Raid Update Ideas (Part 2)

Hey folks, I know it has been a while, but I wanted to resume the discussion around Raid's current state and why it is not at all resembling of a true raid server. As always, feel free to pm me on discord with questions, and please leave any feedback below.

In light of some responses I have recieved and direct chat with some individuals, I would like to begin by discussing what Raid truly is, and what Brawl's Raid is doing wrong.

'Raid' as it is called now, is actually 'Hardcore PvP'. This means that it is essentially a Hardcore gamemode, meaning mostly vanilla. There is a shop to encourage trading, and the currency is Gold to improve the ability to use the 2nd major plugin- Tracking. There are also warps, used to store locations to revisit with ease. Since it is soup pvp, there is also mob capturing to allow use of mushroom cows for soups.
This is basically it. (There are a few other minuscule features like teams, etc.) Other than this, the Hardcore PvP Raid gamemode is entirely vanilla. Which brings me to today's topics:

1. KOTHS

Koth is an event that is appealing to the pvp community. Ideally, players will come to koth and fight for prizes worth fighting for. However, this means using your own loot to fight for control. Due to this, players will likely demand in-game items as reward for victory. While this could work in theory, it is flawed on two fundamental levels.

a. This requires infusing goods into a gamemode, which does not align with the nature of a Hardcore gamemode. I will propose an alternative.
b. Even with team caps, and in an ideal world with many players, when real loot is up for grabs, teams will form alliances and either split loot, or take turns winning. This will close to guarantees each team a partial victory every time​

In my eyes, KOTH can be fixed one of three ways.

1. Remove it completely. This is a factions minigame, and doesn't really fit the whole style of the Hardcore gamemode, because unless you infuse loot, no one will want to compete.
2. Make the KOTH event a free-for-all and have teaming result in being ejected from the event. This will require a lot of supervision, but minimizes the loot infusion aspect and works for unpopulated servers.
3. Similar to 2, make it FFA, except also make it single elimination, meaning 1 death and you're gone, and make the prize for the single winner be a week of elite. This is a good reward, and as seen by BBH's old HG streams, friends are willing to fight for the potential of a free rank.
​

2. End Event

This goes hand in hand with spawner changing. The only purpose of this event is to give players the potential to get a dragon egg to change spawners. I will reiterate the negative effects of spawners for arguments sake-

Changing spawners is NOT in any way Hardcore. This is simply a way to make farming items easier for players. Sure, there's a risk of being raided, but the new members of the community hardly seem to be interested in tracking so this risk is minimal. Changing to an enderman spawner, you can make plenty of gold selling pearls, or have a leg up in away from spawn pvp. Changing to pigman spawners creates gold inflation. Changing to villager spawners makes it incredibly easy to farm emeralds, and in turn OP gear. Changing to passive mob spawners makes getting miscellaneous items easier. Etc.​

In my opinion, the end event is pointless. The end should be closed and the end event should be removed. This event also draws in players by offering in game loot, which is the same idea as discussed in the Koth section.​

3. Enchantment System

a. Enchanting

I am a firm believer that the 1.8 enchantment system makes it way too easy to enchant. Since you can bottle XP, you can simply enchant stone items with level 1 until the desired enchantment is listed. This means there is no real trouble in enchanting, other than patience. ​

I believe that enchantment hints should be fully removed. There is no harm in doing this except making players get more XP and enchant more armor or tools. ​

b. Salvaging

Despite plenty of talk of salvaging, I am firmly against this idea. Allowing for salvaging actually devalues tools and ores. If I raid an iron pvp bank with a dib of each, averaging half broken, I would be able to salvage this into about 10 stacks of iron, and a dub of swords would be about 100 diamonds. This means I can store pvp items in their raw form, much more safely since it takes up less space and therefore less time to transfer to and from chests.

Another issue is that, if enchanting for diamond armor, the only cost is now XP, or afk time, since mobs spawn on their own. This means you are guaranteed to get the perfect item, so long as you afk enough. This devalues ores, mostly diamonds, because it minimizes the cost and therefore the amount of mining required. So, if it takes on average 3 tries to get the perfect enchant, diamonds are now about 3 times less valuable. Instead of taking about 72 diamonds to get an OP armor set, it will take just 24 and some afk time.​

c. Anvils

Anvils serve a few purposes, two main purposes being to repair items, and combine enchantments. I believe that, along with enchanting being more difficult, anvil costs should be slightly more similar to 1.7. Costs to repair max enchanted items should be about 25 to 30 levels. Also with this, I would recommend keeping the cost at a consistent level, rather than increasing each time you repair. I believe this is worth it, because you can be guaranteed to maintain any item for a steady cost, so long as it doesn't break. This puts more value on the existing enchanted items you have, since they are harder to acquire. A similar approach can be taken for combining items. ​

Conclusion

Change 1 will result in better pvp experience in any player count, and likely draw in some other players for the nice reward. Or, to counter the draw of other game modes, simply make it only a raid rank.

Change 2 is to eliminate spawner changing and loot infusion. Both of these are extremely bad for the gamemode fundamentally.

Change 3 will result in higher value being placed on enchanted gear. Coupled with no spawner changes, there will be significantly less 'multi-sets' style pvp. Players will likely be more cautious in storing their loot, and more interested in tracking to steal loot from others.​

 

I again disagree here. Salvaging is not very hardcore, and I have always thought that. You should not be able to raid a pvp bank if you are running low on iron. If you raid a pvp bank, you should be stuck with pvp gear. If you want iron, go mine, or raid a vault.

Custom items are extremely out of the realm of hardcore. You are giving players a literal edge on others based on results of an event. This is not hardcore. This is something you'd see in OP factions. The only way I see to fix koth is to make it a free for all, where the winner gets a week long rank. This could even be split into a 'top 3' category where the 3 last players get a key for a random item, from tags to ranks.

I am a firm believer that giving players items runs the game economy, and when those items are custom enchantments, or a level above the rest, then I say it is a hard line that is not to be crossed, else we risk being more like OP factions and less like Hardcore PvP Raid.

 

Punishment wouldn't be ban or kick. Just ejection from the event. I agree that it could be tough to moderate, I am not sure how this could be solved, might take some discussion. It would be quite easy to see obvious teaming, and with enough players, being passive toward teammates is not an issue really, since you'd likely die anyways.

 

Simple solution- make the koth event scoring system different. Currently it is a 'capture the objective' style event with infinite lives. Perhaps this isn't the most ideal system to use for raid?

How do you feel about, rather than this, having it be an event based on having 1 life, and only players who have the most (insert new objective here) are left. Maybe like a last man standing event? Or perhaps KOTH is 30 minutes long and whichever 3 or 5 players are on the platform longest win? This may be better to replace the team capture style. Rather than fighting away from koth, teams try to push hard to the platform and keep fights on the platform, without falling off. Of course you could ban knockback and punch to balance this.

 

Pretty sure I did the math on this already a while ago...... Redstone obby gens are fine by me personally, so long as it is impossible to make afk obby farms.

 

Rainer, the Script for obby gens is like 15 lines long.........