CV7: Quests and Ranks

[Fireheads]

Ooooo tension convention

[WallyDonkey]

Firstly, I want to apologise Tis if you are feeling upset or disheartened by these changes; that was never our intention and we do our best to make sure as many players as possible are happy with any changes we bring in. None of this is targeted at making things worse for older players, or snatching away perks out of spite that you have relied on for so long. Rather we are looking to open up the rank system to all of our players, but we want to do so without making every player on Cubeville overpowered to the point of being completely immune to danger.

Whilst the easy option would have been to leave the old ranks alone as we introduced new ones for sale, the Minecraft EULA simply does not allow us to do that. There needs to be equality of opportunity for all players, something that has been missing for a long time, and which we are looking to fix with this update. To that end if we wanted to balance the ranks, which we do, then it has to apply to everyone; whether they are purchasing them new on CV7 or if they purchased them years ago.

Now I'm going to try and respond to your post point by point and explain the reasoning behind various things; bear with me as this might get a little long

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I'm gonna admit , that is crappy that theres no refund as they deserve something back that was taken

They've gotten 10 years of use out of those perks - plenty of use for the $$ they paid

DM wasn't bought out till 2013 or 14. I started in 2012, so that cant be 10 years.

This is correct, Death Master (DM) has been out for 8 years. Which is still a fair amount of time but indeed not quite 10 years. This probably got a little confused with the fact that Saemai said the old ranks were made 10 years ago, which is true, but does not include all ranks.

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Wally, it has nothing to do with the splitting of the ranks.. or the fact we got deathhound for ratpack, which I also don't like. It's to do with the 1hour cooldown time. It's way too long. Why cant it be like the rest 20 min at most. 10 at least.

Specifically on ratpack, though you don't seem to mind that change as much, there were too many technical issues to overcome to carry that over. These rank perks don't just remain functional forever once written. It simply would have taken too many programmer hours to move over for what it is, especially now that shulker boxes can increase storage to a maximum of 36 inventories (63 if you fill your ender chest with them as well) whilst packrat only ever added 1. We have to choose between and prioritise what makes sense to do with the volunteer programming power we have. We felt that with the amount of time it would take to update something that is mostly replaced anyway, it was best to let that one go and focus the time on improvements elsewhere. Happily, in 1.16, shulkers automatically lock to players as chests do, so they will be even easier to use.

The cooldown additions were about balance. The Death Master (DM) rank has always been overpowered, and we have had a desire to tone it down for a long time. It was not a decision that was made lightly, we have been weighing the choice and its merits, cons, and the impact on the server as a whole that would be the repercussion of releasing things as they are, with wishing to respect those who purchased ranks in the past for literal years. Removing the consequences of death from minecraft essentially puts the game on Super Easy mode, borderline Peaceful even, which is not the gameplay intent of our server.

Many, many times over the years I have had to explain to upset players why we can't simply restore their lost items when they die, that they need to try and find them or start over. And that starting over is just part of the game, sometimes you die and lose your things, it happens to the best of us. I've also had to explain many times why the server doesn't have the KeepInventory gamerule turned on; that it ruins the survival aspect of the game and removes any real challenge to players. Having the DM rank as it was goes against all of that completely and, whilst I'm not opposed to it being around in some form, I think that really it always needed a cooldown to stop it completely killing the survival aspect of the game. It also had unintended consequences. You shouldn't be able to '/kill' and '/respawn' hundreds of times in a row to get a haste beacon effect whilst mining, /kill wasn't supposed to be a second 'home', and you shouldn't be able to do crazily dangerous things constantly with no potential consequence at any point.

You will still be able to keep inventory once per hour, return to your death point once per hour, (which is basically getting your stuff back as well as long as you didn't die in lava) and use Death Hound once per 20 mins to get the location of your death drops. When you don't need it, you'll be able to help someone else out who has died with no hope otherwise of finding their things. A combination of these three cooldowns covers a lot of death. True, you will no longer be completely immune to death and item loss, you won't be able to ignore all dangers of the game without risk at all times. As a survival server, we did not feel these aspects of the game should just be cut out entirely. However, if you play the game with any amount of care, you will still be able to recover your things the vast majority of the time. If you have died enough times in the last hour to have already used your /respawn, keepsake, and coordinates from Death Hound, then you might just want to be a little careful for 20 minutes or so. We feel this is reasonable. You might even find new enjoyment for the early game in minecraft if it is slightly more challenging! Personally I find the game most exciting when I don't have overpowered armour and equipment.

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Sae plz explain what this means
"On the whole, people who had purchased ranks in the past, especially end-chain ranks, will have more functional rank abilities than they have had in many years."
How and what are these 'more functional abilities' you speak of.. I cant see any 'MORE' in taking away the, 'instant respawn to making it 1hr cooldown', at all. Where does the more function ability come in here?

Obviously sae can speak for herself on this but since I'm replying I'll throw my two cents in anyway. There have been some parts of ranks that have not worked for a long time due to changes in the game. Things like automatically selling WG regions, repair chests, toll doors, etc. So removing those has not taken anything functional from the game, but rather we are tidying them up and introducing abilities that are functional. Just because some abilities now have a cooldown doesn't mean that they are not functional, it just means that they are functional and not overtuned.

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Also... "Not only that, but the perks they purchased have given them a far greater advantage over the last handful of years than they were ever intended to, since they were unavailable to all other players, and I would argue that this was not a slight advantage."
If I am not a staff because I choose not to, then should I not have something to say I have put in a lot of years and over $450 into this server in my time I have spent here?

There are a lot of ways to contribute to Cubeville, be it working for, playing on, or helping financially support the server, and we appreciate all of those. Many different people have helped in one way or another over the years. You yourself are a Quest Builder and I really appreciate the work that you have put in there, as well as all your time helping players over the years (as I have said to you before heh). There are patrons who have donated many dollars (in some cases thousands) to keep Cubeville running over the years, although their only perks are cosmetic (and having a cool server to play on!) Then there are people like Fredi; the poor guy got lumbered with the role of lead programmer in the run up to CV6 launch and had to almost single-handedly upgrade CV to a multi-server solution and write a lot of new plugins from scratch to achieve it. As well as since then, keeping the technical side of Cubeville going whilst making constant improvements and updates, including the massive overhaul required to accommodate the sweeping changes to Minecraft's back-end in the 1.13 update. I couldn't add up the number of programmer hours he has put in, and I would be scared to try and put a dollar value on to it because I certainly don't have the tens of thousands of dollars to repay him if he wanted it lol. And that's just one example, staff put in countless hours of labour to keep this server going and exciting.

We're not taking away your ranks, your past purchase is still valid and you will maintain, as best as possible, the perks you enjoyed before, along with a few new ones. However, buying ranks years ago never meant that things would never change, look at any other online gaming purchase. The fact that we're still doing our best to honour those purchases within the framework of creating a fairer system is done simply because we believe it is the right thing to do, and I would hope that those holding old ranks would appreciate that aspect here.

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And... "As Wally also pointed out, at the time ranks were purchased there was no guarantee that the Cubeville server would even be around in 5 years time, let alone that all ranks would still be available exactly as they were when created a decade ago."
Wally wasn't even on CV when all this happened and if he was he had the chance to get the perks at a (may I say VERY) reduced price when he had the chance.

Correct that I was not around when all that happened, and was quite annoyed to discover when I joined that I had not long missed out being able to purchase all these cool ranks lol. But I do have access to the information that was given out at the time, and can say that there was not any promise made that ranks would never change. It's probably more surprising that they haven't been updated for this long of a period, which is why a number were broken. Though if I did have the ranks I still would not be opposed to these changes, to my mind they are just fair and bring balance to the game. In the same way that I make changes to PvP kits when something is too strong, I don't think it is unreasonable to look at ranks in the same way and make adjustments where something turned out too strong.

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Also if he does have them why would any of these changes effect him now. He has /god , /v , /gmsp , /gmcr among others and can spy on anyone he chooses. I know cause I have had many a high rank staff do it, from Sequoia to Toe.

I am always amused by people who think that just because I have /v, I have nothing better to do with my time than spy on them or anyone else lol. But to answer this point, staff are absolutely not allowed to use the powers that come with their position for personal gain, and this has been the reason behind demotion or complete removal from the staff team in the past. There is a very clear separation between being staff and being a player when it comes to powers. If I could use all my staff abilities for personal things then I would have finished Arcadia a long time ago ha!

Staff abilities are there for a reason; /v is for when a server project needs a staff members full attention and makes seeing and / or participating in chat difficult or impossible, or to watch suspect situations. Equally, /god is there to keep staff from dying when they go to a /modreq to help a player out. It is not used when mob hunting, playing normally as a player, etc. I can do practically anything as a staff member in terms of powers/abilities, but as a player I still needed to hire Cade to use his obsidian perk to make my pigman farm, and I still needed to pay Sequoia to upgrade my tools to be RP maxed. Abuse of staff powers is taken very seriously. There is a very clear separation between staff powers and player ranks and the two do not influence each other at all here. Just like anyone else I am looking forward to being able to purchase RP etc

[Tisjstme]

Thanks for that long reply Wally, I will send mine back to you in a DM. There is no reason for me to also tell an epic tale here. But I would like to say that I understand now what you were trying to do for all the players.

[Fireheads]

Any dates on when these will be available? Especially DR quest?

[Mcemi]

So I ordered a shirt online with a red heart graphic design on it and when my package arrived, there was a shirt with a red circle on it. I contacted customer service and they replied back, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we reworked the design. I understand this is frustrating, but you got what you ordered, we just changed it after the fact."

No.

"Well more people wanted the circle than wanted the heart. We had to be fair!"

No.

The EULA does not apply to perks purchased before the EULA was updated.

No.

So who wants to front the costs of refunding the $ for perks purchased? I could sure use the many hundreds of dollars right about now, but I spent it years ago to have special perks in a game.

[Tisjstme]

So I ordered a shirt online with a red heart graphic design on it and when my package arrived, there was a shirt with a red circle on it. I contacted customer service and they replied back, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we reworked the design. I understand this is frustrating, but you got what you ordered, we just changed it after the fact."

No.

Changed it????

Its now a onesie.

Still not happy with DM...

[Ethanlues]

Thats tough

[WallyDonkey]

So I ordered a shirt online with a red heart graphic design on it and when my package arrived, there was a shirt with a red circle on it. I contacted customer service and they replied back, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we reworked the design. I understand this is frustrating, but you got what you ordered, we just changed it after the fact."

No.

"Well more people wanted the circle than wanted the heart. We had to be fair!"

No.

The EULA does not apply to perks purchased before the EULA was updated.

No.

So who wants to front the costs of refunding the $ for perks purchased? I could sure use the many hundreds of dollars right about now, but I spent it years ago to have special perks in a game.

Your analogy isn't exactly accurate; your order wasn't changed on arrival, it was updated many years later, and after you'd been able to wear your shirt with a red heart on it as much as you want. The changes to ranks are overall relatively minor, considering how long it has been and how much the game and CV has changed.

I'm not going to argue here about the EULA, we've been doing so for many years and it is up to the server management, not individual players, to understand and apply the rules to the server to keep us out of trouble.

No refunds are being offered, because nothing is being removed and, even if they were, people have had full use of the ranks for many years so it is a bit disingenuous to argue for a refund. The ranks have changed a little, but they're still there and you can still use them. I'm fairly sure you would have trouble returning any shirt to a store after you've been wearing it for 5+ years

[Mcemi]

So I ordered a shirt online with a red heart graphic design on it and when my package arrived, there was a shirt with a red circle on it. I contacted customer service and they replied back, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we reworked the design. I understand this is frustrating, but you got what you ordered, we just changed it after the fact."

No.

"Well more people wanted the circle than wanted the heart. We had to be fair!"

No.

The EULA does not apply to perks purchased before the EULA was updated.

No.

So who wants to front the costs of refunding the $ for perks purchased? I could sure use the many hundreds of dollars right about now, but I spent it years ago to have special perks in a game.

Your analogy isn't exactly accurate; your order wasn't changed on arrival, it was updated many years later, and after you'd been able to wear your shirt with a red heart on it as much as you want. The changes to ranks are overall relatively minor, considering how long it has been and how much the game and CV has changed.

I'm not going to argue here about the EULA, we've been doing so for many years and it is up to the server management, not individual players, to understand and apply the rules to the server to keep us out of trouble.

No refunds are being offered, because nothing is being removed and, even if they were, people have had full use of the ranks for many years so it is a bit disingenuous to argue for a refund. The ranks have changed a little, but they're still there and you can still use them. I'm fairly sure you would have trouble returning any shirt to a store after you've been wearing it for 5+ years

Yeah, right. I’d like to hear from the owner of this server on this topic as it is above staff’s pay grade.

Winky face. ;)

Btw, if nothing is being removed, then why was a lot removed? Huh?

[WallyDonkey]

So I ordered a shirt online with a red heart graphic design on it and when my package arrived, there was a shirt with a red circle on it. I contacted customer service and they replied back, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but we reworked the design. I understand this is frustrating, but you got what you ordered, we just changed it after the fact."

No.

"Well more people wanted the circle than wanted the heart. We had to be fair!"

No.

The EULA does not apply to perks purchased before the EULA was updated.

No.

So who wants to front the costs of refunding the $ for perks purchased? I could sure use the many hundreds of dollars right about now, but I spent it years ago to have special perks in a game.

Your analogy isn't exactly accurate; your order wasn't changed on arrival, it was updated many years later, and after you'd been able to wear your shirt with a red heart on it as much as you want. The changes to ranks are overall relatively minor, considering how long it has been and how much the game and CV has changed.

I'm not going to argue here about the EULA, we've been doing so for many years and it is up to the server management, not individual players, to understand and apply the rules to the server to keep us out of trouble.

No refunds are being offered, because nothing is being removed and, even if they were, people have had full use of the ranks for many years so it is a bit disingenuous to argue for a refund. The ranks have changed a little, but they're still there and you can still use them. I'm fairly sure you would have trouble returning any shirt to a store after you've been wearing it for 5+ years

Yeah, right. I’d like to hear from the owner of this server on this topic as it is above staff’s pay grade.

Winky face. ;)

Btw, if nothing is being removed, then why was a lot removed? Huh?

You are more than welcome to try getting in touch with Inutterable. I might suggest being somewhat less rude when you message him if you want to get a reply though. Good luck!