OG:SMP Doesn't feel very OG (yes, this is a feedback post)

[Xenyth_0]

"We want to bring back that old style server feel..." ~whoever wrote that in the home page.

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, and sorry if I offend any of you admins or owners who may happen to see this. The server, for what it is, is terrific and very enjoyable. OG:SMP doesn't feel very og. Since the survival games servers are always empty, I'm ignoring them and just focusing only on survival. Now just to clarify, I won't try to make any "this is p2w" arguments simply because - it's not. This server is not p2w. What I'm going to argue is that there are certain aspects of this server that don't make it feel like an OG true vanilla experience. It's the closest to a populated true vanilla server that we will likely ever see for a long time, if not, ever, since those servers were basically slaughtered by greedy p2w servers and big "corporation" servers like Hypixel or Mineplex. But even then, at least in my very humble opinion, it doesn't feel like the good 'ol true vanilla servers that used to run. (These servers go by a lot of names, some call them true vanilla, some call them anarchy-lite, some call it vanilla-anarchy, all the same thing defined by one thing: It's anarchy with minimal plugins and hacking being the one thing not allowed.) This is where I can understand the issues of trying to run a true vanilla server this day in age with the current Minecraft server community. All of them have fancy plugins and a lot of true vanilla servers are abandoned and not played anymore, that being that a Minecraft player even knows what true vanilla server is anymore. So, knowing this, it's likely that if you don't have a good way to spread the word of your server, like a YT channel with a couple thousand - million+ subs, this server will likely not be played on. But this is supposed to be an og true vanilla type server, look at the quote mentioned, and also the rules say you CAN grief, you CAN rob/loot, and you CAN kill other players.

What I think makes this feel more of like a modified-true-vanilla server and less like a true vanilla server is the small perks like being able to set homes, a marketplace (with a sometimes difficult grind to get money), the rep system, and the guild system. Let me explain why before you question my reasonings. First of all, the sethome command. To truly bring back an old style server feel warp and teleport command would have to be completely non-existent. Back in my day, we walked back to our bases. On foot. Having sethome, and I admit I have used it because it was there, slightly ruins the appeal for me. Then, the marketplace. Now hold on, I actually like the marketplace. In fact, I admire it, it's neat. But for a true vanilla server? Probably not. I don't think there are many ways a marketplace can be implemented into a true vanilla server without it getting griefed (or however you spell that). Heck, I used to play on a true vanilla server where a few players built a market city, had it up for only about a month before it was blown up. The marketplace system slightly ruins the economy appeal of a true vanilla. The economy of a true vanilla server is mostly based off of trading and looting, not this in-game currency stuff, and honestly, I prefer the trading and looting. Another small issue I have with this is the ender chests right as spawn. I want you to make me grind for my ender chest. Yes, I mean it when I say make me. Not just me, everyone. Forever.

Now I don't have too much of an issue with protected server spawn. If it wasn't there, the server would be full of right of the bat spawn killers to no end. Granted, more chaotic servers like 2b2t actually have no protected spawn and there's usually no spawn killers most of the time so maybe I'm eating my own words there. The rep system really does get to me though. This is a true vanilla server, one of the only servers where destructive griefing, pointless murder, and ruthless robbery is supposed to be okay. But instead, there's a rep system put in place. Having a rep system feels more like trying to encourage all the players the get along and be nice. Some people don't want to be nice, and for this server, that's okay. But having a rep system feels like the equivalent of tattling on somebody for something they are allowed to do. This is made so much worse by the fact that having low rep takes away permissions in the server for the player. I even brought this up in chat and an admin told me this is to reduce toxicity which just proves my point. Then it's supposed to be non-abusable, but having ranks allows you to rep more in 24hrs, meaning you have more chances to down rep somebody just because they stole something from you. BE A MAN (or woman, the saying just goes like that I'm cool either way) GO FACE HIM (or her, women can be the villain's too I'm cool either way) YOURSELF, and if you can't, grind for what you need than grief his entire frikin base! Lastly, and this is the smallest thing I have an issue with, needing a rank to have a guild. I know it's just vanity (or at least I think so I would know for sure if I had a guild...) but it's another small thing that ruins the appeal a bit. Let's say you go to the club, and now, you want to go flirt with this person and ask them out to dinner. (AKA: You want to ask this player if he'll join your guild) Unfortunately, you are covered in rags, dirt, your hair is greasy and you have a giant pimple on your forehead the size of the Italy. (No judge we've all been there, pal.) Now this other person flirts with the same person you were but this guy has a nice suit, silky hair, a smooth touch worthy face, and he just looks like the alpha male. The alpha male is having a guild, where the alpha male get's the person he flirted with, and people without a guild and are covered in dirt did not. I think you can join a guild without a rank, but all I wanted to do was start a guild called the Syndicate™ and now I can't and if I see a guild called the Syndicate™ I'm suing you for everything you're worth. Including you're pets! My point is, having the fancy guild title is always more appealing.

Now here's where I do that really fancy rebuttal thing. Having a true vanilla server is not possible in the current state of Minecraft server communities. (Whoops I did my rebuttal earlier (too early) so sorry!) Those types of servers are considered boring these days. I get where the creators of this server were going. And I do like this server. I don't plan to stop playing (but if I never come online again just know I'M BEING REPRESSED) and I do enjoy the server, and I'm totally okay with anti-lag plugins as well. But personally, for someone who has had some of their best times in Minecraft of real true vanilla servers, calling this server OG (remember I'm only talking about the survival you people never play Survival Games, geez.) or true vanilla, or a good 'ol style Minecraft server, feels like false advertising.

 

[Glixe]

The 2 problems that will make a public server that actually feels og, are that unless you're in older versions of the game it won't feel right, and also the community has changed, and for better or worse there is absolutely no way it will go back. The only way that the old way servers worked was the fact that everyone was new to the game, now that people knoow how the game work, their mentality is different.

(if what I just said doesn't actually make sense, I just skimmed the thing you wrote instead of reading 4 paragraphs cause lazy)

 

[PixelRunner]

People are just gonna delete their morals just because they are allowed to. Still, I just think that people should shut up about "Oh, I was ALLOWED to do it, so there is ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM!!!" The lack of rules was there, not to turn this server into a complete anarchy server, but so that the server could be run by the players. The players should get to make their own governments, their own currencies, and by ALL FRIKIN MEANS! LET THEM BUILD THEIR OWN SPAWN! Given the current state of the world, you are either making a p2w server where everything within 2,000,000 blocks of spawn is claimed, or you are going to make a 2b2t clone. Although instead of accepting that I think we should just figure it out.

Also WOW that was a lot to read!

Edit: Actually, you know what, for all its worth why dont we just tell players they are not allowed to grief/kill/steal and see what happens

 

[Supwe]

Well, it's true all of what you say isn't og, but I think most of them are necessary and I'll explain you why (this is just my point of view don't take it so seriously).

1- /sethome. I used to have some servers with my friends, no plugins at all, and it was really nice to build our own nether tunnels with ice to connect our bases, stronghold and other places of interest. We were REALLY far from each other, those nether ice boat travels took around 5 minutes in average. We didn't need a /sethome, it was fun and part of the experience connecting all of our world through those tunnels. Unfortunately, a server like this needs it. You can't just build fancy tunnels connecting your base to anything or probably someone will find it soon, and that's ok. It's not a survival with your friends but it isn't either 2b2t, you need to build your base at a certain distance to keep it safe, and travelling through normal nether, without altering the environment so you don't get found, it's not that nice, and the distance required is slightly considerable. Yeah, there were some proto-highways on the world before the reset, they didn't get that far because of time and that's what they do on 2b2t, but if you know so much about 2b2t you know how much annoying is travelling on that server. They are always trying to find a new exploit to travel faster through the highways whenever Hausemaster fixes their previous one, and they do it because it is a pain in the ass. Yeah, the appeal of 2b2t is that it is almost fully vanilla, but I guarantee you if you gave these players a /sethome they wouldn't complain that much.

2- Marketplace. You talk that a true vanilla is about trading and looting, but why would a full netherite guy full of gear and tons of stuff at their base trade with you? What can you offer him? I think the economy system is improvable, but good so players without that much gear have a chance to make a good deal. Also it helps making the progress a little bit more enjoyable. Instead of grinding villagers until you get the enchantment you want (which some may found fun to do, probably), you can go mining by your own, keep all of the materials you need and sell those which you don't, and with time you'll get that enchantment book you wanted, a shulkerbox or some other late game item. And no, they weren't that easy to get. I had to grind for several fays for my shulker, my elytras, and probably I could have obtained them through the normal intended way, getting gear, going to the end and all of that, and you probably can do that on the same amount of time that it took me to buy them on the marketplace, but they are both valid options. Want to get that far far away to find an end city with ungriefed elytras? Go ahead. Want to grind money at the same time you do other usefull things? Go ahead. It isn't og, but I don't think that's a bad thing as it does not replace the vanilla way to do it because as I said, both still take time to do.

3- Rep system. In this one I agree with you. Condemnable attitude is already bannable, so anything "bad" you do that doesn't get you banned, it probably isn't that bad (but still can be judged if morally correct or not). And I think griefing a base is ok, it's part of the fun of not having protection, but sadly there are some actions that I find morally cuestionable. For example, spawn killing. This isn't that much of an issue now due to some invulnerability time when you join for the first time, but it was still a problem in the guild war event where many innocent not fully geared people where killed and griefed because of the misunderstanding of the rules by one guild. However, rep system doesn't solve that. Yeah, they bombed with negative rep those players, but you can just abuse the rep system and up or down rep for almost any reason. You also had some of these fully geared guys gifting players items like diamonds with the name "/rep (insert name)". In addition, about events, it would be nice if they didn'tmake half the server targets for being chased, but I hope future events don't have these design problems.

Those were your main points, but now that this is about "og", I want to add some of my complaints.

A- Donkeys, llamas, mules etc. I would understand disabling them if there was a known unfixed duping glitch, but by default? And no, I don't want people to find dupe glitches, but I think directly preventing you to tame and ride them is not ok. And yes, this can be a problem for some players. On some of my old survival servers with friends, on early/mid game before I would get those late game items like shulkerboxes etc, mules were really really usefull and I used to explore with them as they are faster than donkeys but can carry items.

B- Resets. Resets can be a thing even on og, but since you talked previously about 2b2t, I think this is an interesting topic to cover. What is the main reason people care about 2b2t? I'm talking about people, no the players themselves. You probably guessed it, the history and lore around the server. 2b2t videos have millions of views because people find interesting all what players have made on the years it has been around. That by itself doesn't mean all of those people who watch the videos will play it because of the queues and the generally hostile environment it is to new players. But from that million views, at least a little bit of them will join, and an even littler amount of them will become server regulars. 2b2t will never die because its history and lore are appealing to a huge audience from which a tiny number of players will begin players.
Resets ruin that, and I don't think this server necessarily needs an appealing lore built around the years, but it is what made me quit from playing and I'll explain why. When I joined, I didn't know resets were going to be a thing. Before the reset I had some decent gear, not netherite but had fully enchanted diamond items. What I did when I joined for the first time was travel through then -X overworld highway. I wanted to get as far as possible, I travelled and travelled until I reached the end at around -28900. Come on, it was so close to -30.000 I couldn't just let it like that. So I began digging the 3x3 tunnel with iron pickaxes because it was what I had. It took time until the highway surpassed the extreme hills it was left around, and that's not all, some other new player with iron pickaxes too also helped me to dig that tunnel. And, finally, with the help of that guy, another player I never saw and me, the final 1100 blocks to -30.000 were reached and I built a temple milestone there. All of this was what my first post on this forum was about (https://og-network.net/threads/x-highway-reached-30k.387/). But that wasn't all. My inspiration for the temple wasn't that great and it didn't look that good, so before continuing building the highway bridge through the ocean, I left a sign saying if someone came there, that please they add something to decorate the temple. What did I find some weeks later when I came back? Signs, not that many but they were awesome. I left a chest from when I was building it and someone filled it with some of the few things they had like food, wood and that kind of stuff. One of the guys who helped me with the final 1100 blocks put a bamboo in the middle of the entrance, COOL, one guy put some trapdoors on the columns for decoration and left a sign, OMG SO COOL I LOVED IT. Finding that players improved what I originally built, used it, got the highway even further than I did and found later some of the signs from the guy of the trapdoors was probably THE BEST thing that happened to me on this server. But now, what's the point? What's the point of building highways and interacting using signs with players that went through there before and after you? What's the point of all I told you if it's going to dissapear. And yes, I could download that zone from the espectator server or whatever, but that isn't the point, the point is that even more players find it, leave signs and improve it. Why would I want a local download? To remember how pointless it was? I prefer keeping my memories of what it could have been.
Also, didn't want to tell this ever but since now it's all lost, I'll tell. I did a puzzle in latin through that -X highway. I hid some signs on the milestones that others built previously to me, knowing that probably whoevers finds them wouldn't care and with the risk of someone just exploding the entire thing, but you know? who knows if in 5 years, some random latin student would find them and try to find the rest of the signs. Dude that probably would be the most epic thing EVER to me and the latin student who tries to solve it. And even if there were no resets and the server kept running for 20 years, probably nobody would care about those signs, but the probability of someone trying to solve them was not 0 and that was cool. Also the reset was announced while I was getting resources to build a latin theater (not amphitheater). I wouldn't build it that much far from spawn so anyone with the coords wich I would have made public could find it. Yep, someone would explote it eventually, there's no doubt about that, but in the time it was around, maybe some players united to make a role play or something. People did that on the theater of Club Penguin, someone might would have done that if it was built idk. Again, not the most likely, but the probability isn't 0.

Well, that's all I have to say. If admins think all of the not-og things and resets are the way to go I respect that. If and admin reads this, I don't know, I hope this little little bit of lore about the old world liked you . If some player reads this, don't take my message and the original post so seriously, try the server, enjoy it by your own. Maybe I can't enjoy it anymore but maybe it fulfills you.
Tenete bona dies et protegete vestra moenia!