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What is this COTE thing?
It's an arena. It's very nostalgic and comes from Orion's original server. It was an amazing arena at the time (even though it had the stereotypical straight river system, it was at a time when no one knew how to build arenas properly), and was where the competitive community spent their time fighting and training.
 

AndDrew

Member
The choosing cooldown is a little long maybe it should be lowered a little like to a day instead of 10.
 

ViperMLG

Member
The protection plugin on the server needs to be discussed. Precious Stones does not operate like some of the more common survival protection plugins like Factions or Towny. This is okay because both of those plugins have their drawbacks and I'm sure both were considered when designing the server and were not chosen for a good reason. I have two main concerns about the plugin in terms of their affect on survival gameplay. As a player who frequents survival-avatar servers, and a staff member of PK, I hope you consider the issues I have with the plugin.

It is focused on individual survival and is not group-friendly
Precious Stones lacks many features that enrich the survival experience by allowing groups of players to coexist and help each other survive. The plugin allows for players to share land, which is great, but nobody other than the owner is allowed to add players to the land. This becomes problematic when trying to assemble a large group as the owner may not always be available to let people join their community. There is no power hierarchy that allows for players other than the owner to invite players to build on their shared land.
Precious Stones was designed around groups of 2-3 players building on a single piece of land, this is evident by the size and quantity of claims available. A player can only own 2 plots of land, which covers roughly an area of 100x50. This does not allow for large groups of players to build together, unless they contribute their plots as well which leads to another problem. Plot management in a large group does not work well, as each plot owner would have to individually add players of the group to build on their land. This is a complicated procedure and can take a lot of time to just add one plot of land if there are a lot of players in your group. If a player were to join/leave your group, you'd have to reconfigure each plot to make sure they don't have perms.
Plugins like Factions and Towny are a much better choice for group survival as they have power structures, land ownership and plot-specific configuration built in with their plugin. The purpose of Precious Stones as an individual player protection plugin is defeated by lwc. The valuables in a chest are already protected and can be modified to allow players to access them. Precious Stones only exists on the server to protect builds, which both Factions and Towny can do better.

It does not accommodate for players who want PVP in survival
Not everybody wants to worry about being harassed by PVP'ers in survival, I get that. But not everybody wants to deal with the chaos that comes with fighting in the arena. It is difficult to set up group fights, and there is nothing to really fight for. Allowing PVP between players who want to PVP in survival would let players fight for a cause, like the equalists, or for territory, like the earth empire. It gives the survival world risks and danger, more than just default mobs that can't touch you because they don't bend.
The rules state that wandering onto another player's land is dangerous, but why aren't explorers allowed to defend themselves? I cannot bend on another player's land to escape the situation or fight back. If that's the case, why have PVP enabled in the first place? A one sided battle where only one player has access to bending is very pointless. Or if I wanted to protect my friend who is being attacked on their own land, I cannot assist them with bending since only the owner can bend on the plot. Even in a friendly situation, I cannot bend on another player's plot to move around or attack mobs.
Another part of PVP that the arenas cannot provide is an immersive avatar experience. In survival, you have the entire avatar world to build in. Fighting in this world could be an amazing part of the server if it was allowed. There could be massive battles like the air nomad genocide or the conquest of the entire earth kingdom. Players could recreate full scale battles like the 100 year war. The beautiful avatar map is something unique to the project korra server, and should be used to its maximum potential.
Factions and Towny allow for this. Players can create massive empires with many allies, or choose to remain neutral and not get involved in battles. They can fight for each others land and resources, or even try and become the supreme ruler of the survival world.
Finally, popular plugins are popular for a good reason. They are full of features, and many people are familiar with how to navigate them. Players are used to Factions and Towny, and they are a lot easier for a new player to learn as they don't require you to know all the commands right away if you're not a leader of a town.

I know the staff has their reason for deciding against Factions/Towny/Other, and this is just my opinion. I don't know the full reasoning behind their decisions, so if any staff would like to explain their reason for choosing Precious Stones, or if any players would like to discuss what I've written, I would greatly appreciate it.
 

xNuminousx

Member
The protection plugin on the server needs to be discussed. Precious Stones does not operate like some of the more common survival protection plugins like Factions or Towny. This is okay because both of those plugins have their drawbacks and I'm sure both were considered when designing the server and were not chosen for a good reason. I have two main concerns about the plugin in terms of their affect on survival gameplay. As a player who frequents survival-avatar servers, and a staff member of PK, I hope you consider the issues I have with the plugin.

It is focused on individual survival and is not group-friendly
Precious Stones lacks many features that enrich the survival experience by allowing groups of players to coexist and help each other survive. The plugin allows for players to share land, which is great, but nobody other than the owner is allowed to add players to the land. This becomes problematic when trying to assemble a large group as the owner may not always be available to let people join their community. There is no power hierarchy that allows for players other than the owner to invite players to build on their shared land.
Precious Stones was designed around groups of 2-3 players building on a single piece of land, this is evident by the size and quantity of claims available. A player can only own 2 plots of land, which covers roughly an area of 100x50. This does not allow for large groups of players to build together, unless they contribute their plots as well which leads to another problem. Plot management in a large group does not work well, as each plot owner would have to individually add players of the group to build on their land. This is a complicated procedure and can take a lot of time to just add one plot of land if there are a lot of players in your group. If a player were to join/leave your group, you'd have to reconfigure each plot to make sure they don't have perms.
Plugins like Factions and Towny are a much better choice for group survival as they have power structures, land ownership and plot-specific configuration built in with their plugin. The purpose of Precious Stones as an individual player protection plugin is defeated by lwc. The valuables in a chest are already protected and can be modified to allow players to access them. Precious Stones only exists on the server to protect builds, which both Factions and Towny can do better.

It does not accommodate for players who want PVP in survival
Not everybody wants to worry about being harassed by PVP'ers in survival, I get that. But not everybody wants to deal with the chaos that comes with fighting in the arena. It is difficult to set up group fights, and there is nothing to really fight for. Allowing PVP between players who want to PVP in survival would let players fight for a cause, like the equalists, or for territory, like the earth empire. It gives the survival world risks and danger, more than just default mobs that can't touch you because they don't bend.
The rules state that wandering onto another player's land is dangerous, but why aren't explorers allowed to defend themselves? I cannot bend on another player's land to escape the situation or fight back. If that's the case, why have PVP enabled in the first place? A one sided battle where only one player has access to bending is very pointless. Or if I wanted to protect my friend who is being attacked on their own land, I cannot assist them with bending since only the owner can bend on the plot. Even in a friendly situation, I cannot bend on another player's plot to move around or attack mobs.
Another part of PVP that the arenas cannot provide is an immersive avatar experience. In survival, you have the entire avatar world to build in. Fighting in this world could be an amazing part of the server if it was allowed. There could be massive battles like the air nomad genocide or the conquest of the entire earth kingdom. Players could recreate full scale battles like the 100 year war. The beautiful avatar map is something unique to the project korra server, and should be used to its maximum potential.
Factions and Towny allow for this. Players can create massive empires with many allies, or choose to remain neutral and not get involved in battles. They can fight for each others land and resources, or even try and become the supreme ruler of the survival world.
Finally, popular plugins are popular for a good reason. They are full of features, and many people are familiar with how to navigate them. Players are used to Factions and Towny, and they are a lot easier for a new player to learn as they don't require you to know all the commands right away if you're not a leader of a town.

I know the staff has their reason for deciding against Factions/Towny/Other, and this is just my opinion. I don't know the full reasoning behind their decisions, so if any staff would like to explain their reason for choosing Precious Stones, or if any players would like to discuss what I've written, I would greatly appreciate it.
Something that I thought of from this, what about a peaceful world and then a PvP world?

Of course, PvP would still be allowed in the peaceful world, but whatever plugin they used for land protection would protect someone's land from any grief where the PvP/Danger World would enable grief and raids. The Peaceful World could represent a time where an Avatar like Avatar Yangchen was in place, then the Danger World could represent Aangs era. Something to consider.
 

Hades

Staff member
Server Administrator
@ViperMLG
So I just read your big long post. We are aware of the issues that come to play here and are working on a solution to allow others to bend in protected regions. The point of using this system was to allow users to build nice things and not just build a hole in the ground. I do agree there should be more pvp involvement and a possible change to a different protection system. I was not aware that only the owner would be able to bend/add people to the region. These are all things we can work on or possibly switch to a better system. Your post here will be put into consideration in search for a way to make everyone happy as best as possible. The reason of not using factions was simple. I didn't want people to view this server as a raid server. PVP yes, raiding no. When people see factions they instantly think raid server. However I will personally look into factions and do more testing with it, or come up with a solution's with our current protection system.

@xNuminousx
Thank you for posting all your opinions as you stated before in your long post most of what you wrote has been taken care of/being worked on already! You also made a post about nick names. We are not granting nick names to users for ingame staff reasons. however we are willing to cut names short if they have extended numbers in them such as name123. we would trim the numbers, but that is about it. As for what your most recent post about a peaceful world, I have thought about it but here is the issue with that. we implement a peaceful world then what comes into play is this issue. economy, people working in a peaceful world over the pvp world will have great gain over the economy we put in place with out any risk, granted they will still have the same risk int he resource world, but not the same risk as if they have in the current survival world.

hope this clarify s what people been asking and wondering if we are doing anything about them.
 
It does not accommodate for players who want PVP in survival
Not everybody wants to worry about being harassed by PVP'ers in survival, I get that. But not everybody wants to deal with the chaos that comes with fighting in the arena. It is difficult to set up group fights, and there is nothing to really fight for. Allowing PVP between players who want to PVP in survival would let players fight for a cause, like the equalists, or for territory, like the earth empire. It gives the survival world risks and danger, more than just default mobs that can't touch you because they don't bend.
THIS

Nowadays you can hardly find any wilderness-bending duel, which to me is unfortunately. If servers, like this paritcular, gave a cause or a quest to fight in those areas, let it be to seek out treasure or for conquering land, it would much more for me to play and see others engage in bending fights which are outside of the 'imprisoning' arena.
 
Another part of PVP that the arenas cannot provide is an immersive avatar experience. In survival, you have the entire avatar world to build in. Fighting in this world could be an amazing part of the server if it was allowed. There could be massive battles like the air nomad genocide or the conquest of the entire earth kingdom. Players could recreate full scale battles like the 100 year war. The beautiful avatar map is something unique to the project korra server, and should be used to its maximum potential.
That would be just beautiful, I had plans making big events like this happen every so often on and it worked pretty well on my server. We could make a lot of reference and minigames to show. For example,

- An event where volcano erupts. Benders could start preventing the lava from reaching and destroying the village whilst the team avatars spawn at the scene
- A minigame world, where earthbenders spawn as prisoners and a few other 3 player play the game with the task of roleplaying the team avatar. Team avatar has to collect enough of earth bendable resources (or it could be set to be restrictly coal blocks), sneak past the guards into rig and provide/place down earthbendable blocks before the timer ends and automaticly kills the earthbenders dead before they could fight back the guards to freedom.
- A team of two spawn in a special arena, one having equalists/chiblockers and Amon, the other benders and Korra. Amon goal is to remove as much as bending from the paralyze victoms from opposing side (the victims who got their bending removed will be indicated with chained armor), while Korra tries to return it back of every team. With a timer running, at the end of it the team who killed the most of their opponents and has most retained/erase bending count respectively, wins.

Ect. I could go on and on. Including a probending with a vanilla/command block would be great even when the dedicated plugin for it is not setted up. To make the server/survival more immersive, just include two seperate timelines like spit into two umbrelling worlds: Aang era and Korra era. Of course the avatar would differ, like for e.g, ArchBear_Vega as avatar would exist in Aang's timeline, while Simplicitee is the avatar for Korra timeline. Both would be able to contact each other easily through pm, since they share the same avatar cycle spirit.

The Difference between those worlds or servers would be in history, technology advacements, architectual structures, ect. Anyway, there could always be another portal in spawn which is pretty much exact replica of the avatar universe but with buildings, premade towns (with the respective look for its timeline-- or two timelines made into new two portals). Have us spawn in our respective nation (i.e. air benders in air nomad, waterbenders in water tribe), but still allow for players to immigrate/runaway to another nation.

Also, there could be some roleplaying going around the server that makes it useful. Like those who work as metalbending police force could earn money for a living by putting arrest those who do not obey the law, like vandalize the streets of republic city (the nerf stuff would revert back). This would also be fun for the criminals and cops, as they would have to chase or be chased by the law enforcement (cops would have to be in close radius to send/tp them to prison by pressing sneak on the criminal.).
 

tetrisd

Member
There's not very much value added in having another PK server that doesn't offer substantial new gameplay. We're talking about a bare-bones server with survival, arenas, and no add-ons. I mean, sure, it's the official one, but if you're banking on the value of players being able to interact with PK staff, that's probably not sufficient.

Furthermore, it's pretty hard getting a competitive edge in even a niche market like bending servers; honestly, it's a bit of a crapshoot. Other PK servers have already devoted years of man-hours in building an ecosystem. And for what? A few thousand dollars per year? A few hundred players? I'm not saying money and population should be the principal focus, but they do bring perspective.

I mean a lot of it depends on your vision. Do you want to grow the server and make money? Or do you just want it to be a place to hang out with devs? If it's the latter, you've already succeeded. If it's the former, you're going to fail at this rate. What's the value added of the official PK server? How do you make it so compelling that players from other well-developed, fleshed-out servers come and stay?
 

xNuminousx

Member
There's not very much value added in having another PK server that doesn't offer substantial new gameplay. We're talking about a bare-bones server with survival, arenas, and no add-ons. I mean, sure, it's the official one, but if you're banking on the value of players being able to interact with PK staff, that's probably not sufficient.

Furthermore, it's pretty hard getting a competitive edge in even a niche market like bending servers; honestly, it's a bit of a crapshoot. Other PK servers have already devoted years of man-hours in building an ecosystem. And for what? A few thousand dollars per year? A few hundred players? I'm not saying money and population should be the principal focus, but they do bring perspective.

I mean a lot of it depends on your vision. Do you want to grow the server and make money? Or do you just want it to be a place to hang out with devs? If it's the latter, you've already succeeded. If it's the former, you're going to fail at this rate. What's the value added of the official PK server? How do you make it so compelling that players from other well-developed, fleshed-out servers come and stay?
These are some really good points. Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
I'm gonna side with tetrisd to this one. I doubt this gonna make much of a difference and have people to donate to make it alive for, like how he put it - "barebone server". Something needs to be interesting, appealing.

Mentioning "no-addons" I think that's barely a factor the issue. It can still be interesting without them. This server just need stuff to do. Take some comments from like @ViperMLG. Ok you have this land-claiming-protection plugin, what's the purpose for it. Ok, you get the claim, now what? You cannot bend in it and others can't conquer it. They will be just sitting there, permanently like monuments with dusts and spider web slowly encasing it. It needs some difficulty, challenge, depth, roleplay, ect. just something.

Provide mini-game related ideas from my other comment that relates to bending, and interesting quest. Not necessary what I proposed, but events and perhaps a freakin functional vanilla/plugin run probending arena that I and some could find (even if the dedicated plugin is not working properly, you can use other plugins or command blocks or other vanilla ways of running). ;D

Something else should be put in, other than aesthetical stuff. I wish I could think of any, but today my creativity is lost right now.

I hope you consider this comment as valuable feedback from this comment. Than again, you probably working on these ideas or server already, so I hope this gives you some inspirational benefit or something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
 
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xNuminousx

Member
The server is going to appeal to players mainly because it's a shiny, new OFFICIAL server. But they likely won't last because it's very similar to what already exists. I first joined it a couple days ago and didn't stay long because it didn't really offer me anything that I haven't already done a thousand times.

An addition that I think would really be interesting is sort of a new extension to the server that could be called Infinity. Idk why but I just thought of that name and sounded dope so I included it... Anyways... I've mentioned before that you should allow players to be able to test several different updated features (like addons and side-plugins). But why not take it further? This is something that could be completely unique to the PK server. Every server has so many restrictions on the abilities you can use and what you can do on their server. So offer the players their creative freedom. For starters, you'd need to make the server Bungee so that you could allow this without interfering with the basic PK set up. You'll have your basic server which includes everything PK currently has and then there will be the Infinity server where players will just have free rein over whatever this want. There could be a survival world, arena, and a testing space for players to freely use ALL the abilities PK has to offer, all the addons that community developers have to offer, and maybe even some awesome features from other plugins. This would be useful for players who are bored of the same old thing and it can be useful for server owners who want to know what an addon might be like before they start testing it on their own server. Of course there would need to be restrictions on what's added like an addon has to be updated constantly, similarly to PK. Whether it be to new minecraft versions or new features.

Some players enjoy the challenge of a restricted environment (like the current server) and some just wanna have fun with everything they can (like the infinity server would offer).

This is one idea that could make the PK server special. I haven't come across a server that offers free rein over plugin aspects yet. The most freedom I've seen from a server is where they offer a plot world and you get creative mode.
 
Not much freedom when only developers share their idea. I think having players to submit like "hey I have this x, can you install it here and have us play test it" and then the developer goes checking if it has malicious intent and if not, they install it.

Tho "Infinity" might turn out reduntant server/world, no? Lots of work for builders to build, or if it only takes copy/pasting the builds - that's what it would end up, a replica from copy-paste. And it's just a server with only all abilities access to normal players and... that's pretty much it. Can't describe, but that might be a waste of resource (or maybe money) of hosting and creating it.
 

xNuminousx

Member
I think having players to submit like "hey I have this x, can you install it here and have us play test it" and then the developer goes checking if it has malicious intent and if not, they install it.
That could work if something is left out or what not.

Lots of work for builders to build, or if it only takes copy/pasting the builds - that's what it would end up, a replica from copy-paste.
You wouldn't even need to make it pretty or anything. Players would be so distracted and overwhelmed by all of the possibilities that a build won't mean anything to them. As long as they have a space to be free. Plus, if a build is NEEDED they could always work on it in their free time if they finished all of their projects.

but that might be a waste of resource (or maybe money)
Well honestly putting up a "bare boned" server could have been a waste of money. I know the EULA allows you to charge access to your server but they didn't really go in depth on if owners are allowed to charge access to bungee servers... Not really sure if that would be a good idea though.

And it's just a server with only all abilities access to normal players
I did mention they could allow free access to other plugins as well. Not sure which but that could be discussed at some point.

Even though it's called "free access" it would still be done professionally and by following guidelines. If it's executed correctly there should be no issues. I can see this server feature appealing to the younger audience. Typically younger people love to have complete access and just do what they want (which why typically the ones saying "please give me flight" or "GiVe Me AvAtAr StAtE!!e21e" are younger). Something to think about.
 
Mix feelings here. I do not think it would change much or keep the server alive. It might make unbalance scales, where people would be more leaning to the "Infinite" server then default, leaving incredible small numbers as it is at the current server/place/world.
 
Than again, I heard from mist words they will build a lobby where people will be free to advertise their servers. So that's something that would make it stand out from other bending servers I believe, as I haven't seen any other do something like with that kind of altidute.
 

xNuminousx

Member
Than again, I heard from mist words they will build a lobby where people will be free to advertise their servers. So that's something that would make it stand out from other bending servers I believe, as I haven't seen any other do something like with that kind of altidute.
Servers would want a well populated server to advertise on... If PK isn't doing to well then why would a server do it? If it's free then the argument of "Why not?" could come up.. But if somehow you have to pay for it I don't see it working out very well.
 

xNuminousx

Member
http://projectkorra.com/forum/threads/updates-on-the-official-projectkorra-server-your-input-needed.6826

Your is like asked here with the same answer, lol. Beats me. That might be why it isn't a thing yet, because the server hasn't grown to attract great number of people in the first very few mountains or more or so.
And that conveniently doesn't say it'll be free. I imagine there'll be some way to pay for it. Like if your server is already a part of the Featured Server list then you will automatically get ad space in the lobby as a part of a "package" ... or something idk.
 
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