When we soft launched the server about 2 weeks ago one of the proposed welcoming events was a race to "The End" and slay the dragon. I was rather outspoken about that and proclaimed it could be a larger server event a few months from now. After some debate between the other mods and Kerm, we all agreed and disabled The End so it can be a properly orchestrated event. Fast forward to yesterday.

I mentioned that it'd be really awesome to have a Hardcore race to The End over a weekend or something. Obviously we can't do this on the Cemetech 1.9 server because we can't pick and choose who to only affect for Hardcore Mode. I had to sign off for the night after that but didn't stop thinking. Perhaps the weekend is too short a time frame. Regardless though, I think this could be fun.

I also mentioned that the winner, or winners should there be a team, should certainly get rewarded in the Cemetech 1.9 server upon completion. I was thinking Elytras could be a neat reward but with Elytras eventually available in the proper server it probably wouldn't be worth it. Maybe along side Abba events, we can have a monthly reset of the Hardcore server. I don't like the idea of hosting the HC server on Cemetech unless Kerm is okay with it. I'd most likely spend a few bucks out of pocket each month to host the server myself.

So, is there interest? Ideas for rewards? Other ideas?

-- Some of my ideas --
One thing I'd like to bring up, I'd like to maybe mimic the graylist we have on 1.9. Except make the HC world whitelisted. So, in order to join the HC world you need to be gray listed on the 1.9 Server. That way we prevent any one from hoping on and murdering others and stuff.

As far as plug-ins go. Minimal. No towny, no egg catcher, no essentials. I'd bring over the IRC plugin and either set up a new IRC channel or bring it in to the existing channel.

Well, I think it could be kind of cool! I'd probably want to team up with people, since I imagine the dragon on hardcore would be nuts to take down.

Would we get a portal in spawn to go to the other realm, or would we need to join another server?

As to the reward.. Make it a set amount of lapis ore. People can split it if in a team.

And resetting the HC server.. Do you plan to renew the reward for the dragon kill every few months?

Indeed. And with every failed attempt at the dragon, sets it up for someone else to hop on and try. Because The End would already be opened. So assuming a team of players get to The End and die, their base would still be there and the portal still open.



I'm still iffy on that. I'm not sure what realms are but I think each server can only have one difficulty setting. Even then, if multiple difficulties can be had, how would Hardcore work? Would it ban you from the regular world or just prohibit you from entering the HC world?

Additionally, I think it'd be great to remove any influence the 1.9 world may have. I'd be more inclined to heartily reward the victors if they joined the HC map and beat the game without any of the plugins we all depend on. If the 1.9 Map influences the HC map, such as farming away in Normal difficulty then jumping to the HC map I'd feel like that's a lot less of a challenge.

If this was a thing just for the weekend, I'd be more inclined to let let the 1.9 map influence the HC map.



That's what I was thinking. I feel like it' need to be a considerable amount. Maybe 2 stacks? 12,800D sounds like a good reward? I plan to add on a stats plugin and other plugins to track data so I could also provide awards for effort, so it's less of a winner takes all. But that might impact the popularity of Cemetechs 1.9 Server.



I was thinking every month. But I really don't know how fast it could happen. I was thinking of automating the process so I could type a command and have the world deleted and a new world generated. No pre-built server spawn. Just an empty world with no protections (though PvP would be disabled). I was thinking of just making the server reset the 1st of every month but what if someone is almost ready to take on the dragon? I wouldn't want to take that from them.

I'd award the same amount of Lapis but maybe diminish it for repeated winners. I'm open to other prizes. Maybe if we keep the end closed on 1.9, aside from the server sponsored dragon fight, participants who meet posted and set "criteria" earn an Elytra or some other goodies.

I wouldn't want to keep the end closed on the main map. I really want to get in there and explore the end cities, if not for the Elytras, for the amazing blocks that are available there.

Also, why don't we open up the abba map up for it? We can reset it every short while, with explicit rules that only abba caving is allowed there, no actual mining, and the race to the end can happen via there. That way, we get new maps for caves, new dragon/end cities, etc. No money out of pocket on anyone's behalf, since we can use something we're already doing anyways

You could even set up a rule where whomever wins (as in, first to kill the dragon) cannot do so for the next iteration, but is cleared to do so again after the next next reset?

Since when was Lapis Lazuli valuable? I thought diamonds were the most valuable.

We are using the lapis ore as currency, you trade it at a sign shop in spawn to get 100 per ore. It was decided this way to keep from having a farmable income so people just afk on the server all the time.

I'd be completely behind this. Also, would we get to keep the dragon egg at the end?
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I think giving the Dragon Egg to the victors would be a great idea. That way towns and/or individuals could show off their achievement; the dragon egg from the dragon we slay in the End on 1.9 for the server event will be showcased in spawn.

As far as this particular event is concerned on the 1.9 server, I would side with holding it off for at least a couple months, and would like to suggest turning it into a 2-part event where the first part is for players to go on a scavenger hunt to find a stronghold somewhere in our world that hasn't been discovered, which an admin has revamped specifically for the treasure hunt. Seeing there are multiple strongholds, players could be tasked with finding some clues which point them in the right direction to the correct stronghold so that it'd be faster than manually using tons of eyes of ender to try their luck in finding one stronghold at a time. The revamped stronghold could have some extra cool/valuable prizes in the chests scattered throughout the structure that is beyond what you would normally find, such as lapis ore (seeing that it is the official server currency), a bit more diamond horse armor, a couple of spawn eggs of animals that may not be on the map currently or are otherwise rare, maybe even ones that were specifically marked as a 0% catch rate on our plugin. I think this would be something very cool to do as an opening event to slaying the dragon, which is debatable whether we could do it the same day, or put off the part 2 to the following weekend of sorts. Perhaps to further make the hunt interesting and bring more interest into the event, we could expand the map by an additional ± 250 blocks (don't tell anyone when you do of course), and that would serve to broaden the search area of the hunt, and also be a kickoff to allowing players to have more places to explore on our main map.

For the dragon slaying event itself as a part 2 to the whole thing, I support it being a community thing where we all rush in and kill it, and then we take the egg to put on display in spawn somewhere.





I am in general highly in favor of having monthly events on the server to begin with, regardless of what it is, as to support the continual blossoming of server involvement and activity (we've had the most activity on the server, that really goes back to our 1.7 map release). I enjoy having a mix of activities that appeal to a variety of members including abba caving and the treasure hunts-- both of which I do enjoy very much. Additionally, I feel that a missing gap could be filled by also doing some sort of PvP event, which also implies more PvE. I would love to see a race to the end sort of event, where it appeals more to the survival inclined members, and could also include the PvP aspect if we allow players to engage in combat in the event that they run into each other in the race (thoughts? This is more optional, but would make things more interesting).

For rewards for such an event, especially seeing it's hardcore difficulty meaning that it's technically hard, but you of course die and you're out... I agree with it being bigger than usual, of course, grand prize going to the winner, and some participation prizes for everyone else. Perhaps the participation prizes could also be based on how long they survived, or also based on whether or not they found a stronghold? For the grand prize, something on the order of 10,000d sounds more than reasonable-- it's 100 lapis ores worth, which is not something that would take all day long to get, but is something that would take time in general to earn. And as a second option, perhaps a team could opt out of the lapis option, and instead go for a rough equivalent in diamonds (some players may not be participating in our currency system, so lapis wouldn't be super valuable to them).

Elytras are definitely OP as discussed before in another topic, and we definitely need to be very cautious about passing them out. I think we should wait until we open up the end on the server to actually allow them to be obtainable, in the least, since they will definitely slow down path production town to town, which is something we have long and continually urged (I'd admit I'd probably use an elytra instead of walking a path or boating across a sea if that says anything).



I think that something every month is good as I mentioned before, but I'm iffy on whether if we wanted to do a race to the dragon every single month. I think we should mix it up month to month, and do events of similar survival/PvP theme, but not identical. I would like to also suggest that we could mix them up with UHC events (or also make the dragon race event a UHC style, race to the dragon). As a refresher on what a typical/classic UHC event is, it stands for Ultra Hardcore, which is basically the same idea of setting the map to hard difficulty (which reminds me of another point...), but health regeneration would be off. You can only regenerate health through golden apples or healing potions. UHC also usually entails PvP being the main aspect, where players are spread throughout the map, they gather their basic survival resources and PvP gear, and then the last man standing wins. Some UHC events also enforce things like a shrinking worldborder (which is very easy to do with one command), which would perhaps shrink from like a 2000x2000 area, down to 200x200 over the course of like 2 hours. This would effectively put a constraint on how long events last until a winner is decided since it'd force everyone together to battle. In general though, it's another idea to put into the mix so we aren't going to get bored of one particular event or another.

This brings me to another point-- we wouldn't want to set the server to hardcore difficulty because it would ban the players as they die. I think it would be much more interesting to people that when they die, they get automatically put into spectator mode to be able to fly around the map (without actually affecting anything of course), and be able to watch battles take place from whatever angle they like. Setting the server to hard difficulty is completely identical other than the fact that you wouldn't be immediately banned from the server. If we wanted to also do something like be more fond of the classic UHC event, we could also simply turn health regeneration off (UHC events, though are considered "hardcore" by their more extreme nature, are not actually hardcore difficulty-- just hard).

Picking and pulling relevant discussion for the Hardcore proposal:



I'm iffy on the PvP side with this because I don't want folks to get "territorial" and kill other players. Since I figure 5-6 players might attempt this I'd rather them not kill each other. Just to make it an easier goal to obtain I might even go in before the event launches and set the server spawn point close to an End portal and maybe mark it with some structure so most of the players time isn't spent finding one.



That's true. It should be a substantial amount. 12k is quite low on that end. I'd love to get feedback from other players about what they think is worth this challenge.



My idea was, since I was planning for this to be a repeatable event, to only make Elytras obtainable through this challenge. That way they aren't super wide spread, as once the dragon is defeated on the 1.9 world anyone can go into The End without worry and portal to the rest of The End. Sure, finding an Elytra could be hard but I think this challenge would balance their OP status as those who killed the dragon are truly, OP.




I like this idea. I would be more than happy to host a server that does this as I'm not sure how multi-verse handles Hardcore mode on other worlds, if it even supports individual difficulties. If we could get a list of hard core events folks would like to do that'd be great. We're already getting some "elitism" comments and I agree to an extent. I think we should certainly have events that make it fair for all contestants. I could even look into game worlds where it's a large map that players PvP on. They are given swords - I think? - and go at it. Upon death they are teleported to a room above the arena. I think there can be teams. Not quite hard core but could be a lot of fun.



I'm am quite against that. If Spectator mode wasn't a no-clipping thing, where players could zoom through blocks that could be useful. Or if spectator mode was like other games where you could only see from the PoV of another player, then I'd support it. But spectator mode in something like a Hardcore Dragon slaying could be bad as players could have a second, alt account to die then zoom around the map looking for mob spawners and other treasures and even The End Portal if I don't mark it. But I think we eventually ruled against alt accounts? On the other note, it could mess with the stats as spectating players still rack up play time and if we're going on the stats that could affect some stuff but I suspect we'd use kills and other values for determining participation scores.

The hardest thing we'd have, though, is getting participation. Like that snowball fight. Just 3 players with 7 on the server. Granted, there was no incentive but still. These events aren't going to be fun without a number of players. I think if we advertise each event long enough, set a date and time and stick to it, we'll have our participants. Maybe one month of events, then a month of advertising and setting up the next event -- One month on, one month off. Events like PvP could be laddered. Where We have 4 teams. T1 and T2, T3 and T4 go up against each other one weekend. The next weekend the winners from those battles go against each other, thought I think 6 teams could be a better fit. Even if it's 2v2.

For the spectating thing, coudn't you just put them in creative and remove all the permissions? Placement, Spawning, Block Breaking, and any others that may apply.

I'm iffy on Creative (with no perms) upon death as well. There's no zooming through walls but someone could still walk through lava or adventure around with no consequence. If we did an event where people could come back after death, I believe it'd have to be a PvP type area with a spectator viewing area so players could watch from the sidelines or above. When the purpose of a server challenge/event is hardcore, it should remain as such.

I think it'd be really fun to have an event like this for PvP. There's other types as well, such as going to the viewing area when you die, I think the game mode was Elimination or Last Man Standing.