This is a “quick” post outlining some of the things I’d like to see on 3.0 and prompt some general discussion. This post focuses on economy, conflict, and general player interaction, and how the server can facilitate it. It doesn’t touch on the specifics of PvP meta, which I might make a separate post on at a future date.

Items on this list are in no particular order and vary from concrete ideas I think the server must implement, to suggestions on how to encourage player interaction and provide more meaningful conflict, along with advice on how to implement them and general balance pitfalls I want to avoid.

All of these stem from the fact that conflict, trade, and in general, high-level play, come from nonuniform distribution of resources, and giving nations the tools and incentives to compete for them is the best way to encourage them. Some of these are ideas that can add immense depth to the server, without an enormously complex or resource intensive plugin.

Player Render-distance

On a server all about player interaction, it should be very important that player render distance should be highly valued. Higher player render distances make all types of interaction easier.

Beta Test

You need an open beta before launch. There shouldn’t be an argument about that. Besides preventing a lot of problems other servers have had, a beta test is a great way to involve the community in the pre-launch phase. I’d be willing to make you guys a map for the beta test if you feel that it is holding you back from having one.

Deposit Based Ore Generation

As I’ve gone over in the past, many civservers, 2.0 included, suffered from a lack of meaningful conflict and trade due to poor and uniform resource distribution. A good step in the right direction of alleviating that would be to utilize a deposit based ore generation system. To be brief, the map should look like This instead of This

A few additional things must be done to implement this idea well.

• Deposits must vary in size, density, and quality

• There must be a way for players to, with relative ease, judge the density and quality of a deposit. How you do that is up to you. Possibly you could combine using generated ores and HiddenOre.

• Deposits do not have to be exclusive, they can overlap or contain multiple ores. It’s actually a good thing (to an extent).

• Deposits must be above a certain size. I’m not sure what the “perfect size” is, and further, the “perfect size” will depend on the size of the map, but deposits that are too small won’t be found or will be mined out extremely quickly. You don’t want either of these things.

• There needs to be ways for groups to defend deposits from outsiders and benefit from maintaining “control” of a deposit. I don’t think snitches go quite far enough in that regard. If these don’t exist, people will continue to go mine wherever.

Meteors

Meteors and core drills are two potential suggestions I have to encourage what I’ve seen referred to as “emergent player interaction,” whether this be in the form of minor skirmishes, political alliances, or something else. A good server give the players the tools to facilitate this interaction, but not force it.

Meteors fill a specific niche. Core drills, I expect, will be something that is mostly competed over by power groups and their allies, where smaller groups will have trouble controlling them on their own without aligning themselves with more powerful groups. Meteors, however, can be controlled far more easily by smaller groups who play their cards right.

Meteors would essentially be obsidian spheres filled with ores that spawn around the map. It would probably be worthwhile to have the obsidian spawn with a small reinforcement as well. There should be a five minute notification that a meteor is about to spawn “You see a star streak across the sky” etc. as well as a notification when it has landed and in what direction from you “You hear a loud crash to the east. A meteor has fallen.”

Players/groups who are quick to react to a meteor landing and can prevent interference from other groups for the fifteen or so minutes it should take to extract the ores can benefit immensely. You might even see solo players who “ninja-harvest” meteors, by getting to them quickly, mining a few ores, and then leaving before a more prepared group arrives.

As this is a suggestion, here are some things that must be considered if this is to be implemented:

• Should meteors have an automated spawning system, or manually created by the admins with a command? A command system would be far easier to create, provided the players trust the admins judgement. It would be far easier to implement this system by simply generating a coordinate, and tasking an admin with spawning a meteor at the nearest suitable location to it.

• How often should meteors spawn? Should there be a “timer” system, telling the admins when they should spawn meteors, so we prevent the “7 dragons in one day wtf admincrimes” from 1.0?

• How much reinforcement should they have? The purpose of reinforcement isn't to be cancer, but to require a group to maintain control of the meteor for at least 15-20 minutes in order to reap the entire benefit of it. Is there a better way to do this?

• Should there be different types and sizes of meteors?

• Should meteor spawn locations and times be logged if they are spawned manually?

Core Drills

Core Drills are meant to fill a niche at a higher level of gameplay than meteors. They are indestructible structures pre-placed on the map by the admins. Nations who can control, fuel, and protect these structures from others can receive a steady supply of ore, based on the drill. Drills should have an activation time and activation cost for exchanging hands. There should only be a handful of drills on the map, depending on the size. 7-9 might be a good number.

Consider:

• How and with what should these be fueled? How high should the fuel cost be?

• How do players control or attack drills? (I think something worth looking at is EVE: Online’s “reinforcement” structure control system. It is very well thought out and addresses many problems with other systems I’ve seen. To put it simply, a structure can be attacked at any time. When it takes enough damage, it becomes “reinforced”, and a timer starts. The timer thus dictates when the battle for control takes place, as when it ends, the structure will be “vulnerable” for a set time, where if it takes enough damage it will be destroyed, or in this case, claimable by an opposing faction. This gives both groups a chance to fight, rather than some random raid while they were asleep).

• Activation cost/time?

• How much ore should they produce? How long should each cycle be?

• How to prevent general cheese? (People building vaults against indestructible structures etc. Easy fix would likely be with a WorldGuard region).

Resource Sinks and "Home Turf Advantage"

These are two things that would add a ton of depth to the game, and go hand-in-hand. Ways of garnering home turf advantage should be resource sinks. Players who invest time and resources into a location and maintain control over it should be rewarded. An idea could be to have “nexus” blocks, that are upgradeable and give different effects based on what upgrades they have. Effects can range from increased arrow damage to increased mining yields. Area of effect could potentially be upgraded as well. Likewise, it would be smart to have these effects take time to activate.

Potentially, a separate class could be “wards,” which function similarly but hinder your enemies. They could apply revealing to enemies within the area, give them a three second mining fatigue debuff every tenth block break, or increase the durability damage done to their armor.

Resource sinks are a method to give the mods flexibility in another aspect -- making more resources "useful." Having uses for mass amounts of relatively unused items like mob drops, leather, lapis, redstone, and coal, will amplify the effect of many of the ideas listed above.

One last note

It may be a good idea to separate your thoughts into separate comments, if you're going to be like me and want to talk in depth about a lot of things.

EDIT: holy shit formatting is cancer with this css...