Official Update Thread

[Lazuli73]

So, let me get this straight. This blood thing is just another useless feature that the admin team felt needed to be prioritized over some far more pressing, long outstanding bug issues that absolutely no one has even tried fixing. Great, that's exactly what we need. More shiny bells and whistles instead of as something mind-numbingly simple as the ability to grow grass.

 

[Cryptite]

So, let me get this straight. This blood thing is just another useless feature that the admin team felt needed to be prioritized over some far more pressing, long outstanding bug issues that absolutely no one has even tried fixing. Great, that's exactly what we need. More shiny bells and whistles instead of as something mind-numbingly simple as the ability to grow grass.

I considered not responding to this at all because of your tone, but it deserves a response nonetheless because of your underlying concern.

To start with, if you need to blame somebody for the Blood thing, blame me, not the admin team. It was my idea and I implemented it. It's not useless, btw; it's intentionally vague. Features like Blood come in from time to time because I'm at work and have a spare cycle to work on Loka. When I'm at work, however, I cannot play minecraft and test things, so I'm usually fixing bugs I can easily figure out or stubbing in new features, or sometimes fun additions to the server. Doing something like fixing the grass requires me to actually be at home and interactively test things. Further, sometimes, things that seem "mind-numbingly simple" are not so easy in code to fix; and grass is one of those examples.

Finally, clearly there's a difference between what you find "pressing" and what we do. The grass is but one of many long standing bugs, but pressing, it is not. It seems you conveniently gloss over every other bug fix that's going in that fixed things that were literally impacting people's towns, pvp, even their ability to connect to the server and play.

There is always going to be strife over things that change on Loka, no matter what (that's game development). There will always be features added to Loka. There will always be bugs on Loka. We may fix bugs or add features that some people don't care about at all. That's an inherent disadvantage of Loka being a bit of an "Everything Server." Some people come to Loka for towns, some for conquest, some for lore/rp. So it's easy to understand that the Lore crowd doesn't give two shits about anything involving Conquest, and that's understandable. That said, Loka is great in part because of small, fun little features like Blood (other examples, I would say are the Fishing expansion, Custom Crafting, etc) and we're going to keep adding stuff like that continue to add value and depth to the server. Given I am but one person, and our other developer is still slowly ramping up, bug fixes are going to be prioritized over how many people they affect or how potentially abusable/broken they are. Not being able to bone-meal grass is an understandably frustrating problem, but it's unfortunately not a pressing issue for most players. If it were a simple fix, it'd be fixed by now.

 

[Wolfegger]

I have been on a number of servers, two with really good owners/coders. Cryptite is out of their league in his ability, effort and helpfulness. Recently, shifting to 1.9, a necessary step (as players always demand the latest update) has presented heaps of problems. I cannot fathom how frustrating it has been for him--the time he has been at it. Yesterday, I said to Magpieman, "Man, Cryptite fixes things faster than Mojang."

Please don't chip away at him. Every chip on the guy who is busting his ass for the team makes him think, "What the hell am I doing this for?" Appreciate what we have in Cryptite and Loka because we would miss them dearly if they went away.

 

[Grubul]

Cryptite's coding wonders are the reason im playing a game on pc at all. I understand that we each want our things fixed. But i wanted to thank You cryptite, for doing what you do, in your free time, just to make a small group of people happy. We do appreciate You.

 

[Cryptite]

Every chip on the guy who is busting his ass for the team makes him think, "What the hell am I doing this for?"

I think one of the biggest reasons why I keep doing what I do for Loka, a server with, let's face it, on average very few players, is because predominantly I'm doing it for me. Seeing you guys have fun on the server keeps me going and is what motivates me to continue to work on Loka. Even if one new person is experiencing things on Loka in wonder, that's enough for me. If I did it for any other reason (like money), I think things might be very different.

Plus, anybody that says something with fervor, no matter how mean-spirited it may seem, just proves the level of passion people have for Loka. If they didn't care, they wouldn't even be posting.

 

[Skuhoo]

I've reported tons of bugs and have seen them fixed the next time I logged on. If fixing bonemeal on grass was as "mind-numbingly simple" as you claim it is, it would have been fixed. Halting development of any new features, regardless of whether you think they're useless, to fix a bug that ultimately isn't major is just downright silly.

 

[Lazuli73]

Let's get something straight. I recognize all the hard work Crypt does, and for all of Loka's faults it's still remains the best server I've ever played on. He does it out of the kindness of his heart and has no really obligation to do so. My main grievance is his style of ownership, which will only be addressed in a personal conversation that will likely never happen. As hard as critiques can be to swallow, they're necessary to grow. I know I'm not the most tactful person in the world, and if I offended anyone I'm sorry.

However, that doesn't stop me from having strong opinions. I've played on this server for over three years, and most of it has been fun. The best years of my life. But I can't just ignore all the lore threads and vague features that go no where. Lore threads like the underground desert ruins and lore villages. They started out as these exciting and climatic lore storylines, and it pains me that they dwindled away into nothing. The only thing that has been a continuously progressing feature is Conquest, and despite my adverstions I do admire the amont of dedication that went into it. But regardless, there is more to this server then just Conquest, or at least it's advertised that way.

I don't have any gripe towards these small, behind the scenes features. If anything I welcome them. What I want is for them to go somewhere, for someone to expand upon their humble beginnings and become something truly spectacular. There are so many interesting and unique things you could do with Loka, and I die a little inside when something comes to screeching halt. Leaving something intentionally vague is good foreshadowing, food for future thought, but if you don't build onto it the details amount to nothing. Prove me wrong, I want you to. Show me that you are willing to go all the way and bring a lore thread from beginning to end. Finish a story. The one Aegon is currently developing sounds intriguing, and I really hope it lives up to a something. If not, I'll be thoroughly disappointed once again. Thank you to you the amazing staff team and, patient owner.

Once again I apologize for my lack of tact. I highly doubt I'll ever develop the foresight to ever have one.

 

[Cryptite]

• /horse should no longer set already-dead horses to other things, or revert them to normal.
• Lots of fixes to how Industry chest handling works:
  • Placing, breaking, replacing industry chests should work properly now.
  • Smoke stacks for Industries now function to tell you whether your industry is empty or full, with black smoke over the offending chest(s) and white smoke indicating things are good to go.
  • Holos for industry chests broken will go away, rather than stay where they used to be.

 

[Cryptite]

Lots of updates and major Town Quality of Life changes/fixes.

• New: /g alliance tag - You can now change the Tag for Alliance chat much the same as you can with town chat.
• /here now straight up says whether you can or cannot make a town where you are.
• Covered Chests should act a little more normally now and respect blocks that don't actually block chests opening in the first place.
• Fixed Discord losing connection to Loka from time to time.
• We've turned on random light updates. This may or may not alleviate instances of areas that are lit but don't have the torch, etc there anymore.
• Attempted 'flight-by-boat' will now teleport you immediately to the ground in foreign territories (same as Elytra)
• Major Quality of Life improvements with towns:
• /g industry create is now more organized and no longer displays industries that don't exist yet as available.
• /g help received a major overhaul.
• Industry/Territory Building Previews now show the actual building instead of stained glass blocks. This should help see where you're placing stuff.
• Deleting Buildings should maybe hopefully be cleaner and no longer carve a big hole in the ground?
• Most all industry buildings have been updated so that they destroy far fewer blocks. See gif below for evidence of the Barn being placed and clearing any more blocks than it needs to:
  
• 

 

[Cryptite]

• FIXED: Smoke Stacks (Daylight Sensors) are no longer required for gathering Industries to function (this is why they weren't working)
• FIXED: Barn not properly recognizing feed and claiming to be empty.
• FIXED: Titles not working on the Tab list for Wanderers and Nomads

 

[Cryptite]

• The radius for the for the boats leaving soon message has been lowered from 120 blocks to 40 blocks.
• CHANGED: To place a sign for a Claimable Zone, you must now shift-right-click (sneak) and place the sign on stone brick in order to set up a claimable zone sign.
• FIXED: Spectral TGen Modules wouldn't un-glow people after they get destroyed.
• FIXED: Inhibitors weirdly half-regenerating terrain after they delete.
• FIXED: TGen Modules just breaking.
• FIXED: Putting multiple sales up in the market at varying stack sizes should now properly set their prices, rather than max them out at 64 for some reason
• FIXED: A ton of other small stuff.

 

[Cryptite]

• We've adjusted/tuned/made-more-aggressive some of our anti-raiding tools. If you find these are causing false positives, please let us know. Things like Block Jumping are now more aggressively checked and will kick you from the server if you continue to try it.
• More Discord stuff, maybe stays connected longer?
• /pets might be back!

 

[gabrosen]

﴾͡๏̯͡๏﴿ O'RLY?

 

[Cryptite]

• ADDED: A command (for admins) that allows us to, in case of a combat log, immediately transfer the contents of a player's inventory to another player's escrow chest. Upon next logon, the combat logger will be immediately slain as well.
• FIXED: The market, as a whole. Due to adding the above command, I wound up needing to refactor the Market (a long time coming). This should fix a lot of the remaining inconsistencies with the Market and also now won't lose items for players who namechange.

 

[Cryptite]

• Bonemeal now works to plant grass/flowers. Flowers will automatically be replaced with ones that can/should grow in the area.
• FIXED: Some minor oddities with having no Capital of Garama
• FIXED: You can no longer rotate items in itemframes in foreign towns.
• FIXED: Chorus plants should never drop Chorus Fruit in the overworld
• FIXED: Barns shouldn't generate loot for non-native animals (Northern barns won't process Pigs, for example
• FIXED: Minor oddities with donator pets in foreign towns

 

[Cryptite]

• Industries are now a little easier to place and are more informative about why they're in an Invalid Location.
• In addition, some oddities with getting stuck with Industry previews have been fixed.
• Finally, you can use /g i in addition to /g industry to perform industry commands.

 

[Cryptite]

Part of our recent work on Loka has been adding some Taxonomy to the server so we can identify problems and dropoff points. Mainly this is about figuring out why players leave so early. As part of our first phase of updating the new player experience, we have shortened the intro course (at least in terms of where players spawn) and really pared down what we show players about Loka.

In addition to this, Moralleath and Dhanri have gone on vacation for awhile as we are no longer going to be using Quests to direct new players around Loka. For the most part, this is because it gives the false impression that Loka is a heavily Quest-based server, when really, we only have an intro quest line, a daily quest, and a town quest (and a few other optional quests). All other quests stop pretty quickly leaving new players wondering what to do since they've effectively 'run out of quests'. The intent is to pivot Quests in such a way that having a quest to do is very exciting, possibly rare, and may mean a big reward.

Holograms will now direct players into the wilds as quickly as possible with much less (practically none, now) "flavor text". We think the single biggest reason players leave when they join (besides lack of interest in a survival server, etc) is that it takes too long for a new player to join and get to any of the fun.

This is the first of many major upcoming changes to Loka that we will be rolling out in the coming weeks and months. We'll keep you posted as always.

Go Forth!

 

[gabrosen]

Go Forth!

May the 4th be with you!

 

[Cryptite]

• You can now plant flowers anywhere in the world. They're just blocked from growing by bonemeal in the proper locations now.
• Players with pets dismissed should no longer find them aggressively turning back on after restarts.
• Players can now once again change their own titles in towns.

 

[Cryptite]

New Aladra has launched!
The populace of Aladra has been busy at work with the newcomer Lokans and have greatly expanded their town. Spawn has a fresh, new, professional look and a few new features to boot including:

• Daily Dock Blocks: A small set of blocks that can be mined at the docks. Each day at 10AM server time, a new fresh set of blocks will be unloaded from the docks and each player can mine them.
• Town Mastery Leaderboards: See which towns are at the top of their town levels.
• Vendors! Still being currently added, but we'll be adding lots of new things to purchase for players over the coming days and weeks. Maps of the continents like those found on the docks will be purchasable very soon.
• Dark Market: Buy and sell Heads (and Blood, soon!)
• Library: The Lore of Loka will soon return. As soon as we fill some Librarian positions, we'll start getting the library up and running like in the old days.
• Town Slots and Applications: Any town that has is Level 6, and has a /g banner will display in the Town Slots room under the Capital Halls. New players can right click banners/bookshelves/signs of towns to learn more about them and apply to join them (with or without the Owner being online). See also /g slogan

Many thanks to our excellent Build Team at the beauty of new spawn.

Go Forth!