- Joined
- Oct 1, 2014
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This is a long post obviously. Some of it may seem like rambling, because some of it is. This was the best I could do at organizing my thoughts without sounding like one of those "back in my day" grandparents. I'm going to hold the first line of the most important sections. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing just read those parts. Thanks!
For as long as I've been on the server the concept of "Fixing PvP" has been on the table. It's commonly discussed among pvpers and while yes, there are issues with the game mechanics, is PvP itself really the problem? We've removed traits, removed vampirism, added kit PvP, koth, and fixed many minor issues. So why has none of this helped? Because PvP was never the actual issue. It's always been factions.
All of the changes in the past two years that have affected PvP are appealing to the normal MineCraft pvper. We've thought of adding HCF (hardcore factions, more competitive PvP system) features, and made the fighting style more vanilla in attempts to attract more PvPers to the server. In my opinion, we've been going about that the wrong way. The PvP community on massive has always been made up of mostly people who began on massive craft and learned to PvP on here. I can only think of a few specific players that actually came from outside PvP servers, that already had knowledge of pot PvP mechanics, and most of them just came because they had a friend that already played on Massive. Most of these players quit after a few tries because they didn't like the PvP system. So let's stop thinking of trying to make massive appealing to outside Pvpers because that's just not working.
Now when I say factions is the issue, I don't mean the plugin itself. I mean the treatment of the factions worlds and lack of interest most players have in it. When PvPers say they want more PvP, what we really want is more raids. There's a difference, trust me. Kit PvP, KOTH and a fight between two power factions that starts with the incredibly stupid "knock knock" or one leader messaging another "we're gonna raid now get ready" are all examples of PvP. These are events, staged PvP with no backstory, no meaning, and no reward apart from bragging rights. A raid is when one faction attacks another without any warning. The attacker kills off a noob, alerting the rest of the defending faction. The defending faction can call in their allies, and a fight breaks out. A raid isn't set up, there's no communication beforehand, it just happens because the defending faction wants to protect their land, and the raiding faction wants them to surrender. When was the last time a pvper could say that happened? I've brought up the idea of a proxy war multiple times. Two power factions lead their own sides, and all other factions that get raided are forced to align themselves with one side, in order to survive.
Why doesn't this happen anymore? Because no one cares. It's simple. Go give raiding a shot. Raid any faction you see on f list. Find their f home on the dynmap and go there. You won't find anyone, and if you do they'll tell their officers, and then just get told to stay inside. "Stay inside until the raiders get bored and leave" is the greatest system of defense. And now a days factions won't even make allies so they can get some help on defense because having allies come to your aid will just make the raiders want to keep coming back.
How has raiding sunk to this level? Because every change to factions in the past two years has allowed it to be this way. Even the ones you wouldn't even think about. The biggest one is that factions used to be a part of the lore. I was never around for this but I'm pretty sure a good amount of players stopped caring about factions completely when Regalian roleplay became a thing. It seems that there's some stuff going on to introduce survival worlds back into the lore or something with the new lore posts done by @Optimalfriskies. So that's a good start. Maybe this could rekindle some interest in the factions world for some of the old players. The next thing on my list is something I can guarantee most people would never think of as a reason there's no PvP. Why is it that you can never find a player in their cities in the factions world? Well maybe they're in regalia role playing. Or maybe.. it's because every faction owns approximately 18 cities in every world now. The system used to be that factions could only have one set of claims in each world, they had to be attached to each other. You couldn't spider claim, and you couldn't have multiple cities on opposite ends of the world. Which makes sense, because why should an empire own multiple cities if they won't even defend one? PvP factions are probably used to claiming raid portals now and some of you might be thinking, "but Sevak, how could people claim their raid portals if they're not attached to their city?" Well, that's the thing. You didn't. People actually had to hide their raid portals, in trees, underground, etc. This was actually part of the fun because defending factions would feel like they had some way of defending themselves if they could somehow find the raid portal and destroy it. Back then, there was no massive restore, so it's not like you had to remake your raid portal every month or something. If you know me, you know I absolutey hate massive restore. It's a great idea in theory. But it takes away one of my favorite parts of massive from when I was a noob, which was being able to run around, exploring the worlds and finding abandoned factions to scavenge.
The next thing is a bit of a tangent but probably the most controversial topic of the past year so I'll go over it anyways. Massive Mobs. Now if you know me, you know I absolutely hate massive mobs even more than I hate massive restore. I don't care what anyone says, @Gethelp had actually found a way to fix lag completely for about a solid week before massive mobs were added to every single world. I don't have statistics to prove it, that's true, and maybe I'm wrong, but what I don't get is why we can't even put it to a test? Remove massive mobs completely for one weekend. That's two days without massive mobs. This will be the time when the most amount of players are on. Pvpers can have some raids, and if theres still lag. We'll shut up about it finally. But if a good amount of the servers active community don't like massive mobs, isn't testing what the server is like without them something that should at least be considered? All I'm asking for is two days. Okay just had to get that out there. Back on topic now.
So what can we do to actually fix the issue of the lack of raids? Well we can't just delete regalia and force all the roleplayers back into factions, so let's start small and start moving back towards massivecraft's roots. Some ideas I've had:
- Increase massive restore to every 4 months but give players the option to create tickets and have land manually restored if they want it for building. I get that massive restore is intended to keep the worlds clean, but hyarroc won't turn in to daendroc over the course of 4 months. Maybe the chance to explore and find bases will inspire young players to stick around. For people like me, there's significance in every build someone makes. Everything repesents history and nostalgia to someone.
- This is a long shot, and wouldn't have an immediate effect. But it used to be that premium players had 20 power and non premiums had 10. Now everyone has 30. So a group of 5 people can claim a decent sized city. How does that make sense? So why not decrease each players power a bit. And to top that off, allow one claim per world, rather than as many claims as humanly possible in 3 worlds. This will force factions into more intimate situations. Not only building stronger community, but also giving each piece of land more meaning and a drive to defend it. Rather than "oh they're attacking our city in north Ithania? Everyone go chill in the one in south ithania, it'll take them 20 minutes to get down there lol." I can see the issues with this idea and wouldn't understand if it wasn't ever implemented. But it's all up for compromise.
IF YOURE GOING TO TAKE ANYTHING FROM THIS POST, LET IT BE THIS
- Now this last idea is something that I can't see why we shouldn't do. A server wide factions war. Create two sides, backing the current power factions. One side could be lead by Solarian (New Raptum) and Deldrimor. The other could be lead by the opposing Wrath and Wyvern. This could be a continuation of the current voyage threads in the server news and announcements section on the Forums. Maybe the ship that's currently sailing around could discover this huge war going on. Each side presents their case for why their side is good and a thread is made allowing factions to choose a side in this war. Like one of those old faction war threads under faction announcements! Those always looked so cool and I'm sad I missed them. From this point on all factions involved have a duty to their side to take part in some way. Each faction on both sides could be the host for some cool raids. The war could be documented by more server announcement posts, faction announcements from players, YouTube videos, etc. Also if the server wants to host some events for it, KOTHs that actually take place in the factions world (could be given lore so they're like "strategic points in the war" or something) would be so much fun. These KOTHs would actually be competitive and costly rather than just free loot for whoever is bored enough to outlast the other trolls.
For as long as I've been on the server the concept of "Fixing PvP" has been on the table. It's commonly discussed among pvpers and while yes, there are issues with the game mechanics, is PvP itself really the problem? We've removed traits, removed vampirism, added kit PvP, koth, and fixed many minor issues. So why has none of this helped? Because PvP was never the actual issue. It's always been factions.
All of the changes in the past two years that have affected PvP are appealing to the normal MineCraft pvper. We've thought of adding HCF (hardcore factions, more competitive PvP system) features, and made the fighting style more vanilla in attempts to attract more PvPers to the server. In my opinion, we've been going about that the wrong way. The PvP community on massive has always been made up of mostly people who began on massive craft and learned to PvP on here. I can only think of a few specific players that actually came from outside PvP servers, that already had knowledge of pot PvP mechanics, and most of them just came because they had a friend that already played on Massive. Most of these players quit after a few tries because they didn't like the PvP system. So let's stop thinking of trying to make massive appealing to outside Pvpers because that's just not working.
Now when I say factions is the issue, I don't mean the plugin itself. I mean the treatment of the factions worlds and lack of interest most players have in it. When PvPers say they want more PvP, what we really want is more raids. There's a difference, trust me. Kit PvP, KOTH and a fight between two power factions that starts with the incredibly stupid "knock knock" or one leader messaging another "we're gonna raid now get ready" are all examples of PvP. These are events, staged PvP with no backstory, no meaning, and no reward apart from bragging rights. A raid is when one faction attacks another without any warning. The attacker kills off a noob, alerting the rest of the defending faction. The defending faction can call in their allies, and a fight breaks out. A raid isn't set up, there's no communication beforehand, it just happens because the defending faction wants to protect their land, and the raiding faction wants them to surrender. When was the last time a pvper could say that happened? I've brought up the idea of a proxy war multiple times. Two power factions lead their own sides, and all other factions that get raided are forced to align themselves with one side, in order to survive.
Why doesn't this happen anymore? Because no one cares. It's simple. Go give raiding a shot. Raid any faction you see on f list. Find their f home on the dynmap and go there. You won't find anyone, and if you do they'll tell their officers, and then just get told to stay inside. "Stay inside until the raiders get bored and leave" is the greatest system of defense. And now a days factions won't even make allies so they can get some help on defense because having allies come to your aid will just make the raiders want to keep coming back.
How has raiding sunk to this level? Because every change to factions in the past two years has allowed it to be this way. Even the ones you wouldn't even think about. The biggest one is that factions used to be a part of the lore. I was never around for this but I'm pretty sure a good amount of players stopped caring about factions completely when Regalian roleplay became a thing. It seems that there's some stuff going on to introduce survival worlds back into the lore or something with the new lore posts done by @Optimalfriskies. So that's a good start. Maybe this could rekindle some interest in the factions world for some of the old players. The next thing on my list is something I can guarantee most people would never think of as a reason there's no PvP. Why is it that you can never find a player in their cities in the factions world? Well maybe they're in regalia role playing. Or maybe.. it's because every faction owns approximately 18 cities in every world now. The system used to be that factions could only have one set of claims in each world, they had to be attached to each other. You couldn't spider claim, and you couldn't have multiple cities on opposite ends of the world. Which makes sense, because why should an empire own multiple cities if they won't even defend one? PvP factions are probably used to claiming raid portals now and some of you might be thinking, "but Sevak, how could people claim their raid portals if they're not attached to their city?" Well, that's the thing. You didn't. People actually had to hide their raid portals, in trees, underground, etc. This was actually part of the fun because defending factions would feel like they had some way of defending themselves if they could somehow find the raid portal and destroy it. Back then, there was no massive restore, so it's not like you had to remake your raid portal every month or something. If you know me, you know I absolutey hate massive restore. It's a great idea in theory. But it takes away one of my favorite parts of massive from when I was a noob, which was being able to run around, exploring the worlds and finding abandoned factions to scavenge.
The next thing is a bit of a tangent but probably the most controversial topic of the past year so I'll go over it anyways. Massive Mobs. Now if you know me, you know I absolutely hate massive mobs even more than I hate massive restore. I don't care what anyone says, @Gethelp had actually found a way to fix lag completely for about a solid week before massive mobs were added to every single world. I don't have statistics to prove it, that's true, and maybe I'm wrong, but what I don't get is why we can't even put it to a test? Remove massive mobs completely for one weekend. That's two days without massive mobs. This will be the time when the most amount of players are on. Pvpers can have some raids, and if theres still lag. We'll shut up about it finally. But if a good amount of the servers active community don't like massive mobs, isn't testing what the server is like without them something that should at least be considered? All I'm asking for is two days. Okay just had to get that out there. Back on topic now.
So what can we do to actually fix the issue of the lack of raids? Well we can't just delete regalia and force all the roleplayers back into factions, so let's start small and start moving back towards massivecraft's roots. Some ideas I've had:
- Increase massive restore to every 4 months but give players the option to create tickets and have land manually restored if they want it for building. I get that massive restore is intended to keep the worlds clean, but hyarroc won't turn in to daendroc over the course of 4 months. Maybe the chance to explore and find bases will inspire young players to stick around. For people like me, there's significance in every build someone makes. Everything repesents history and nostalgia to someone.
- This is a long shot, and wouldn't have an immediate effect. But it used to be that premium players had 20 power and non premiums had 10. Now everyone has 30. So a group of 5 people can claim a decent sized city. How does that make sense? So why not decrease each players power a bit. And to top that off, allow one claim per world, rather than as many claims as humanly possible in 3 worlds. This will force factions into more intimate situations. Not only building stronger community, but also giving each piece of land more meaning and a drive to defend it. Rather than "oh they're attacking our city in north Ithania? Everyone go chill in the one in south ithania, it'll take them 20 minutes to get down there lol." I can see the issues with this idea and wouldn't understand if it wasn't ever implemented. But it's all up for compromise.
IF YOURE GOING TO TAKE ANYTHING FROM THIS POST, LET IT BE THIS
- Now this last idea is something that I can't see why we shouldn't do. A server wide factions war. Create two sides, backing the current power factions. One side could be lead by Solarian (New Raptum) and Deldrimor. The other could be lead by the opposing Wrath and Wyvern. This could be a continuation of the current voyage threads in the server news and announcements section on the Forums. Maybe the ship that's currently sailing around could discover this huge war going on. Each side presents their case for why their side is good and a thread is made allowing factions to choose a side in this war. Like one of those old faction war threads under faction announcements! Those always looked so cool and I'm sad I missed them. From this point on all factions involved have a duty to their side to take part in some way. Each faction on both sides could be the host for some cool raids. The war could be documented by more server announcement posts, faction announcements from players, YouTube videos, etc. Also if the server wants to host some events for it, KOTHs that actually take place in the factions world (could be given lore so they're like "strategic points in the war" or something) would be so much fun. These KOTHs would actually be competitive and costly rather than just free loot for whoever is bored enough to outlast the other trolls.
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). Also the worlds probably wont get junked up too much but if they happen to do so the only people that really care about seeing ruined bases are RPers which would never even think about straying from the safe zones, so it doesn't really mater 
