NEW: Mob Arena + updates

[Aeonex]

[shppthwhtfx]

a few questions... if inventories are cleared each time you enter an arena, how do you collect items earned in it? o.o where are these arenas located in the server? (does it have its own world?) And I'm assuming by the way you phrased it, fishy has already applied it to the server.

I believe the cap should be lowered, we were lagging things with 10 blaze (granted they set fire to things which creates more lag). 20 should be the highest being considered for this. It doesn't hurt to try it out, I have no clue how this plugin works =) I'll try it out in my spare time and come back with deeper critique ...hopefully

[9bjames]

Tried it out myself... and yes, it does lag a lot, lol. Well, on my end at least, it might be more a case of my client lagging, but I ended up getting 3 minute long chat lag when it got up to some of the higher waves... like 45+. Anyway, just to answer ya question shpp... it adds rewards to your inventory after you've left the arena, although I don't know how it works when your inventory is full.
If you want to see the arenas, you can do /ma arenas... or something similar, to show all the arena areas you can fight in, but either way, you can do /ma help to show any mob arena commands.
Last thing... I'm unsure if this is intentional, or whether it's just temporary... but in the default arena, no damage is on apart from when fighting blazes, wierdly. Might want to change that if possible so that there is full damage etc, since otherwise it may just end up with endless amounts of waves, as people just play for the easy, practically free rewards.

[Aeonex]

The mob arena is currently set to default:

Default settings:
100 mob spawn max
basic rewards
15 second wave interval
1 world
No exp earned
(lots of other settings, but all will remain default)

I am working with Clownfish to change to these settings:
30-50 mob spawn max
better, mob item only rewards
pvp world, nether, adventureworld, world, desert and planetoid
Exp earnings
Custom classes (if popular idea)

We will also be setting up more mob arenas in already existing arenas (not newly built ones) because we have many arenas on the server. Even in the PVP world. Please post concerns if you aren't willing to donate your arenas for mob arena play or any other general concern.

The following worlds will be both PVP enabled and PvE. These arenas will be ALL out "survival of the fittest":

PVP World Mob Arena
Adventure World Mob Arena (Needs to be built)

The desert world will NOT be PVP enabled, but will have "damage" enabled for PvE challenges.
We could alternately setup the nether or planetoid world to have mob damage. So we can have two mob arenas with PvE challenges. However, that's up to Clownfish on how many mob arenas the server can handle.

[9bjames]

Hmm... Sounds interesting, but really I think it would be better to have it optional for each arena, whether it's just players vs mobs, or players vs everyone. I would suggest making two of each arena in this case, but of course that'd create more lag of each arena is being used at the same time... not to forget would be redundant if there could be a setting which is set at the beginning of each match. I think this would be better, since not all players would want to be against each other, I mean it'd end up with other players being targetted, rather than the mobs, and would end pretty fast in that case, whereas some players may just want to do an all out mob killing party for certain mobs (I'm guessing each arena would have a different mob set, so nether would have nether mobs, normal world - normal world mobs etc).
As well as this, I'd say 30-50 mobs spawning is still a little high... especially if we'll be running multiple arenas at once. Maybe have it as 30-40 max, but I think there should also be a max amount of waves, before the arena game ends.
Lastly, I do think this is a good idea, but will this completely eradicate the use of IC mob spawners? It's a bit of a wierd change, and lately there have been a lot of those... I get the feeling we do very much need to finish off the new spawn, since there have been so many new additions which the old spawn doesn't cover... and in general this new mob arena seems like something that could do with some explaining, to those who don't fully understand it.

[shppthwhtfx]

@james I'm pretty sure aeon said only pvp world and AW will be both pvp and pve arenas (because they're in a pvp world and the arenas spawn mobs to fight people).

I asked aeon about it and he said he has no control over mob sets.. sadly =(

I agree that the settings should be lower, but I don't think aeon will listen to those of us who don't have fancy PCs/internet connections that can download 20 things at once while playing 2 windowed MMORPGs and play pong all at once without a drop of lag ...seriously, ridiculous exaggerations aside, the server had issues sometimes even without having waves of mobs spawned >.> rusty cant play anymore cause of the lag without mob arenas for example, who knows who's next *looks at clo*

I asked aeon about ICs in game as well and he says the developer abandoned the project =( we'll just have to adjust unless a miracle happens and someone picks it up again

and I agree mob arenas are a good idea, as long as it doesn't screw half the servers' gameplay over with lag

[theeaussiepom]

So that's what happened to rusty : (

[Aeonex]

Well, 30 is sounding more like a reasonable number for me per each Arena. The reason why I don't want it set to such a low level is due to the settings of the arena itself. Sometimes, in special waves, 10 of 1 type of mob is spawned. So some waves would be ONLY zombies, which is boring. The idea is variety to make it a challenge. Lowering the mob spawn in each wave would alter the mob arena game too much. It wouldn't be a mob arena! All arenas would be zombie arenas or zombie/skeleton only. (for example). If we decided to lower the individual variety of mobs, then you would have no consistency either.

The mob arena is a lot more limited than you think. Each wave spawns a % of mobs, except special waves. They spawn special mobs, like zombie pigmen, blazes and powered creepers. If the cap was set at 20 and they didn't kill all 20 within the next 15 seconds. The next wave would be only 10 spawned zombie pigmen (if they were only able to kill 10). It would make it VERY boring.

If we set the wave time higher, if multiple people joined the same arena (as many like to), then it wouldn't be a challenge at all. They'd kill all the mobs in 10 seconds and wait 20 more (if we decided to set the wave time higher, but left the mob spawn cap to 20).

I am concerned about your PC's and what they can handle. I am worried more about the over-all performance of the server first. Mob Arena is an attempt to re-gain what we lost with the other arenas. We could spawn 100 sheep at one time and only lag in planetoid. This is why I want to spread out the Arenas per world. That way only 1 world will lag at a time.

One last thing: Mob Arena is a UNIVERSAL plugin. So if we edit one part of Mob Arena, it alters ALL the arenas in game. Not just 1 world, that's why I have no power over the mobs.

[shppthwhtfx]

If what you say is true about the mobs only lagging one world, we could move most of the arenas to a not as popular world and not have any trouble with 40~50 mob setting ...because really, once everyone gets accustomed to the idea of mob arenas, there won't be as many people using the arenas at once, or they can ask "hey anyone using an arena I can join?" and they can share the laggy goodness rather than make twice the lag. I think we should pick 4 or 5 arenas that are really fun to fight in and then set those up in their own world and have a few others in other not as popular worlds ...one per world. How does that sound? o.o

now there are a few worlds that no one even uses anymore for various reasons that havent been deleted for unknown or various reasons: goldenmines, rsworld, thomvanberlo2 <I dont even know what thom used this for x.x

@aussie that's only one of the problems rusty was having, I think the major reason he left was real life ..but he was inactive beforehand because of lag, which in my book is pretty terrible =( *hates lag*

[Aeonex]

If what you say is true about the mobs only lagging one world, we could move most of the arenas to a not as popular world and not have any trouble with 40~50 mob setting ...because really, once everyone gets accustomed to the idea of mob arenas, there won't be as many people using the arenas at once, or they can ask "hey anyone using an arena I can join?" and they can share the laggy goodness rather than make twice the lag. I think we should pick 4 or 5 arenas that are really fun to fight in and then set those up in their own world and have a few others in other not as popular worlds ...one per world. How does that sound? o.o

now there are a few worlds that no one even uses anymore for various reasons that havent been deleted for unknown or various reasons: goldenmines, rsworld, thomvanberlo2 <I dont even know what thom used this for x.x

@aussie that's only one of the problems rusty was having, I think the major reason he left was real life ..but he was inactive beforehand because of lag, which in my book is pretty terrible =( *hates lag*

I agree with all your concerns Shpp. I am limited in what I can do to update the Mob Arena Plugin. I have the ability to set up Mob Arenas. However, if I go to another world (Say, the nether) I no longer have the Mob Arena commands. This is because the config files for the mob arena plugin only support the main world. Currently, the Multiverse plugin (The plugin that allows many worlds on one server) conflicts with the Mob Arena plugin. I will search bukkit diligently for an alternative solution. If I can find a solution, I will definitely go with your concerns and setup all arenas in other unused worlds. There will be 1 arena in the main world as "default". I will also set the mob max spawn to 30 as soon as I am able to edit the config files. I would like to note that once a certain amount of mobs are "loaded" in the server, then it starts to lag. This is around 200 (bad for me, really bad for someone with your connection). As I said before, regarding worlds, if we spread them out, then it won't lag the server in general.