JtE can't last forever. But when is it time for it to go?I have been thinking about this for some time now. I really haven't talked about it that much because I don't want to sound like an old crab, but JtE's time is coming. Face the facts!
I see you tried to use sensationalism. You haven't presented any facts yet, and you don't in the next sentence either, so I'm immediately skeptical.
1. Player Count - Obviously the player count is down from the opening of JtE. That is perfectly normal for any server, but from what I have observed, the player count is reaching all time lows. I've been on a lot more this past week due to school being out and I've noticed very low player counts not only on the weekdays, but also on the weekends. The player counts remind me of the last days of the previous SMP, when I was one of the very few who still played.
It's natural that player counts get lower without some form of community events. People won't have any attachment to a community they don't participate in, and for a lot of blocktopia the participation is outside of minecraft, here on the forums or ts, or in other games. As you mention below, a lot of people who once were active with the server are commonly found on other blocktopia servers now.
And this issue hasn't been circumvented by any other SMP either, by the way. Making a new one clearly isn't the answer, because we're still doing it. If we really want to see people participating on the server, then we need to give them a reason to continue to log in, not just log in for a bit till they're bored again. The castra event had a huge turnout. And as soon as people were done with it, they logged out forever again. The point is that we know people will show up to do things, it's a matter of finding things that will keep interest over time, rather than drying up within a day.
I don't see how what you feel about the situation has any connection to what other players have actually experienced. I was killed twice last map. Once by danni, who made a very clever and fast ambush on a few of us, and once by someone who's banned, and that person griefed to get to me in the first place.She said that many players didn't like PvP because they would always get killed. I feel that the players that said that didn't give PvP a try.
I very much like pvp, by the way, but it's something that is terribly mishandled in minecraft. When I feel like challenging myself against other players, I get on world of warcraft, because that game provides me with a much more fair, challenging and satisfying environment for pvp (despite how it constantly has balance issues anyway). Minecraft has 2 extreme issues that need to be addressed before I'll care about pvp in it.
- First, the game has to offer a stable framerate and connectivity to all players all the time. The biggest challenge I have in minecraft pvp is not having huge lag spikes when someone is coming at me. I have no control of this, and the situation is even worse for a lot of people. I've found that between myself and someone on a similar machine, the person who gets hit first has a spike roughly 60% of the time, and dies very quickly either without or barely responding. This isn't anything to do with skill, it's a limitation provided between my hardware and the game's software. My hardware is good enough to run WoW smoothly, so clearly minecraft has some very inefficient code.
- Second, the disparity of gear is ridiculous. I don't even care about enchants either. Diamond equipment is insane compared to iron equipment. And this puts a lot of people off, because they don't want to waste their diamonds on gear that someone else may take from them, but they can't really compete without diamond gear. And completely losing your inventory because you died is a very harsh punishment, especially to people who are new to pvp. One of the things I really thought primordia did right was prevent most people from wearing diamonds. And I did think there were some balance issues with primordia too, but it still made the pvp much more interesting and fun for me.
Another thing in JtE that ruins the fun is the Nether Network. It is very convenient and it makes travel easier, but let's face it. It's much more of a challenge to transport everything in the overworld and it's more fun too. If we had PvP, another NN would not be made I think. If one was made, it would be a hotspot for combat and many would not travel it. PvP would make travelling fun again!
The NN was a player initiative (Snowman , thanks bro). Would it have been made with pvp? Only snowman can answer that. But I will point out that overworld travel really isn't harder than using the nether, it's just longer. Duration != difficulty.
3. Pre-Made Towns, Trades, Emeralds - At first I thought all of these trades and pre-made towns and emerald being a major currency would be awesome, but it's not. The trades were somewhat useful in the beginning, but now they're just blah. I think they were actually too useful I think. They discouraged players from getting things on their own and they took the fun away. I don't think the trades are that good anymore now that we all have loads of supplies. This also made emeralds not rare, which isn't that big of a deal but still meh.
I've ranted at superstein about this topic already, when he was economist. I do believe that same feedback was passed on to oak for consideration as well, so I'll spare the lengthy diatribe here. What I will say is that I have used the trades fairly rarely, and usually to save myself the time of collecting a tonne of leather (which I might not have done if I could have had 100 cows for a bit, but rules are rules), but their existence isn't just to serve me. They have to serve others as well, and I'm sure other people have used them for other things. Furthermore, these trades are the answer to disappearing resources, which you mention below.
4. Quests - I can't say too much on this topic since I really didn't do any quests, but they are gone now anyways. Many people complained of the glitches, and I just found them unattractive. There were a lot of quests that I just felt looked stupid.
I have to admit, I only did one quest. I was definitely excited for them, but I really focused on making my town instead, with the intent of doing all the quests when the town was done. Now the quests are out (for now at least), so I can only imagine that I missed out.
5. Minecraft is being Updated - As we know with the previous SMP, updates can make our SMP server outdated. Another reason for updating the last SMP was the fact that it lacked natural cocoa and emerald ore. Right now JtE lacks natural quartz and it will lack naturally spawned horses, mules, and donkeys soon enough. This also brings up the issue of resources. As we all know, resources like glowstone cannot be found in the nether in great quantities anymore.
As stated above, traders are a solution to this problem. And naturally spawned mobs? They should spawn just like any other mobs do.
6. Application Process for Towns - ... I would choose the person with the fancy book cover, the TAG. See what I mean? This gave the smaller clan a disadvantage right off the bat.
So your concern is that new people might be superficial? Are these really the people you want in your clan? Regardless, there are a number of factors that work against the balanced creation of clans, and it's not just the tags or chats. Mainly, people will join with other people they already affiliate with. New people will either be joining the server because a friend brought them, in which case they'll join their friends clan, or they're faced with the question of "which clan will help me best?". I'm confident the most common answer to that question will be "the bigger one". More members = more people that can help, more resources that can be shared.
This part, I fully agree with. Now, to read the other 4 1/2 pages of this thread and pick away.I understand that there are other opinions out there so please post away if you disagree! I encourage those who Agree to also post. Everyone's opinion is critical!