The time has come again where we as a community need to decide which road to take with our Minecraft server. As many of you may know, our Minecraft player base has not been the highest recently, mostly due to schooling and other reasons, but also due to players getting bored and leaving our server. I have talked to many of the other admins, and have decided that it is time for a change. As you notice, there is a poll above for you to post your very basic opinion, and a comment button below for you to go into more detail. To explain the poll, you basically have 4 different topics to vote on. Due to the "10 Option" rule, I had to reduce them into a small area, but the topics are still clearly separated.
Your votes support the following:

Reset Current Map / Keep Current Map
Pretty self-explanatory, do we want to keep our stuff?

Difficulty Too Easy / Difficulty Too Hard / Difficulty A-OK
Again, a simple question. I've heard some complain that the current map is too easy, and that needs to be hardened. Where going into a cave was scary, and collecting gems was a rare sight. How are we doing? You decide.

More Plugins / Less Plugins (More Vanilla) / Keep Current Plugins
Currently we have a couple plugins that affect gameplay, and some that are just a nice accessory. There is a main plugin, McMMO, that keeps track of play "ranks" in certain abilities, such as 'Woodcutting' and 'Archery'. This seems to be a plugin that people enjoy, however the current leaders of the McMMO Scoreboard are above and beyond the reachable ranks, and the stats could be reset.
Another plugin that seems to be active is "Bosses" where it makes certain zombies and skeletons a bit more powerful, and killing them rewards you with a tool of specialty. Are there any plugins that you would like to see our server implement? Any you wish to take away? Comment below.

Let's Have Mini-Games! / Let's Not Have Mini-Games
There are many mini-games that are possible, and can bring in countless amount of players -- if built and ran correctly. The possible mini-games that would be workable/runnable for us, is Prison, SkyBlock, Blocks vs. Zombies, and maybe SurvivalGames however this would be very risky due to the lack of popularity this game presents.

Please leave ALL ideas and opinions in the comment area below: ALL responses are greatly appreciated.

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

I'll go ahead and post my opinion here even though it's already known for the most part. Right now, I think this map was way too easy for people in many ways. People had many diamonds and hundreds of levels of McMMO experience in the first week alone. This caused players to become bored and stop playing. I think we should reset the map, but keep this same basic theme of questing. We can keep the buildings, and quests and such, but make sure that minerals and gems are harder to attain. By setting the spawn rate lower for iron/diamond/gold/emerald, I think this will keep players more interested for longer. It would also be nice if we could find a plugin to increase default mob damage (if there isn't already an option in the Spigot configs). This will make caving more difficult while adding that extra challenge to keep players interested for a longer amount of time. I can remember when I joined in 1.2.5, it was scary to go caving alone. In fact, I can remember on numerous occasions asking rob, ferrarirob, to go with me caving. Everyone played that map for ages before getting bored from what I can remember.

I voted for keeping the relatively same amount of plugins. (Add a few useful ones/subtract a few not so useful ones) We had great plans for this map, but since everything took so long to update and it was all unevenly updating, it just didn't work out. I am hoping this next map can be as great as we wanted this one to be.

As for mini games, we have a SG server basically all ready to go, and then we could add a Prison or Skyblock or some other popular mini game to get our name out there.

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<@wankin> i have a double penis one where it's meant to be and one on my head so i get called dick head alot but a plus is the ladies love it

I agree that it is too easy, but I think the boss mobs were the wrong way to go about raising the difficulty. They were too destructive of the environment and they could easily 1 shot even the most prepared player. I think making mining more difficult is a good idea as well, even though I rarely get diamonds normally. If there is a way to make it so even bases people build aren't 100% safe would be good. If there is a way to just make everything in the game a bit more challenging I think it would keep people around longer.

I am still interested in quest lines and would be more than happy to work on builds and the like. I think they could be good alternative ways to get resources if we made resources scarcer and gave people a reason to do the quests. The quests of course would be challenging in their own ways.

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[22:26] <+PTB2> UNICORN_XD: well not so much hitting it but rubbing it on my face because it was soft XD

[21:17]<+SMPB> (Patogy) what were you expecting to eat?
[21:17] <@Aadolf> Shit.

Well, if we want to do quests, we are going to need someone who can write them. Perhaps a few people, someone to write the story part and then someone to script it. Of course, this assumes that the Citizens plugin gets updated fairly quickly.

Lets remove bosses, and work out some way to just buff the normal mobs a bit. Perhaps setting mobs on in all residences and maybe allowing creeper explosions. I'll double check, but I think the minecraft difficulty is already in hard mode.

An idea I have been thinking about for a while is to perhaps turn off health regen. There would then be some simple shops that can sell potions and/or ingredients. But I'm not sure if the general player base would like that.

As for the minigames, over the next month or so, I want to start really working towards that. Survival will still be around, but just as another server off of the main hub. Its seeming that all the more popular servers are moving towards this model and it would be wise that we do the same. A lot of framework is already in place for this, so we just need to start building the servers.

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

The server is in normal mode I am pretty sure. Hard mode would allow you to die from no food and such wouldn't it?
As for the scripting of quests, with a bit of a refresh, I could probably help out a bit with that.

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<@wankin> i have a double penis one where it's meant to be and one on my head so i get called dick head alot but a plus is the ladies love it

Yeah definitely have key points. Ofc I know mbl and CoD's ideas, but APC you're right on point. We definitely need to keep the storyline of quests, and continue to add more as time progresses.

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

I haven't even used my wrath of mbl sword yet, so I vote keep as is

I get frustrated every time I catch up to people in mmco and then the map gets reset. I absolutely love the Diablo drops. I recommend we keep this plug in. I do think we need big bosses to fight, like the giants. Something that people can call out for other people to help with.

I do agree with having a hub with multiple game options. Could have a uhc, prison, hunger games survival, zombies, paintball, sky block, sky wars, etc.

Agreed, I think DiabloDrops is a keeper. As you may have noticed 'Wrath of mbl' is no longer a drop. I feel like it would be cool if we had some other drops that were only for a limited time.

I feel like the week of double MCMMO Exp was really bad. It allowed people to get their stats way to high in the beginning. Perhaps we need to thing of something else for special events.

Giants would be fantastic to add in. We just need to find a plugin that will do it for us.

As for the minigames, they would be an extension. They would not replace SMP. The way I am currently thinking it would work, is that smp.specialattack.net would still connect to SMP, that won't change. However we will have something like mc.specialattack.net that will connect to a hub where players can go to a minigame or to SMP.

Although we do have a few games in mind, it would be great to hear what you guys want and think is popular.

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

So, I would be more than happy to write story lines for the quests, and I already have some thought out, all it would take is some typing on my part.

I like the idea of bosses but would like them to be more controlled, like being at the end of quests in specified areas that could be built.

I don't think taking regen off completely would be ideal unless a majority agreed to it.

The hub idea sounds good, and is there anyone who is good with command blocks around? I have an idea for a mini-game that i think would be popular.

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[22:26] <+PTB2> UNICORN_XD: well not so much hitting it but rubbing it on my face because it was soft XD

[21:17]<+SMPB> (Patogy) what were you expecting to eat?
[21:17] <@Aadolf> Shit.

Well, I think that rather than having more servers, it would be better to have one multiworld server with per-world inventories and connected chat sparated by prefixes (so it doesn't seem so dead, maybe also connected with FTB through IRC). From minigames I would like to play MobArena and some spleef (maybe with freebuild-like tournaments?)

well we do need a new map. i am a little tired of theone we have now. Knowing i have explored nearly all of it

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Quickly! Hide in that tree!

I figure I might as well post my opinion also. I believe the map should be harder. Like maybe we have mobs health buffed alittle bit and I agree with Cod that mining should be more difficult. I also noticed that we have had a lack of Staff online, I know you could sometimes find some in IRC. But I believe if we had a few more Operators to help people, I also noticed we had a lot of people adventising on our server. Like they would space out the IPs and such. I believe we should keep diablo drops and have more quests. Also I believe the hub idea would be a good idea. Well that is my opinion which is not perfect.

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<_blueflame_> Redbanana if we are going to do this right i need you to bend over

<redbanana22> Ok

<_blueflame_> Im going to ride you like a pony

I hang out in IRC whenever I am on my computer. I can also be reached through steam if needed. We have a lot of Ops actually. They just got bored of this map, or they got bored of minecraft in general. The Vets of the server have plenty enough power to be able to moderate the server whenever an Op isn't present as well. As for the advertisement, take a picture of it and send it to an Op+. They will get banned if you have evidence of it.

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<@wankin> i have a double penis one where it's meant to be and one on my head so i get called dick head alot but a plus is the ladies love it

You offering to help write/design the quests is a HUGE help and is super helpful in adding activities to do in-game. Just speak to mbl or I over here, or Steam and I'm sure we can set you up with what is looked for and whatnot. If we keep bosses, which isn't looking great, then your idea sounds really good. We could always name them, and set a respawn for them so they can be killed again and again. Of course we would have to be careful doing this, to prevent abuse of the system.
Right, well the multiworld system is what we plan on using, with all servers connected to a central hub. MobArena and Spleef may be nice to have, but they wouldn't be able to run on their own. However, we could set up a smaller minigames server, whereas smaller activities like these would be set to cycle through and voted to play.

Mob difficulty and ore spawning will both need plugins for them to work properly, but that shouldn't be much of a problem. Just a bit of time searching for them and that should be sorted out. Staff is a problem, and like CoD mentioned most of it is due to the boredom of the map, however it is also due to them being and busy and moving on away from MC. This could be changed, if of course the proper Vets were willing to step up to the job and accept what's going on. Like you said though in our private discussion, Vets have very few permissions and are often in trouble when helping with crowd control.

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

I didn't really mean keeping that same boss plug-in, I really don't like it personally, I died way to many times to them and had my trees burned down once... Would we be able to use command blocks in the server? I have seen several systems for triggering command blocks that would spawn a boss mob with a custom name, gear and drops, I just don't know if we'd be able to do it. The one I was thinking of would require an item that would be gathered through a quest and have a unique name and would be the only way to trigger the boss.

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[22:26] <+PTB2> UNICORN_XD: well not so much hitting it but rubbing it on my face because it was soft XD

[21:17]<+SMPB> (Patogy) what were you expecting to eat?
[21:17] <@Aadolf> Shit.

How much would you guys be up to having custom world gen on the server?

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What are you looking at?

costum world gen would be amazing. As for difficulty it should be harder(enable creepr explosions ), same with mining. I do think we should get rid of MCMMO because the double drops allow you te gather resources way faster.

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[20:55] <+FBV> roqqan: pat
[20:55] <+FBV> Patogy: yes?
[20:56] <+FBV> roqqan: pat your fat

Yea, custom world generators are awesome, especially this one - http://goo.gl/8Iep6p

The delima now is how do you want the map to be laid out? Should we get a team together and build new things? Or just carry over the builds we have now?

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

You could carry over some and add a few. Maybe spread the buildings a little bit more around the map. Also if you need help building, i'd like to help.

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[20:55] <+FBV> roqqan: pat
[20:55] <+FBV> Patogy: yes?
[20:56] <+FBV> roqqan: pat your fat

What I suggest is bringing over the larger buildings from the server. (The castle, Leo's, and Islerlohn) Then get a few people who want to build together to make a spawn as well as a new place for people on the server to visit. It keeps the familiarity of the things from this map, but it also adds a new twist.

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<@wankin> i have a double penis one where it's meant to be and one on my head so i get called dick head alot but a plus is the ladies love it

Agreed, but I also feel as if some of the other builds we have are important to the server, and storylines aswell. Therefor, I suggest all (server) builds be moved over.

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

I said it in another post but, I would like to keep my tree build and finished it as a sort of quest hub. My idea was for each level of the towers to be a step up in difficulty for quests and then have each tree be a different quest line. Each one would have a theme for the tasks and loot/rewards. I've just realized as I was typing that I have been thinking of making them different skill trees.

The focus of each quest line would have challenges and loot that would match. If we can use command blocks it shouldn't be too hard to create gladiator style arenas where people would survive waves of enemies to get some reward. We could also make dungeons with puzzles/traps/parkour things like that, maybe make mob drops rarer as well and make like quests where people have to gather items to get things like bone meal and stuff for farming.

I was also thinking that instead of the shops with just about everything make them very limited and then have most of the items available through quests so people can't farm money for items they would have to work for everything. It would increase the difficulty and slow down a lot of people along with the scarcer resources and what not.

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[22:26] <+PTB2> UNICORN_XD: well not so much hitting it but rubbing it on my face because it was soft XD

[21:17]<+SMPB> (Patogy) what were you expecting to eat?
[21:17] <@Aadolf> Shit.

So, let regen the map, possibly with a special world generator. Buildings will be carried over as we play, meaning that everyone will start from scratch. We can add in the quests over time, as people gather resources to construct the monuments to house them.

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

So APC, do you think we should have player shops or not?

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

The only upside I see to player shops is people being able to trade while offline, I have always preferred bartering and trading. I think that emeralds were a good idea that was poorly executed. The problem with them is they don't actually have any value and the offers that villagers make with and for them are random and don't set a marked value.

The problem with the system we have been using is that money is too easy to get and items are too cheap so money quickly becomes valueless to most people for anything other than keeping a barrier up around their houses which makes the game easy as well. If we keep using money I think that getting money from mobs should be significantly lowered or removed unless we set up a gathering quest where an npc would buy mob drops, this would make people have to travel to the npc and the travel time would raise the value of killing mobs and slow down farming for those who would make grinders and get thousands of dollars by sstanding in 1 place. If also possible it would be good to set a limit on how often those kind of quests could be done or have the npc have limited money to pay.

I think to keep people interested and playing we have to ramp up the difficulty of everything a lot. I understand having the ability to stop other players from griefing but I think having res' or bought land going beyond that makes the game too easy. I also think that /home and scrolls need to have really high cool downs again, if we strengthen mobs and make resources scarce being able to tp around the map to friends homes all the time is going to negate most of the difficulty those would add. I am thinking 15 minutes or more, make it so that waiting for the cooldown isn't worth the time it would take to walk somewhere. This might also cause people to make towns that would actually function rather than being built and then slowly becoming abandoned as people move on to the next thing.

With the Quests I could use some help coming up with ideas for extremely difficult quests that could be a goal for people to complete over time, I think that could help keep peoples interest.

p.s. when are you all on irc most often because some real time back and forth would be nice...

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[22:26] <+PTB2> UNICORN_XD: well not so much hitting it but rubbing it on my face because it was soft XD

[21:17]<+SMPB> (Patogy) what were you expecting to eat?
[21:17] <@Aadolf> Shit.

I'll just slide in here and give my 2 cents

I know this part might not be helpful but I've never really minded which plugins you guys put in because like I kinda don't log on to soley play the game or I've just worked around the changes. I usually just come on to hang out and chat with you lovely people. Though however, those pesky mob bosses are definitely something else. I remember mining and doing my own thing when I noticed a name in the far distance and how jolly, thinking some other player was down here mining with me. So naturally I would go check it out. Then BAM. Curiosity killed the cat.

But I do like the idea of a hub with all sorts of multiple game options and what not. If you were to go visit the minecraftserverlist people seem to dominate the servers with a bajillion different game types. If my memory does not fail me, I do remember when we had Towny our servers were filled. I, myself do quite enjoy the hide and seek one/prop hunt thingo. Oh oh and factions.

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[22:53] MegaTmoney97: i did you were on the barn
[22:53] xhoneydew: What? You did me on the barn? o.O
[22:54] MegaTmoney97: yeah honey i did you on the barn
[22:54] MegaTmoney97: with my times 6 speed

I agree with APC in the sense that money has been substantially easier to get. Playershops are a nice addition and is nice so that guests have some reason to register. I am also in IRC from about 6:30 p.m. Eastern time to 9:30 p.m.

As to honey, that's why I play as well. Not so much the game but more so the interaction between players. Prop hunt could make an interesting PIE. Factions however is not really a minigames. We're trying to keep survival as our primary server. Factions is really popular so I do see what you're saying. It's just that it would most likely tip the balance of the primary server. You also need to have a substantial player base to do it right.

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<@wankin> i have a double penis one where it's meant to be and one on my head so i get called dick head alot but a plus is the ladies love it

Casually been stalking this thread.

This is a really minor idea and mightn't even be possible. But to make money more valuable and harder to obtain; is it possible to limit the total money on the server. So you'd have say 1 million moneys (could be any number. I just chose a million, it's a nice number ) and then another 20,000 money's for every new player. So 2 players would make the total 1.04 million.

Then this money could be used for mob kills or whatever. When you buy Res's the money goes there etc.

I think that would make money more valuable as the values would generally stay the same.

As I said, minor point.

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[01:44]aaanythiNG:I just donatedto SpA
[01:44]aaanythiNG:Because I love Jam
[01:45]Tigerdragon180:i love you in a non gay way jam
[01:45]GreatBuilder3:i love you in a gay way jam
Jawz13:P.S I Love Jam

I don't think we really need some abstract currency and shops, wouldn't it be better if you had just some block count determining how big can your res be, increased by time spent on the server?