The JRCraft Progress Blog

Hey guys,

This blog post may come off as more of a criticism, but I'll do my best to make my argument clear and convincing rather than personal or something.

So ever since I logged onto JRCraft this year, I noticed something strange. I think I logged on around two months ago, a little after I re-started posting things on the forum and people started to come back. The first thing I noticed, as I entered the server, is that there were two distinct survival servers. I was quite confused, (mostly because of the super-disorganised spawn at the time), and managed my way to one of them. I started playing on the Survival server, where I made the cute house, obelisk and bulk shop. Later, as Jamie updated the hub and the servers became clearer, I realised that the Survival server was where more people were playing, so I started building there. That's the server where I built my rich-person house and where I own the one and only dragon egg that will totally make me rich. Now, Jamie has added a third survival server, called "Survive". I liked his idea, when he first proposed it, but I feel like we've strayed from our intentions. 

Server Purpose

I ask myself: What's the point of having multiple servers that all server the same purpose? If we're not trying to distribute some large amount of players, then I find it quite inconvenient. All I really want to do while playing is to hang out with friends, which is loads of fun! Much nicer than surviving on one's own. But if 3 friends are on Survive, and I'm trying to build my house in Survival, it gets bothersome. The solution around this is to make, or stick to, a server's purpose.

Jamie originally proposed the "Survive" server as a hardcore, thrilling and difficult server, where players could fight it out like true anarchists. When he first gave this idea, I imagined that there would be little-to-no build protection, stealing/looting would be allowed, no god mode or flying whatsoever, etc. I was expecting it to be a true struggle to stay alive. 

Therefore, with these expectations, I was quite unhappy with the result. Obviously, things like stealing, looting and griefing would have to have strong regulations on what is allowed, and what isn't (I think a good idea would be protection allowed on regions against griefing, but not on doors or chests, so people would have to barricade their houses accordingly). Such regulations could simply be discussed based on what we want and what we can do. I'm also aware that the server isn't completely built yet, but I would request that godmode and flying be turned off as soon as possible, so that people start surviving in a truly hardcore way. 

Making Distinct Servers

You might think that these conditions would make survival on the server way too hard. Worry not! The whole point of the Survive server would be for hardcore players who are ready to go all in, surviving with their clans, building locked-down, threatening castles with traps, or hidden underground bases to avoid looters and rivals. If you're not up for that, then the Survival or Classic server would be perfect for you. One of these, at least, should have keep-inventory, flying, godmode, and plenty of other goodies that people go on plugin servers to play with, rather than vanilla. I have little ideas, though, on how to make a stronger distinction between the Classic and Survival server (I think we should start by changing either "Survival" or "Survive" to something more different). Jamie proposed a skylands world, and I think making a skylands linked to Survival, for example, could be a good way to go, but there's some steps of discussions that all the staff and the community should go through before. 

What's the point of the Survival and Classic servers? I know the Classic is meant to bring back a map that was many players' favourites, but is that really the best thing to do with a whole server? If the server is only there for reminiscing purposes, then I think there are better ways to go about it (like downloading the map or something through internet). "Survival", to me, seems like the type of place people go to build communities, farms, shops, and have social interactions in friendly ways. It might be better to either turn off pvp or turn on keepinventory, because both combined make for some sketchy ethical restrictions that nobody is sure of. 

The Creative and Minigames are perfect examples of extremely dedicated servers. The Creative Server is one where you are in creative mode, so you can build what you want. For this reason, we don't need two creative servers. The Minigames Server has a similar logic; there is no current need for two servers with the same purpose.

Conclusion

I'd truly appreciate it if, as a staff team and community, we could discuss the purpose of the three survival servers, and make them as dedicated to their purpose as possible. Having too similar servers will confuse guests as they try to pick somewhere to invest in, hoping that they won't need to change servers because they actually would have been happier building on another. As an example, we could make the servers:

• "Survival" (shops, no pvp, flying, protection on anything, mob-arena (I have an idea for a 'survival server mob arena'), communities, love and cuddles)
• "Lawless" (Clans and clan wars, raids, looting, traps, pvp, no godmode, hard difficulty, area protection),
• "Creative" (you know)
• "Minigames" (money-making games, classic mob-arena, team and pvp games, spleef, cool command-block original minigames by me)

I'm all ears to arguments towards keeping the classic server or against other ideas I've stated. If something is unclear, let me know and I'll elaborate.

@Jamie

Hey guys!

I've been playing a little on survival lately, mostly focusing on building my fancy house (Czech it out at /warp FranchHouse). I've decided to make it look really nice and visitable, with the possibility of adding extra rooms to host close friends. 

The next thing I'll build (in 5 weeks! I'm gonna be off of JRcraft as much as I can until then for the sake of my grades in my upcoming finals) is going to be my starter shop. Over there, I'll primarily sell food, coal, iron, wood, and seeds and saplings of all sorts. This shop will be made for people who just joined the server, I'll do my best to adapt the prices for them (everyone starts with 150 dollars!). Possibly after that, I'll expand into a second shop that will sell music discs, potions, and some other more "luxurious" stuff. I'll also be buying materials, especially building materials because I'm not a huge fan of mining. I'll design the shopwarp so that people can put up ads about shops people can sell stuff at, or sales that are happening (for example: "Franchshop buying andesite for 200$ per stack!"). I think once I build my shop and people start using it, others will be more inspired to build shops of their own, and the best ones will be selected to be featured at /warp shopwarp. We'll have to come up with some application system, I don't think it should be too difficult.

I can also envision some type of admin-managed mall (fresco-like) where people can buy stuff at, but at a higher price than "market value". The reason for this is that what the owners of the shop (it doesn't actually have to be an admin, it can be a citizen) do is go to other more local shops, buy their stuff and use it to fill stocks of the mall. By having higher prices, the owners make a profit and people are encouraged to go to smaller shops. However, I think people will be quite interested in buying everything together, so we'd have to both minimise the discomfort of /warp shopwarp and find better advantages to local shops. I think by raising prices high enough, everyone will be happy.

On a more personal level, I've gone to the end, killed the ender dragon to then retrieve a ton of xp and a dragon egg. To be clear, it's the only dragon egg in the Survival server (there's only one per world). I decided to sell it for 1 Million dollars, which will, in my mind, end up happening eventually. Some rich person will eventually buy it, and if not, I'll keep it as a nice trophy for myself. I also continued to explore the vasts of the end, which are new to 1.9, to find impressive islands full of weird plants that give a ton of fruit (which is a nice, EXTREMELY cheap source of food), which I'll definitely sell at the starter shop for something like 1$ for 16 fruits. I also found some interesting ender cities, which I made sure to loot, and retrieved very interesting items, including "end rods" (very fancy lamps that I'll also be selling, maybe 50$ a piece); some strange blocks that I don't think I'll bother selling; and more importantly, dragon heads (which I might sell at something like 10 000$ per head) and elytras (once again, around 10 000$). These last two are a lot more rare and very lavish, the elytra gives you the ability the fly (glide with style), so I am selling them for much more. There's only 1 per 3-4 cities, and cities are difficult to find. 

This led me to the goal of becoming the richest person on JR. It's pretty arbitrary and might seem a little ridiculous, but I hope to make it in order to prove that my business strategies have been successful, and if the JR economy is booming as I intend for it to, it will give me many opportunities to build all kinds of projects. In other words, I want to be the Donald Trump of JRCraft  

PS: I discovered through an accident the mind-blowing fact that if you put 4 spruce saplings in a square, then they'll grow a massive and pretty pine tree. I now have my exterior decoration problem settled.

Hey guys,

What is this new blog?

I've figured the type of blog entries I want to write aren't gonna fit into the forums or either of my two blogs, so I therefore made made a new blog. I need to get these ideas out of my head anyways; I figured this would be the best place to do so.

Here's a short description of this blog:

A blog documenting, contemplating and discussing the progress JRCraft (and possibly a little bit of the forums too) is making and can make. I'll be criticising systems that don't seem to work, while discussing solutions. I'll also throw out ideas that could be implemented into the server, in survival or minigames. These ideas probably will have either to do with the economy or the server easier to be on for players. They can also either be individual (as a personal project) or server (the staff will have to work on it) project ideas.

This blog will slightly be like a brainstorm and discussion ground to go through before posting ideas in the "suggestions" area of the forums.

Current Ideas

• Shops: I think player shops should be the fuel of the JR economy. I've already suggested the "shopwarp" idea in the forums, in order to give everyone easy access to other player shops. It seems to be an idea people like, so good shops are going to have to be built. I have two main ideas for shops at the moment.

  • Bulk Shop: This shop is already built in the classic survival server. However, if only the survival server matters, then I'll have to find a way to make enough money so that people sell their materials to me (I doubt people will buy more cobble and dirt than will sell). But anyways, this is quite an easy shop to build.

  • Starters Shop: This shop is one that I'm excited to build, and will be most beneficial. It could be built at a personal level, close to spawn, but getting staff to place it as close to spawn as possible would be ideal. This shop would sell wood, cobble, minerals, basic tools, armour, food, and horses. The horses will allow people to go as far as they want in the world (assuming flying is turned off, which it might or might not be). Survival servers can be really harsh on new players if they have to scavenge for minerals and food while finding a place to start surviving, so this shop would be ideal. People could sell stuff to replenish stocks automatically too. However, this leads to another problem: New players have no money, so how could they afford anything at such a shop? In comes in the idea of jobs.

• Jobs: This is an idea that came to mind while thinking about how starters could get money. An example of how it could work is by having new players walk into a courtyard and having them chop wood, farm, or kill mobs (three ideas at the moment). Then they cash in what they got to get money in return. As a builder, I could then use the materials they get for my own projects, and also sell them to others that need them. I'd have to figure out the details of how to stop them from taking too many tools or something like that from the shop when they're sent to go work (are command blocks available?? That could make things very simple for me). Using this method, people could make money at any time in the game, which would be especially beneficial to new players.
• Minigames: As usual, I'm interested in making minigames for everyone on the minigames server. With or without command blocks, I could make fun multiplayer games where people could either make money or gamble money. I also am considering to build a casino on the survival server, where I could make a lot of money, which would then fund my sell shops. I don't know how ethical gambling is on a minecraft server though, I'd have to get some feedback from staff to decide.

So my questions to staff:

• Are command blocks usable on the server?
• Is gambling ok?
• What do you think of these ideas?