Reinstatement of Hardcore Factions & Peaceful Survival

Hello everyone,

Today I bring to you a multitude of suggestions. The one I'm presenting here is the return of Hardcore Factions & Peaceful Survival.

I would like to ask you to hear out my arguments before commenting down below.


Why Hardcore Factions & Peaceful Survival?

A gamemode where anything goes is the essence of Minecraft. People love it for good reason, it is why many bought the game in the first place.


How is it worth it to add it back to the server?

These happen to be extremely convenient gamemodes that you can play solo, with friends, and would even go as far as to invite other friends over which may compliment growth of the server.

Skyblock is similar in this regard although much less so. Many enjoy it in the company of a friend but Hardcore Factions in particular gives players a greater incentive to invite over their friends.

Most importantly, these are gamemodes that can be enjoyed in the long term, something this server strongly needs and benefits from. If I were not to count Farm King due to its nature, Skyblock would be the only game that offers long term gameplay.


Why did it lose popularity?

There are enough reasons why one could speculate it losing popularity, but I will call out one which can be controlled and is in my opinion a large factor why many lost interest; excessive resets.

Factions is a type of gamemode that you invest lots and lots of time in. You build bases to be proud of, you create farms to earn income, you raid enemies for all sorts of gain, and often you will rebuild again.

Coming from someone who used to play this gamemode a lot, I would say that you take away a lot of motivation from the playerbase when you consistently wipe the efforts that take a long time to build up.

I don't disagree with the first reset, but I do believe the server suffered losses from those that happened onwards.
Resets should only happen after a significant amount of time (years), with the community pleading for it, and it being for good reason.
I also believe Skyblock and Creative suffered from this, except I don't think those should have ever been reset at all, unless the servers become unplayable because of lag.


Additional changes I would like to see

- Claimed land plays too big a role in these gamemodes, for that reason I think it is for the best if you limit the donation feature that allows individuals to claim more of it (to 5 or less).

- The Headgrabber function could be a donator feature allowing the player to claim the head of a person they killed in PvP once per kill.

- I think reusing the first spawn / safe area would be an acceptable move as it was simple, not too big, had a balanced shop, and can be recognized by community members which would make them want to check it out.



This may have been a lot to read but I made sure to only cover topics necessary to help you understand that this will be of benefit to the server.

The series of suggestions I posted today are because I concluded the end of the server might be near and change must happen if we want to fight to keep it running. The community has to speak out now, and this is my contribution to it.

I appreciate you taking the time to read through everything. Thank you.

Spoiler: Related Threads

The Reward System
Changes to KitPvP
The Dropper And Getting Over It

 

Thanks, you've provided a lot of information I can work with.

I will start with the most important point that caught my interest and have not heard of before.
Mojang or perhaps Microsoft in this day, demanded termination of Factions, why?
I doubt their problem lies directly within the concept of the game, so what was their problem specifically?

If Factions was still popular, shutting it down would mean allowing the server to take a big blow, which it did.
Were the specifics of their demands so strict that we were not able to find a workaround to it? Were attempts made to find workarounds to it?


Next, if statistics tell that the resets have not negatively impacted the game then that is my fault for assuming so.
I used to play Factions with many friends and have never heard of their desire for another reset after the first one happened. From a personal point of view, I was not very fond of those that happened onwards so that is were this misconception of mine was born from.


Lastly, I think you're only looking at a fragment of what the game is rather than its entirety. Working together to raid other factions is undeniably a big part of the game but that is hardly everything to it. To determine that players can not have fun without this component would be presumptuous.

The majority of time spent playing the game is building up your own faction. That involves working on your base, member composition, farm, to gather resources, scout etc. You spend significantly less time on raids compared to all of this.
Raids are not hard to come by either, you merely need to find one opposing faction and determine whether you can gain loot from them. Many raids are of small scale, always been and yet they are often still fun.

Hardcore Factions is prone to amass committed players naturally due to the way the game is played. It is up to us to allow for such environment to be established to begin with. Everything has to start somewhere, even if anew.

You mentioned this game was popular even before it shut down, that solidifies my point that many love the game and it would be a wasted opportunity not to have this server benefit from it.

 

If factions was forced to be removed in order to keep the server up, how could they add it back to begin with?

 

We would have to remove the prime causes that led to these claims from the gamemode.
Those details are not shared to us, so we are not able to offer solutions to it.

Since it's not shared to us, I believe it is alright to assume they aren't impossible to workaround, otherwise they would already have shot down my suggestion.

"It's not enough" is the same concern you hear from everyone, but in my opinion this line of thought is full of greed because of the unwillingness to do or see value in something unless you receive it all. Other than that it could also be a mere justification to the slothfulness of anyone with actual power.

Just like any other goal, you work towards it step by step. You don't achieve big goals with minimal effort.
Once we have successfully taken one step, that is when we can start thinking of the next.

The community has lost hope because they haven't seen significant changes in a long time, and anyone to suggest anything gets shot down or ignored. When things do change, people will slowly realize that their voices may matter after all, and we may see more suggestions and ideas pop up over time.

 

I was not referring to myself being shot down or ignored, as these suggestions are clearly still an ongoing case. I speak of these things with the big picture in mind and address concerns I see within the community in hopes that they are not left unnoticed, and taken into consideration.

You also seem to misinterpret my words on slothfulness, that was not something directed to you as I would not assume you to have the authority to accept suggestions of this scale. I do however find the take you gave in my quotation, which I understand many people share, to be greedy.

I have been seeing you as a contributor and spoke to you in a way like I would to anyone else, this entire time. I am aware you are not discouraging my ideas, but I do address the impact your words have. Each of your comments evoke thought and even if you do not intend for it, there are arguments to be found lying within them. I simply address them, just like I would with the input of anyone else. I am unfortunately not able to apply intonation to my words which may make them harder to understand, but your input has undoubtedly been useful to this thread.

 

I'm sure it's been tough. I personally would have loved to see the things you've done in your time here, and give recognition for your efforts deserving of praise. I wasn't one to stay around so I'm not really fit to speak on that, but at the very least I can say that I'm able to respect the fact you're still here, you among few others have persevered to this day, unlike the dozens and dozens of other staff members who are no longer here.
Now that the server is facing such a difficult time, the words of you who remain perhaps have the most weight. If there is anything you'd like to achieve, the best way to do so would be to consult the others and band together (and I'm not talking about anything related to me and my recent efforts btw, you can ignore me in that regard). If all of you were to reach a common consensus about something and work out all the details together, it would be hard for the owners to ignore it.


Anyways I've strayed from the topic so do pardon me for that. I'll touch on a few of the points you mentioned but won't go through all of it.

First of all nostalgia, none of my suggestions are based off of this because I know personal feelings tend to get in the way of the big picture.
I do believe everything I suggested is able to be a net positive to the server. A few of them are long shots I knowingly threw out there because it's better to have more ideas cycled around, and you would never know the result of something you don't try.


In what way does Factions benefit the server? I explained most of it in my previous posts but compared to the games we currently offer, I consider Factions to have the most potential out of all of them. The in-game shop makes the biggest difference as it adds the objective of farming which players spend a significant amount of time on, besides building and exploring.
Ideally it would be great to find ideas that have a similar impact like the shop system, but even in this state it remains a solid gamemode.


If it turns out that no new players come to the server then what?
It is unlikely for us to see significant fluctuations in playercount, just because of the addition of one gamemode, that will almost always be the case as things stand right now.
If we really wish to attract new players then advertising is by far the most effective method, but this would prove futile if done in our current state because the games we offer are lacking in appeal. And even if we improved that, advertising still wouldn't be an easy job.
Gaining popularity by word of mouth should also be achievable albeit slowly. We would have to change the stagnant state of the server by actively working towards the appeal of it however we can. The biggest problem we seem to have is that people are too afraid to take risks, and because of that no noteworthy change has been made for a long time. We need to shift people's mindsets to be okay with it, being too afraid will get us nowhere and taking risks is much better than accepting defeat without trying and ending up regretting doing nothing in the end of it.