Dear Guildcraft, the players and Staff, With this post I would like to make a few suggestions for the next Skyblock reset. Part of this is my opinion as a player and part as an veteran of guildcraft. I still have faith in GC and its staff, thats why i'd like to share my opion with all of you curious readers and most importantly, the people working on the reset. I would like to see an enjoyable skyblock expierence, while not losing what skyblock is about. This is mostly meant as 'food for thought' on what directions the GC Skyblock could go in and hopefully start a constructive discussion between player and staff. My vision of Skyblock as a gamemode vs the current Skyblock Although I'm rather new in the current skyblock and enjoy playing, it mostly feels like it's survival right now. When I look at skyblock itself I see it as a challenge. You want to make your island bigger and complete certain goals towards a longterm goal or endgame. All the while struggeling with limited recourses and buildable space. Curently I'm missing this challenge. Right now, with an easy to obtain starting budget, it mostly feels like I'm supposed to horde money instead of fighting the struggle of starting on a dirt island. If I dont know how to get a start going, I'm basicly just stuck on a cobble island with no purpose at all. -Mayor Suggestions- These mostly include suggestions that impact the current gameplay the most. They change the feel of the server for players and might discourage current player but most likely encourge new players to stick around. Limit the /shop For some suggestions/factors this function has a lot of impact, but certain aspects of the /shop are ruining the skyblock experience. I'm not saying this because of the market, in my view its simply ruining part of the gameplay. The current /shop is influencing the island levels, challenges, crafting, kits and more. I would suggest limiting items or changing the prices in the shop so it isn't as 'exploitable' as it is right now. Challenges Personally I felt kinda disappointed when the challenges were simply the vanilla plugin ones when I joined mid-december. I'd suggest creating custom challenges, either via the ASB/BSB plugin or with, for example, the Batllepass plugin. Either way seems fine by me, but skyblock is not like survival and is supposed to be a different kind of challenge. Challenges should, in my opinion, become a bigger part of the Skyblock experience on GC. The added benefit is that for newer players its possible to set short and long term goals while playing (if this is encoureged). This can keep the new players interested for a longer period of time to get a chance to fit in the community or experience more of the general gameplay. Ofcourse this stil depends on the rewards, game continuity and what they can still achieve in the longterm (endgame). Nether and The end Currently there is no endworld and is the nether a generic warp. With this suggestion I'm assuming its still not ideal to have a private nether island, but if its possible to make it work without issues i'd suggest that instead of the generic warp for the nether. I would suggest adding an Endworld with a generic warp. An addition to the chronologically of the gameplay would be to block the permission behind a challenge. Once the challenge is complete you can give the permission to goto either world and/or give temporary acces depending on what works best. A very specific idea, I neither agree nor disagree with, is to make either of these worlds allow pvp. It could give some extra danger to those worlds, but I wouldnt be sure how much this impacts the expierence of these worlds and how to properly implement this. -Minor Suggestions- These suggestions are either not that significant or help to balance certain aspects of the current gameplay. Although minor in this post, for some players they seem to be weird decisions from the past reset. A new look at tokenshops I think the tokenshops and crates are basicly fine as is, but some items in the tokenshops seem currently unnecessary (eggs, blocks) and I think there are more usefull items to be sold in these shops. A new look at Island level calculation Currently it is very easy for (relative) little money to raise the island level. This is caused by cheap blocks buyable in the /shop. Id suggest either limit the amount of times these blocks are calculated or lower the amount they influence the levels. PvP on skyblock Although I personally dont take much part in the fights, I hear some specific complaints about the pvp in skyblock. I dont think it should be a big part of skyblock as a whole, but I recognise a lot of the current players apreciate a good pvp fight from time to time. I'd suggest another look at the current CE's that should be part of skyblock and fix specific bugs/issues with the pvpmine. I've seen several players give some proper suggestions I can agree with in parts. But I currently dont have the knowledge to give proper suggestions to improve on the current situation. -General advice- These suggestions mostly apply outside of the reset and are mostly aimed at topics I would like to see as a player (or what I see other players struggle with) in general. They however can still apply on the reset. In some ways these ideas are already implemented, but I think they could be used more liberaly or improved upon. Open communication and transparency In this case I mean with transparency that it's easy/easier for the players (and possibly in some cases, the staff) to see what actions are performed. I understand there needs to be some form of preparation before you introduce something, but currently it is hard for player to see what is going on and what is planned. I think this can help with the motivation of us players to participate in this community and would confirm that the staff is, indeed, working on improvement. The tools for this mostly already excist, but I think they should be used more liberaly. Some examples. The 'changelogbot' could be used for more then simple updates and fixes, but could also show whats currently a known bug/issue, what's being worked on (small/short term) and staff that got accepted/promoted/demoted. Twitter should be used more often, be proud and share what you're doing with the world! Try to link back to the forums/site more often in all the media the server uses, give the most information on the site and summurise in your other media. The main/direct portal towards the server/community is the website. This suggestion is mostly meant to encourage engagement amongst players and show a lively community to the outside world. I'm not suggestion my way is best, but simply asking to keep this in mind and look for ways to improve on this. "Dont forget PR, it is queen" as my old boss once said, with some liberal translation on my part ;-). Informing new players Although this could technicly fall under the reset suggestions, I'm putting it here because I feel more gamemodes lack this in parts. In a certain way its implemented, but it is not clear where to find this info. I'd suggesting making it clearer for new server players how they're supposed to start off on specific gamemodes. Let them start off in a 'first-time' spawn where they very shortly get explained how to start off and what they're supposed to do (skippable ofcourse). In skyblock I noticed a lot of players asking what to do, although its shown at spawn. Maybe there are other ways of achieving this (for example with a timed announcment?), but this was an old example I knew on the top of my head. Some final words Currently I'm just enjoying my time on Skyblock in my free time. I have learned a lot on guildcraft and I still apreciate most of my expierence on this server. Although I might disagree with specific aspects of the current course GC is going in, I still owe a lot to GC and wish it the best. This is part of the reason I wanted to write this post, I want to share my view on this in respect of the current status quo of GC and I want to spark a constructive discussion. The other part is mostly because I want to have an enjoyable time on the gamemode I like! If I'm reachable, I'm always willing to give my opion or advice on certain things. As TheJovi and others once said (if i remember the quote correctly) : I'll be there to watch GC untill the end. Sincerly, ItsmeSteyn p.s. Although I dont completly agree with their suggestions, they did inspire me to make my own post and made me think about the suggestions I made in this post. Some of their points I didnt adress properly, but I can see their point of view. Espescially on the token part, from a server viewpoint its a difficult story but I can see how tokens currently feel too underprized in the gamemode. Two suggestion-posts to read : https://www.guildcraft.org/threads/suggestion-for-next-reset-vote-token-reward.84489/ https://www.guildcraft.org/threads/listed-suggestions-for-next-reset.84291/
I agree with all your suggestions Here's my opinion about Island Calculation Instead of calculating every block on an Island, they should just put values on certain blocks (ex. mineral blocks and other precious blocks) this way they can't exploit the /shop for getting Island Levels. Instead of showing Level it should just show how much your island is worth depending on the precious blocks on the island, This way people with many spawners could be noticed more than people just placing blocks from /shop.
I didn't read a single word but I agree with Steyn that I should be promoted to co-owner. Good work mr steyn.
