Loka 2.0 | The New World

[Cryptite]

Alright folks,
you've been patient and we've got decisions to throw at you. If you're wondering why we've let so many things be broken on Loka for the past couple of weeks, it's time to find out why. Here's everything you need to know about what's coming up for Loka. Brace yourselves, grab your snuggee, your beverage of choice, and let's get dirty.

The Reset
It's the whole thing this time.

A hotly debated subject of late. The tl;dr of it is that yes, we're doing a reset. We're doing a full reset. The only things we're allowed transferred over are the following things that can go in ender chests:

• Player Heads
• Books
• Unique Items (gifts, PvE items, etc)
• Possible ultra-rares that some people luckily have (Bedrock, Spawn Eggs)

That's it. No towns, no wealth, no advantage-giving items, nothing else is going. This is a huge sting, and we completely understand. I also understand that I have completely betrayed all I've said in the past in that we will be bringing towns over. Unfortunately, after very heavy deliberation, we reached the conclusion that a huge number of problems with Loka is the incumbency of our veterans who have been able to, for years and several world changes, been able to amass and transfer their wealth and buildings; ever leaving them at an advantage to new joins.

While we also realize that it's entirely possible that those in power now may very well still rise to power again, but at the very least, people have pointed out that they would at least like the chance at getting to start out at 0 with everyone and see how they fare.

The admin team is aware that there are those in the Lokan community who've declared that with a full reset would come their departure from the server. We hate to hear this more than just about any other thing, but we have to consider the future of the server before the concerns of few. If you're planning on quitting because of this, at least read on and see if what we're bringing to Loka might keep you interested just a little while longer. If we cannot sway you, the we, and mostly I fully apologize if you feel betrayed by this change of mind, because it's on me that you thought otherwise about the reset.

However it turns out, there are some great changes coming to Loka's new world that will help with this power imbalance. We aren't just resetting the world, we're changing Loka's dynamic in an awesome way. Read on!

The New World
It's not just a reset, folks. It's a rebirth!

We're not satisfied with Minecraft's world generation; fewer and fewer people are these days. I think I speak for a vast majority of us all when I say that exploration was one of the biggest things about Minecraft that drew me in. It's what we didn't know that's what excited us. Let's bring back a bit of that shall we?

We're crafting a custom world for Loka
The rumors are true and we're bad at keeping secrets. We are crafting a custom, realistic-type world for Loka from the ground up, meeting expectations we've set for ourselves long ago in terms of the greatness of our server. Regular Minecraft generation be damned! We're having huge mountains, vast Mesas, great Jungles. Calderas, Volcanos, ice plains, impassible walls, great forests, I could go on! Here's a breakdown of the what and the why of the new world.

• The new world is 8k x 8k - The amount of people that are 15k from each other is too damned high! But really, nobody can see or interact with each other, everybody's too far away. We're constricting this new map so we can have real and honest interaction, trade, and conflict.
• Three continents, three conflicts - Will you choose the frigid North, the temperate west, or the scorching Southern continent? Each continent's biomes are unique to it with a few exceptions. This matters because of:
• Trade - We have a market, but it's kinda boring. We'd really like to bump up our economy and make trading a real and honest thing that people have to do to get what they want. Biomes are so prevalent that anybody who really wants something for themselves can go get it if they want to, but what if you couldn't, because:
• Biome-specific resources cannot grow elsewhere - The primary example of this is saplings and some plants. A spruce sapling can only grow into a tree in a taiga or similarly cold biomes. You can't plant them anywhere else. If you're going to settle in a Taiga, your wooden structures are probably gonna be Spruce unless you trade with a friend in a Savannah for some Acacia. We'll be adding other resource specifics, but we haven't finalized that list yet. Suffice it to say, trees and some other resources won't grow/work anywhere but where they come from.
• No Nether - There will be a nether island, but we are disabling access to the nether. We want travel to be meaningful and somewhat realistic. This helps with the aforementioned problem of incumbents. Right now, the top cities, if you didn't know, have nether hubs and nether tunnels to every adversary. Knock on their doorstep? They'll be at your town in under 3 minutes, even if they're 40k across the map. Seem fun? How're you gonna get around? We're gonna add stuff like:
• Ports - The three continents aren't just accessible by slow-boating your dinghy across the world, the spawn Island will start with a port in which you can choose one of the three continents to fast-warp to via a boat. This will help travel between the major continents, and will also help noobs spread out to continents of their choosing. There'll still be "noob ghettos" but they'll stay out of spawn and spread out a little bit.
• Smaller Towns - Towns will now be capped at a radius of 200-250 (exact number to be decided). Growing beyond that size will require an application (like the good old days) whereby the admins will decide whether you actually have enough members/structure where you actually need more protection. No offense, but we just don't need Zor taking up 1000 square blocks because he's a rich person.

Of course we're still working on it, but wouldn't a couple sneak peaks look nice?

These are just a smidgen of what to expect in the world. In short, it's gonna be awesomeballs, of course! Just as soon as we can post some screenshots of the new world, you bet we will! Up next!

Conquest
Still got it, it kinda sucked, but it'll matter more now

So what's wrong with Conquest? Quite a bit, let's examine why it sucks right now:

• Intangible currency (Territory Points) - They mean nothing, they can't be stolen from, they just generate magically and they benefit bigger and higher-level towns more.
• Can't beat the best - You can, but it takes immense resources, time, and knowhow which is hard to get if you're new and going against the people that, in our current case, built the system...
• I'm a raider, I don't care - Again, because intangible currency. There's no incentive to do territories because they don't get you anything but the possibility to select three fairly inconsequential policies. What a scam!

There's more to it of course to, but one of the biggest drawbacks of Conquest is the lack of tangible resources. The reason we had it that way is because we developed the system when many of the would-be top towns already existed and were very rich. We decided for intangible currency because we knew if you could spend, say, emeralds to build a TGen, the richest would have 50 immediately and win. Turns out they won anyway, and that was our big mistake.

Conquest now costs you real moneys
What's to lose if somebody drops your TGen in the middle of nowhere? Not much if you have many, you'll just magically regain those TPoints and build another one. Because we're doing a full-reset, we can now (and should have) make Territory Generators, Towers, etc cost tangible currency. We don't the costs down yet but you can use your imagination paintbrush to paint this picture:

• TGens cost, say, Diamonds - You dropped 9 diamonds to build a TGen. Somebody is attacking it and unless you want to say goodbye to that mining trip, you should have more motivation to protect it, especially since the attackers get those diamonds. We do not intend for the diamonds in and out to be the same. This is because:
• Loka needs a money sink - Whether we have raiding or not, you shouldn't just keep all your wealth forever. If it takes 9 diamonds to build a TGen, you might get 5-6 if you take one out. This creates a money sink and incentivizes Conquest because now you can have valuable resources to gain by attacking a TGen. The rich can still buy a lot of TGens but now they can lose their money too.
• TGens will generate stuff - We nearly added this in our last Conquest update (you heard of Supply Stations). We don't have this system finalized yet, but TGens passively generating something will make it so that you don't just drop 9 diamonds that are lost the minute you built the TGen (you can't get them back, they can only be taken by enemies). You can get your money's worth if those 9 diamonds turn into... 20 emeralds or 3 recall stones or something over a period of time. It's an investment, and one that you'll want to protect.

The concept of having Conquest cost ores means people have a literal and tangible stake in the game, as opposed to playing a meta-game with a currency that regenerates and can't really be stolen from.

Another issue with Conquest is how Alliances work, so we're changing a bit of that too

Alliances are now continent specific
RIght now, anybody anywhere in the world can ally with anybody and that's real weird. Disparate tendrils of alliance-controlled territory spreads randomly around and there's no real central alliance in terms of territory. We said earlier that there are three conflicts. That's because each continent acts as its own world of Loka:

• You can only ally with a town on your continent - We want Alliances to be a little more coherent and we don't want, ie, Argus territories spreading over all three continents because it means we can still have one dominant world power.
• You cannot build territories in the ocean - Your territories stay on your continent, around your town. What this means is:
• There are now three Capitals at the end of the month - Each continent functions separately and each continent will have its own wars and conflicts. There can only be, in our ever-present example, one Argus in control and they may just have one continent. Rather than have a crappy 2nd and 3rd place prize or something, you can now vie to be the seat of power of your continent, enacting policies that affect your continent. But we'll still have a:
• World Capital - This will be more likely just a title and maybe the ability to choose one, maybe two World policies.

Cheeky stuff right? It gets more fun. We're totally changing how you become Capital.

Democratically Elected Capitals
It's hearts and minds stuff now!

RIght now, big towns = more TGens, and the entire system can be won effectively by Eastbowmen. Good for him, bad for the rest of us. Earning capital is now done by a democratic system. At the end of the month, you now vote for Capital:

• Your town gets one vote to start - By default, every town participating in Territories gets one vote.
• You can earn votes - Votes can be earned throughout the month by things other than just having TGens. Unfortunately, we haven't quite nailed down what gets you more votes or how many yet, but suffice it to say, it's not just by being the biggest territory-holder in the world; that sure helps though.

Because there's voting involved, there's politics involved. Want to be capital but don't have more votes than the continent? Better start talking to your adversaries. Offer trade, protection, whatever you want so that they may vote for you to be Capital.

Now this Conquest stuff is still sort of boring because it all takes place out in the wilds with nothing causing harm to your town. That's why we're working on ....

Town Sieging
Take it to their HQ!

We actually don't have this system fully developed yet, but we are working on it right now. We're going to build a system where you can take the Conquest fight all the way home and do stuff to towns. You just can't do stuff to towns right now. If you earn another town's wealth by taking out their TGens, imagine if you could siege their town? Stealing, man!

As for other things involving doing stuff to towns:

Town Annexation
You're ours now buddy. Welcome to the Jungle!

We currently have limitations in place where you cannot place TGens near another town. You might have pre-supposed that with a smaller map, the chances of running into another town with your territories might happen pretty quick. Truth!
If you encompass another town in your Territory, you automatically own their town in certain ways:

• You get their votes for Capital
• They're automatically absorbed into your Alliance if you have one
• Other stuff!?

This'll probably get changed a bit; perhaps towns not participating in Territories can't be eaten, we'll need to fine-tune this, but it's certainly a bit of intrigue to the system.

PHEW!

And we're also adding stuff like:

• Quests
• NPCs
• More PvE content
• Dungeons
• Resource Islands
• Airships for cross-continental travel
• and more!

Suffice it to say there's a lot coming.

I suspect you have questions now...

-Crypt

 

[JocelynReed]

woot woot

 

[AfricanPenguins]

Fucking amazing.

 

[Leasaur]

So, you guys still want to quit? :3

 

[AfricanPenguins]

My one and only concern is I personally dont have a good enough pc to run on amplified so whats gonna happen when i get near these massive mountains/structures

 

[EpicBacon99]

Something to establish before I go into anything, I don't play on the server pretty much at all anymore. That's a given, and I understand due to this my opinion isn't exactly super valid. I get it, moving on.

I'm looking at this in two ways. And in one way you're gonna hear a lot of spiel I've spouted before, but make of this what you will.

One way is that I'm very upset. I know things change and evolve, but Loka's really done a 180, not even close to what it used to be. I admire your capability with these impressive plugins but it feels a lot too much, I feel slogged reading all of this and I loved the simplicity of Loka before, albeit admittedly flawed, that was the beauty of it. It was flawed but easily fun. Left to your own devices you could make friends and join an arguably close community, regardless of who wanted your head or not. Loka had a charm, and I feel like with all of this it's lost that charm, once being very close to vanilla with a few custom supporting plugins, it's lost that image entirely from my point of view.

But, before you say "Oh Bacon you're just stuck inthe past, get over it" I'm also willing to acknowledge that, if this is indefinitely the direction the server must move in, you're doing it right Crypt and I commend you for that. The three continents and premade world is an interesting concept, warring continents could prove fun. Like I said before though, it all seems a little complicated anymore, but I'm willing to give credit where credit is due and say that as far as doing the server this way, you're doing an undeniably good job, going off of this post. It's just not the way I'd generally like to play, and not a place I'd ever imagined Loka going and I mean absolutely no offense to you or anyone that enjoys Loka this way, that's just my general opinion.

Tl;dr Good job, but also not.

Thanks for reading the whole thing, if you did.

 

[X_Cavator]

Alts should not be allowed. If we wanted to me and east could get alts with small towns on each continent and control the world. Though this would be a struggle for us, I think it would just be easier and more fun if alts were banned.

 

[AfricanPenguins]

Alts should not be allowed. If we wanted to me and east could get alts with small towns on each continent and control the world. Though this would be a struggle for us, I think it would just be easier and more fun if alts were banned.

Some of us have brothers/siblings who either play in the same location or even same computer so...yeah. i dont see how that would work

 

[Lazuli73]

Oh man those screenshots of the custom map look so sexy. It's going to be fun exploring it.

 

[Jedoi]

I don't think alts should be banned, but if they were, you'd have to figure out the issue of siblings who play on the same IP/friends who play at each other's houses, and so on.

 

[Lazuli73]

Managing alts would most likey rely on the honour system, people admitting they have an alt and just choosing not to use them.

 

[Cryptite]

Alts should not be allowed. If we wanted to me and east could get alts with small towns on each continent and control the world. Though this would be a struggle for us, I think it would just be easier and more fun if alts were banned.

Like what others said, it's difficult/tedious to determine families playing together vs real alts. What we're most likely going to do is make a rule stating that no alt-towns can be created and then just remove any we find.

 

[Cryptite]

Tl;dr Good job, but also not.

The only issue Epic is that your argument comes about 2 years too late. The trend towards the "complex" if that's what you wanna call started mere months after I joined the server and, for better or for worse, we're here now, so we're going all the way! Weeeeee!

 

[EpicBacon99]

The only issue Epic is that your argument comes about 2 years too late. The trend towards the "complex" if that's what you wanna call started mere months after I joined the server and, for better or for worse, we're here now, so we're going all the way! Weeeeee!

Yeah, like I said at least you're taking the necessary steps to doing the whole "complex" thing right so I guess I'm at least happy about that. I'd love to at least give it a try and take the dive with everyone, but the same problem is ailing me that has been for my entire time on Loka.

MY COMPLETELY ARSE COMPUTER I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW RUSTLED THIS MACHINE MAKES ME.

 

[Kobeyador]

with all the changes to the server will the rule list be revamped to fit Loka 2.0? i.e will guardians still be unable to "raid" other towns?

 

[Lazuli73]

Will the /home function for nomads still work the same in this new world. You can /home at spawn and set a home once every four irl days.

 

[Zor95]

The reason we originally permitted towns to reserve 1000x1000 plots of land right off the bat was because of the ugly effects of expansion. When you're forced into a small piece of land you have to build smaller buildings and walls with a smaller radius. Then when you want to expand you have to tear all of that down and build a new wall and new buildings. Or not. Just leave everything up and have a cluttered mess of a town like HC. It's more realistic, but it's a big waste of time and resources. Especially considering that resources will be harder to get on this new world I'd rather not have to deal with that. Even if towns don't make use of all of their reserved land I think it would still be better overall to allow them to start with a decently sized generator. So how about initially starting with 500x500 and having to apply for more from there?

 

[Cryptite]

with all the changes to the server will the rule list be revamped to fit Loka 2.0? i.e will guardians still be unable to "raid" other towns?

A once-over on the rules is probably. I don't see us changing Guardians being unable to raid towns. They can certainly still PvP and Siege towns using the Conquest system, but that's a far cry different than raiding, which we arguably don't have anyway.

Will the /home function for nomads still work the same in this new world. You can /home at spawn and set a home once every four irl days.

I'm not sure if we'll change this, though Wanderers and Nomads can change their home infinitely right now with no time cooldown.

 

[Cryptite]

So how about initially starting with 500x500 and having to apply for more from there?

If you mean 500x500 in that the radius is 250, that's what we were saying, 200-250 was the radius of the town, not the width.

 

[Zor95]

O, radius. Carry on.