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.


Revision #13
Created 25 September 2022 10:17:45 by Jim 1234
Updated 27 July 2024 22:25:32 by Jim 1234