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

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

The 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

• The difficulty level will remain at Hard.
• Skeleton accuracy will be reduced to its normal difficulty level.
• Effect durations will be reduced to their normal difficulty levels.
• Witches will now throw Poison II potions for similar damage over less time.
• Players will drop 50% of their XP on death.

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.

The 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

• The following mobs now have a small chance of spawning naturally:
  • Zombie horses: 0.05% chance of spawning instead of a regular horse
  • Elder guardians: 0.01% chance of spawning instead of a regular guardian
  • Killer bunny: 0.0000001% chance of spawning instead of a regular rabbit
  • Toast: 0.01% chance of spawning instead of a regular rabbit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Most settings will remain unchanged.
• Guardians will drop 75% XP when farmed, up from 50%
• Blaze spawners will no longer be affected by the mid-air changes.
• Elder guardian spawn chances will be reduced, and they will only spawn in water if possible.

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.

It 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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

• Stone
• Andesite
• Granite
• Diorite (sadly)
• Prismarine shard
• End stone
• Dirt 
• String
• Gunpowder
• Ink sac

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Diamond based trades will remain.
• Some prices will be adjusted.
• Some Emerald trades will have their effectiveness reduced.
• Curing chances will not be changed at this time.

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.

Many 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.

Similar 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.A 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.

VanillaTweaks 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.Continuing 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.

Another 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.

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

We 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

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

For 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

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:

• The difficulty level will remain at Hard.
• Skeleton accuracy will be reduced to its normal difficulty level.
• Effect durations will be reduced to their normal difficulty levels.
• Witches will now throw Poison II potions for similar damage over less time.
• Players will drop 50% of their XP on death.
• Most settings will remain unchanged.
• Guardians will drop 75% XP when farmed, up from 50%
• Blaze spawners will no longer be affected by the mid-air changes.
• Elder guardian spawn chances will be reduced, and they will only spawn in water if possible.
• Additional items will be added to the junk list:
  • Stone
  • Andesite
  • Granite
  • Diorite (sadly)
  • Prismarine shard
  • End stone
  • Dirt 
  • String
  • Gunpowder
  • Ink sac
• Diamond based trades will remain.
• Some prices will be adjusted.
• Some Emerald trades will have their effectiveness reduced.
• Curing chances will not be changed at this time.
• Plugins will remain unchanged.
• Better End will be readded is possible, with vanilla End City generation

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

Game on.