Being around minecraft servers and roleplay/rpg servers for so long I see a flaws in both kinds of servers, both having CRITICAL impacts on their overall experience, feel and gameplay. To understand my position you will first need to recognize the extremes of these kinds of servers.
1. Strong/mature Role Play community, low player count, HUGE landscapes, HUGE structures, unused land, little interaction, minimal economy, minimal forum activity, and as always constant donation/upvote spamming in chat. These kinds of servers have the constant flow of "running around and dieing of hunger then leave the first day because of how bored you are.
2. Little to ZERO role playing, HIGH player count, immature community, Overcomplicated spell systems, massive amounts of quests little reward, HUGE unused worlds, minimal forum activity, constant donation/upvote spamming, etc. These are those kinds of servers: |REaLmCRAft![QUESTS!1] [NPCS!11][MCMMO!][HUGEWORLD!!1][CiTYS!1!1][PVP][fACTIONS!][RPG SERVER!!!!1!!!11!!!111]|. In my opinion these need to dissapear. By adding so many plugins, overpowered donation perks, and 9 year olds, your transforming minecraft into a game that isn't.
Is there a happy medium between the two? Not anymore. Even though a server is RPG based, it should STILL feel like minecraft. What am I implying? I am implying that servers need to STOP worrying about their 9000x9000 block continent they need to create in the next week so their server can launch. That sort of scale is BEYOND unnecessary. I would even argue that a VANILLA generated world can be more persistent and immersible than the one I just described.
The next thing I want to talk about is what most server push aside. You MUST have a player developed world. By throwing in a bunch of players into an already created world with little to do, YOUR DESTROYING THE EXPERIENCE. It not only destroys interaction, but it gets rid of immersion, economics, and an end goal for the player. When you walk around the server for the first time in a PLAYER driven world, you can see the amount of time spent, and wasn't built by 10 teams using world painter and world edit. This is EXTREMELY important because a world that is player driven gives the player the opportunity to INTERACT with that city or town. This means signing up for the town guard, starting a small business trading with other small communities of players, buying a home, enter in arena tournaments, or even running for the kings representative! These interaction while still having the RPG feel (like adding dungeons for people who want to hack n' slash) gives the BEST possible experience for a minecraft role play/rpg server. Small independent communities within an over-arcing world. What I am implying is that as a long time minecraft rper, I want another server like the early days of Lord of The Craft. What was so great about this was that the world was completely player driven, it had elements like mcmmo for those kinds of people who wanted that experience. It also had an overall enemy that was against everyone on the server. This created an epic experience where the entire server was facing the undead to protect their homeland. It was an experience like no other, further no one has ever tried to resurrect that sort of idea. Whether or not a server like this still exists I am not sure the current minecraft community will give this kind server a chance.
You want a good roleplay server that ACTUALLY has roleplay on it? Search Massivecraft on Google... (Sounds like a stupid name I know but it actually has active and good role players on it, also has survival) Only server I have ever stuck to, all I do on it these days is roleplay... But anyway, check out the website.
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'All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.' - Gandalf the Grey
You want a good roleplay server that ACTUALLY has roleplay on it? Search Massivecraft on Google... (Sounds like a stupid name I know but it actually has active and good role players on it, also has survival) Only server I have ever stuck to, all I do on it these days is roleplay... But anyway, check out the website.
Iv'e been on Massivecraft. It's a decent server at first but then it becomes pay to win.
I'm a new Minecraft hoster myself (a few weeks ago I decided to rent a server and see how it all works) and it's currently fairly 'closed server' at the moment. (doing a whitelist with somewhat stern check on the players that apply). During the test I have indeed encountered the same problem as what you've just mentioned and I have absolutely no idea how to fix it (though I know what causes it).
The community is mature (since it's basically just my guildmembers) and I never spam donations or upvotes (not that kind of server). Nor do I have a single intent to make the server too 'pay to win' or 'pay for OP powers'. The server map is also no pre-created, I have no intent of creating massive buildings everywhere that aren't going to be used. I feel like both economy and the map should be player created. But that's where the good part pretty much ends.
The economy is a problem, because every player can literally get all the items they need within 1 day and have farms of all sorts, so trading is not useful at all. I don't know how to create a money sink in the game that people need. (I was thinking of selling fun stuff, such as potions that can disguise yourself into animals). I have faction plugin, so people need money to claim land. I've also added so that you need to pay for /home. Still, the economy is dead, no trading is necessary between players nor is the currency really needed.
The community is also a problem, because there are no perks in groups of people interacting with each other. It just creates mini cliques in every factions that never interacts with each other.
Would love to see the discussion on this thread continue on and see what you guys think are the solution to this.
Totally agreed with your points, especially the one about lack of immersion. It's not necessarily immersion into Minecraft I'm concerned about, but also immersion into the experience we'd want.
For instance, one time I played on a prison server. It was kinda fun through the first days of it, doing all the trading and combat, but despite me persisting to reach my freedom and ending up being freed, it barely had any excitement besides running from juggernauts. I was hoping to see us doing things that are just like the real-life counterpart, such as sneaking objects, being assigned cells, prison orange suits, policing, defiance, that sort of stuff. I know it would sound like too much, but it would be a good immersive experience.
Hell, the least I could ask are the occasional planning with other prisoners on riots and escape attempts, then when we'd escape we'd be hunted down by outside authorities (mostly advanced AIs). This is something that would certainly add more feels, immersion, and fun in prison servers instead of the same old repetitive instruction set: Mine, run from danger, sell everything, repeat.
1. Strong/mature Role Play community, low player count, HUGE landscapes, HUGE structures, unused land, little interaction, minimal economy, minimal forum activity, and as always constant donation/upvote spamming in chat. These kinds of servers have the constant flow of "running around and dieing of hunger then leave the first day because of how bored you are.
2. Little to ZERO role playing, HIGH player count, immature community, Overcomplicated spell systems, massive amounts of quests little reward, HUGE unused worlds, minimal forum activity, constant donation/upvote spamming, etc. These are those kinds of servers: |REaLmCRAft![QUESTS!1] [NPCS!11][MCMMO!][HUGEWORLD!!1][CiTYS!1!1][PVP][fACTIONS!][RPG SERVER!!!!1!!!11!!!111]|. In my opinion these need to dissapear. By adding so many plugins, overpowered donation perks, and 9 year olds, your transforming minecraft into a game that isn't.
Is there a happy medium between the two? Not anymore. Even though a server is RPG based, it should STILL feel like minecraft. What am I implying? I am implying that servers need to STOP worrying about their 9000x9000 block continent they need to create in the next week so their server can launch. That sort of scale is BEYOND unnecessary. I would even argue that a VANILLA generated world can be more persistent and immersible than the one I just described.
The next thing I want to talk about is what most server push aside. You MUST have a player developed world. By throwing in a bunch of players into an already created world with little to do, YOUR DESTROYING THE EXPERIENCE. It not only destroys interaction, but it gets rid of immersion, economics, and an end goal for the player. When you walk around the server for the first time in a PLAYER driven world, you can see the amount of time spent, and wasn't built by 10 teams using world painter and world edit. This is EXTREMELY important because a world that is player driven gives the player the opportunity to INTERACT with that city or town. This means signing up for the town guard, starting a small business trading with other small communities of players, buying a home, enter in arena tournaments, or even running for the kings representative! These interaction while still having the RPG feel (like adding dungeons for people who want to hack n' slash) gives the BEST possible experience for a minecraft role play/rpg server. Small independent communities within an over-arcing world. What I am implying is that as a long time minecraft rper, I want another server like the early days of Lord of The Craft. What was so great about this was that the world was completely player driven, it had elements like mcmmo for those kinds of people who wanted that experience. It also had an overall enemy that was against everyone on the server. This created an epic experience where the entire server was facing the undead to protect their homeland. It was an experience like no other, further no one has ever tried to resurrect that sort of idea. Whether or not a server like this still exists I am not sure the current minecraft community will give this kind server a chance.
Iv'e been on Massivecraft. It's a decent server at first but then it becomes pay to win.
The community is mature (since it's basically just my guildmembers) and I never spam donations or upvotes (not that kind of server). Nor do I have a single intent to make the server too 'pay to win' or 'pay for OP powers'. The server map is also no pre-created, I have no intent of creating massive buildings everywhere that aren't going to be used. I feel like both economy and the map should be player created. But that's where the good part pretty much ends.
The economy is a problem, because every player can literally get all the items they need within 1 day and have farms of all sorts, so trading is not useful at all. I don't know how to create a money sink in the game that people need. (I was thinking of selling fun stuff, such as potions that can disguise yourself into animals). I have faction plugin, so people need money to claim land. I've also added so that you need to pay for /home. Still, the economy is dead, no trading is necessary between players nor is the currency really needed.
The community is also a problem, because there are no perks in groups of people interacting with each other. It just creates mini cliques in every factions that never interacts with each other.
Would love to see the discussion on this thread continue on and see what you guys think are the solution to this.
For instance, one time I played on a prison server. It was kinda fun through the first days of it, doing all the trading and combat, but despite me persisting to reach my freedom and ending up being freed, it barely had any excitement besides running from juggernauts. I was hoping to see us doing things that are just like the real-life counterpart, such as sneaking objects, being assigned cells, prison orange suits, policing, defiance, that sort of stuff. I know it would sound like too much, but it would be a good immersive experience.
Hell, the least I could ask are the occasional planning with other prisoners on riots and escape attempts, then when we'd escape we'd be hunted down by outside authorities (mostly advanced AIs). This is something that would certainly add more feels, immersion, and fun in prison servers instead of the same old repetitive instruction set: Mine, run from danger, sell everything, repeat.
My fan fiction of the game: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1957118-programmer-my-first-fan-fiction/#entry24096758