Sporadic

My stance on this has always been the same, i only take into account the opinions who WANT to age their characters. A lot of people say “2 weeks/ year is perfect”, but these are mostly people who don’t like aging in the first place. So for them I could make it 1year/1year and it would make them happiest. They’re going to stay perpetually 25 because that’s what they want. And that’s fine with me tbh, but then I don’t have to take their opinion into account beyond the fact that we leave them the option to set their age manually. But there is people who actually like progressing a character through old age, and in general they prefer 1 week /year. This is people who like dynastic RP, heritage, succession crises and the like. It gives a far more dynamic quality to the RP because things move at a decent enough speed to remain interesting month after month.

if you leave now the bullies win ?

I sanction this thread, whatever that means. The 3 of you who I brought up are the most serious from what I’ve seen about a mechanically-based economy system. You also have vastly different opinions. How to achieve it, therefore, probably will require a lot of discussion. So it’s up to you to work through it and reach a consensus that also appeals to a majority of the community. With this, I wish you the best of luck, because I know it won’t be easy. Anybody else with a proactive attitude that you can involve in this will also be welcome. In the meantime I’ll be working through a 1.13 setup that will hopefully be self-sufficient enough to the point that I have time to actually code something. @SeventhCircle will also have to be convinced since he’s the most involved with 7.0 and can do the resource nodes, scarcity, and most importantly decides how land is to be distributed (real estate being one of the most valuable resources for nations). Cheers.

Probably but we'll write something to redirect "*message" to the emote channel and "((message" to the correct looc channel.

Some concern here and there about the chat plugin. To wrap that one up VentureChat has almost all of the features of the current chat plugin. There's channels, local chat, ooc chat, party chat, emotes, persona cards, and most everything else. Some features lost include customizable emote colors, mumbling and continuity (aka auto " this is my message-" buffering). There'd be a much smaller compatability plugin to preserve all other features. In return we are able to preserve chat logging, which was jeopardized by HawkEye being discontinued. We'll also gain on discord integration and cross-server chat which is the crucial first step in splitting server load and eliminate lag.

I don't know how impatient people are, but I wanted to make sure people were in the loop as to why 1.13 is taking so long. Tofuus and I (but mostly Tofuus) have been updating the possibility on getting all the plugins 1.13 ready. This is somewhat daunting of a task, but there's luckily some progress that was made both on our side and that of the bukkit plugins. However, there's also many obstacles. Here's an overview. TLDR: certain features you've taken for granted will disappear. Worlds will break. Everything will take time and cost money 1.13 Spigot status is still officially in "development" status but is getting more stable. We might try to update on this map, although its just as likely we won't / have a temp map. Either way expect stuff in the current world to break when we officially make the switch. Break badly ? Despite this md5 is a genius and a diligent Spigot release scheme has made most of our off-the-shelf plugins immediately functional in 1.13 HawkEye, our block logging plugin, is officially discontinued in 1.13. Because the logging is so closely related to the names of materials this one will very likely no longer work properly. This means we have to switch to the only option left available: CoreProtect. This will cause a lot of feature loss and a very big work effort to get the transition going, and can be considered the major holdup. The alternative is to do away with block logging, but suffice to say the GMs don't trust you guys ? NoCheatPlus is discontinued and likely not functional with the 1.13 protocol. I doubt this will upset anybody ArcheCore works, but we might turn off seasons altogether for 1.13 Our version of WorldEdit is mostly okay but important people up in the coding community have recommended against its usage. What we end up doing here is mostly a judgment call, but the choices are stability (less world corruption chance) vs speed (ability to do calculations without upsetting the main game loop). Regardless of which option is chosen we might have to ask people to use large WE operations sparingly or during server valley hours. NPCs have been very difficult to make compatible but Tofuus has been giving it his best efforts and succeeded. Most smaller plugins should work fine except when they do fancy/stupid stuff that calls the Minecraft code directly. Our disguise plugin has gone premium in 1.13 and might not be available. This breaks mob Hunting and the ETs ability to be a minecraft mob. Obelisk gets to be in a category all of its own: Most Obelisk modules should work out of the box Data conversion is really difficult for Obelisk modules because things are encoded in Base-64 for reasons beyond my comprehension. This makes it even more likely we will just move to a temp map when this 1.13 stuff is done. Our chat plugin named RPEngine is the largest issue as it is utterly chaotic and not maintainable. To prevent future dev suicide urges we will likely use this opportunity to switch it out for an off-the-shelf plugin like VentureChat. However, you can expect a lot of feature loss to occur from this, for example the continuity feature or the mumbled speech through walls.

@AT I think the underscore (_) is wrong please confirm and /accept if necessary.

Not necessarily the best place to see it for visibility. I just post here cuz I like to have my blog on archive. Either way with 1.13 you might see something on this from our coders ?

The Remove Nexus Chronicles Will Nexus Come Back? Short Answer: No Long Answer: There's been an argument going on in status updates for several days/weeks now by a few dedicated individuals who want to see some features of Nexus reintroduced. In a nutshell these are all advocates for a mechanically feature-rich Roleplay Server as opposed to the feature-light philosophy that the Dev Team has committed to in Atlas. Certainly, with the stagnation that always comes when maps pass the halfway mark of their lifetime it is natural that people just want " more things to do". There's also been a distinct lull in staff proactive-ness which many people blame many different causes for, further reinforcing the stagnation. Indeed, then, any system, even one as grindy and antithetical to roleplay as Nexus might seem like a welcome diversion from the monotony. So why aren't we just "reactivating" the plugin? Maybe bring it back temporarily while we wait for 7.0? Why don't we just take SOME features which SOME people might have liked and release Nexus-lite? The reasons for this are many, but there's 4 I'd like to discuss off-the-cuff with you all today. Reason 0: Roleplay IS the content I really can't put it any easier than this. At the end of the day, this IS a roleplay server. Content plugins such as the Magic Plugin and the Skills Plugin have been pitched in Aegis and Asulon as a way in which Roleplay can be guided and enhanced. However, this is no longer Aegis. LotC has grown far beyond anything that could be encompassed by a mechanical plugin. We have a massive history, endless lore, and an amount of playstyles equal to the amount of players we have on this server. Every single one of you has their own unique way in which they enjoy LotC. And your only limitation to this enjoyment is your imagination (and the server rules!!). Nexus, on the other hand, is a mechanical plugin governed by global rules and hard limitations. It's a plugin that tells you what you can't and cannot do. And in order to make a plugin function it needs rules which are universally valid. This runs amok with the way a lot of people choose to enjoy this game. Not everybody falls neatly within the context of Blacksmith or Stonemason or Mage. In fact almost nobody does. To force people to pick such "professions" kills a lot of the magic of LotC (the metaphorical kind, not evocation). Nexus is a lot like a vending machine were people need to chuck in coins (in the form of grind) in neatly-defined slots in order for the candy to pop out. This experience takes away from what is most important on this server: To tell a story, and to share an experience with other people. In more recent plugins, I've opted for a much lighter experience where centralization is key. Hunting and Caravans are both plugins that are relatively light and force people to come together in the same space in order to enjoy it. For better or worse, this have let to people meeting each other in a way they wouldn't have before. The grind, furthermore, is not mandatory as Minas are not strictly necessary to gain a PvP advantage. While you might have your qualms with the plugins, they are at the very least unobstructive to the main attraction on this server, which is Roleplay. Reason 1: The Inescapable Cycle Anybody that's been lurking feedback threads as long as I have knows there's a cycle the forums go through. A feature is introduced, and the people who hate it take to the forums and ask for its removal. The feature is then amended, but for the really discontent people this isn't enough, so eventually whatever was the issue gets removed. Then the people who actually liked the feature want it to go back the way it was, and so the cycle continues. Limited Creative is the best recent example, but similar things can be seen in the never-ending "Remove Freebuild" vs. "Bring Back Freebuild" discussion that starts with every new map. More vs Less Nations is also popular, when any removed Nation will take to the forums and demand the criteria for nationhood be revised, which will inevitably only lead to a surplus of nations requiring the tightening of the rules once more. Should Nexus be brought back in any form, it will be greeted by the same people who hated it before and still do now. Although many people consider the Energy System an improvement, there were just as many who vehemently oppose any kind of resource gating on a Roleplay server. There's also dedicated Lore Keepers who were against the conflicts of the mechanical nature of the plugin against the free creativity of lore. There were a lot of discontents. Nexus was a massive project and it wasn't discarded "just because". It in fact took months of (ultimately futile) tweaks and rebalancing, and subsequent criticism on these measures, before the plug was finally pulled on the project. People who liked Nexus probably never saw the forum as much as I did in those days, but you will just have to trust me that the Remove Nexus camp was large, and they weren't the friendliest or most reasonable of chaps. Reason 2: Time Investment Big projects require a time investment much longer than pretty much any other team's project. Nexus, for example, would require no less than a year of coding up to a release, followed by at least 6 months of heavy rebalancing of the various features, and a lifetime of light tweaking and rebelancing as the community shifts and evolves. This is a huge time investment. Even just "reactivating" Nexus won't just work out of the box. The codebase of LotC has since changed to be completely incompatible, and Nexus had become a very unstable beast to begin with. Just getting to the point we left off would take a large amount of work. And this is the Nexus that so many people hated to begin with. To actually begin improving the system beyond its foundations to a point where it will be welcomed by the majority will take a lot of planning. Planning which will likely require multiple teams to work together and give their opinions, but only a single or duo of coders to actually do all of the heavy lifting. I like to think in similar terms whenever someone comes to me with a "Magic Plugin". I know that coding such a thing, given the amount of highly divergent lore we have, would be an absolute mammoth of a task. There's been a lot of people in the past that have wanted to code such a thing, but I just know they won't have the willpower to push through a hesitant community for the better part of a year. It's in fact an arduous journey a coder will have to go through to make a fully completed Magic Plugin. It's going to take a really special person to pull it off. Reason 3: Opportunity Cost Devs don't just code and produce content plugins for the community to enjoy. Our task list is expansive and any commitment to one task means less time to spend on the other. If nothing else, the day-to-day maintenance, bug-fixing and support queries make up a sizable chunk of work. And we're a small team. Our caurrent team has individuals such as Seventh and Wrynn who can focus on smaller content plugins, but the main crew is either inactive (such as myself and 501) or focusing on more important things such as updating to Minecraft 1.13 (Tofuus) or facilitating functional tools for an increasingly complicated staff roster (Kowaman). Without a doubt there will be people who (rightly) point out I should just quit if I am inactive. And that's fair. However a large amount of this server runs on code I've written so it's likely better for all of you if I stick around just in case things get out of hand. Beyond that my time is my own to spend how I'd like, and right now I am just not too inspired to launch any large content updates for LotC. However, I did release smaller content updates that I believe worthwhile without obstructing RP (Hunter, Caravans) and pushed work on things I believe in such as the application and voting overhaul. In Conclusion I wrote a lot, so thank you if you actually chose to read through it all. I didn't go back and edit because I want this to be a honest, from-the-heart discussion where we don't diss each other or point fingers or act like we know better than everyone else. So to conclude I invite you to pitch in your own thoughts about this server and how you interact with the content plugins in it. Which ones you enjoy, which ones you'd like to see, and which ones you can live without. Also let me know how Nexus has affected your roleplay and how the way you roleplay has changed after it, if at all. Hugs and kisses, Sporadic.

Always liked your LotC vlog back in the day. Best of luck with the stream.

The Remove Nexus Chronicles A Philosophy Shift: Native When I made the moronic decision to rejoin the LotC tech team the title of my application was "remove nexus". Indeed, I think undoing the monstrosity that I had helped create was the least I could do to absolve myself of past sins. Nevertheless, even if Nexus were purged from the server, the problems that we once tried to solve still exist. Thus came the proposal for Native, first called NativeSkills but more recently Project Native. I envisioned it both as a profession system as a guiding philosophy for all future plugins. With Native, we would take all of the parts of Nexus people liked (custom foods, drinks, click-and-go workstations, RP items, weapon variety) and strip all of the content that people disliked (grinding, endless craft times, OP PvP gear, deleting core vanilla features such as 3x3 crafting). Furthermore, we would commence development but for the grace of a few core rules that I have come to identify as tantamount over my years of experience here on LotC: Release content focused on centralization. Don't take options form players, but reward the things players do that help the RP on the server. Don't restrict vanilla minecraft, but rather add on top it. Don't produce content that incentivizes or forces long periods of grinding over roleplaying. Make content that is true to Minecraft, but include the lore that makes LotC special wherever possible. The philosophy is simple, but the execution is not. The resulting system was far more complex than Nexus could ever be. And make no mistake, Nexus was complicated to code. And the only reason it was even doable by a few volunteer coders in their free time was because we could do exactly those things players did not like... because it saved us time in the long run. But of course, this only served to remind us Nexus was as much Telanir's creation as mine. Alas, now Max is a full-time "Chairman" that hasn't written code for years, and I'm an old ******* man who can't be seen hanging around with you kids anymore. I've written too ambitious for an amazing profession system once, but truth be told unless we Kickstarter it there's no way to find anyone with the skills and time allocation to really knock it out of the park. But as they say: Perfect is the enemy of good. I've shelved about half the ideas and opted to keep it simple. There are a few smaller, simpler plugins that don't take as much time from me, but are still going to be fun and engaging for you (hopefully). And, of course, they will keep to the rules I've posted above so you will never see the like of Nexus encroaching on LotC again. The Llama Caravan plugin is the first step in a Patch 6.2 you will soon see launched. Thanks to everyone's testing and feedback, I'm now on the path of creating a basic Pet Protection plugin that will cure Llama autism (for the most part, since a lot of their retardation is just innate to Minecraft). We will then release as many as three trade routes, each of them starting at CT but ending somewhere else, and cycle through them one week at a time. This measure will make sure that our desire for centralization is met, as there will only ever be one profitable road to venture. This forces people to meet each other, maximizing the chance of RP. The second measure is the sparsely revealed HuntLite plugin. Dredging through the code of the late Teegah we've worked it into a spawning algorithm that doesn't bog down the server and ensures the same degree of centralization we've wanted from other plugins. Native-Hunting will randomly activate one of 9 areas per day, allowing you to fight one of 9 random mobs (and one secret one ;). These mobs are area-bound and their spawning is such that lag factories aka mob grinding caves will be a thing of the past. Some of these mobs you may already know from tried and true Lord of the Craft lore. As a little spoiler, here's a page from our bestiary: But don't worry, lore-haters, because the strongest mob of all is the dreaded Unlorethy, which is sure to pose the greatest challenge to aspiring Hunters yet, and it ALWAYS calls PvP default. I dare you to try and shelf him ? Expect to see these critters soon, either in the areas designated by them (There will be a guide at Cloud Temple to show you the way), or within the hands of the Event Team, which will be able to spawn these beasts to spice up your Event Experience. The third measure is an expansion of our Cloud Temple stores. Because let's face it, for Minas coming in there needs to be Minas going out. I've spoiled a little about this before, but I will spoil some of it again, because I think it will be interesting. As I've mentioned I've worked really hard to turn some of our old plugins into Attributes. These Attributes you may have seen in the Persona menu before, governing stats such as how many Soulstone slots you have. Now, however, almost EVERYTHING is an attribute, and you can boost all of these For example, new players get a temporary -80% Hunger attribute, but for the right price your Persona can get a permanent one by consuming an Elixir. More of the studious type? I've revamped the Soulstone plugin so that each of your Personas can have a red soulstone pillar, as long as you first study one of the Tomes that keep this hidden knowledge. Pet protection? More knowledge on animal husbandry can be gained from studying one of our books. Knockouts lasting too short, another Elixir will give your comrades extra time to revive you. As with the Shop Of Wonders, there will again be oodles of new equipment coming through the CT by foreign Llama caravans. As always, we try to keep away from things that completely upset the balance of PvP, such as diamond armor. Regardless, despite this requirement we hope you will find some use of the items for sale, and feel like your Minas-hoarding ways have not been in vain. Most of all, we want you to know that your VOTING has not been in vain. Of course, you are still fully encouraged to Buy and Sell RP items with your money, as these are the items that truly make Lord of the Craft what it is. The fourth measure... well, let's not give away too much already. After all, anticipation is half the fun. Hugs and Kisses, - Awe PS I know nobody cares but the forums now include emojis. Native was going to allow emojis into OOC chat too but somehow nobody else on the dev team was excited ?

so right now voting is the only way to gather Minas and for a big reason this is working fantastically for exposure. We're up in the ranks, new player intake has tripled, we're on the front page of Minecraft-server.net and somehow a PCGamer content miller saw us in his server list which also makes us a prominent google hit for "Best Minecraft servers". All these things are REALLY good for exposure -> new players see us -> server grows. What I'm saying is you better keep hitting that motherfucking vote button. BUT all this vote-whoring is going to feel cheap in due time if not already. There should be other ways to make Minas. Of course, you can make your own shop and sell items from the resource islands, OR sell a batch of RP items renamed by your favorite pocket GM. But in the end this can only net you other people's voting money. There is no real source of income beyond that. Either way, any Minas-making method should take the following very important factors into account: Any Minas source should be accompanied by a Minas sink so that Minas has an inherent value Any Minas source should not lead to excessive grinding as it has in past maps. Let's investigate both points. 1) is basic economics. In real life, any currency is backed by a central bank which guarantees its value. In LotC, Admins need to back up the Minas which items which have value. We need to sell items that players want, so that indirectly players want Minas. This is a very important point. Nobody is going to sell their cool Lore-Items or RP artifacts for a worthless currency. And if they dont do this, there is no economy. However, guaranteeing value is not as easy as you think. Pretty much everything that is currently being sold at Cloud Temple, someone has come to me in discord/on forums/ingame and said "but what if instead... you just give us that item for free.". No exceptions. If not for free then for almost-free, for various arguments which generally boil down to the same. Either way I generally have to deny the request for the above reason. PvP items are the same. Most things in the Shop Of Wonders, people have said it would "destroy PvP". Most of these claims have been unfounded. However, it illustrates the difficulty in selling high-end items players want, because many people will riot if we sell anything that upsets the balance of PvP. Lore items, lastly, are very hard to attach value to. People who write (artifact) lore will generally never attach a true material cost to their lore. Of course, many lore requires ingredients (e.g. symbols), but these ingredients are usually only collected by the lore-holder themselves so they don't encourage a supply/demand chain which would stimulate an economy. 2) is what the Remove Nexus Club is all about. It's very simple. We learned from past mistakes. In essence we want to make sure that people don't spend hours in the mineworld or resource island to grind stuff to sell to Admin shops (hence, we don't have admin shops). We dont want people building giant underground mob farms which lag our server (hence, no Minas from mobs). And we don't want people to sit in front of their array of workbenches in the middle of nowhere (hence, no Nexus). Ideally, the way to make Minas is through RP, but there is no mechanical way to guarantee this. We can only encourage you to sell RP items, start a shop, or play a travelling merchant, but most people simply won't because there's no real incentive to. The perogative for this one is with the players, not with us staff. So please go ahead and make it happen. So what are we actually doing? Two new money-making plugins are coming down the tubes. One of them I can discuss today because it is very straightforward: It's a new Trade Route plugin. It works as follows: Point 1 sells item A cheaply and buys item B highly. Point 2 sells item B cheaply and buys item A highly. Players sell item A at point 1, travel across the road to point 2, sell item A, buy B, and return. The items in question are unstackable, highly volatile, cannot be teleported with or placed in any chests. The player will need to transport the items using a Llama caravan. The items are lost on death, exposing the trading player to significant risk. The main attraction for using this kind of plugin is that it forces people to "grind" by walking up and down the main road, which many players hope to be the central point for all kinds of RP to occur. Hopefully we can encourage people to come here more often, now. The main road might attract highwaymen which are looking to intercept trading players. This in turns leads to guards and mercenaries which in turn apprehend the highwaymen. And, if we are lucky, the resulting ado and commotion leads to the popping up of various roadside taverns and shops which are drawn to the new source of activity. Additionally, we're releasing new items for sale. In the face of our restrictions, we've settled on a series of Elixirs: one-time drinkable potions which boost a Persona's statistic for the rest of the map. They can only be used once per Persona and give a variety of benefits, examples of these are listed below: Taking less damage from mobs Dealing more damage TO mobs reduced soulstone cooldown Slower hunger increase Higher "Bleedout Time", the time it takes for a Knocked Out player to die. Amount of players that can use your Red Soulstone pillar. And more... And there you have it. There's other things in the tubes that I don't want to divulge on just yet, but feel free to comment on what's been revealed so far, and what you think of our development philosophy.