Hello players and staff alike! The Managers have been discussing what would make survival more fun for the players. The thing about that is, its really only mentioning what we think would be more fun. So I am putting this out to our loyal players with a question: What do you think would make surviving in Agharta more fun? What features would you be interested in seeing? Now let me make a statement here to curb some of the answers. If it would change the focus of the server from survival, then please rethink your idea. We want to keep the server on the survival track, but possibly introduce some new elements that would increase the concept and enjoyment. An example would be an idea that gets bounced around: Something that would give players more to do in survival beyond getting a house set up and living. So I leave you with these questions and ask that everyone put in an idea or two as a response.

Once more to remind you:

What do you think will make survival in Agharta more enjoyable and fun?

What features would you like to see added for boosting the survival experience?

Thanks for your time!!

Kal

Oh boy, well since we made a thread lemme word vomit all over it. Keep in mind all of these ideas are just baby ideas. Thoughts in my head, I don't know the true basics of the technical mumbo jumbo but...ideas....I have plenty of them.:

1) Redoing spawn completely, bring the players back in for the builds. Even if its just taking it down a small chunk at a time and redoing one of the four inner sectors in the first ring of it. Make the buildings player built, hold a monthly, quarterly, whatever event where we say "this competition will be for the Minetown Bank" (just an example). Then players would be given a build area on event/creative/where ever we hold building events of this size to team up(or work solo if they prefer) and execute an idea for That build. The winner of the competition would have their build featured at our spawn indefinitely, or until we decide spawn needs changed again (hopefully never). There would still be builds done by the staff/build team but it would help bring back that "Player based" Feel everyone loved about classic.

2) MAKING SPAWN FUN! I can't stress this enough, Spawn is basically a museum of the possibilities of building in creative with world edit, most of it is flat, it lacks any major landscaping and while it is beautiful, no one visits it. My idea is (since this is a vanilla feature we have disabled) Making single spawner areas within spawn that players have to find...search out and locate. The easier ones (perhaps like, pigs chickens or cows) could be less effective grinders, like a one spawner bbq. The rarer/harder to get to ones could be more worthwile (Squid, creepers, what have you) It would be like making each spawner, in its own, a little mini game. This is something we could build/do in complete survival mode, it wouldn't need creative, or fly or jump. You could easily turn one of the hostile mob spawners into some sort of arena/make it harder to stay there and farm the items to help keep the market in balance. You could easily flag just that area for pvp and players could massacre eachother while worrying about the mobs spawning as well.

3) I've said this before....WAY back in the day to staff that aren't staff currently (YFM for one *sniff*) Adding the possibility of lore/adventure to survival. Not necessarily a full out Roleplaying element but something that a player CAN do if they want to. Give Shamballah a story, make it interesting, put little lore areas where players can pick up a book and read about the many adventures of Sawine through the creation of Shamballah, or whatever main hero decides to build this wonderful city. Hide places throughout the map, little builds that are somewhat hard to find. (a good example is the underwater kraken we currently have on the map) I understand the world map will make this easier, but its the thought that counts. Have a sign that gives a book that tells a small story. Once the players have collected certain groups of books/a certain number of books they can turn them into staff for an item (nothing huge, but key items that are typically harder to farm.) This is a bit more difficult technically wise because we would need a way to make sure players can only get one book from the sign and a method to track which players have turned in what books. Again, I don't speak technical mumbo jumbo, this is just an idea. This would get players out and about on our map, pull them away from the warps and give them something to get armored up and adventure out to. We can make it semi dangerous to get to the area (No like, swimming through a lava river type scenario where an average player can't make it out alive)

4) Adding Daily/weekly/monthly quests. This is something that is just an idea. The server would host a sort of quest. It could vary from day/week/month. Something like "We're building the Bank of Minetown this month (coinciding with the player event or not) and we're low on stone brick. Bring me 64 stone brick and I'll give you one gold ingot." the pay would not be grand, you would not get MTC from it (that would just flood the market) and you could only complete it so many times a month/day/whatever. It gives new players a chance to get on their feet and I would hope bring players out towards getting more. There could be easy ones (as mentioned above) or harder ones (Like, find me an ender egg and I'll give you (something worth less than buying an ender egg at the Admin Shop but still viable)

5) This idea is a bit less....executable but its an idea, I think its a decent one so I'm going to post it. Since it is a vanilla feature to be able to change the type of spawner using a spawn egg (keep in mind we currently have this disabled) we could start allowing well established towns/players to purchase spawn eggs and change their spawner. Perhaps we only allow a player one spawner change, perhaps we limit it to towns and only allow them One spawner change. This idea is a baby that needs lots of love and nurturing but seeing as I think its an idea that will get shot down quite a bit I haven't really nurtured it. Staff would have to change the spawners, players would not have the ability but it would bring players a reason to save up and buy spawn eggs, while giving them the ability to make more efficient spawners if they so choose (Say they have a spider/skelli/zombie spawner grinder and want to make it a skelli/zombie/zombie spawner, by buying a zombie egg and using one (or their only) spawner switch they could do that.

Activites. On a regular, scheduled basis.

These could be races (such as to the top of the Death Cube, or some other parkour style event), building contests, or something else a more creative mind comes up with.

But it should be scheduled. Not just a staff member is on and feels like running it, but it's known in advance to players that this event will occur at this time and if you want in, you need to be there.

For the build contests, we could make it more interesting by giving players specific materials to build from, or they have to build a specific size, etc. Whatever guidelines would make it challenging.

NPC Quests and the like have been popping up as ideas for the last few years. I don't know anything about it really, but it's worth considering if people like the sound of it.

well perhaps maybe we can add in some small stuff in like the wedding plugin or clans, not some super necessary thing but just some stuff we can bond over. Maybe even stuff like receiving certain items/mtc when finishing achievements (not necessarily the normal minecraft ones, ex: get xMtc for 100th diamond mined). Also we should maybe reset The End and have dragon events every two weeks or so. Maybe we can add in new events as well, maybe a spawn hardcore-parkour, treasure hunting, mazes. Also more building events, and give players a place to request building events if they can fund it with their money. Just a bunch of ideas!

Some things that were really popular back in the day were Build Events. I forget how often we held them, but there was a theme for each one and only a certain amount of time to build it (we're talking hours, not days/weeks/months). It brought lot of people together and we had some great times.

There are a ton if ideas I can offer, so I will list the two that are currently applicable to stay survival...

1) I have always wished for multi use currency. lots of people build events or host small things, like Bumpy's spleef, my Mob-Arena, random fishing events... stuff like that. it would inspire people to do other things. For example... towns. there are tons of em, the most dominant and most developed is Kalel's Aydindril. there are tons of people there, that you could run a new currency off for town goodies and trades... or deals for being a resident. this will not only allow people to get residents in their towns, but inspire people to spend in the economy, and thus keep money around to help people get items and stuff to do quests that people have mentioned already. its just a basic idea.

2) another new idea is to have not only quests, but multi person quests. where it takes 2 people or more to get one started. Group chat or clan like ideas are not my exact idea... more like guilds. where you can place or donate money and items to make your guild wealthy and high up. this will also need an inactivity rule on people who decide to join, maybe 2 weeks of inactivity before they are removed from that guild... I love the idea of guilds rather than clans for one big reason... they can be monitored easier. I have no idea on how this could be done but I for one would love a guild, not clan setup for new members and even special guilds for donors, staff, vip, TV or something rank based.

=== as a note with all the ideas comes a big issue... updating. if a lot of ideas are used updating will be like classic. broken and evacuated... so why not restart classic as a beta? or set up a beta server for testing? Agharta has the people, but you don't want to add something that will be removed... so test these ideas out before adding them. allow people to see what ideas have been posted and what ideas are not going to work since not all ideas are combinable! its a great way to see what is top majority for the MineTown community.

for now this is my 2 ideas in a nutshell. hope they help!

Loving the responses so far, keep them coming!

Another Idea, rather than editing my first post (As it has nothing to do with my first ideas) I just posted again, I hope that is alright. Instead of making a certain 'spawn market lot' area, perhaps filling the spawn area (I have no idea what its going to look like now) with buildings and placing various little areas for the market lots to be in between the big builds might give players a variety and bring them out/give them another reason to explore the spawn area. That being said each market lot would still have a warp and a ML number so inspections could still be done by warping to the ml and inspecting it. If we did it this way we could also allow for market plots of varying size and price, but we would also need to take into consideration what the amount of item frames might do in the location where the shop is located. It would also keep the market from becoming a laggy area if we spread out the shops throughout the spawn.

We could still have a much smaller spawn market area with fewer shops and perhaps players could pay more to maintain a piece of 'prime location'.

Another neat idea might be to allow players to purchse a plot in spawn as if it were a town. Perhaps have an underground ruleboard for what is required to build within spawn and if the build does not hold up to the rules/expectations perhaps if there is a free build teamer open they can give pointers/opinions. Players could get like, three strikes to build within their spawn plot before simply refunding their money and telling them that while their build isn't necessarily bad its not what we want at that location?

Again, just baby ideas I literally thought of moments ago...they need twists and development but I think it could be something to add to the server.

IDEAS:

PVP ON: Like out in the wilderness when adventuring, PVP is on like in the Nether or End, Making travel and adventuring more difficult and immersive making other players potential threats as well as mobs. But when entering a well established town PVP is turned off so no fighting can occur within town limits.

Towns/Nations: When Aghartha was established, this was a feature that would have been implemented but was cut, This Feature would have given players incentive to join and become a useful and well established member of the community or go out on their own and try to establish their own town having to be attentive to its people and run it efficiently. If a Town is well established, They get recognized as such and is given a warp, pvp is off within its borders, and NPC'S are added as quest givers or parts of quests. Towns near each other can decide to merge to become a nation and have a capital and all that.

Quests: This would make the server into a RPG sort of game, Giving the player motivation to adventure, fight mobs, find special ores, ect. Quest Givers would be in towns, spawn area, or faction HQ.

Factions: Separate from towns, Players can join factions and complete special faction related quests to gain special loot (Ex: Hunter Faction needs to hunt certain amount of animals or something) and rise through the ranks or submit a request to create their own faction with an outline of the faction's theme and quests

Just Ideas