- Joined
- Mar 4, 2011
- Location
- Earth
Preface -
I come from an age of Herocraft that is ancient history to many of you. Herocraft has changed significantly since I joined and its taken a long time for me to be ok with that. For a long time I wanted it to go back to the 'good ol' days' where pvp was shunned, cities were huge, and the politics were many. I don't think that way anymore. This is important because I want you to understand that my opinions and thoughts about Herocraft have changed greatly over my time here but despite those changes and that personal growth one prevailing thought has stuck with me, one that I can't let go of. One that I hope to talk to you about in this thread.
Towns Look Like Shit
Allow me to explain:
Towns used to be huge. Giant glowstone rings in the sky marked the floor to ceiling region in which you could build. People built structures, farms, town halls, and more - citizens were given plots to populate the streets and make the city look alive. Cities were restricted in style - nothing could be floating unless it looked like it was supposed to be flying, town's couldn't have roofs or be giant boxes, and these rules made things look cool as hell.
Much of it is gone now, but the old graveyard section of the forums used to have loads of cities with photos that blew modern towns out of the water. They were proper cities built to look cool and serve a purpose. This enhanced each city and area giving towns and kingdoms a unique feel, elevating them beyond just a collection of buildings stuck somewhere on the map. Walls and houses often had style limits enforced by mayors, which meant the Kingdom of the Rising Sun looked and felt like a feudal Japanese city while the town of Seagate was more akin to a tropical paradise on a distant island.
The Problem
Minecraft has little reason to build. The only reason you're going to build a house is because you want to. A cave in the side of a hill serves the same survival purpose as a grand mansion: Its shelter from monsters. Minecraft's core gameplay loop reflects this - it gets dark and monsters come out. In order to beat back the night you must mine for gear, make torches and armor and either fight or bring light to the darkness. As long as you have a place to store your things, aesthetics are secondary. The creative drive to build something that looks nice has to come from within.
Box Towns
At the time of writing we're in beta so its no surprise that people don't want to invest themselves in something that will be destroyed within a month. This I have no qualms with. However let me pose a question:
Are you going to build something more than a safe chest room on release?
The Townships plugin has no restrictions on roofs, and the heroes plugin makes walls hilariously easy to circumnavigate. Combine that with exploits, griefing, and planned betrayals and you will be actively punished for allowing your houses and towns to out in the open. The solution to this? Make a box with an airlock and dig down. Suddenly you have your own impenetrable vault that's only weakness is user error. And now that you have the most secure possible system in place to protect your items what is there to do? Level up and...
Kill Everything and Everyone
Its no secret that Herocraft is PvP centered. It almost always has been. Players historically have been bloodthirsty and brutal, sometimes extending to cruel and evil. Where some players looked for sport and to best other in a contest of skill for hard earned loot, others looked to dominate and rule simply spreading their dominion to all they came across. Spawn camping, toxic banter, and other downright abusive tactics were employed against any and all; even people who wanted no part in it.
I think a lot of this was propagated by the 'Hardcore Attitude' of the server, encouraging a dog-eat-dog style of play where you always have to look out for number 1. I'm not saying PvP is bad, but to a player who just wants to play the game and build something entirely by their own merit, having a screaming prepubescent teen chase you with a sword is not a great experience.
And do you know what happens to people when they're thrown into an unfamiliar PvP system that requires macros to function and they have a 13 year old screaming in OffTopic to get good as they get slain for the 10th time? They go elsewhere. I don't have the metrics but I watched a LOT of players leave the server because it simply wasn't fun to die and have your progress wiped over and over again when there was another server just a webpage away that wasn't going to have these problems.
Growing Up
The average age of the server was most likely a huge factor in this, but times have changed and I think so have we. We've alienated a lot people, but I also think we've retained a lot too. And Minecraft doesn't have a small player base, so active players aren't going to be hard to find. Not as easy to find in 2011, mind you, but I don't think they need to be. I personally have been focused on fostering the community and welcoming new players because we need them if we want Herocraft to be the best it can be. I've seen some incredible growth from players that I didn't think could change, and in turn this has changed me and the way I think about this game.
So what does this all mean? And how has talking about box towns turned into me rambling about PvP and alienating the player base?
Some of you can probably see where I'm going with this, but...
You Never Get a Second First Impression
If we want players to wonder out of spawn for the first time and fall in love with Herocraft, a strewn collection of cobblestone boxes serving as personal regions isn't going to help. At all. In the before times we used to have bedrock vaults for donors of a certain tier with a free teleport so you could afk in peace and safely store your items. The current system that we have right now is almost exactly the same, you just have to grind out 25c a day for it to stay up.
No one is going to come to Herocraft Remastered excited about all the square shapes they can see dotting the landscape in a game that is quite literally made out of boxes.
For years I've heard people tell me that this isn't Easycraft, but if I can set up an impenetrable bunker with 250c and a stack of cobblestone, I'd like to know what YOU consider Easycraft. And for the record, I don't think Easycraft is a bad thing, but that's a whole different discussion about difficulties and the experience that the server looks to provide.
TL;DR: My point is:
Herocraft Actively Discourages Building and Punishes Anything that Isn't a Box Town
As previously mentioned Minecraft's core gameplay loop doesn't even encourage building, all you need is a cave in the side of a wall and you're set as long as it can hold your things. The hardcore attitude of the server tends to drive players away, which while not detrimental, certainly doesn't help. And the PvP centric attitude encourages players to hide their belongings making classic town concepts impractical, dangerous, and high risk for the promise of absolutely zero reward. Lastly, box towns look like garbage and are a poor first impression on new players.
So I want to open the floor for discussion. How do we encourage building? What sort of rewards can we offer to incentivize and provide for the creation of sick ass builds that will draw players and make the server feel alive and stand out? Is that even something we want? I think it is. Please leave your thoughts below and lets work together to create something breathtaking and construct something worth building.
I come from an age of Herocraft that is ancient history to many of you. Herocraft has changed significantly since I joined and its taken a long time for me to be ok with that. For a long time I wanted it to go back to the 'good ol' days' where pvp was shunned, cities were huge, and the politics were many. I don't think that way anymore. This is important because I want you to understand that my opinions and thoughts about Herocraft have changed greatly over my time here but despite those changes and that personal growth one prevailing thought has stuck with me, one that I can't let go of. One that I hope to talk to you about in this thread.
Towns Look Like Shit
Allow me to explain:
Towns used to be huge. Giant glowstone rings in the sky marked the floor to ceiling region in which you could build. People built structures, farms, town halls, and more - citizens were given plots to populate the streets and make the city look alive. Cities were restricted in style - nothing could be floating unless it looked like it was supposed to be flying, town's couldn't have roofs or be giant boxes, and these rules made things look cool as hell.
Much of it is gone now, but the old graveyard section of the forums used to have loads of cities with photos that blew modern towns out of the water. They were proper cities built to look cool and serve a purpose. This enhanced each city and area giving towns and kingdoms a unique feel, elevating them beyond just a collection of buildings stuck somewhere on the map. Walls and houses often had style limits enforced by mayors, which meant the Kingdom of the Rising Sun looked and felt like a feudal Japanese city while the town of Seagate was more akin to a tropical paradise on a distant island.
The Problem
Minecraft has little reason to build. The only reason you're going to build a house is because you want to. A cave in the side of a hill serves the same survival purpose as a grand mansion: Its shelter from monsters. Minecraft's core gameplay loop reflects this - it gets dark and monsters come out. In order to beat back the night you must mine for gear, make torches and armor and either fight or bring light to the darkness. As long as you have a place to store your things, aesthetics are secondary. The creative drive to build something that looks nice has to come from within.
Box Towns
At the time of writing we're in beta so its no surprise that people don't want to invest themselves in something that will be destroyed within a month. This I have no qualms with. However let me pose a question:
Are you going to build something more than a safe chest room on release?
The Townships plugin has no restrictions on roofs, and the heroes plugin makes walls hilariously easy to circumnavigate. Combine that with exploits, griefing, and planned betrayals and you will be actively punished for allowing your houses and towns to out in the open. The solution to this? Make a box with an airlock and dig down. Suddenly you have your own impenetrable vault that's only weakness is user error. And now that you have the most secure possible system in place to protect your items what is there to do? Level up and...
Kill Everything and Everyone
Its no secret that Herocraft is PvP centered. It almost always has been. Players historically have been bloodthirsty and brutal, sometimes extending to cruel and evil. Where some players looked for sport and to best other in a contest of skill for hard earned loot, others looked to dominate and rule simply spreading their dominion to all they came across. Spawn camping, toxic banter, and other downright abusive tactics were employed against any and all; even people who wanted no part in it.
I think a lot of this was propagated by the 'Hardcore Attitude' of the server, encouraging a dog-eat-dog style of play where you always have to look out for number 1. I'm not saying PvP is bad, but to a player who just wants to play the game and build something entirely by their own merit, having a screaming prepubescent teen chase you with a sword is not a great experience.
And do you know what happens to people when they're thrown into an unfamiliar PvP system that requires macros to function and they have a 13 year old screaming in OffTopic to get good as they get slain for the 10th time? They go elsewhere. I don't have the metrics but I watched a LOT of players leave the server because it simply wasn't fun to die and have your progress wiped over and over again when there was another server just a webpage away that wasn't going to have these problems.
Growing Up
The average age of the server was most likely a huge factor in this, but times have changed and I think so have we. We've alienated a lot people, but I also think we've retained a lot too. And Minecraft doesn't have a small player base, so active players aren't going to be hard to find. Not as easy to find in 2011, mind you, but I don't think they need to be. I personally have been focused on fostering the community and welcoming new players because we need them if we want Herocraft to be the best it can be. I've seen some incredible growth from players that I didn't think could change, and in turn this has changed me and the way I think about this game.
So what does this all mean? And how has talking about box towns turned into me rambling about PvP and alienating the player base?
Some of you can probably see where I'm going with this, but...
You Never Get a Second First Impression
If we want players to wonder out of spawn for the first time and fall in love with Herocraft, a strewn collection of cobblestone boxes serving as personal regions isn't going to help. At all. In the before times we used to have bedrock vaults for donors of a certain tier with a free teleport so you could afk in peace and safely store your items. The current system that we have right now is almost exactly the same, you just have to grind out 25c a day for it to stay up.
No one is going to come to Herocraft Remastered excited about all the square shapes they can see dotting the landscape in a game that is quite literally made out of boxes.
For years I've heard people tell me that this isn't Easycraft, but if I can set up an impenetrable bunker with 250c and a stack of cobblestone, I'd like to know what YOU consider Easycraft. And for the record, I don't think Easycraft is a bad thing, but that's a whole different discussion about difficulties and the experience that the server looks to provide.
TL;DR: My point is:
Herocraft Actively Discourages Building and Punishes Anything that Isn't a Box Town
As previously mentioned Minecraft's core gameplay loop doesn't even encourage building, all you need is a cave in the side of a wall and you're set as long as it can hold your things. The hardcore attitude of the server tends to drive players away, which while not detrimental, certainly doesn't help. And the PvP centric attitude encourages players to hide their belongings making classic town concepts impractical, dangerous, and high risk for the promise of absolutely zero reward. Lastly, box towns look like garbage and are a poor first impression on new players.
So I want to open the floor for discussion. How do we encourage building? What sort of rewards can we offer to incentivize and provide for the creation of sick ass builds that will draw players and make the server feel alive and stand out? Is that even something we want? I think it is. Please leave your thoughts below and lets work together to create something breathtaking and construct something worth building.
