Factions (No, not what you are thinking)

[KenuDragonfire]

So I started a conversation up on the server, and it lead to a pretty good idea that will solve quite a few problems:

Factions.

No, not the plugin. Basically, we'd have groups of towns aligned across the server, combined into factions. The wilderness and these towns would be battlegrounds for wars, games (such as the Olympics idea we have had or the ever popular Hunger Games), and other options for these factions to compete in. They wouldn't try to take land, they wouldn't try to infiltrate each other or anything like that, they'd just flat out FIGHT.

When new players join the server they'll have the option of joining these different factions. They won't be comforted by the town and be completely safe once they join a faction; they won't get a home or anything like that. They will have to build a base, have to fend for themselves for a bit. However, they still have the knowing of having allies and the ability to switch out of factions.

After a week or so they'll either join a town or make their own if they have the resources. They'll play on the server normally, with the risk of thieves and PvP always around (even more so than now), but they'll at least have some sort of security and a few allies to help them fight off the others.

Spies, however, is something we haven't really decided on yet. Should they be allowed? Should people be able to switch factions quickly? Higher-ranks in the faction should have the ability to kick players out, but would the risk of spies be as bad as it is now, leading to fewer players joining towns? And, should new players be allowed to join factions in the first place, or should they be allowed to make their decision once joining a town?

These questions and more need to be answered by the community of the server, so help this idea out (or don't if you absolutely hate it, which some might) to see if we can get some PvP back in the server.

 

[mopb3]

Seems like a fairly good idea to me, but I can foresee one large problem; People will not be patient enough to wait a whole week before joining towns.

 

[Magpieman]

I feel we need more advantages to living in the wilderness and maybe more disadvantages to towns. If people have ideas about possible pros and cons to each that would be good. (one possible example is allow pvp in towns but chests are safer there and in wilderness bases chests are vulnerable but maybe prevent pvp there somehow)

With factions maybe have 4 factions, one which peaceful towns wish to join, one where towns full of thieves and killers join, and one where towns in between the two join. The final one would be for outlaws who live in the wilderness and not in any towns.

I dislike the ideas of spies altogether.

 

[Magpieman]

Another idea instead of factions they could be 4 different Gods that are worshiped.

 

[KenuDragonfire]

I said a week as just a rough estimate, all I want is for newbs to live in the wilderness for a bit rather than join a town and get everything handed to them.

And I think that factions should be player-made rather than set in stone by the server (That is just me, not sure about anyone else.), so we'll have requirements on how to have a faction. I was thinking either 3 towns or a certain number of players if more players start to live in the wilderness. I hugely support people living in the wilderness and not wanting anything to do with towns, but nobody really seems to want to do that.

(Personally, I think with all that is going on IRL, the last thing we need is warring religions on the server.)

 

[Cryptite]

You can't really stop spies from existing. Technically we can check ips, but ultimately people are going to have multiple accounts, and short of constantly watching whispers, trying to police spies is just a waste of time if you ask me.

Otherwise, I think this is a neat idea and could be fun to try to implement.

 

[thelineguy]

Perhaps we should enable pvp in towns and have a custom factions plugin. It would require a couple of towns to agree and a high ranking admin (Perhaps overseer) to create and make official. Towns in other factions would automatically become enemies, while towns in your faction are allies, and towns in no faction at all are neutral until attacked. This way towns will form alliances and expand the server from single towns dominating the system from their sole power.

 

[mopb3]

-Snip-

I agree with line here, he seems to have good ideas ^_^

-Spies Stuffs-

I think having people infiltrate other factions is a good idea anyway, and yeah Spies would be so damn hard to police.

Another idea instead of factions they could be 4 different Gods that are worshiped.

I like the idea of Gods and religious wars, seems like it could be fun but I wouldn't limit it to four.

Dibs on being one of the Gods! XD

 

[Magpieman]

I personally feel we should have a limit to the faction numbers otherwise there will just be lots of 1 or 2 town factions and would almost be no point in them. With regards to Gods/factions i think a player can become head of the faction or maybe have one town as the lead town/capital.

 

[Cryptite]

This is all slowly starting to be very much like the server I once ran.

 

[Magpieman]

Im also thinking we should prevent players from one faction being put on build rights of a town from a different faction. So you can be part of more than one town but they must all be within the same faction.

 

[thelineguy]

Im also thinking we should prevent players from one faction being put on build rights of a town from a different faction. So you can be part of more than one town but they must all be within the same faction.

And also perhaps prevent players from being in both a faction and neutral town.

 

[Artagan]

Factions ought to be a sort of upgrade for a town, like replacing a large gen with a small gen. The owners of say, three or more towns have to do agree to create a faction together, with one of the group becoming faction leader. Maybe even make a faction generator, upgraded from a large generator, that identifies the territory of that faction (along with performing the other faction functions, like prohibiting members from having perms in more than one faction territory) and is located in the "Capital" of the faction, belonging to the leader of it. Also, in the same way that large gens can only be owned by those of sentry rank or above, perhaps faction generators could only be owned by guardians or above. Only a suggestion.

Spys are virtually impossible to regulate, outside of banning alt accounts, which slim might not like.

One week is too long to make wanderers wait; three days would be enough.

 

[thelineguy]

Factions ought to be a sort of upgrade for a town, like replacing a large gen with a small gen. The owners of say, three or more towns have to do agree to create a faction together, with one of the group becoming faction leader. Maybe even make a faction generator, upgraded from a large generator, that identifies the territory of that faction (along with performing the other faction functions, like prohibiting members from having perms in more than one faction territory) and is located in the "Capital" of the faction, belonging to the leader of it. Also, in the same way that large gens can only be owned by those of sentry rank or above, perhaps faction generators could only be owned by guardians or above. Only a suggestion.

Spys are virtually impossible to regulate, outside of banning alt accounts, which slim might not like.

One week is too long to make wanderers wait; three days would be enough.

And at least one of the towns must be a large

 

[mopb3]

This is all slowly starting to be very much like the server I once ran.

Then you are our inside expert here

Tell us the ways to make this work O' mighty one who has done this before.

 

[Zor95]

This is all slowly starting to be very much like the server I once ran.

Then you are our inside expert here

Tell us the ways to make this work O' mighty one who has done this before.

I don't think he means that in a good way

 

[Cryptite]

Well I said slowly. There wasn't pvp or factions on my server, but it was a very rpg-rich server with one massive town that everybody lived in. We had quests and various thematic warps to other towns (boats, hot-air balloons) that were for quest hubs and we had begun to introduce a magus school that would, through various trials and tribulations throughout the world, grant people spells to cast. At that point though I was the only active admin and I had essentially created an mmorpg in which I found myself constantly having to create content for my playerbase.

So while the content was arguably richer than you would find at the time in minecraft (0.8 or so), the amount of upkeep kept increasing and the amount of time I had to work on the server (I say work, never play. Many Admins will agree that once you have admin-level responsibility, you spend so much more time running the server that you rarely get to play on it) kept decreasing to a point where I simply had to kill the server.

So I suppose my point is, while I think this would be very neat, we're developing a system that asy has not yet given input on, and if he's cool with it, then he has to write the code for it. The reason the server is so very cutthroat and simple is that it keeps the server (mostly) running by itself.

This new spawn we've made and are (hopefully soon) implementing is meant to make life easier not just for everyone, but specifically the admins as the main reason it even exists is to try to inform new players about the server while simultaneously weeding out 90% of the players who will otherwise join, bitch, ask for stuff, commit suicide 20 times, and then leave.

These kinds of things help the server to run autonomously and those are the kinds of things most likely to be implemented quickly.

Now don't get me wrong, all of these extra ideas are awesome, neat, AND cool, but we might step back and consider the fact that even with what we thought were "simple rules" on the way the server ran, each and every day they are brought into question, debated, interpreted, and sometimes changed, and this is with just two systems: pvp, and towns. Now we're trying to implement "bigger towns with alliances", rewards/punishments, changing generators that already will change but aren't yet implemented, and other stuff.

That said, and as I said before, this would be pretty sweet, but I can't see this being implemented any time soon. But that's not to say discussing it is taboo, as having a well-established idea is far easier to implement than an amorphous one.

/WallO'Text

 

[Magpieman]

Yes simplicity is key, equally i feel we need to either expand the towns idea or implement something like a simple faction idea to solve the many thieving and pvp problem we have. Vanilla minecraft was never multiplayer friendly.

I would very much like asymptonics input and get a feel for the direction he wants the server to go. Whether he wants to go down more of a town building route where peoples creations are safe which attracts an older player base (not a building server), or go for the more war type server where peoples towns can be won and fought for.

 

[thelineguy]

Yes, I reckon we need a simple approach to this, if at all, and perhaps one in which players can solve their own problems.

 

[Scott Miller]

Sorry to miss this thread for so long.
I like some of the ideas here, but largely cryptite and magpie are right, in that the server needs to stay simple enough to not require a huge effort to keep people interested. As you guys probably know, I'm generally in favor of the least structured solution to making the game interesting, and let the players themselves create the alliances and philosophy that makes sense for their towns.

I have a counter-proposal, that I think is simple to implement and could be a lot of repeatable fun:

Towns can build a special kind of portal which warps to a different world. When they enter the portal, they're warped to a random spot for that town (that is each portal goes to a random location but the same location each time) in the world.
This world is regenerated periodically (once a month?), and is of limited size (1 or 2k wide). Somewhere hidden in the world is a structure with a prize, possibly a generator of rare materials, or a series of structures which contain clues to the next one. I'd like to hear ideas on what it is you find. But each town in the real world is essentially a base to jump into the contested world where PvP is enabled, no protection. Pure vanilla. Each town would then rush to find the structures and guard them, and either solve the mystery or reap the rewards.

If possible, the puzzle element would be auto-generated. For example, if it was 3 successive structures, the last one generating diamonds, the plugin would generate them with the world, with each structure having the location of the next built in. So towns would want to find one and keep other towns from finding them, or guarding the structure so the other towns can't solve the puzzle.

What I like about it being a separate world is that it solves the concerns around PvP areas, griefing, etc. Its essentially a free-for-all, reset once a month.

Thoughts?