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The Foundations Update

Cryptite

Cryptite

Elder
Staff member
Elder
The Foundations Update
Homes 2.0, New Docks, New Player Experience, and more!
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A new player experience is no simple feat. Loka is an infamously complex server because it uses extremely few common plugins for its primary experience. But we want to advertise and get the word out! The problem is that players who are direct recruits have no on-boarding process and quickly get frustrated and leave, with no idea what to do. The past several months have been slowly fleshing out the features and foundational systems required to onboard players. This update is the first major push of changes to help retain new players. There will be many subsequent updates that follow this one. A lot of systems were touched to make this work which is why there are a variety of updates included in this one.

This update will begin in Early December and may release in parts. Let's get into it!
Homes 2.0
Bet you didn't even know we had a Homes 1.0

Campfire.jpg
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Homes on Loka need to solve a few problems that the old homes couldn't:
  • Scalability
    • Players should be able to set homes anywhere without running out of room, taking space on the continents' real terrain.
  • Protection
    • New players need safety. Even though Loka is a PvP server, hunting down new players should not be a valid sport.
  • Sense of community
    • Ways to interact and chat with each other, make friends, and join homes together.
The old homes guaranteed pretty much none of this, so a complete redesign of the feature was required, as well as modernizing a lot of adjacent features that come with it like updating/fixing /tpa, etc.

Technical Specifications
The biggest technical aspect of Homes 2 is that they are instanced copies of the world where the player does /sethome. Only the player can access or even see their home and their builds and belongings are all fully safe. Loka is a PvP server to be sure, but one that chooses very carefully where the PvP should take place. We want to ensure new players have a safe place to call home so that they can get more invested in the server before falling off. It's not a solo experience, however. You can add your friends to your Home! We fully expect and want new players to group up and many changes have been made to encourage this.
  • Dimensions: A Home instance is exactly 48x48 blocks (3x3 Chunks).
    • It is a physical copy of that piece of the world at the moment of creation.
    • The physical center of the home is denoted by an automatically generated campfire with some dirt. Cozy!
    • Entity Wipe: When a home is created, NO entities are copied. No animals, mobs, item frames, or paintings. Containers that are copied over are cleared of their contents.
  • Bedrock Boundary: The border of a home is defined as bedrock on the surface.
    • It is unbreakable, easy to see, and clearly marks the edge of your home border.
  • Dialog System: While there are still /home commands, there is also a nice Dialog system which lets home owners nicely manage permissions and members of their home.
    • You can edit/view your members as well as manage container access, allowing players to join your home and build but not walk away with all your stuff.
Specifics
  • No PvP: Homes are a Sanctuary. No PvP allowed. (You can still attack animals).
  • Block Drops: To prevent resource abuse, blocks inside a home only drop items if:
    • They were placed by a player in the home.
    • They are natural blocks (trees, dirt, etc.).
    • Unnatural blocks (ruins blocks, generated structures) will NOT drop items.
  • Storage Limits:
    • In order to prevent Homes being used as a protected storage unit, there are limits on containers in homes.
    • 32 Max: Chests, Trapped Chests, Barrels, Hoppers, Dispensers, Droppers.
    • 24 Max: Shulker Boxes.
  • You cannot enter your home while in combat.
  • Placement:
    • Must be at least 60 blocks from a Town.
    • Specific exclusion distances apply to Conquest Buildings (Radars, TGens, Inhibitors).
    • No homes in Infested Territories.
    • Town Overlay: If a town is settled over your home, you can still access it via /home, but you cannot walk in from the outside anymore.
  • Visitor Safety: Non-members teleported to your home (via /tpa) are placed in Adventure Mode. They cannot break or place blocks (just like entering a foreign Town)
  • Ownership Transfer: If you set a new home while owning one with members:
    • Ownership automatically transfers to a member with Container Permissions.
    • If no one has perms, it transfers randomly.
    • If you are the only member, the old home is deleted.
    • You cannot have more than 1 home.
  • Joining a Town: Upon joining a town, you will have a limited amount of time to still access your home in order to get things out of it, after some time (a few days to a week) your home will automatically be deleted.

The New Player Experience
Get straight to a Home
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The Intro Story
Players now start with an on-rails questline that takes them straight from the intro cave all the way to getting their first home setup. It's imperative that in the first minutes on the server a player is given a place to call their own, at which point they can then be slowly introduced to more Loka features. Most new players now can't even make it off of spawn and quit (bad).
  • The Aladra Choice: Upon reaching an NPC in Aladra they are given the option to continue the intro or stop there (so recruits can bypass the intro experience if they want).
  • Your First Continent: Players are then taken to the docks where they can choose between the 3 continents to try out first.
  • The Starter Kit: These are now rolled into the intro quest.
  • Brand new RTP: Nomads are able to use a New NPC at each continental dock to select from all the biomes on that continent that have coastal tiles and randomly teleport (wash-up, in lore terms) to that biome. These prevents all new players just setting homes as close to the docks as possible.
  • Players are then taken to spawn to be told about the Player Vault, and more.
  • ....and more. This questline is still a WIP and is likely to be updated frequently as we see how players interact with it.
  • The intro questline is infinitely repeatable, meaning players will have the opportunity to revisit it if they decide to. Granted it won't be that useful at first since it's really only about sending nomads to setup their first /homes.

Nomad Chat
Just for the players and relevant Lokans
​
A key social component of the intro experience is that all Nomad players are able to chat with each other, as well as with knowledgeable Lokans both to learn about the server but also to meet and befriend each other. It's expected/desired that new players may choose to join each others' homes rather than all live separately and we want Nomad chat to serve this function.
  • Nomad chat is now the default channel that New Players will be in upon joining.
  • They will not be in Public Chat by default, and will learn about /ch in order to join it later if they'd like.
  • Similar to Guide Chat, we want nomad chat to be relevant to new players and focused. As a result, nomad chat is accessible onlyto:
    • Nomads (the untowned)
    • Lokan Guides
    • Town Owners & Subowners
    • Slicers
    • Staff (Sentries+)

Docks Renovations
For the first time in over 10 years, the docks of Kalros, Ascalon, and Garama have received major updates.

Ascalon.jpg
Pictures of Garama and Kalros dock updates will be added when ready!​
  • Visual Overhaul: Complete redesigns to make the contrast between Aladra and the continental docks a bit less jarring. Building techniques have improved across all of Loka and not just Aladra!
  • Capital Theming: The docks will have opportunities for theming that the continent capital can show off
    • Starting with Guard NPCs (like the war district)
    • and more later!
  • New Life: Populated with new NPCs and details.
    • Room for growth!

Other Changes!
Dialogs and more!​
Time permitting, we're always looking for the right opportunities to use Dialogs and migrate our features to use them when it makes sense (which it does for many things!). So we have a couple features that got the new treatment:

Channel Menu:
  • /ch has been completely overhauled to be more understandable and easier to use for all players.
1763740124634.png1763740130246.png

Town Log
  • /town log is now presented in a clean, clickable UI.
  • I can't explain why I just decided to do this one afternoon.
1763740112205.png

RI/Yellow Tag Changes
It's important that new players are taught about going to the RI. However as many players have pointed out recently, that is a very dangerous thing to do and we don't fully want to keep veteran and new players entirely apart, especially if you have helpful veteran players helping new players.

As a result there are two big changes here:
  • Resource Isles are no longer Red Tagged.
    • This is not a meant to be a forever permanent forever change. We still mean to add 2 RIs in the future, red and yellow tagged ones, like infested. For now though, it is more important to serve a growing new playerbase than to hold tightly onto the ganks at RIs for now.
  • In Yellow Tagged areas, when you die, you will now only drop 50% of your unstable items.
    • Inevitably, new players are going to get ganked, but at least we don't want them to lose everything they had or just gathered.
    • This does not apply to Red Tagged areas, where you will still drop everything on you, unstable or not.

This is a Feature Preview post, so be sure to check back as we flesh it out further with more information or with answers to questions from players.

Edits:
  • Nov 24th
    • Total containers and shulkers allowed in a home reduced to 32/24.
    • New update about RI/Yellow Tag Changes.

A big thanks to the development team for the work on this massive system.

Go Forth and Home!
 
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OP now has a section at the bottom for edits as changes/updates are made to the system while still in progress. I'll also post here when there are changes.

Nov 24th
  • Total containers and shulkers allowed in a home reduced to 32/24.
  • New update about RI/Yellow Tag Changes.
 
__Ske__ said:
Inflation incoming
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Buts its gonna be better for the server overall though its usually you help a recruit go once to ri and then they get ganked and die within 10 seconds and never go again quit or just ask for stuff from the town owners. at least if they go they only lose half the stuff which still sucks but they can at least go grind for a hour and if they somehow die they still have like half of what they originally had.
 
__Ske__ said:
Inflation incoming
Click to expand...
Why are you so against updates that help new players? Like lexxnd said this is gonna newer players get their own money and gear without relying on their town owner like what do you want bro there’s already hella tax
 
fa1c said:
Why are you so against updates that help new players? Like lexxnd said this is gonna newer players get their own money and gear without relying on their town owner like what do you want bro there’s already hella tax
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did i say im against it? XD
if anything, shards dropping in value will benefit me cuz i dont hoard them lol
stating a fact that inflation is coming, doesnt mean that im against the change
 
SilentStormSix said:
im sure potential money being removed causes inflation yup thats how it works
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wait, wdym "potential money being removed"?
since there are plans to add two more RI's, doesnt that mean that if admins dont nerf the amount that you can sell the items for (diamons from 12 to 8 for example) - there will be more money on the server, making it less valuable?
RI's are equivalent to the national bank and mint, since iirc they are the only thing on loka that produces money (since ores are the only thing that you can sell to NPC's, on the market someone has to pay already existing shards, NPC's generate money from nowhere, same as the government can just print more money), so adding more ores to sell would make the server generate more money from nowhere

i might've read something wrong, that's what im asking what you mean by this
 
Worth mentioning that we do not yet have solidified plans on the new RIs yet, whether there are 3 new reds (with the original yellows) or 1 new red. Either way we'd have to balance the numbers out so it didn't result in doubling the ores one could get, etc.
 
koreapoludniowa said:
wait, wdym "potential money being removed"?
since there are plans to add two more RI's, doesnt that mean that if admins dont nerf the amount that you can sell the items for (diamons from 12 to 8 for example) - there will be more money on the server, making it less valuable?
RI's are equivalent to the national bank and mint, since iirc they are the only thing on loka that produces money (since ores are the only thing that you can sell to NPC's, on the market someone has to pay already existing shards, NPC's generate money from nowhere, same as the government can just print more money), so adding more ores to sell would make the server generate more money from nowhere

i might've read something wrong, that's what im asking what you mean by this
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the potential to store away wealth that can't be stolen or accessed effectively takes money out of circulation if the person were to just leave

additionally the effects of potentially more people playing/making towns/getting involved in the server (the goal of homes) will offset the additional money being created by new, weaker RIs, as there will be more economic activity and more people spending money on sinks such as AIs, building mats, taxes, etc. (IDEALLY and likely)

though it will definitely need to be balanced and additional impactful sinks need to be added instead of 600 shards per 16 blocks building mats that only inconvenience builders (which at this point are a minority of players)
 
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SilentStormSix said:
the potential to store away wealth that can't be stolen or accessed effectively takes money out of circulation if the person were to just leave

additionally the effects of potentially more people playing/making towns/getting involved in the server (the goal of homes) will offset the additional money being created by new, weaker RIs, as there will be more economic activity and more people spending money on sinks such as AIs, building mats, taxes, etc. (IDEALLY and likely)

though it will definitely need to be balanced and additional impactful sinks need to be added instead of 600 shards per 16 blocks building mats that only inconvenience builders (which at this point are a minority of players)
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okay, you're right - i did not think about potential new players spending more money on various things, countering more ores from RI
i feel like the only thing we should worry now is balance, so people spend the right amount of money, so its value doesn't go down (much) or the other way around
 
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