Easy mode, Hard mode, lets do it!

[wokka1]

Ok, ever since minecraft/bukkit allowed different modes for the servers, we've been on easy mode. Why is this? Well, it defaulted to it, and we didn't want to just change it on you with no notice.

However, we are going to let the players choose which mode to switch to. We are a survival server, so we'll stay on at least easy, peaceful is not a choice. This link to the Minecraft wiki page on difficulty settings tells you what you need to know about the various aspects of each difficulty. You can only cast 1 vote, however, you may change your vote if you choose to.

Also, we have /spawn and /groupspawn, which makes travel way too easy, and given that this is a survival server, it doesn't make sense from a survival aspect. Notch took out /spawn back in the alpha days, but we've always left it.

We'll let the poll run for about a month, at the end, we'll switch modes if its chosen to do so, and get rid of /spawn and /gs

VIP will keep /home if you have it, but travel will be done by hand. For those of you trading, etc, we'll have something soon to resolve that for you, and make the game more indepth. More info on that to come later.

[rbk95]

If we end up switching, how will we get to differant worlds without /gs and /spawn?

[697134002]

Hard mode lets you starve to death. The number of new players would go down tremendously.

[Wildwill002]

I want easy mode... I dont like the mean things ._. I only like playing hard mode on rts's

[wokka1]

If we end up switching, how will we get to differant worlds without /gs and /spawn?

walk, minecart, boat

[Byroe]

I think hard mode would make things more like survival, people would depend on each other more because of the increased difficulty and make things more survival-y (staying inside at night, living in towns, etc)

[steveab]

is it possible to have different difficulties on different worlds?

[vallorn]

is it possible to have different difficulties on different worlds?

Im afraid not. since all the survival worlds are on 1 survival megamap.

anyway.

does anyone have opinions on this?

Also, we have /spawn and /groupspawn, which makes travel way too easy, and given that this is a survival server, it doesn't make sense from a survival aspect. Notch took out /spawn back in the alpha days, but we've always left it.

We'll let the poll run for about a month, at the end, we'll switch modes if its chosen to do so, and get rid of /spawn and /gs

If so (Against or For) we would love to hear them. after all:

Consensus.png

[Xan_Krieger]

If we end up switching, how will we get to differant worlds without /gs and /spawn?

walk, minecart, boat

so basically everyone would live right at the spawn and it'd be really crowded. Please never remove those.

Also easy mode, and if possible make a normal and a hard world.

[Mattybcd]

I think it's smart, what would you do in SP? And besides it will take 10 minutes at the most to get to your house and back (that came out wrong) I like the idea. AND you Could donate

[wokka1]

As stated, there are no ways to make an easy world and a hard world with how we have things designed. We could, but the performance hit on the server would be too great, and we'd rather not do that.

[bootstrap22]

ok well i voted normal because i want the server to be more survival-y, but i think some people would leave if it was actually hard; i am however all for the removal of the spawn commands as it would give me new reason to build awesome subway systems

edit: spelling & grammar, and to clarify that my vote boils down to the hardest that will not lose players

[Sti_Jo_Lew]

God, not having groupspawn is going to majorly suck. I live in the very far corners of world, generally a good 10 minute walk from any rail, in order to build large projects without fear of being crowded in. Without groupspawn, it will take me at least 15 minutes to get to the hub. I also see this being a huge issue when it comes to land, because everyone will crowd the area near spawn.

As for the difficulty, I chose Normal. I go out without armor to build and get attacked a bit anyways, and it's no threat at all. Even iron armor makes you nearly invincible against normal mob spawning.

[SirDoom]

Honestly, the difficulty could go to Normal without much change, but that's really a non-issue. As long as it stays below hard (so you can't starve to death), It shouldn't matter.

What should is groupspawn. Removing that has a pretty big disadvantage.

1- There is a hub you HAVE to pass through to get around the server. Unless you are entirely located in one world, you're going to need to go to the hub. If you want to go play PVP, do a puzzle in Enigma, work on a project in any new world that might come up, or what have you, you have to go through the hub. Right now, you can warp to the hub, and walk the rest of the way. That kind of makes sense. Removing /spawn just doubles the travel time, without adding anything to the fun. People won't be able to build far away from spawn anymore, especially if there aren't rails leading out there. The extra 10 minutes of just walking to get back to the hub would be nothing but an annoyance.

[Xan_Krieger]

I don't get why people want it harder, it's already hard enough with how much people die. How would more deaths benefit anyone?

[bootstrap22]

as convenient as the spawn commands, i would really like to have trade be something that has costs associated with it to mix up the prices a bit, as it is its just a case of a quick /gs then /home, i really like the idea of constructing trade networks to speed up trade, they'd be nice collaborative projects to link cities, and some centrally located cities could be escapecraftian Baghdad's or Constantinople. (Note: i do not stand to benefit from this, my town's near the edge of fyra; i just really like building projects with a purpose, such as railroads, or giant bridges)

[FUDAAA]

i think we should leave it for the time been since the new mob A.I has changed

[TyrasEngineer]

I think that bumping it up from easy isn't a bad thing, so I voted for normal for similar reasons to people above me. I remain unconvinced about the merits of removing /gs though. One of the features that EC well for is its willingness to cater to all types of player: survivalist, puzzle solver, builder or PVP slaughterer. By removing /gs , swapping between these modes will be a chore rather than a pleasure, and for a game that seems negative- parts of the game could be neglected due to unwillingness to risk travel, potentially leading to a divided community who have minimal interaction.
I agree that railways could be built to lessen the burden (and I'd enjoy that- they are my favourite projects!) but getting them back to spawn would become a near impossibility due to the multitude of player claims.

[Iron_Fang]

Well we will just have to build a railsystem like in v3, but no spawn commands are a problem..... I sometimes get stuck in cuboided areas XD

[MrJKapowey]

I voted Normal, but I agree with Tyrese and Sti and Iron and SirDoom.

No Spawn Commands would make it far to much of a chore to move between worlds and stuff.

[TyrasEngineer]

That is something I hadn't considered, Iron. At the moment, if someone is trapped in a cuboid, they can be told to use /gs and be done with it. Without these tools, the person would have to be rescued with more manual input.

[LS13]

I only mine without torches and sometimes without any armor, and I rarely die. Normal for me.

About /gs, I see how it can take away from survival, but without it travelling around will suck. I never live close to hub, and before I was royalty and then a mentor, I had to walk a good 10 minutes or more out to my place in Fyra. Make that two way, and most of my time on the server would be spent travelling, and not building cool stuff.

[wokka1]

For those of you saying that it will be hard to travel without /gs. That's the point of a survival server. Most MMO's do not have a fast travel system that teleports you around, other than something similar to /home. Some have a travel system, and we do, its not great, but it does work. Can it be better, of course, and its something we'll work on.

As to using /gs to get out of a stuck hole in a cuboid, thats a technical issue we'll resolve before removing /gs.

In doing this, we want to put the focus back on your cities, not on the hub as a fast travel destination. Your cities should be a hub of activity, and most are not. We'll also be adding more things for your cities to have, features to make them more attractive for players to come visit.

[TyrasEngineer]

I think that trade isn't necessarily going to be too negatively impacted- in fact, I think that diverting trade from the hub and making it more player focussed is almost certainly a good thing. I feel that my issue in that it could potentially discourage players from trying all of the other things that Escapecraft has to offer (such as puzzles or creative) if getting to the locations where they can do this becomes a chore due to inherent risk and large time investments. Obviously, Survival comes first, however I see many other resources being neglected and wasted as a result of this, if it becomes infeasible to get to the places to use them.

[Krye]

I have hated the hunger system ever since it was implemented. It's not like minecraft is challenging even on the hardest difficulty, so upping the difficulty merely for the sake of upping the difficulty is only going to serve as an annoyance. Take WoW for example, they listened to the vocal community that said they wanted a challenge. They made the game harder and lost 2 million casual players and now they're bleeding subs every quarter. The majority of gamers aren't hardcore, people just want to have fun, forcing people to constantly tend crops so they don't starve to death or adding artificial challenges like having to run back to your base for 20 minutes every time you die or want to trade isn't fun. If you're looking for a challenge, you probably shouldn't be playing Minecraft.

[SirDoom]

That's just it though wokka. Not everyone lives in or near cities. If you want a good bit of land for building something, you're pretty much forced to go far away from the cities to build. Everything I've worked on is miles from the nearest city (not to mention the nearest neighbor). The same can be said of anyone who aspires to build more than just a small 10x10 house. Sure, if you live in a big city on the rails, it's no problem. But to everyone else, simply getting from their house to Enigma to do a puzzle (or to pvp to fight others) is a chore that would potentially outweigh the fun that could be had doing the puzzle or actually fighting. Not to mention the "I just lost full diamond equipment in PVP, now I have to walk 20 minutes back to my place to go get more before I can fight more." factor.

In short, removing /gs would add to the survival part, but it would hurt every other part of the server, and would force people to build closer to spawn or in well-connected cities, limiting the diversity of structures built. I honestly don't think the hit to the creative aspect of the game is worth it to add just that tiny bit of difficulty to the survival aspect.

[welwyn]

My view on this: If it was a fresh world ( Not an option I know but theory crafting) then the land would be shaped with zero fast travel in mind. As it is players have spread to find land, built structures away from others to expand, and towns are off the beaten track due to space.

To change the fundamental aspects of travel at this stage in a map would be seriously detrimental to a lot of aspects. I think the benefit towards survival is far too minimal to warrant the change.

If you are serious on contemplating this, I urge you to make a poll on it, so you can have a clearer view on members opinions before making any decisions. While rules implemented will be followed, the enjoyment of members, and in turn the population of the server may suffer with too large a change at this stage.

I now include some finer issues in a spoiler:

Spoiler! :

For new players, the /spawn function is useful for those who require information they may of missread or forgotton, or those who managed to escape the tutorial before completion. This could be sorted with a /spawn function available for those who have not reached veteran rank yet

Players who get stuck in cuboided areas wont be able to /gs out.
Now either a mod needs to move them, increasing the allready high load on mods, or we need another way to get them out without /gs. Having mentors able to do this would just shift the same workload, although over a greater member base, but at the same time the risk of abuse opens up greatly, not to mention staff training time to teach all current mentors the new commands and whatnot, makes that pretty impractical
Using something like /unstuck with either a random or a set move pattern would be a high risk of being abused to get places people shouldnt get. Either a limit, such as once per 12 hours, with more than 3 times per month to be reviewed to check abuse, but again thats extra workload for somebody who needs to manually check...

One point I would like to know how you intend to sort, is the hub is on a void surrounded island, so getting to places like enigma or creative would be all but impossible. The only other way round that would be a nether pathway network, but I have yet to explore the hubs nether area to discover if that is feasible.

TL:DR Keep /gs and /spawn they be useful.

[wokka1]

Welwyn, you are forgetting the aspect that each world has a spawn and a portal to get back to the hub world, no one uses them because of /gs, but they are there and function.

The fact that people use /gs to get out of a cuboided hole will be addressed, I've found a solution for this and after further testing, we'll implement it, before this change is made.

We are also looking at options for a faster than minecart travel, but it won't be an instant /gs portal as you are used to.

[random980]

Personally i think bumping the difficulty up to normal would be the only logical option to make it more 'survivaly', As the health system is actually being set to its base damage intake/ect. While Hard mode is purposely challenging and is only for willing people, if we want a hard mode change i think more than just a majority will have to be willing for it to be fair.
However i my only objection against any change is because new players will be getting shot in the foot with the hunger bar change, unless we have a '/kit noob' or something that supplies free food for those who are not Vet yet.

My greatest concern is the idea is feeding /spawn and /gs to the banhammer. Good idea in terms of survival, boosting traveling and communities but EVERYTHING else gets effected. Escapecraft is not a solely survival server, we cater to all/most aspects of minecraft play, forcing survival mode onto others who dont want survival (via removing direct access to hub) will drive some people away.
PLEASE keep /gs, its use is fundamental for catering for all types of minecraft players and people who just want a change of gameplay. yes it can be abused in terms of trading in survival, but there is an easy solution to that, move hub out of the survival world ._.

[SirDoom]

We are also looking at options for a faster than minecart travel, but it won't be an instant /gs portal as you are used to.

Will the proposed "faster-than-minecart" travel be available from any location, or just from small number of predetermined access points? If it's from anywhere (or close to anywhere, such as transport nodes every few hundred blocks or so), that seems reasonable. It may take longer to get there than normal, but I wouldn't mind actually taking a minute or two to get to spawn (20 minutes, on the other hand...) However, if it's a stationary map feature, such as the Fyra Rails for example, that still leaves the problem of "I've built everything in an isolated corner of the map and am still a long way away from even the main rails".

As Weleyn said, people who have built structures on the server did so knowing they had a fast way back to the hub, so they probably didn't take into account how difficult it would be to get back to spawn from their place on foot. Same with the cities- Many aren't built on rails or on rivers, they were built wherever the founders could find enough land to do so. Those cities that are on rails or some other fast travel system would boom without /gs, but the more isolated ones would pretty much die. (and the already dead ones would never be seen again, because let's face it, who wants to walk all the way to Borderpost to look around when you'll just have to walk all the way back afterward?)