- Joined
- Jun 29, 2012
- Messages
- 4,429
- Reaction score
- 34,414
- Points
- 663
- Age
- 33
I've been sick for the past week, and before that even a bad sleep cycle that basically made me braindead at American Hours. It's time for another round of changes coming the end of this week, Because tackling early game experience is kind of needed.
- A rule addition that bars sexual content in public channels, save for innuendos on the haphazard.
- The rule changes are great, they really are, but they sometimes make enforcing the atmosphere in public channels difficult when there is no explicit target. I am fine with innuendo jokes in public, but I am not fine with full blown sexually charged conversations, so that rule will be added as of Monday.
- Staff have been struggling with the idea of "I can't punish general chat so there's nothing I can do when a player is being bullied, when they refuse to ignore the people who are doing it". On the contrary, any staff from any department can engage in so called diversion tactics, to dissuade the ongoing discussion in favor of some random bs that outspams the negativity. That is something I will try to get the department leaders to work on with the different departments.
- New players will receive full Iron armor, Iron tools and half a stack of bread, and 10 (or 30, haven't decided yet) Regals.
- Somehow on the server change this disappeared, and it's frankly led to a terrible situation where new players are left to fend for themselves with nothing.
- Faction price is being dropped to 0 Regals.
- This may be a bit of a controversial decision, but I think I have my very solid reasoning, while most of the counter arguments are derived from personal argumentation. When I first joined the server, I had 8 of my friends join me and give me their 30 silver so we could pool together and pay for a faction. This was very important to me. I said to myself "If I can't claim my own plot of land, I'm not playing on this server". In the past, we made the faction price high because of the argument "well, players should join factions and introduce themselves to the community this way", and sure, there may be some merit in that, but that only works with people who are already invested on the server. The practical reality that this ideology has resulted in, is the vast majority of the new players simply quitting because they cannot claim any land or secure their goods (due to the additional pricing of Massivelock). I think a lot of players underestimate how important the "own stuff" concept is for new players, because they have been around for so long. Will this change result in a bunch of dead factions? Oh absolutely. But with Game staff spending less time issuing warnings for general chat, they can spend more time moderating the factions in Essalonia.
- A new world will be produced, hopefully at deadline around mid September/end of September. Much smaller than Essalonia, and without 1.13 blocks. This is largely to give a wider range of biomes for the players, but also because I think I want to return to the idea of Massive with multiple maps. I'm going to likely buy a new rack machine, the second since the server became mine, to ensure that this server has the lowest latency possible. I could wait until 1.13, but frankly, I like building maps, and I want to take a crack at more unique map construction like underground caverns which I haven't done before, and just making new Bo2's to create more variety. It also tackles the problem of overpopulation on Essalonia because of 0 regal costing factions. When Computergeek completes the 1.13 transition, a 1.13 map will be made immediately after within a week.
- I am going to try to finish a single dungeon map within a week. This is not going to be a complicated map. I am going to use a linear dungeon tile that I have had sitting in the build world for years, it will mostly just be mob grinding and parkour, and there will not be any flashy gameplay features. The main point is just to produce a quick dirty dungeon as a proof of concept to show the other staff that it doesn't need to take a year.
