xp, gold and faction points, I would say that it's fair to allow the mobs to attack players again, and even buff the mobs so that they can be deemed rewarding for killing some mobs that could potentially kill a player. If possible, a 3rd layer could be added in for this and the tier 2 rewards becoming that tier 3 layer's rewards whilst tier 1 moves to tier 2, and a new, less rewarding layer takes the place of the 1st one, as this layer can have inactive mobs like they are currently (Not sure if this is possible, just putting an idea out there from an outsiders perspective). An example of the newest tier's layer could include prot 5 mobs which sharp 5/6 weapons which will seek out and attack players. Bows are almost completely useless against protection 5 sets which immortal ranks have easy access too, even with archery rank 1000 when you daze the opponents using a power v bow with armour piercing 4. Of course the difficulty should match the reward a bit better so it wouldn't have to be this extreme, but anything for it to be a little more worth-while to slow down the aggressive rates at which players can currently print $, f-points and xp with what is near enough a 10/10 reward, 0/10 difficulty farming method given you have the numbers for it.
If possible, this new layer could instead add in chances for legendary-mythic tier enchantment books to be dropped by the mobs, or something else that would give an incentive for players to take on what could be a challenge with an equal reward to match.
- This is a bit of an issue with some of the players more so a server issue, but if it's possible to increase the distance from 1 caverns layer to the next, this would probably assist with reducing the amount of players that get ganked by people who are geared up and are abusing playerESP. This is an issue that I have constantly heard about since I first started playing on the server, with lots of PVP focused players even admitting to using such cheats along with ESP's that allow them to see people's enchants and such. Having the layers so close together easily allows these players to locate and jump on an unsuspecting newbie.
- Buff the Koth rewards/Fishing contest rewards. Both of these are nice to have, but there is almost no incentive to compete in the fishing contest due to the $ made is so horrendously low, and koth rewards after a period of time being mostly focused on the chest that you can open. Of course this could be something that is scaled throughout the map, whereby the winners of the koth obtain the current rewards for the first 2 weeks, but after a point where players have lots of different sources of income, the koth reward could increase the $ made to 10mil or something that is worth fighting for, not just the potential low % to obtain gear that you may want from the chest.
- If it's possible to add in lava source buckets to greatly reduce the time at which it takes to place all of the individual lava that would be greatly appreciated. For someone like myself, spending all day in a 1x1 area placing large amounts of lava gets quite disorientating after a short period of time so for myself at least, I struggle a lot to get through these during a grace period. Of course since these wouldn't be too necessary in masses, but would be extremely useful, this could for instance, be 4x the price of obsidian gen buckets (just an example).
MCMMO:
- If it's possible I'd love to see fishing receive custom drops so that it could be another cool, niche thing to do on the server such as farm for keys using keygreed. Obviously this would be aiming to give better rewards for those that willingly put in the time to grind the rank up of this stat. This could also merge into the idea of creating fishing as a potential income source that could be around the same as mining whereby it won't be anything amazing but would at least be worth doing for those that don't want to compete in the warzone for koth's, bosses or caverns loot.
- Taming would be nice to buff a bit since it's currently one of, if not the most tedious offensive stat to farm, where you can reach rank 1000 just to watch a basic sharp V sword 2 hit a wolf that wouldn't even need to force the opponent to gapple versus 10 of them (Tested this a few times with Loganaitor in the last map by giving him my immortal kit and having him fight a number of wolves at once whilst my mcmmo for this was at 1000). Whether it's a buff to thick fur (somehow) to allow the wolves to tank a bit more or to their Gore effect so that they actually pose some form of a threat in combat, anything would be a nice change, especially since you physically cannot summon wolves using the bones in warzone or with eggs, forcing players to run outside of the warzone, spawn in their wolves, and run back in, since teleporting long distances doesn't always work.
- Not sure if it's possible since there are no varying levels for this, but if excavation could get custom drops too, then this would be another cool addition.
- Archery can't compare to anything else in PVP as of right now, even at rank 1000, so if it's possible to either buff the damage from skillshot or daze, it should help it out more, even if it's a very minute amount to avoid it becoming the best PVP style. Of course, since daze has a % chance to work, if it's possible to change the bonus damage this can do, you can easily balance the % chance to daze around the additional damage.
- I don't know what's happened with the actives of the swords and axes, but if they are brought back then it could be a nice addition too, just obviously buffing and nerfing their scaling damage where necessary.
Basically put, caverns is a bit too strong compared to pretty much any other method for xp unless you are spending 5mil+ on xp bottles to use an automated xp dispensing redstone machine, faction points, and $, which is mostly op in the early game as things will balance out later in the map once factions start to obtain a large sum of spawners.
Obviously having a farm based economy is a fairly boring way forward but to at least make it an option in the early game, along with mining could be a different way of allowing smaller/less experienced factions to try and keep up and not fall completely behind with some of the top factions right off the bat during grace periods.