Every once in a while, the subject of adding more mods comes up.
For starters, I’m very careful about adding more plugins and mods to the server. It already runs 22 plugins that manage things like the permissions system, the map, warping, economy, grief prevention, explosions, world size and lots of other things. The more plugins I add, the harder the server has to work, and the more potential for lag.
It also gets really complicated getting all of the plugins to cohabitate. I’ve tried a lot of plugins that added some great features, but as soon as I implement them, they break another plugin. The more plugins there are, the more of a nightmare it becomes to manage them all.
The other problem is that more plugins makes it harder to keep up to date with the latest version of Minecraft. This server runs on Spigot. The Spigot team does a very good job of testing and keeping up to date, and I’m usually able to upgrade to the newest version with in a few days of Mojang releasing them. The biggest cause for hold ups is waiting for plugins to get updated. Some of the plugins I’m using now haven’t been updated in years and it’s a miracle that they’re still working.
Then there are the social and playability aspects of adding more mods.
Inevitably, players want me to remove hunger, nerf the mobs and generally make the game easy.
I’m not going to do this. It’s a survival server. Mine resources, farm animals and food, craft tools, brew, enchant… play the game. If I make it easy, than we might as well scratch everything and make it a creative server. There would be no point in playing.
I also get asked about enabling world PvP, and dropping the grief prevention.
I’m not going to do either of these things either. The reasons for this are simple. If I remove grief prevention, people will start destroying and vandalizing each other’s builds, and there will be no way to protect your stuff. Every time I miss the slightest loop hole in the grief prevention plugin, someone takes advantage of it and starts griefing.
Every. Single. Time.
Grief prevention stays, and that is not up for discussion.
World PvP is also not going to happen. I play on several PvP servers and have checked out many more. It’s the same everywhere. Lots of trash talking, bullying, insults and generally horrible behavior. I have yet to find a PvP server that isn’t riddled with that kind of stuff.
This server is intended to be a welcoming, family friendly environment that encourages team work and resourcefulness. World PvP encourages the exact opposite of those things. So that isn’t going to happen either.
If you’re looking for that kind of server, there are literally thousands of them out there.
If you want to battle, you can do that in the arena. You’ll find a warp to it in the warp room. It’s a nice, restricted, contained area. Duke it out as much as you want.
I’m aware that a few plugins are still on the fritz since the update to 1.11. I’ve spoken with the developers of those plugins and they are working on them. Hopefully we’ll be 100% in the next week or two. I expect the holidays to slow things down in that regard.
That is all.