So far the server seems to be fine- if you can get started. There are however a few problems with that. One in particular is both short term and long term, and can kill any chance of getting a large player base. When you first spawn, you can spawn at night. This means new players will waste precious time early on starving, or they will venture out and be killed by mobs. This happened to me, and what was annoying was it happened INSIDE the safe zone. It isn't enough to stop them from spawning inside, they can't be allowed to follow players in. I also struggled to figure out what was changed, the signs could be a bit more specific. Additionally, I was lucky to recover my sponge when I was killed. But what if not? New players should have the sponge as a guaranteed item. But the biggest, long term problem I see is simple. The first few players on were able to get materials in safety and secure themselves. I was not able to do that. I went a decent distance away, and still could not avoid other players. The only reason I even got their was because I was able to steal a godsend amount of basic supplies from an abandoned/raided house. I'm worried that over time the general area around spawn will become crowded, and new players will be unable to get anywhere without help from a friend who already is on. This may limit the server pop from it's full potential.
Ideas to fix it:
1. Make spawn completely safe, and give a mini tutorial that expands on the signs in the starting tunnel.
2. Give new players a few items, maybe just some food and a stone axe, to help them get away from spawn, to stop the immediate area surrounding it from being impossible to pass through.
3. Either give new players a 1 hour grace period where they can't lose items and are safe from PvP, or create some sort of safe passage to outer regions.
4. Right now, the server is just really hard for noobs, but once you get established, it is almost easy because you have insane advantages over new players. Perhaps some features could be changed to make having a lot of stuff hard to handle (Builds fall apart without care, better mobs attack you, nerfing high level armor, etc) not to punish progress, but to keep the server tough, because once you have an iron pick and some iron armor, the game is basically as hard as vanilla with slightly different physics.
Ideas to fix it:
1. Make spawn completely safe, and give a mini tutorial that expands on the signs in the starting tunnel.
2. Give new players a few items, maybe just some food and a stone axe, to help them get away from spawn, to stop the immediate area surrounding it from being impossible to pass through.
3. Either give new players a 1 hour grace period where they can't lose items and are safe from PvP, or create some sort of safe passage to outer regions.
4. Right now, the server is just really hard for noobs, but once you get established, it is almost easy because you have insane advantages over new players. Perhaps some features could be changed to make having a lot of stuff hard to handle (Builds fall apart without care, better mobs attack you, nerfing high level armor, etc) not to punish progress, but to keep the server tough, because once you have an iron pick and some iron armor, the game is basically as hard as vanilla with slightly different physics.
