Intro

Did you know that Factions is developed by Cayorion, the server owner here at MassiveCraft? Cayorion is usually busy coding unique plugins for us, such as MassiveQuest and MassiveTraits. The last month however he has been focusing on Factions. In this news post we outline the changes made, why they were made and what can be expected in the future.

Changes Made

• The map Teled Methen was released (this actually has to do with Factions).
• The expansion FactionsRestore was developed.
• The expansion FactionsTax was developed.
• The faction creation price was lowered from 2000 Regals to 100 Regals.
• The automatic inactivity player kick was changed from 20 days to between 10 – 100 days dynamically depending on multiple factors.
• The faction flag monsters is now configurable by faction leader.
• The power was increased from 10 to 20 for normal players.
• The power was increased from 20 to 60 for premium players.
• The commands /f f, /f claim and /f sc were reworked and improved.
• Fixed over 50 minor bugs and issues reported on GitHub.

Changes Explained

It all starts with FactionsRestore. On big servers, like MassiveCraft, world maps are quickly worn out due to intense player activity. Soon all trees are cut down, all ores are mined and ugly dirt pillars cover the horizon. FactionsRestore counteracts this by restoring wilderness chunks back to their original release state.

The recently released world map Teled Methen is the first to ship with FactionsRestore enabled. Teled Methen turned out exactly like we hope it would. The world remains beautiful, resource rich and factions settling there enjoy knowing they won’t have to move to a new map due to the current one wearing out. With this in mind we have decided that most future maps will ship with FactionsRestore enabled.

But what about factionless players? On maps with FactionsRestore you need a Faction so you can claim what you wish to keep. With this in mind we have made Factions more accessible. Lowering the creation price from 2000 Regals to 100 Regals has made creating a new faction affordable even for new players. To counteract inflation and add a new layer of diplomacy to the game Cayorion developed FactionsTax. Factions now have to pay a low upkeep cost per chunks claimed. To gather that money the faction leader may optionally configure a tax for the players in the faction, which is automatically paid once a day.

In order to quickly clear out inactive one player factions that never really gets used, we reworked the automatic disband of factions and automatic kick of inactive players. Such player factions will be removed after only 10 days. But if you are an old active premium player you will benefit from as much as 100 days which is significantly much more than the previous flat 20 days. Use /f p for more info.

But what about darkrooms? Darkrooms have up till now always been build outside faction territory since monsters could not spawn inside faction territory. Now they have to be built inside faction territory in order to not be restored by FactionsRestore. With this in mind we made the faction flag monsters configurable by the faction leader. Monster spawning can be toggled on using /f flag yourfaction monsters yes.

We also doubled the player power! On MassiveCraft you get 20 power instead of the regular 10, and premiums even enjoy 60 power! This makes it easier to claim what you want to keep in the new FactionsRestore era. We are also confident we can afford giving this to our player base. After all the MassiveCraft network runs on 10 epic rackservers.

Last but not least the commands /f f, /f claim and /f sc were reworked and improved and over 50 minor bugs and issues were fixed. /f f looks better and does not crash for big factions. /f claim and /f unclaim have been replaced by the far superior /f set which supports weird stuff like radius unclaim with circular shape and flood fill. /f sc no longer freezes the client and uses smoke particles to remain active even when the player moves around.

Epic Times!

Changes to Come

Our future plans are revised all the time and should be taken with a grain of salt.
That being said the plans for the near future for MassiveCraft and Factions currently looks like this:

1. FactionsTax will do the first taxation 7 days from now. Make sure to fill your faction bank!
2. New epic world maps are in the making. They will be released with FactionsRestore enabled. The next one will be a snow and ice one called “Jorrhildr”.
3. Old world maps like Daendroc will eventually be removed.
4. The commands /f perm and /f flag will be reworked to use sub commands like /f flag set monsters yes and /f flag show.
5. The commands /f recruit, /f member, /f officer, /f leader, /f promote and /f demote will be merged into a single /f rank command like /f rank playername officer and /f rank playername demote.
6. The commands /f enemy, /f neutral, /f truce and /f ally will be merged into a single /f relation command like /f relation set factionname enemy and /f relation list enemies.
7. A few extra utility commands will be added.
8. More expansion plugins like FactionsTax and FactionsRestore will be developed.
9. The main factions documentation will be updated.
10. Finally the plugin version number will be declared up from 2 to 3! Factions 3 yaaaaaay!

So in short, what should I do?

These five things should get you well sorted!

1. Become premium! Because you like MassiveCraft (and the 30+ ingame benefits)!
2. /f money deposit 1337! So your faction bank contains enough money for the new /f tax system.
3. Move to Teled Methen (optional)!
4. Test out /f sc! Remember to enable particles in your client.
5. Type /f p to see your faction inactivty kick length!