What makes a Good 1.9 PvP Server

[Cryptite]

There were musings in #general of Discord this morning about what it would take to bring Loka into the modern age of Your Average Kit PvP Duel Server. For starters, this is merely brainstorming. The beginning of this conversation centered around the question of "What if there was a Classic Potion Duel option for duels that did not have the 33% Loka Damage Buff". It is known that our 33% damage is in-place for Conquest, but we also know that the PvP community at large doesn't like it because it's a change from vanilla 1.9 combat.

Now, it's not currently on our roadmap to do this work, presently. However, from my POV, there is not a staggering amount of missing features or work that would need to be done to make Loka's PvP minigames attractive, or even arguably Best In Class for dueling, kit pvp ffa, etc.

I'd like a brainstorming session with our community about what we might need to do to attract some growth in the dueling community. There are some boundaries to this discussion I'd like to setup, just so everybody's on the same page as to what we could do vs what we would do.

Firstly, we already have the basics:

• An FFA Arena (Proving Grounds)
• The tech for duels.
• A rudimentary kit preference system. It wouldn't be tough to add more kits.

Secondly, we're not interested in overly fancy versions of kits with crazy features etc. Ideally, we look to implement a clean, simple system for dueling, kits, etc. No gigantic holograms, nothing overly fancy, just a simple system to do what you need to do and fight. We'll leave Fancy to survival.

Now, naturally a big concern with the PvP community is the community itself. There's a known disconnect between the rules we enforce on Loka to keep it PG and the average behavior of duel servers. This is a big one to talk about. We're not big on the idea of separating communities on our network. Ideally everybody plays "Real Loka (Conquest)", but we know there's a huge community of 1.9 pvp duelers out there that have no interest in Loka's survival server, but just want somewhere to endlessly duel and smash in FFA. The idea I had would just be another IP: pvp.lokamc.com. This would basically just connect you straight to the Hub and would not force you to join Real Loka and be in our intro course, etc.

The community we'd attract doesn't have interest in survival, and it's probably not worth us trying to force them through our intro experience. If they want to come check out Real Loka, that's what the pad in the Hub is for.

To me, there're benefits to trying to bring the dueling community here. For one, Loka just has a bigger active population, whether on survival or not. Secondly, we could have a nicely active ranked queue, so that people on regular loka can actually fight more people.

Third, it has the obvious side effect of naturally bringing some people into Real Loka on account of being on the duels server. Of course there're concerns with toxicity, etc.

So, what are we missing? What would it take? How should we deal with the behavior of your average dueler in the Hub? What makes a Good 1.9 PvP Server and what could Loka do to have the best one? Or, should we do it at all?

Let's hear your thoughts.

 

[BuscoNombre]

Just get gud wtf

 

[Cryptite]

Just get gud wtf

Oh

 

[TimeCentaur]

If a new server were made that didn’t have the 33% damage buff then it’d probably not have to have pot PvP only because it really is quite slow without the buff.

I kinda do like the idea of making a pvp server to attract a different audience that isn’t focused on survival. Could even make some of those mini games that other servers have like Skywars but for 1.9 PvP, kit PvP, and maybe even some mini games that aren’t necessarily reliant on PvP but just games.

 

[NerdieBirdieYT]

Interesting...

Since I am the World's Best Minecraft PvPer, I will leave discussion of what should be added to the poor underlings. I have no need for additional features as I am already the Top Dog (er, bird).

This idea is fascinating because it sort of puts Loka into the position of a mutli-server (there's a more technical name for that, which I'm spacing on). A hub and portals to different servers (ie Survival, Kit PvP, VotA & other minigames, etc) expands Loka greatly, in my mind. Whether or not that expansion is GOOD is arguable.

First things first. Make Loka into a mutli-server and you're going to start having people who don't play core Loka, as Crypt said. That's a dangerous step to take for a server our size. I've seen a lot of multi-servers which are not large enough to support having their playerbase split across multiple worlds. There will be like, 2 people playing Prisons, 5 people playing Factions, 3 in minigames... For cases like that, it's just not reasonable to split an already tiny community. Loka is bigger than those servers, though, and the dynamic is different. The core of what I'm getting at is that I believe Loka can handle multi-server so long as Conquest is very clearly and distinctly at the core.

The suggestion presented wasn't (and I doubt ever will be) to make Loka a total mutli-server, as in, having various EQUAL gamemodes like Skyblock, Factions, Prisons, Survival, etc. What was suggested is simply PvP outlets being modified and expanded to attract a greater community. So what does that community look like?

Crypt mentioned Kit PvPers being two things: toxic and laser-focused. Because of their focus, I think we of the Web-Art Team are going to have a hard time attracting these players even with Kit PvP being expanded. Why would PvPers leave their communities that they're perfectly happy with to PvP on a server whose main focus is Survival? And even if they would, how is Loka going to get its name out there? Were these changes to happen, I think we'd need a marketing push (increase in media output as well as paying for advertising) in order to actually get people over here.

Then, immediately after they get here, we need to make their experience special. What makes Loka's kit PvP any different than normal? Why should they play here rather than a server fully dedicated to Kit PvP? Those are questions we need to address.

As for toxicity, I can see it going two ways. One, toxic players are overly toxic and are swept out via bans. Two, toxic players are just toxic enough that they can get away with it. Strong, large, PvP-focused Towns start popping up and dominating. That makes the experience less fun for everyone else, and could maybe result in more PvE content (which we all want anyway) and maybe some balancing changes. If strong Towns start coming, I think we need to be prepared to make some changes and give weaker Towns more things to do if they can't beat the PvP Towns.

This post was a bit of a mess, but hopefully the points got across. Excited to see where this goes!

 

[NerdieBirdieYT]

If a new server were made that didn’t have the 33% damage buff then it’d probably not have to have pot PvP only because it really is quite slow without the buff.

I kinda do like the idea of making a pvp server to attract a different audience that isn’t focused on survival. Could even make some of those mini games that other servers have like Skywars but for 1.9 PvP, kit PvP, and maybe even some mini games that aren’t necessarily reliant on PvP but just games.

Games like that are going to pull the focus from Survival and take time/energy to code that could be used for the main server.

 

[Cryptite]

Just for clarity, it seems worth reiterating that in no way are we interested in adding Factions ("Real" factions), Prison, Skywars, Bedwars, or whatever else have you. The idea is really to just modernize and beef up our current PvP getup such that it remains competitive.

Additionally, these upgrades and the "split" of the ability to just join the hub is only meant to bring players that just wanna duel and click pixels (and raise our online player-count of course). This idea may lead to natural cross-breeding into Survival, but that's not the real intent. We know they ultimately don't care.

Also, Loka is already a network with multiple servers (That's what the Hub and the minigames/duels/PG already are), so there's no real new tech here.

A lot of what this idea is is 80% complete, we just (I believe) lack a few things like multiple-kits, better kit-handling, and a stable and unified /pvp menu that works equally across all servers on the network (this is the most technically challenging thing, actually).

 

[Marioistrash]

I honestly like the 33% buff because it doesn’t turn pvp fights into 3 year long fights. I enjoy the Loka pvp system

 

[Ic3y]

I would love to see 1.7/8 pots plug in brought to Loka. This would add another skill aspect of potting to get the full effect (its not hard but it can still be messed up). This would also mean people would be able to stay alive longer as potions effectively become more powerful and so the damage increase would seem less of a shock.

A factions type server could be fun, more like HCF with small teams.

 

[acornheart]

maybe have like conquest fights staged on this server like every one get kit potion and tps them to some conquest or real place just on a dif server with the conquest set maybe to have pratice fight with your town or just for fun and warm people on the pvp server up for the real loka experience if they like that they might want to join the real loka

 

[MasonMcBadbat]

We could sell our souls to Hypixel and become a game mode there. Even some of those servers have dead lobbies though.

Vota comps would be cool, or things like that one "Everyone get in here" battle we had where we setup two sides and everyone piled into a vc and we had special rules or mechanics changed (I think we did tridents for that one).

Whatever update comes out, we should save it until another bump in activity arrives

 

[Steve5729]

Loka is the only good 1.9 server change my mind

 

[Pac_Man_]

I’m not quite sure that everyone here is getting the same ideas I got from this. But I like this idea and will throw out my completely PvP irrelevant opinions anyways.

So I think this would be a really cool thing to do but a few key aspects should be addressed. First off let’s talk custom kits. I think this is an area that community representatives could be a huge thing. If you give people access to generally any PvP gear they’ll optimize to such a complete science the meta would be 2 or 3 kits at the most. I think having 10 kits that you can change the default layout of (not contents) that are designed to be balanced would be the way to go. The community at large could then speak with Community Reps if any of these kits need to be changed at the end of a PvP season.

Secondly, would be the vanilla PvP idea which I think would be kind of confusing. How do you know which are which without confusing people? You have to be able for people to easily know the difference in what they’re picking and I don’t know how you make that super super clear when the goal is for people to be able to hop online and do a duel or two (or seventy-eight we don’t judge) at a time. It’s probably worth doing you just gotta make the messaging really right on that one.

Building on that idea of confusing people though, like you touched on, the PvP community can be VERY toxic at times. I don’t know why that is but it’s an unfortunate truth. I just can’t see enforcing different rules on toxicity between main Loka and Loka Duels. It would just end up with the more toxic side dragging down the reputation of the less toxic side, I believe. But also it would confuse people who decide to migrate from one side to the other would be very confused on why they are suddenly held to different standards of conduct. That said, I don’t think the solution to that would be to make it harder on people to communicate within that environment. I think the easiest way of handling this might be to apply a less strict chat filter to dm’s there (and because of the inconsistent things maybe main Loka too) where you blacklist certain words like racial, homophobic, etc. slurs and things so that those dms aren’t sent. That way you aren’t dealing with the typical endless derogatory and inappropriate trash talk within these communities. Personally though I see a good potential in having a “safer” or more pleasant environment for people to come and do some drop in drop out duels would be a great thing.

Lastly I think just having a simple, low maintenance, chill duel environment would be a great thing. It doesn’t need to be expanded too greatly from what it is now, just a bit more comprehensive and clear on what each thing is. And that’s a big thing, just keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be some 14 modes with Skyblock factions, or Free For All Prison Bedwars. I know that’s a bit silly of an example and not really the point of the idea in the first place, but simplicity is the point. Keep it to relatively limited modes, simple GUIs, and limited focus. It should be something that receives notable updates every ranked season at most. That’s pretty clearly what’s being gotten at here, but I just think that by keeping it simple like that you could open it up to being a very community driven aspect of PvP. Let them guide the kit balance, the arena maps, he’ll let them have a voice in the arrangement of the GUIs maybe, keep it simple, clean, and focused on what people think is/isn’t balanced/working.

(As a random side note that didn’t fit into the rest of the post’s general flow, a few more PvP titles and stuff that carry over to Loka Conquest would be real cool.)

I don’t know if this is what you were looking for in feedback, let alone if it will be helpful in any way, but yeah I really like this idea conceptually. It just needs to be a simple and clean side show that supplements conquest. But in conclusion yes I would enjoy/use a somewhat more expanded PvP Duels functionality.

 

[Qfu]

just change the damage to 66.6% or 99.9% i dont see what the problem is...

 

[NerdieBirdieYT]

just change the damage to 66.6% or 99.9% i dont see what the problem is...

If we're doing 99.9% we may as well round to 100%, I think that's fair

 

[Aggressive_Gibon]

 

[ACwavelength]

I like the idea of a separate server.

I don't care about what's in it. I just hope it gives the gloating crit spammers somewhere where they can boast and argue in public chat without annoying the average unprofessional non pvp god players who just want to build and do stuff