Survey Results

Results and changes for 1.16 Stress Test

This is a summary of the changes we are making to the 1.16 server, following the feedback from the earlier survey. 168 of you responded and your feedback is valued. While we have not followed all your preferences to the letter, we are nonetheless making some changes to the 1.16 server based on your feedback. This is not an exhaustive list of 1.14-1.16 changes, but it does cover the big things the survey asked about.

World size

The initial world size will be 8750 blocks (diameter)

This only applies to the overworld. Other worlds will have their own sizes.

We previously announced our intention to make the 1.16 world smaller, for a variety of reasons. The 1.14 world size was too heavy on disk space, with the Dynmap taking up almost 100GB. In addition, only 0.92% of the 1.14 world's surface area was ever claimed, and the Dynmap still shows large unexplored areas. With the additional world changes discussed below, some larger builds will no longer be present in the overworld too, further reducing the need for space.

As a result, despite 49% of survey respondents saying the world size was "Just right", we will be using a smaller initial size for 1.16. We have opted for a size of 8750 blocks, which is in-between the 2 most popular alternative sizes - 10k (19%) and 7.5k (10%). This is roughly 80% smaller than the 1.14 world but should still offer plenty of space. Further expansions can always be considered if the world ends up too full, as well as for 1.17 and its expected mountain changes.

If this size proves inadequate for a good biome selection, we will consider slightly larger sizes.

The world will be square

Exactly 2/3 voted for keeping the world square like 1.14, and we will be doing so. A square world also allows the world border to remain visible, which will help with world wrapping. This results in a world with a similar surface area to the 10k circular 1.13 world.

The world will wrap around

There is a surprising majority - 58% - who would like to see a wraparound world, where reaching the border will teleport you to the other side. We are up for trying this, so it will be enabled in 1.16. It can always be disabled again if it proves too confusing or buggy. Since the world is square, the visible world border will give a visual indication of where wrapping will occur, which should make it less jarring.

Server Settings

The difficulty level will be set to Hard

This is one of our bigger departures from the survey results. In the survey, 67% of responses preferred normal difficulty, with 29% wanting hard. However, after a discussion with staff, and some survey participants, we are keen to try and experiment with hard difficulty. Staff are generally for this idea, and several comments within the survey, and conversations outside the survey have shown that some normal voters are willing to try hard difficulty.

We feel that the additional challenge added by hard may make the game more interesting, as food is more important, and mobs hit harder. In the end it is unlikely to be a significant difference, as Minecraft is significantly easier in a multiplayer setting, but we would at least like to give it a try.

Existing gamerules will remain the same

Many responses wanted all the listed gamerules to stay at their 1.14 settings, or had no preference:

mobGriefing - Remains Enabled

65% wanted mob griefing to remain enabled. This is unsurprising due to issues like villagers being unable to pick up items when it is disabled. Note that is does not affect the ability for mobs to damage claimed areas, or explosions above sea level. These are managed by other settings we will cover below.

doFireTick - Remains Disabled

64% preferred fire spread to remain disabled and remain disabled it will be. Fire will therefore not spread, as in 1.14.

doInsomnia - Remains Enabled

In one of the closest results of the whole survey, 41% of responses wanted phantoms to remain enabled, with 38% wanting them disabled. With such a close result, we decided to go with our personal preference of keeping them enabled, which also avoids issues with membrane becoming extremely hard to find.

doImmediateRespawn‌ - Remains Disabled

49% did not want immediate respawn to be enabled, and 38% had no preference, so the 1.14 behaviour will remain. Dying will still present you with the respawn screen and will allow you to try and work out where you are, while also risking your items despawning while doing so.

doPatrolSpawning - Remains Enabled

Pillager patrols will continue to spawn as they did in 1.14, as 74% of responses preferred this setting.

doTraderSpawning - Remains Enabled

The wandering trader will also continue to spawn, with 82% of responses preferred this setting.

doLimitedCrafting - Remains Disabled

Enabling this gamerule was unlikely to ever be considered, nonetheless 86% voted against it. Crafting with be unrestricted as a result.

disableRaids - Remains Disabled

Raids will remain enabled, with the support of 2/3 of the responses.

keepInventory - Remains Disabled

Another unlikely consideration which received little support, with 52% preferring it disabled and 23% having no preference. Dying will therefore drop items as normal.

doWeatherCycle - Remains Enabled

90% of responses wanted weather to remain enabled, as it likely would have anyway.

doDaylightCycle - Remains Enabled

The day/night cycle gets the highest level of support of all the gamerules, with 95% in favour. Time will continue to progress normally in 1.16.

Newly added gamerules will use their default values

The 2 new 1.16 gamerules received large majorities for their default settings, which we will keep:

forgiveDeadPlayers - Remains Enabled

82% preferred players to be forgiven by angry mobs, if said mobs see them die.

universalAnger - Remains Disabled

Nearby innocent players will not get attacked by angered mobs, after 49% of responses wanted this gamerule to remain at its default disabled value.

Some server settings will change

We will be changing some spigot/paper/Tuinity settings based on the survey results and wanting to experiment with new things:

nerf-spawner-mobs - Will be Disabled

This setting was enabled in 1.14 and helped reduce lag from mob spawner farms. However, it also makes random spawner-created mobs encountered in caves completely unresponsive to the player, which makes them pose no challenge at all.

More players would prefer it to remain enabled over being disabled, with 44% vs 17%, however 39% of responses expressed no preference on either side. As a result, we would like to start 1.16 with this disabled, to make mobs in caves less of an embarrassing waste of space. Naturally, we will turn it back on if this causes performance issues.

fix-zero-tick-instant-grow-farms - Remains Enabled

Zero tick farms are apparently fixed in 1.16, however if they somehow reappear this setting will be enabled to prevent their use. 57% of responses were in favour of this remaining enabled.

use-faster-eigencraft-redstone - Remains Enabled

This setting improves the performance of Redstone, at the cost of potentially breaking some particularly complex machines. Some comments in the survey did express concerns over this setting as a result of this risk. In the end though 47% remained in favour of it, with 36% having no preference, so we shall leave it enabled.

auto-replenish - Remains Enabled

Lootable containers that have been looted and left empty will continue to refill themselves after a delay for newly visiting players, with the support of 82% of responses.

flat-bedrock - Will be Enabled

Bedrock will be generated as a flat layer in 1.16 after receiving strong support at 45% in favour and 25% with no preference.

disable-player-crits - Remains Disabled

Crits will continue to exist, with 52% in support and 38% having no preference.

disable-sprint-interruption-on-attack - Remains Disabled

58% of responses wanted sprint interruption behaviour to remain as it was in 1.14, with another 27% unsure.

disable-relative-projectile-velocity - Remains Disabled

Projectiles velocity will continue to use 1.14 behaviour, with the support of 42% of responses and 47% with no preference.

pistons-can-push-tile-entities - Will be Enabled

Testing has shown pushable tile entities allows bypassing of chunk limits. This option will therefore remain disabled unless a fix for this is found.

One of the most significant 1.16 changes will be the enabling of this setting. This allows pistons to push some tile entities, such as single chests, furnaces, campfires and more. This naturally depends on the feature being implemented in 1.16 Tuinity, which is not guaranteed. However, if it is, we shall be enabling it with the support of 45% of responses, plus 33% without a preference.

Grief Prevention settings will remain the same

The following Grief Prevention settings received support for their current 1.14 settings, and will remain the same:

BlockSurfaceCreeperExplosions - Remains Enabled

With 71% in favour, explosions above sea-level will continue to do no block damage.

EndermenMoveBlocks - Remains Enabled

58% supported endermen continuing to move blocks, with 22% having no preference. This behaviour will therefore remain enabled.

CreaturesTrampleCrops - Remains Disabled

Mobs will remain unable to trample crops, with the support of 77% of responses.

RabbitsEatCrops - Remains Enabled

Rabbits will still be able to eat crops in 1.16, after 43% voted for this to remain enabled, with 33% expressing no preference.

Claims

Claims will not automatically expire

32% of responses preferred claims to not expire due to inactivity, with 60 days just behind at 29%. After some discussion, we have decided to go with no automatic expiry, so large high-effort builds will not get griefed because the builder took a long break.

Staff can remove claims and builds at their own discretion

While claims will not automatically expire, staff will be free to remove claims at their discretion. For example, claimed unfinished builds by long inactive users, low effort builds and inactive builds in the way of active ones will all be removable. We feel this is the best compromise to ensures that high quality builds do not automatically lose protection, whilst unfinished or low-quality ones can be removed to clean up the world and leave space for others to use.

Players who are affected by an inactive claim near them can continue to create modreqs as before, and we will deal with them on a case by case basis.

Lectern reading will be allowed, but other protections remain the same

71% of responses preferred that lecterns not require access trust to read. We will be following this, assuming it does not allow the reading player to steal the book.

All other protections will remain the same, which includes:

Additional Worlds

Mall, Pixel Art and Amplified worlds will be added

These suggestions had 68%, 85% and 64% in favour, respectively.

Adding a Mall world allows for easier expansion of the mall if required. It also reduces the minimum possible size of the nether hub and removes a possible source of FPS drops for players who visit the hub, even if they are not interested in the mall.

A Pixel Art world allows us to create an area more suited to pixel art creation, with the ability to fly and claimable plots laid out in a way that works with maps. It also frees up space in the overworld for normal builds, as we can now require pixel art to only be built in its dedicated world.

The amplified world existed in 1.14 and was a good source of sand as well as being cool to explore. There is no real downside to bringing it back in 1.16, so we shall do so.

Farm world will not be added, at least to start

Whilst the farm world idea did attract strong support at 66% in favour, we will not be adding it at the start of 1.16. The main reason for this is the possible performance improvements may not come to pass. A world dedicated to farms will likely result in more of those farms being ticked if a single person visits, even if they are not using many of them, simply due to their proximity. Preventing this issue by spacing them out would be additional work and causes issues with players having to travel further to reach them.

We are however open to the idea of having another hive-style world in 1.16. However, this would be on a smaller scale, and will require more planning to ensure server performance is not affected. We are considering either putting together a trusted group for this or taking pitches for farms designs. Either way, this is for the future.

Plugins

Most plugins will remain

Liquid Tanks is not being added to the 1.16 server, due to allowing a dupe exploit.

The following plugins will remain on the 1.16 server:

The Compass plugin will be removed

Whilst the compass plugin still received support, with 60% in favour, with the addition of lodestones in 1.16 we consider it obsolete and will be removing it. Lodestones can perform the main function of the compass plugin (pointing to your bed), and work in all worlds, whilst the compass plugin works only in the overworld. In addition, lodestones are a craftable block, which make it feel much more "Minecraft" than a random command can be.

The TrainCarts plugin will be added from the start

Due to it receiving strong support (71% in favour), we will be adding the TrainCarts plugin from the start of the 1.16 server. This plugin made a brief appearance during the 1.14 server, and while it received some positive reception, it also caused plenty of issues for minecart based farms. The main issue was that TrainCarts altered the behaviour of minecarts in a way that broke existing farms. Many of these issues were fixed but adding it from the start will prevent any remaining changes from causing issues, as players can design around them in the initial build.

We will not be enabling all features of TrainCarts immediately, as we will need to assess the impact of the more non-vanilla automation it offers, but the basic cart behaviour and vertical/inverted rails will be there. The ability to suspend minecarts from iron bars will also be present.

Custom generation for The End will be considered

59% of responses were supportive of the idea of adding a custom world generator, with 21% having no preference. We are therefore looking into the possibility of using a custom world generator for The End (which will not be open from the start), with the goal of making the end more interesting by adding more things to discover within.

The existing end house plugin has the support of 64% of responses, so we may still include this, or replace it with generator provided features if they exist.

An armour stand plugin will be added

A plugin for editing armour stands will be added in 1.16, following the idea getting significant support in the survey, with 85% in favour. We have not yet decided whether we will use the one currently in use on the creative server, or an alternative such as the vanilla tweaks datapack.

Some VanillaTweaks datapacks will be added

We investigated VanillaTweaks after a good number of comments recommended we do so. We believe some of the packs they offer are good quality of life changes or offer interesting new features. As a result, we will be adding the following packs:

The Nether

Claims will be enabled in The Nether, a certain distance from spawn

In line with 52% in support of Nether claims, and 17% with no preference, we will be enabling claims in The Nether. A few comments did draw attention to a large problem this would create however - interference with portal creation. Players would be able to claim areas containing other player's portals to prevent them being edited, and claims could also be unintentionally griefed by newly created portals from the overworld.

To fix this we are restricting claims to the area of The Nether beyond the overworld size, as portals in the overworld will never reach this area which avoids the problem. We are currently working with 1500 blocks from spawn, which allows the overworld to be expanded a bit without bringing the portal issues back. All the space outside of this range will be free to claim, whilst areas inside will work just like the 1.14 nether.

Nether roof travel will be allowed, with spawns disabled

36% of responses supported nether roof access without mob spawns, with another 23% wanting access with spawns. A further 20% had no preference. We believe the best compromise here is to enable access with spawns disabled.

The Nether Hub will be much smaller

As the Mall will be in its own world (62% voted in favour of this), the 1.16 Nether Hub does not need to be anywhere near as large as the 1.14 hub. The staff-created 1.16 hub will have a total size of 62x62 blocks, centred on spawn. This has several beneficial effects. Firstly, we will not have cases of portals getting created inside the hub, as the 1.16 hub is now smaller than the equivalent size of the overworld spawn area. Secondly, the smaller hub results in community created areas being much closer to spawn, so the community is now in more control of the hub's appearance. This overall brings us closer to the 1.13 hub style, while retaining some structure in the form of the spawn area and equipment rooms remaining admin claimed.

The portal search radius will be smaller

The portal search radius will be reduced from its default of 128. This will limit the distance that portals link to each other from, making it easier to create a portal that does not unintentionally link to an unrelated one.

Trusted players will be able to edit the directory

With 42% of responses supporting it, we will be limiting directory editing to a group of trusted players. We are doing this to ensure the directory remains free of unsuitable locations, whilst avoiding the extra moderation overhead that would result from making it mod only. Who will be trusted/what criteria there are for trusted will be discussed at a later date.

Directories will be restricted to Towns, Farms, POIs

98% and 78% voted for adding towns and farms to the directory. We have decided to avoid adding settlements to the directory, despite the 70% in support for them, to reduce clutter. The 1.14 directories are rather cluttered, containing more locations than they were designed to, and not all of these are locations many people will visit. Limiting it to just towns and other notable locations reduces the possible amount of locations to more manageable levels.

Dynmap markers will be used more extensively

Of course, some players will want to be able to find settlements and smaller locations too, so we will be making greater use of Dynmap markers this time around. The trusted directory players will be able to add/edit Dynmap markers, removing the need to create modreqs for them. Locations that do not meet the directory requirements can still have a Dynmap marker, so they may still be found. Dynmap layers will be added for Towns, Settlements, Farms and POIs.

Farms

Additional rules will be in place for farms

The survey results show strong agreement for wanting farms to look nice (59% agree) and not wanting to be near ugly farms (61% agree). As a result, we will be enforcing this. Naturally, some leeway will be given for in-progress or recently completed builds, as farms are typically built in the open at first. However, if some time passes without an attempt to make a farm look presentable, mods will take appropriate action.

71% of responses agree that farms should be removed or limited if server performance is affected. We will therefore act on farms that we suspect are affecting server performance, either requesting they be removed/resized, or immediately removing them ourselves if the situation is severe enough to warrant it.

64% of responses supported the view that farms should be appropriately sized based on demand, with 57% saying that excessively sized farms should not be allowed. With this in mind we will be acting on excessively sized farms, such as melon farms which have always filled chests. Actions will include requests to fix or mods resizing/removing themselves depending on severity.

87% agreed that farms should have a way to disable them if problems occur, so we will also be making this a requirement. where possible.

These new rules will be documented in more detail before the server launch.

Coordinates

Coordinates will be enabled outside of The End

The coordinates results provide some interesting reading, so they are presented here in full:

Coordinates are an important part of the gameplay experience


Strongly Disagree: 8.33%
Disagree: 17.86%
Neutral: 32.14%
Agree: 23.81%
Strongly Agree: 17.86%

I cannot enjoy the game with coordinates disabled


Strongly Disagree: 35.12%
Disagree: 27.38%
Neutral: 22.62%
Agree: 7.74%
Strongly Agree: 7.14%

Servers should be free to choose whether coordinates are enabled


Strongly Disagree 2.98%
Disagree: 5.36%
Neutral: 23.81%
Agree: 34.52%
Strongly Agree: 33.33%

I consider coordinates a "crutch" which people are too dependent on


Strongly Disagree: 26.79%
Disagree: 29.76%
Neutral: 26.79%
Agree: 10.71%
Strongly Agree: 5.95%

I prefer a server map to having coordinates enabled


Strongly Disagree: 6.55%
Disagree: 12.50%
Neutral: 33.93%
Agree: 24.40%
Strongly Agree: 22.62%

1.16 lodestones make coordinates less important for navigation


Strongly Disagree: 8.93%
Disagree: 17.26%
Neutral: 45.24%
Agree: 16.67%
Strongly Agree: 11.90%


I want coordinates to return for 1.16


Strongly Disagree: 6.55%
Disagree: 10.71%
Neutral: 25.60%
Agree: 29.76%
Strongly Agree: 27.38%


In the end they show strong support for server choice, strong disagreement with enjoyment being impossible without them, very mixed views on their importance, especially in 1.16, and preference for a map over coordinates being enabled - with a surprising number of people in the middle throughout. There were also plenty of comments on all sides of the debate. In the end though, the result is clear, a lot of people want coordinates back, and this will be done.

The community response to their initial disabling remains unacceptable and was a large factor in the decision to never reenable them, lest the more toxic players be encouraged to act similarly to any future change they disliked. However, this is now a chance for a fresh start, and many of those players have since left, so now is a good time to enable them again.

It was a nice experiment, but there are indeed areas of the game that are rather dependant on them, and valid non-navigational uses for them. Hopefully, it has at least reduced dependency on coordinates and shown there are alternative ways to find your way in the world.

The one exception to this change is that coordinates will remain disabled in The End (when it opens), in a similar way to Dynmap's end limitations. After some discussion we all agree this is a fair compromise, as The End's challenge and appeal comes from exploration to find rare items. The addition of lodestones in 1.16 now also makes it possible to have a compass that points back home too.

Results and changes for 1.16 Survival

This is a summary of the results from the Stress Test Survey, and our responses to them. 54 of you responded and your feedback is valued. Sadly 7 players started but did not complete the survey before the deadline, these results have not been included to ensure consistency.

While we have not followed all your preferences to the letter, we are nonetheless making some changes to the stress test server based on your feedback.

The results will be presented question by question, in the order those questions appeared in the survey. We will also include some of the more noteworthy comments received in the survey, and our responses to them. Following this we will detail what changes we intend to make, if any.

Please note that any changes listed here will not take effect immediately, we will need time to implement them. Keep an eye on #stress_test_updates for news on the planned changes.

About You

The About You section of the survey was to get a picture of why players choose to play on the RTGame Minecraft Server, and how long they have been here.

Servers Played

image-1604090369567.png

The results here show that almost all the players who responded to the survey have previously played on the 1.15 survival server. There are also still a good number of players from the 1.12/1.13 days too.

Reasons for Playing

image-1604090521955.pngThe server community was the most common reason given for playing on the RTGame server, at 87% of players. Both building and survival were not too far behind, at around 60% each.


Difficulty

The choice of hard difficulty has been a subject of sometimes heated debate since the stress test server opened and was one of the reasons why the survey was created. We have previously heard strong views from parts of the community regarding this, and felt it was necessary to get a broader selection of opinions before deciding what to do.

Overall Enjoyment

image-1604001438749.png

These results are rather encouraging, with a much higher number of players happy with hard mode, than unhappy with it. Many players are also in the middle, with no strong feelings either way. This is perhaps the opposite of what we expected after the negative feedback we received before the survey, which now appears to be from a vocal minority. 

In the end we are happy to see a surprisingly positive reception here.

Difficulty Elements

Increased Mob Damage

Hard difficulty increases mob damage, with the exact differences varying per mob. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604006012094.png

The results are close here but do show slightly more players dislike the increase in mob damage that hard mode brings. Not a huge difference, but it is an area we would like to make changes in regardless.

Spider Potion Effects

Regular spiders have a chance of spawning with a potion effect on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005997761.png

A more positive result for spider potion effects, with more positive than negative responses. In addition, a large neutral response suggests this is not a setting we need to tweak.

Zombie Reinforcements

Zombies have a chance of spawning reinforcements, when attacked on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005987886.png

For zombie reinforcements, the results are almost exactly split, with a single vote pushing it into negative territory. This tiny margin. the large neutral response, and the fact another mechanic unique to hard mode zombies (door breaking) was already removed, mean we will be leaving this setting intact for now.

Increased Chance of Mobs Spawning With Armour/Weapons

Mobs are more likely to spawn with armour on hard difficulty. Zombies are also more likely to spawn with weapons. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005977364.png

Pretty clear result here, with many players happy with the change, and most of the rest being neutral. We will leave this setting as it is.

Increased Chance of Mobs Picking up Dropped Items

Skeletons and Zombies are more likely to be able to pick up dropped items on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005965733.png

Another positive outcome here, with slightly more players supporting the change to mobs picking up dropped items. The positive responses also appear to hold stronger feelings than the negative ones, with more opting for love over like vs hate over dislike. We will be leaving this setting as it is.

Increased Effect Durations

Cave Spiders, The Wither and bees inflict status effects which last longer on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005954657.png

Effect durations are another area we intend to make changes in, after the responses here show many players are unhappy with the current state of things.

Starvation

Damage caused by an empty food meter can kill players on hard difficulty. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005923743.png

Many players remained neutral regarding starvation, with slightly more of those remaining responding positively. We will therefore be leaving this unchanged.

Increased Raid Waves

Raids are longer on hard difficulty, with an increased number of waves. Full details can be found on the wiki.

image-1604005939095.png

Raid changes also attracted a large neutral response, with a significant majority of non-neutral players being happy with them. No raid changes are planned as a result.

Desired Changes

image-1604007176937.png

Perhaps the most important question is what players would like to see done with the difficulty overall, and the results here show that over 2/3 of players would like something at least based on hard difficulty. Some of those players would like some tweaks, which we are happy to provide in consideration of the results for the individual elements above. Many however are also happy with the way things are right now, more-so than any other answer for this question.

The results shown here certainly demonstrate that there is clear support for hard mode, either unchanged or with tweaks. It also demonstrates that the loudest feedback we previously received was not at all representative of the overall community's view on difficulty. I hope the above results are sufficient to show members of this group that you do not speak for the entire community, and you should not act like you do.

Comments

Unsurprisingly, there are people on both sides of the topic, here are some highlights:

As of now I'm fine with a majority of changes that hard mode has to offer and got pretty used to it, The only con of it is the early game or starting out which is primarily influenced by mob damage [...] which has led to me despising specific mobs most definitely the skeleton [...] with their extreme range and chance of having enchanted bows make them a killing machine and pain to deal with.

How[sic] it's no longer relaxing, frustrations around numerous deaths, distractions from building goals, unfair to those who just join the server.

The only feature from Hard difficulty that I would personally tweak is the potion duration effects as I've had multiple occurrences in and outside of the test server where I've been brought down from 10 hearts to 1/2 a heart from a single mob like a witch, just because they threw a poison potion. [...] Having [witches] apply a poison debuff of higher potency for a much shorter time would keep their deadly nature while removing the agonizing time to wait or get milk.

It feels more alive, a challenge, more enjoyable, can provide more growth, more fun, still relatively easy when you have good armour, made me enjoy the game once more.

I'm perfectly fine with hard difficulty, but it would be nice if some more annoying aspects of it were tweaked like starvation taking longer or zombies picking up armor more often. [...] I don't want them 100% gone just tweaked.

Overall I'm loving hard mode as most of my deaths are due to my pure stupidity [...] it makes the world feel more alive in a weird sense as it now forces you to adapt to the fact you cant have it straight of the bat the fact zombies call reinforcements and spiders spawn with effects I adore as like before it makes the world feel more alive.

I prefer the shift in tone and have found it more enjoyable 

Negative effect durations should be shorter and/or rarer to get. There is no fun in having half of your inventory filled with Milk just in case you get poisoned.

In general there were significantly more positive comments than negative ones, with many of the negative ones bringing up issues with specific mechanics or mobs, some of which we will address.

There are a few comments we would like to address individual however:

I don't like the ability of zombies to break wooden doors, otherwise everything can stay the way hard mode is configured.

This mechanic was always intended to be disabled, particularly in claimed areas, and any ability for Zombies to break doors is considered a bug. Please report this if it continues.

Made my point many times before so yea

Whilst this may very well turn out to be true, it is nonetheless a thoroughly unhelpful and unconstructive comment. By creating this survey, we offered a place where you should share your thoughts for us to consider, but you decided not to due to already doing it elsewhere. It is quite likely we have not seen these previous occasions you have "made your point", and thus your opinion may not be visible to us. 

We want to take this moment to remind people that we can only act on things that you tell us about. We cannot read minds, so assuming we already know something will only ensure nothing will change.

Changes We Will Be Making

With the overall opinion of difficulty appearing positive, the difficulty will remain at hard. However, the above results show there are 2 areas that could see some improvement: mob damage and effect duration.

We consider mob damage to be an important part of the overall challenge brought by hard difficulty, so we will not be making sweeping changes to reduce it. However, it has become clear that some aspects of the damage changes may need to be toned down a bit. Skeletons have been named as an annoyance by many players in-game and in the survey comments, as hard difficulty increases their damage, but also increases their accuracy and firing speed. We aim to address this by removing one of these changes, while keeping the others intact.

Our current plan is to reduce the accuracy of Skeletons back to its normal difficulty setting, whilst retaining the firing speed and damage increases hard mode brings. This will allow arrows to be dodged more effectively, whilst retaining greater punishment for failing to dodge, hopefully making Skeletons easier to deal with. Further changes can be considered if this proves insufficient, but this is where we would like to start.

We will not be making damage changes to other mobs at this time, as we feel the game already offers ways to deal with them. Shields can be used to absorb all damage in the direction you are facing, even a charged creeper explosion, and can be equipped in the offhand for quick use. In addition, many mobs are limited to melee damage, which is easily avoided by keeping your distance. Placing torches and building a wall around your in-progress build are also simple ways of avoiding mobs spawning near you entirely. The night can also be sped up and skipped by players sleeping, allowing the most dangerous part of the Minecraft day to be ignored if desired by those online at the time.

For effect durations, we agree that some of them are rather excessive. There will inevitably be other mobs close by if you have encountered one that has poisoned you for example, and their increased damage will already provide additional challenge, without needing to increase the effect duration too. We will therefore be reducing effects durations to their normal difficulty levels. This will affect Cave Spiders, The Wither and Bees.

Witches are not affected by the above change, as the duration of the effects they inflict are the same as the durations of player-crafted potions. We will be making changes here however, as Witches are another mob that has drawn the ire of players in the survey comments. Our plan is to replace the Poison I potion that witches throw, with Poison II. Poison II inflicts roughly the same damage as Poison I (19 hearts vs 18), but it does so over a much shorter period (21 seconds vs 45 seconds). As a result, it deals its damage faster, prompting players to run away to heal, without forcing them to wait almost a minute for the effect to subside.

As mentioned above, we will not be making any changes to Zombie reinforcements at this time. Zombies have already lost one of their unique hard mode mechanics, door breaking, and their other mechanic of picking up items is shared with the Skeleton. As a result, we are reluctant to remove their one remaining unique mechanic, especially with such a tiny margin in the results. This can always be revisited later.

The final change we will be making is an attempt to reduce the perceived "grind" required for players to reach where they were before dying. We have already significantly increased the lifetime of dropped items, which allows easier recovery, and we would like to make another quality-of-life change to XP drops. Currently when a player dies, the game drops 7 XP per player XP level up to a maximum of 100 points. This results in dying at level 30 only dropping 100 XP, or just over 7 levels, which is quite an extreme punishment.

We will be changing this behaviour to drop 50% of the total XP a player had, which for a level 30 player would equate to just over 22 levels. Some work will still be necessary to reach level 30 again, but hopefully with less of a feeling that the game has taken all your XP away. The exact percentage can be tweaked in future, if necessary. The arena XP drop rate will remain unchanged.

These are the changes we will be starting with. We are happy to revisit this in future if further changes become necessary.

In summary

Mob Settings

We have experimented with a few mob related changes during the stress test, with 2 receiving some criticism. We therefore wanted to see the opinion of the overall community before making any changes.

Increased Mob Cap

The hostile mob cap has been doubled compared to 1.15 survival (from 12 to 24). The passive mob cap was increased from 9 to 12.

image-1604059919041.pngThe results show a clear majority are happy with the increased mob cap, with few unhappy players. We will therefore keep the mob cap as it is if performance allows.

Additional Natural Spawns

image-1604063839927.png

Adding additional mob types has also received a positive reception, with another clear majority. We will be tweaking some of the spawn chances however, due to some issues we have experienced, which were also mentioned in the comments.

Chicken Hostility

Chickens will retaliate if attacked.

image-1604063855615.png

Chicken hostility was a silly change, which was introduced purely because the new server software we use offered it as an option. We may not necessarily keep this, but the results do at least show a majority would be fine if we did so.

Phantoms Ignoring Players With Torches

Phantoms will no longer attack insomniac players if they are holding a torch.

image-1604063859557.png

The most positive response in this section of the survey goes to the Phantom changes, so we will be keeping this setting in place.

Lowered Guardian Farm Rewards

Farmed guardians drop half the normal XP and a single item, to balance the relative ease in gaining the XP, and to help prevent massive overabundance of the items they drop.

image-1604063864924.png

Things are less positive when looking at the responses to guardian farm changes, with far more unhappy than happy players. We will be making some changes in this area.

No Mid-Air Spawner Spawns

Spawners no longer spawn mobs in mid-air, making them consistent with all other forms of spawning, and discouraging low-effort farms that simply remove the ground below a spawner.

image-1604063871169.png

The reaction to disabling mid-air spawners is mixed. Whilst more players are unhappy, those who are happy hold stronger views. Almost half of players are also neutral on the matter. The comments list some issues with the current implementation of this change, which prevents some mobs spawning entirely and will be fixed. If this fix is not sufficient to change the above results, then we are open to making additional changes in the future.

No Overworld Withers

Withers can no longer spawn in the overworld, to reduce the damage of escaped withers, and to discourage trapping withers for name-tagging areas or for low-effort farming, which has implications for server performance.

image-1604063877404.png

With a slight lead in positive responses, and many players without an opinion, we will be leaving Wither spawns disabled in the overworld.

Comments

Unsurprisingly many of the comments mention the guardian farm changes, generally being happier with the item changes than the XP changes. Some comments call for the XP change to be undone, others say they are happy with it. Aside from guardians, many comments were happy with the Phantom, additional mobs and chicken hostility changes.

Here are some highlights:

Guardians dropping a single item is a change I would love to see kept as it allows for storage systems to be kept small, not overload, and as a result cuts down on the amount of hoppers required. However, the halving of XP per Guardian can cause issues such as congestion as statistically it takes a person twice as long to achieve the desired XP level.

Renewable elder guardians are epic. though I would personally like to see their chances lowered a bit more

I love love LOVE the fact phantoms ignore torches as I'm usually stupid enough not to sleep before the 3 days are up. [...] I haven't really noticed a change with the guardian rewards XP wise as I usually just repair my items and be done with it [...]

The change to guardians dropping one item is in my opinion great. Last server the chests were constantly overflowing or people threw away stacks and stacks of fish and shards. Having this slightly nerfed will help slow that down a bit.

Yes, the guardian farm changes hurt but I love how it encourages farm diversity. I've only used 'gfarms on the previous server.

I'm still sceptical about the mob spawner block changes, specially for Blazes BUT other designs can always be made instead of sticking it to the old floating ones.

I really like the elder guardian spawns due to renewable sponge but the spawn locations still seem a bit bugged.

No overworld withers is also good because loud noises just to nametag your base on 1.15 was very obnoxious.

Lowered guardian farm rewards wasn't noticeable considering how abysmal the guardian farm on 1.15 was,

Personally I'd like if Guardians dropped full xp but just dropped the half items but if those two are connected together as one thing it doesn't bother me

Changes We Will Be Making

Most of the mob focused changes have been well received and will be left as they are. The guardian farm and spawner changes however require some attention.

The change in Guardian Farm rewards has attracted criticism ever since it was added, with many complaints cantering around the increased time required to gain XP when using the farm, and the performance implications that has.

We currently have no concerns about the Guardian Farm affecting server performance, so this will not factor into our decisions. We also encourage players to consider other means of gathering XP if they are dissatisfied with the Guardian Farm. Minecraft provides plenty of ways of gathering XP, and we now also have a mob arena which can be used for that purpose.

That aside we have since learned that using the Guardian Farm is not as straightforward as it appears, with players sometimes dying due to the higher damage the Guardians can inflict. This also causes mending to "eat" more of the XP gained from farming, particular with the mending changes discussed later. We will therefore be increasing farmed Guardian XP drops to 75% of their normal value, to try and offset this. 100% can always be considered if this proves insufficient, but since this farm has a significantly better design than the 1.15 server, we would rather not jump straight to a potentially unbalanced level of XP gains.

The limits to Guardian item drops will remain unchanged, as the sorting system overflowing was a common problem on the 1.15 server, and the number of items generated is simply too high for the player base to conceivably have a use for. This opinion is shared by some of the players who helped build the farm.

Elder guardians will remain a rare spawn, however their chance of spawning will be reduced as they are simply too common currently. Some players have also noticed that they often spawn outside of water. This was not intended, and we will try to fix this if it is possible to do so.

As for spawners, we will be removing the mid-air change from blaze spawners, as this essentially leaves them unable to spawn. The change will remain for all other spawners, to prevent low effort floating spawner farms being created en-masse, with their associated performance cost.

In summary:

Server Settings

Some server settings have also been tweaked during the stress test, particularly after we switched our server software in the first week, which offered many more settings for us to experiment with. We added these to the survey to see how well received they were.

Mending Changes

Mending now always repairs the most damaged equipped item, rather than randomly selecting one.

image-1604064094411.pngIt is no contest for the Mending changes, which see broad support in the survey results. We will be leaving this setting enabled.

Editable Signs

Signs can now be edited by right clicking them with another sign.

image-1604064099991.png

Editable signs have also been well received, with no players having a negative opinion of the feature, which we will leave enabled.

Sign Colours

Signs can now use colour codes, just like in chat.

image-1604064104338.png

The ability to use colour codes on signs has similarly strong support, so we will keep this enabled too.

Dropped Items Lasting Longer

Most dropped items now last 24 hours instead of 5 minutes, with a selection of "junk" items lasting 15 minutes before despawning.

image-1604064111141.png

Another significant majority in support of longer dropped item despawn times. We will therefore be keeping this setting unchanged as it has caused no performance issues at all so far.

Nether Border Removal

The nether no longer has a world border and can be explored infinitely.

image-1604064116399.png

Finally, we see no players against the removal of the Nether border, so the Nether will remain infinite if performance and storage space allow.

Junk Items

After the 24-hour item despawn change was made, it quickly became apparent that some items would quickly pile up and start to litter the world, particularly drops from mobs or trees. To mitigate this, we introduced the "junk" list, which consists of items of little value, which despawn in 15 minutes rather than 24 hours.

The list currently consists of: Cobblestone, Netherrack, Eggs, Rotten Flesh, Spider Eyes, Sweet Berries, Kelp, Bones, Cod, Feathers, Wheat Seeds, Arrows, Saplings, Flint, Sticks, Pumpkins, Melon Slices, Sugarcane, Bamboo, Cacti.

We asked for additional suggestions of junk items in the survey, and got plenty of responses:

image-1604074792657.png

As shown above, common responses included blocks frequently encountered while mining, fighting mobs, or general exploration. We agree with many of these suggestions and they will be added to the junk list.

Comments

The comments for this section are almost unanimously positive towards all the changes made, with a few expressing concerns of the performance implications of longer despawn times. Here are some highlights:

Mending Prioritizing is a good idea

I can't stress this enough how much I love these changes. Mending changes can save a nearly broken piece or armour from breaking if I kill a guardian. Not having to rewrite a sign is extremely useful, especially if writing long messages. Dropped items lasting longer makes death not as scary. No nether border is very exciting for players that enjoy exploring, and provides a nearly unlimited amount of netherrite and other rare things in the nether.

I'm actually glad to see a greater chance for players to retrieve their items without the risk of becoming an Olympic athlete to get their items back.

I mostly like these server settings, however I do suggest for "junk" items be on a 10 min timer rather than 15, since most people would leave these behind, and most of these can be gathered in big amounts with no real purpose unless you are intentionally gathering them for a project/starting out

Don't the dropped items lasting 24 hours cause lag? I don't understand the reasoning behind adding this, unless it's for the death of players, in which case I feel like a chest with all of your items in the spot where you died would be a better alternative

I'm in favour of all of these, they seem like positive quality-of-life changes that don't necessarily affect the "gameplay loop" of survival other than allowing you more time to retrieve your items and not stress over if you can get back in time, and I think that's great.

Changes We Will Be Making

Few changes are needed here as most players are happy with how things are.

The 24-hour despawn time will remain if performance allows. Currently we have no concerns about performance at all, as items have turned out to be rather undemanding so far. If this changes we will adjust appropriately, but for now everything is fine.

In response to the junk comments, we will be adding the following items to the junk list:

Villager Settings

Another controversial area is the villager changes that have been made on the Stress Test server. Stress Test Villagers have some of their trades modified to use Diamonds rather than Emeralds, in particular Enchanted Books. This was done with the goal of preventing these trades being farmed with a renewable resource, by using methods such as "melkin farms", which were a source of performance issues in 1.15 survival.

This section of the survey aims to show what the community thinks of these changes, and if any tweaks are necessary.

Overall Enjoyment

image-1604064840548.png

Like with the difficulty results above, this is not the result we expected considering the negative feedback received before the survey. The results here show many players are happy or neutral about the villager changes overall, with more players being happy than any other response. Happy players on their own also outnumber both negative answers combined. We are happy to see this proportion of players satisfied with the changes, which again indicates that the loudest detractors are a vocal minority in the community.

Elements

Non-Renewable Items in Trades

image-1604064288917.png

Things get more mixed when looking at the specifics, with slightly more positive responses than negative regarding the use of non-renewable items. A good number of neutral players suggests leaving things as they are is the best approach.

Diamonds in Trades

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A similar split of results for using Diamonds specifically in trades, with less neutral votes but a similar lead for people in favour of this change. It again seems logical to leave things as they are with this result.

Higher Trade Prices

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Increasing trade prices in general gets broader support, with half of players liking it, and most of the rest being neutral. We will be leaving this change in place, but are open to experimenting with the specifics, as explained below.

Desired Changes

image-1604064342439.png

When asked about the trade changes they would like to see, it is clear the main opinion is that prices need to change, with 40% of players suggesting this. This is something we are open to experiment with, as the current trade prices were chosen somewhat arbitrarily.

The other available options get little support in comparison, with 15% of players suggesting a change in items used in trades and changing the chance of successful villager curing.

Comments

Many of the comments in this section focused on trade pricing, with a few requesting changes to villager infect rates, which we are not considering at this time. Here are some highlights:

Personally I'd like to see a 100% rate of curing considering that curing is client-side but I can see how this could seem broken
I think some of the diamond trades are a little much and honestly would prefer emeralds, but it has to be a non-renewable resource so people don't break the server with a 20000 hopper farm. for me reducing the price of diamond trades by 1-2 would be pretty good,
Overall it's a pretty minor change and I don't have very strong opinions either way, 8 diamonds is cheaper than 24 hours to get into the hive tbh.

[...] I'd like to see enchant prices go up personally.

As a person who trades somewhat often I feel like the diamond trades should be somewhat reduced, mostly they suck them up and hurt the economy since there's no getting them back. Villager curing is something else that could be tweaked since it can be obviously exploited but having to lose villagers every time or more often can be a bit sad when trying to get good discounts of specific items.

Making the price higher is a pretty good way to make some things more valuable. At the moment, quite a few books are still pretty cheap, despite being valuable. Discounts also play into this, since they're quite easy to farm and practically negate the diamond prices. Personally, I believe that some books like Mending shouldn't be sold at all, to make Mending armour actually unique and not something that can be easily replaced

I feel that some of the prices for the villagers (namely the enchanted books and whatnot) are too expensive, like mending costing more than a whole new diamond pickaxe.

If the server remains in hard mode, enchanted gear becomes more of a necessity to avoid dying frequently. I am concerned that with enchantments consuming diamonds it will further encourage hoarding diamonds and massive strip mines. [...]

I would like to say that I enjoy diamonds being a part of the resources required for certain enchantments as it puts a reason for players to spend a currency that is often hoarded for no good reason.

Changes We Will Be Making

Due to the unexpected positive reception to the current changes, we intend to keep Diamond trades as they are. The exact trades that require Diamonds were decided arbitrarily, so we may still adjust the items affected.

However, in response to the plentiful feedback regarding prices, we plan to change the prices of some of the Diamond Villager trades. We cannot give exact details at this time as this will need to be worked out, but some trades will likely be reduced in price. This will likely be an ongoing exercise as we try to find a sweet spot.

We are also looking into suggestions of reducing the effectiveness of the more exploitable Emerald trades, to protect the value of Emeralds, discourage Emerald farms, and allow their possible future use in other trades.

We will not be changing curing success rates at this time, as we are aware this can be exploited to gain huge discounts on some trades. We may revisit this if we find a way to add a minimum price to restore some balance.

In summary

Plugins

We added several significant plugins to the Stress Test server, so we added this section of the survey to see what players thought of them after having a chance to use them.

Train Carts

Train Carts adds new minecart-centric features such as vertical/upside-down rails, as well as signs which can control minecart behaviour.

image-1604064538675.pngMany players are happy with Train Carts at present, so we will be leaving it in place if performance allows, and we do not run into any major bugs. Many players have no opinion currently, possibly due to not yet trying the plugin out, so we will keep an eye on this one.

Big Doors

Big Doors allows the creation of animated rotating and sliding doors, which can be controlled with redstone.

image-1604064542301.pngSimilar results for Big Doors, with many players happy, some players in the middle, and few unhappy. We will also be keeping this plugin enabled in the absence of major issues.

Armor Stand Editor

A simple editor for armor stand posing and equipment, using flint.image-1604064546148.pngA large majority of players are happy with the Armor Stand Editor plugin, so nothing needs changing here.

Vanilla Tweaks

A range of quality-of-life crafting tweaks, including more trapdoors from planks, more bricks from clay, crafting full blocks from stairs/slabs, and more. See here for the full list.

image-1604064550049.pngVanillaTweaks also receives broad support, with almost all players happy with it being added to the server.

Mob Heads

Mob heads as a drop for a greater range of mobs.image-1604064554121.pngContinuing the pattern, mob heads also get a positive result, with no negative responses at all.

Wandering Trades

Wandering Trades adds trades for smaller versions of blocks to the wandering trader.

image-1604064559108.pngAnother positive majority for the Wandering Trades plugin, which will be left installed.

Better End

A custom world generator for The End, which replaces the biomes and structures of the vanilla end. This plugin was added briefly, and later removed due to balancing issues.image-1604064563426.png

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Finally, Better End gets a lower, but still convincing majority, in support of it. Our additional question of whether players would like to see Better End be re-added, if balance issues were fixed, also gets a strong positive response. We will therefore aim to re-add Better End in the future, if the balance issues can be worked out, and no other issues present themselves.

Comments

Many of the comments in this section were in support of all the plugins that were added to the Stress Test server. There were however some comments that had questions or concerns about specific plugins, which we would like to respond to here.

With the better end, I feel like the main issue is the lack of difficulty, the vanilla end cities kick the shit out of you and are fun to explore, but the aether biome temples for example are simply, fly in, take high level loot, fly out. they are less in depth and less difficult. [...]

The other thing is if it's possible to add the completely stock vanilla end biome in such that vanilla end cities still generate.

Better End does support End City generation, and we can investigate enabling this if/when we re-add the plugin. If we were to do this, aether temples would likely be disabled, and elytra would be found in their vanilla location.

Not sure if this is a plugin thing or a settings thing, but I'd like to see the ability to sleep through thunderstorms removed, it is frustrating to have a channelling trident only to have every thunderstorm last for under 20 seconds

The behaviour described here appears to be a bug, as the sleep plugin was configured to not change the weather. We will investigate this to see if we can prevent it happening.

The only con is the l a g. I tend to make scenes that range in the hundreds to a almost near Den dural level of stands and judging by how many stands we have at stresswhere it may become a bit of an issue. Also it would be nice if we could still use name tags and formatting for them, sadly people tend to misuse and abuse that feature as seen on the New earth server but hopefully there is still a chance.

Client lag is an issue with armour stands, but we would prefer players to self-police this for now, and not go overboard with armour stand placement. We would rather not have to impose a limit to combat this issue.

One note on the mob heads: I do think the drops of guardians and elder guardians should be decreased a bit. There are quite a lot of guardian heads already at the gfarm, and with elder guardians dropping their heads 100% of the time now there are also quite a lot of those.

Vanilla Tweaks appears to have adjusted the loot tables to account for the "farmability" of mobs, but we will investigate this and make further adjustments if necessary.

Some of these plugins feel like they stray too far from vanilla, like the big doors, train, and better end ones. Also I feel like they probably increase lag.

We currently have no concerns over the performance impacts of any of the added plugins. If any issues do arise, we will assess our options.

In addition, we have never claimed the current iterations of the server are vanilla. Since 1.14 we have always used non-vanilla server software, favoured performance over vanilla parity when choosing settings, included non-vanilla plugins such as claims, liquid tanks, rentable areas for the mall, compass modifications and more. The plugins we have added here have also been well received, despite their apparent lack of "vanillaness". In the end it is a common misconception to claim this server is supposed to be vanilla, and we are always open to considering non-vanilla plugin offerings if the community is up for it.

Changes We Will Be Making

No significant changes are planned in this area, due to the positive responses to all the added plugins. There are however some reported bugs to investigate, some potential better end changes if/when it is reintroduced, and the possibility of plugin changes or removals due to performance concerns or other major issues.

Bugs and Reporting

We added a section on bugs to gauge how many players had run into a bug during their time on the Stress Test server, and to see if players knew how to report or track bugs. Our aim was to determine bugs were not being left unreported.

Bugs Encountered

image-1604065095325.pngWe are happy to see that most players have not encountered any bugs during their time on the Stress Test server. Hopefully, this remains the case, as we want any major issues to be fixed before we consider launching the 1.16 server.

Bugs Reported

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Just over half of players which had encountered a bug reported them to us, which is a good start but could be better. A variety of issues were cited as the reason for not reporting bugs, including being intimidated by the idea of talking to staff about a minor issue. Please be assured that we would rather hear about the same bug multiple times than miss a bug entirely due to it not being reported.

If you do encounter a bug, no matter how small, please report it following the instructions on this page. If you are unsure whether a bug has been reported or not, try checking our Kanboard bug tracker first, and report it if it isn't there.

Awareness of How to Report

image-1604065059015.pngFor the players that have not encountered any bugs, we are pleased to see many of them are aware of how to report a bug if they encounter one. For those who are unsure, please see this page.

Awareness of Kanboard

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Many players are also aware of our Kanboard bug tracker, which is nice to see. For those who are unaware, we maintain a Kanboard which tracks all the bugs that have been reported to us, and our progress on fixing them. The Kanboard can be found here. If you run into a bug which is not on the Kanboard, please report it as described on this page.

Summary

In response to the Stress Test Survey results:

Hopefully all these changes are a good compromise considering the survey results.

Game on.


Results and changes for 1.18 Stress Test

This is a summary of the changes we will be implementing for the RTGame Minecraft 1.18.2 Stress Test Video Game Gaming Server (8MB) (for PlayStation®️2), following the feedback from the recent survey. 80 of you responded and your feedback is valued.

Some of the changes we are making here may be surprising, but we are willing to experiment with them due to unexpectedly strong support in the survey results. The Stress Test is after all the ideal time for experimentation and a subsequent survey will help us to determine if the changes should stay for the full 1.18 Survival Server. We would appreciate you keeping an open mind.

What is staying the same

Whilst some things are changing, many are staying the same. The below list of settings, mechanics and plugins all received strong support in the survey and will be returning unchanged in the 1.18 Stress Test Server.

What will be changing

Fire Spread will be enabled outside claims

We received surprisingly mixed feedback regarding fire spread, with only 33% of players wishing for fire spread and damage to remain disabled everywhere.

Option Votes Percentage
Fire never spreads or damages blocks (NO) 25 33.78%
Fire spreads everywhere, but does not damage claimed blocks (NOCDM) 10 13.51%
Fire spreads everywhere, but does not damage blocks (NODM) 4 5.41%
Fire spreads outside of claims, but does not damage blocks (WNODM) 12 16.22%
Fire spreads and damages blocks outside of claims (WYES) 14 18.92%
Fire spreads and damages blocks everywhere (YES) 5

6.76%
Other 4

5.41%

As you can see there is no clear winner, with over 60% of players wanting fire spread but not agreeing on how far to go. 3 of the 4 "other" responses also indicated support for fire spread. In the end we decided to experiment with enabling full fire spread and destruction outside of claims, which retains the utility of claims for protecting against fire as well as allowing for the more dynamic world desired by some of the above responses.

There is of course the risk that this does not go to plan, either resulting in excessive griefing or server performance issues due to ticking a bunch of fire. Naturally if this becomes a problem we will consider alternatives such as removing the block damage whilst retaining the spread, or disabling spread again. In any case we will of course not take kindly to people abusing this change to upset others.

Explosions will be enabled outside claims

Another surprise can be found in the responses for explosion damage. The most popular choice is to allow explosion damage above ground outside claims, rather than only underground as it is now. 

Option Votes Percentage
Explosions only damage blocks outside claims, unless /claimexplosions is toggled for a claim (CLAIM) 33 44.59%
Explosions only damage blocks underground outside claims, unless /claimexplosions is toggled for a claim (CLOW) 20 27.03%
Explosions only damage blocks underground (LOW) 11 14.86%
Explosions never damage blocks (NO) 3 4.05%
Explosions damage blocks everywhere (YES) 4 5.41%
Other 3 4.05%

Whilst not quite a majority on its own, it is significantly higher than all other options, and becomes a slim majority when considering the 4 players voting for explosions everywhere. As a result we will be giving this a go in the Stress Test. As with fire if it proves problematic we can revert this change for the final 1.18 server.

PvP will be enabled on an opt-in basis

The PvP question presents more interesting results, with opt-in PvP not far behind the existing PvP approach and neither having a majority.

Option Votes Percentage
PvP possible only in designated areas/arenas or worlds (AREAS) 32 43.24%
No PvP at all (NO) 1 1.35%
PvP possible everywhere on an opt-in basis (OPTI) 27 36.49%
PvP possible everywhere on an opt-out basis (OPTO) 3 4.05%
PvP possible only outside of claims (WILD) 4 5.41%
PvP possible everywhere (YES) 4 5.41%
Other  3 4.05%

Based on the above we will be experimenting with an opt-in PvP system. This isn't guaranteed to make it in for the start of the Stress Test, but we would like to introduce it at some point to see how it goes.

Some actions will no longer require trust in claims

Based on the survey results we will be removing trust requirements for the below actions which previously required trust on the 1.17 Survival Server. As with all other changes we can revisit this at a later time if necessary.

Additional datapacks will be added

We received a few comments requesting bundles be obtainable on the 1.18 Survival Server. We will therefore be trying out the VanillaTweaks Craftable Bundles (Rabbit Hide) datapack on the 1.18 Stress Test Server, which as you may expect allows you to craft bundles with rabbit hide.

Separately to this we have also decided to add the Rotten Flesh to Leather Rabbit Hide datapack to allow smelting of rotten flesh to create rabbit hide and from there leather. You can then craft this leather into horse armour, and some other items of much lesser importance.

The /afk command will be removed

This is not strictly speaking related to the survey, but is nonetheless a change we feel needs to be made. The original purpose of the /afk command was to allow players to indicate their afkness to other players without having to wait for the afk timer to detect them. However we have noticed that players have started using this feature to avoid needing to sleep and in some cases to avoid taking damage. This is pretty clear abuse of the afk mechanism and isn't fair to the players who are playing the game as originally intended.

Because of this we will be removing the /afk command. The afk system will remain and players detected as afk will remain excluded from sleep calculations as before, but manual toggling will no longer be possible.

Nether claims will be removed

Whilst Nether claims did receive strong support in the survey, with 61% preferring them to stay and 31% having no preference, we are proceeding with their removal as they continue to pose additional challenges we do not have satisfactory solutions for.

The main issue with Nether claims is how they interact with Nether portals. If a player creates a portal in the Overworld which happens to correspond with the location of a claim in The Nether, a portal will be created within that claim and the incoming player will be unable to remove it. This could easily be seen as griefing by the claim owner and would induce extra moderation overhead for server staff.

Previously this issue has been avoided by disallowing claims within the area of The Nether corresponding with the overworld border, but this has its own problems when the size of the world border changes. The 1.17 Survial Server also suffered occasional issues with explosions not damaging blocks in the unclaimable area of The Nether, due to the large admin claim required in this area to prevent regular claims being created, which will often forget that /claimexplosions is enabled.

The other reason for removing Nether claims is that they simply weren't used much. In the entire lifetime of the 1.17 Survival Server there have been a total of 10 Nether claims, and some of these appear to be accidental or abandoned as they were not protecting anything notable.

Overall the maintenance burden of allowing Nether claims does not seem to be worthwhile when the feature has had so little use. We are however aware that certain farms may desire claims as a means of protection, so we will consider creating claims for these areas on a case by case basis.

Settlements will be allowed on the Nether directories

After receiving the support of 78% of survey responses, Settlements will be joining Towns, Farms and Points of Interest as an allowable directory listing.

The Nether Hub design is changing

We will be trying a smaller and simpler Nether Hub design this time round after reviewing the survey comments. Some players disliked the travel time from ice highway to portal in the 1.17 iteration of the Nether Hub, so the 1.18 Stress Test Nether Hub will use a roundabout design as shown below (materials not final).

image-1650233672004.png

This design retains the ability to switch between highways without leaving your boat, but reduces the travel time between highway and portal by keeping them both on the same level.

In addition to this we have reduced the overall size of the Nether Hub to the bare minimum required for the portals, highways and directories. We have also implemented redirection of portals to the central nether hub portal, if they would have been created inside the nether hub area. This means the large overworld spawn area is no longer required, other than to protect the building itself and to provide space for future necessary structures. As a result we will be reducing the spawn size to 100x100 centered on the spawn point, 96% smaller than the 1.17 Survival Server spawn.

Finally this iteration of the Nether Hub will not be square. The cut off corners you see above will not be protected and can be edited by all players. We hope this will inject a bit of the 1.13 Nether Hub sprit where players had a larger say in how the Nether Hub looked.

Anti-xray settings will be changed in The Nether

In response to the lag issues in the 1.17 Nether many players reported in the survey, we are adjusting our anti-xray approach for the 1.18 Stress Test. The main cause of lag in The Nether is the saturation of a player's connection due to large chunk packets being sent to them. The Nether's chunks are particularly large due to the anti-xray technique we are using, which inserts random ore blocks into the chunk to confuse xray clients and mods.

This randomisation is effective but also makes the chunks harder to compress and therefore larger. In The Nether this randomisation also covers a larger height range due to the spawning patterns of Ancient Debris, which can spawn as high as Y=119. The fact that players are often moving very quickly in The Nether due to using ice highways also adds to the bandwidth use as many chunks are sent in quick succession when the player travels through them.

For players on slower connections this can become a problem if their connection cannot keep up with the large chunks being sent to them. When this occurs other packets will be delayed, which means the player's actions may take longer to be acknowledged by the server. In extreme cases the "keep alive" packets which are frequently exchanged will also be delayed, causing the server or client to disconnect after assuming the other side is no longer there.

To alleviate this we are switching to a different anti-xray approach specifically in The Nether, which avoids randomising blocks and therefore vastly reduces chunk size. After testing this in the 1.17 Nether along the green ice highway we saw a 70% drop in bandwidth usage. Hopefully this will prove sufficient to improve The Nether experience for everyone.

Withers will be spawnable outside of the Arena but will not drop Nether Stars

We are relaxing some of the restrictions we implemented in the 1.17 server regarding Wither spawning. Whilst Nether Stars will remain obtainable only via Withers in the arena to avoid cheesing, Withers will once again be spawnable in other dimensions to allow the creation of Wither Rose farms and for nametagging areas.

The Mall is being moved to the Overworld spawn

We received a range of comments mentioning how the 1.17 Mall world felt less used or more disconnected from the rest of the server than previous Mall iterations. Some suggested that the Mall return to the Nether, an option we discussed but couldn't find an acceptable solution for. As with Nether claims the main issue with a Nether mall is that Nether portals may be created within it causing unintentional griefing. Expanding the Overworld spawn to avoid this would be impractical due to Nether scaling making over 1000 blocks in all directions necessary for full protection.

As a middle ground we will be attempting an Overworld Spawn Mall in the 1.18 Stress Test, which will hopefully restore the community feel. The spawn area has also been simplified to reduce bandwidth usage to hopefully avoid losing the advantages a dedicated mall world had for those on slower connections.

Amplified portals will be added

We heard from players choosing to live in the Amplified world that they feel disconnected from the rest of the server, with no easy way to travel. To resolve this we have implemented Amplified portals. These portals work the same as vanilla Nether portals, but are built out of basalt instead of obsidian. Amplified portals can be used in both the Overworld and The Nether to take players to Amplified, and in Amplified itself to return players to the Overworld. Nether portals can be used in Amplified to reach The Nether. Coordinate scaling between Amplified and The Nether is the same as the Overworld (1:8). This also means that coordinates for the Overworld and Amplified are 1:1.

image-1650237841720.png

The claim block limit will be increased

We are aware that some of the above changes may prompt players to claim more of the things they choose to build. To aid with this we will be doubling the claim block limit from 20,000 blocks to 40,000. The earn rate will remain the same at 200 blocks per active hour, meaning 200 hours will be required for the full allotment to be usable.

Additional claim blocks will be purchasable

In addition to the above higher block limit, we are also introducing the ability to purchase more claim blocks. An additional 40,000 blocks will be available to each player for purchase, meaning a theoretical total of 80,000 blocks are available. The exact price is subject to change, but we are currently working with a cost of 1 diamond for 50 blocks.

Some farm and block limitations will be removed

Finally, we are going to relax some of the farm and block restrictions we have previously had in place on the 1.17 Survival Server. The survey showed rather mixed results on the importance of performance vs creative freedom and the comments featured some passionate arguments for allowing additional freedom or finding a better balance.

For the Stress Test we will be doubling both the Hopper and Piston limits from 16 to 32 per chunk to see if performance remains acceptable. We will not rule out reducing it again if performance suffers too much, but we will also not rule out increasing it further if results are promising. A limit of some form will always remain in place however to avoid needing to clean up 880 hopper monstrosities that half the TPS when enabled.

Creeper and Enderman drops and XP will also be restored to their vanilla amounts, to reduce grinding. Spawner based farms will also have all their block based restrictions removed. We now accept that reducing drops and limiting these farms does not actually solve the problem of needing farms and just increases player frustration.

Despite the above we will however still maintain our position on Iron and Raid farms. We will continue to not allow raid farms due to the extreme amount and variety of items they provide via abuse of a mechanic that is supposed to be a challenge to the player. The fact that they make use of a demanding mob also does not help. Iron Golems will also still drop a reduced amount of iron due the Iron Golem's role as a protective mob which shouldn't be targeted, a stance Mojang themselves have taken in the past when breaking previous iron farms. In any case iron is everywhere in 1.18, you'll be fine.



Results and changes for 1.21 Stress Test

This is a summary of the changes we will be implementing for the RTGame Minecraft 1.21 Stress Test Video Game Gaming Server, following the feedback from the recent survey. 73 of you responded and your feedback is valued.

As with previous Stress Test servers, this is a good time for us to experiment with new ideas. Changes we make here may not stay for the final 1.21 Survival Server, and there will be a follow-up survey during the Stress Test to see if the changes have been well received. We would appreciate you keeping an open mind.

Cited percentages are rounded to the nearest percent for readability. Support numbers include "no preference" responses.

What is staying the same

The below things will be left unchanged for the 1.21 Stress Test Server.

Difficulty

90% of players responded positively to the current difficulty, with a enjoyment rating of 4 or above. 73% want the current hard-with-normal-elements difficulty level to remain unchanged.

Gamerules

All gamerules we asked about will remain unchanged:

Server settings

The below server settings will remain unchanged:

Fire spread

The current server setting ("Fire spreads and damages blocks outside of claims") remains the most popular option at 37%, and the vast majority of players want to see some form of fire spread on the server. With over half of players preferring fire spread at the current level or above, keeping the current setting seems the best course of action.

Option Votes Percentage
Fire never spreads or damages blocks
 11 15.07%
Fire spreads outside of claims, but does not damage blocks 12
 16.44%
Fire spreads and damages blocks outside of claims
 27
 36.99%
Fire spreads everywhere, but does not damage blocks 1
 1.37%
Fire spreads everywhere, but does not damage claimed blocks
 16
 21.92%
Fire spreads and damages blocks everywhere
5
 6.85%
Other 1

1.37%

Explosions

Almost two-thirds of responses supported the current server setting of explosions damaging unclaimed blocks. This setting will be left unchanged.

Option Votes Percentage
Explosions never damage blocks
 3 4.11%
Explosions only damage blocks underground
 6
 8.22%
Explosions only damage blocks underground outside claims, unless /claimexplosions is toggled for a claim
 10 13.7%
Explosions only damage blocks outside claims, unless /claimexplosions is toggled for a claim
 49
 67.12%
Explosions damage blocks everywhere
 3 4.11%
Other 2 2.74%

Sleeping

The current sleeping mechanics, where night length varies based on the number of sleeping players, will remain in place with 71% support.

Option Votes Percentage
Vanilla
 1 1.37%
Fixed percentage
 16 21.92%
Dynamic night length
 52 71.23%
Unskippable shorter nights/longer days
 2 2.74%
Other
 2
 2.74%

PvP

PvP will remain an opt-in feature, with 78% of players preferring this option.

Option Votes Percentage
No PvP at all 1 1.37%
PvP possible only in designated areas/arenas or worlds
 8 10.96%
PvP possible only outside of claims
 1
 1.37%
PvP possible everywhere on an opt-in basis 57 78.08%
PvP possible everywhere on an opt-out basis
 1 1.37%
PvP possible everywhere
 1 1.37%
Other 4 5.48%

Claims

The following aspects of claiming land remain unchanged:

Worlds

Plugins

The following plugins will remain on the 1.21 Stress Test Server:

Fabric

The server will not be switching to Fabric and will remain on Purpur. 67% of players expressed no preference on the choice of server software, and an investigation into the feasibility of migrating to Fabric quickly showed it would involve significant work that a majority of players will see no benefit from. We remain open to the idea for future server versions if it ever becomes more practical.

VanillaTweaks

The following VanillaTweaks datapacks will remain on the 1.21 Stress Test Server:

Client mods

Our overall stance on client mods will remain unchanged. The community is in broad agreement with our assessment of mods which constitute an unfair advantage. Some players had specific questions on macros/scripting and what is considered an unfair advantage, so we will be creating additional documentation on what uses of this we deem acceptable.

What will be changing

Item despawn times are changing

We are making some significant changes to item despawning, with the goal of reducing clutter in the world and making the rules simpler and more predictable:

Claim Block Vouchers will replace direct purchasing

Claim Block Vouchers will now be the only way to increase your claim block limit beyond the default 40,000. The command to purchase blocks will be removed, but a shop selling vouchers at an equivalent price will be located at spawn. There will be no limit to the number of vouchers you can purchase, making your block limit essentially infinite if you have the money. Vouchers will also continue to appear in loot chests.

This change was largely motivated by the underlying claim plugin dropping support for block purchasing, but we also like the idea of using our existing in-world item for this purpose.

More tweaks relating to claims

The Overworld will no longer be infinite

We will be returning to a fixed world size, with a diameter of 20,000 blocks (the 1.15 Survival world size) being the current thinking. Whilst some players enjoy having an infinite world, unfortunately it causes some issues which make it impractical in the long term:

We considered a "hybrid" world border approach, with a soft border that prevents claims outside of it. The rest of the world would then be for exploration/resource gathering only and could be deleted to save space if necessary. We decided against this approach due to the extra work required to adapt plugins for this concept, and because we feel the existing amplified world would function better in the exploration and resource gathering capacity.

Amplified will be formalised as a resource world

The Arena world will be removed

The Wither Arena will continue to exist but will be moved to the Overworld Spawn, making use of the increased spawn size detailed below. We do not plan to allow Nether Stars to drop outside of the arena, as we still want the boss to be remotely challenging to fight. The Mob Arena will be removed entirely.

The Overworld Spawn, Nether Hub and Mall will be player-built in survival

All 3 major spawn structures will now be community designed and will need to be built in survival mode, rather than being pasted from a schematic as in previous iterations. Players will be able to request permission to edit these areas, and threads will be created for the discussions surrounding them.

For the Stress Test Server we will likely stick with deliberately simple spawn areas and allow players with permission to add to them. Design efforts would be better spent focusing on the final 1.21 Survival Server. The Stress Test Mall will also stick to the usual layout, but we are happy for future designs to explore alternative layouts for shops.

We will provide further information on the spawn building design process at a later date.

PvP arenas can be created

While the majority of players are happy with the global opt-in PvP system we currently use, we have received requests for dedicated PvP arenas to also be possible. We plan to update our PvP plugin to allow for this and a basic arena will also be present at spawn.

The Overworld Spawn area will be larger

We received a range of feedback on the 1.20 Overworld Spawn, and the general consensus seems to be that the current spawn area is too small. We have also heard of the performance issues players are experiencing due to the proximity of the entity-heavy Mall, as well as nearby player builds.

To help solve this we will be increasing the size of the spawn area, likely to around 1.17 Survival levels. This area will enforce a minimum distance from spawn for player builds, and will allow The Mall to be moved further from the spawn point. The remaining space will be used for the Wither and PvP arenas, as well as any future server events requiring bespoke builds.

Invisible Item Frames will be craftable with a Splash Invisibility Potion

To avoid Invisible Item Frames being locked behind The End opening, we will be swapping the Lingering Invisibility Potion for a Splash Invisibility Potion in the crafting recipe.

Light Blocks will be craftable

A number of players requested that Light Blocks become craftable in addition to being found in loot chests. We will be adding a recipe similar to the Invisible Item Frame to allow for this.

Some block limits are being increased

We will be trying out an increase in the Hopper and Piston chunk limits from 32 to 64 per-chunk. This should allow more freedom in building, whilst still enforcing a limit to prevent excessive use and the associated performance impacts.

Misc. entity activation range will be reset to vanilla

The range at which "miscellaneous" entities such as Dropped Items and Minecarts tick normally will be reset to the vanilla value, which is infinite. The changes to item despawning should allow us to do this without performance concerns, and should allow farms using Minecarts to work properly.

Some loot table changes are being reverted

We will be reverting some of our earlier changes to vanilla and VanillaTweaks loot tables:

Zombie Villager infection chance will follow vanilla

The chance for Zombie Villagers to infect rather than kill a Villager will be reverted to the vanilla 100% for hard difficulty. This effect no longer stacks multiple times and thus does not need this attempt at balancing it.

The Villager Trade Rebalance datapack will be enabled

We will be replacing our attempt at balancing Librarian Villager trades with Mojang's upcoming solution. See the wiki to learn more about this.

The Camera plugin will be removed

The Camera plugin has been unmaintained since the 1.16 days and has a number of quirks we don't have the resources to fix. The plugin will therefore be removed.

The More Bricks VanillaTweaks datapack will be removed

The changes to Clay generation in 1.18, particularly in Lush Caves have made this datapack less necessary, with some survey feedback saying that obtaining Brick Blocks in mass quantities is now too easy. We will therefore be removing this datapack.

Community event announcements will be posted in #survival-notices on request

We would like to increase the visibility of planned community events, so we will begin taking requests for announcements for events to be posted in #survival-notices.

If you have an event you'd like us to tell players about, including for the current 1.20 Survival Server, feel free to create a modmail using the Contact Staff button in #minecraft-info, and we can talk about it.