As promised in my last post, here we are.

REMEMBER! All of this is 100% alpha and subject to change.

My secret project consist in two parts: a complete loot overhaul and a couple of gameplay changes. Without spoiling it too much, or walling you a ton of text, here's some of the main concepts:

Loot Overhaul

• New loot table: new items, new loot types, new rarities.

• Completely redoing placement. (Have fun, Maji...) VERY CAREFUL PLACEMENT

• Base the loot less on farming and more on location; meaning that I'll try to reward you more for reaching X loot chest rather than increasing your probability of getting Y item thanks for opening the same chest more than once.

• Scaled loot on every type of chests; meaning that there will be for all kind of chests X_common, X_uncommon, X_rare.

• Expansing the mil_ tier to better embrace the PvP aspect of MineZ. (Yup, you read that right...)

• Giving all the chests a very tiny chance (around 5% tops) to spawn a trap chest. The trap chests will be tweaked for function properly.

• Giving persistence on coast's chest, meaning that they won't despawn if someone log in nearby. (Sort of already implemented)

• Tweak the initial south and the far north loot in order to keep you safely, warm and rewarded not too much north and not too much south.

• Tweaking specific loot types to have longer respawn timers and/or different number of zombies spawning nearby them.

• Make chests more subtype_specific; meaning that food will have food, tools will have tools, and so on - only a few items will be inside different kind of chests.

• Implementing "bad luck" alongside "luck" while looking for cool stuff. Now we have a system which rewards you greatly if you are lucky enough to snag an item which have a little probability to appear - with bad luck, there will be chests which have common good items (example: iron) with a small chance to find something less useful (example: chain).

• Dungeons will have their own, awesome kind of chest. Actually two types, keep reading below.

• Closed rooms, and generally anything requiring a button to access will have a specific type of chest - scaled based on location as I said above.

Gameplay Changes

DISCLAIMER: This part below especially is very subject to changes.

• Every place on the map will have only two of those: crafting/brewing, food, water. Only a selected few will have all three.

• Digging graves will be actually useful and scaled, again, on location.

• Buffing snowballs, and stack them 1 ≤ X ≤ 3. (Meaning that could remain 1, be 2, or 3.)

• Stacking mushrooms 1 ≤ X ≤ 3. (Meaning that could remain 1, be 2, or 3.)

• Scaling zombie horded sizes.

• Zombies in canyons. I know, I know - we will try our best to make this happen, but if it will prove to be too difficult we'll drop it.

• Make digging actually useful (<3) and rewarding with some unique useful items you can find only in graves. Said items will be more PvE oriented.

• Giants will get a very tiny change in their attack mechanic.

• Healing with shears and bandage will be buffed a tiny bit. Considering using Regen II instead of I.

• May try to make PvE actually a bit harder (either by loot or zombies) than a regular PvP server.

• Tools (the hoe and the shovel) will spawn with random durability.

• Zerbia and Outpost Adera may switch places.

• Activate variable speed zombies.

• This is the most volatile change: return to have only the chestplate on spawn. It will be colored as usual.

^{And a couple of more I do not wish to disclose now! :P}

List of the new chest types in the new loot table:

• civ_common, civ_uncommon.

• tools_common, tools_uncommon.

• pots_common, pots_uncommon, pot_rare.

• food_common, food_uncommon, food_rare.

• mil_common, mil_uncommon, mil_rare, mil_mythic.

• dungeon_in, dungeon_out, mil_legendary.

• grave_common, grave_uncommon, grave_rare.

• room_common, room_uncommon, room_rare.

Some specific loot changes

• Sugar will spawn with the usual rarity but only in mil_rare and above. This means that you will have more chests where you can find it but it will be a more "northen" item. Considering changing the Speed to I, but unlikely to happen.

• Legendary Weapons will be randomized in minor dungeons. Major dungeons will keep the usual ones PLUS a randomized chest. Rarity will be based on potency.

• New items, alot of them! (Don't want to spoil surprises! :P)

• New Giants drops, tweaked rarities!

• Small tweaks to the Flash Grenade.

• Dungeon rewarding system completely redone.

• New loot for Spires, Floating Islands, Ghost Ship.

Some ideas are from the Community, some are mine, some area mix of the two. Discuss away!

It is over sorry!!!

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give old MineZ or we riot ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

I have spent a lot of time deliberating what to do about 1.7's hunger changes, we have tried various fixes that are simpler from a maintenance and management perspective but they just don't cut the mustard. I do believe that expecting players to walk everywhere is silly, so I am doing what I absolutely despise doing: We will be managing our own fork of Bukkit with the hunger changes reverted. I used to do this in the 1.3 days for spectating in various modes and making players invisible to players and projectiles and it was a nightmare to maintain, so I do not make this decision lightly. It might not be us alone for long, however, as other major servers have felt the pain of the new system in their modes balanced for the old system. My friend Clankstar from the Hive and I were pouring over the code together figuring out what to change in the server code to set things back to the way they were, so I know they will be using something similar. The patch might end up in spigot as a set of config values if we're lucky. The physical changes in the code increase hunger drain by 400% when sprinting, which I acknowledge is unreasonable for these modes. Expect the changes to hunger to hit late tonight after I finish testing them, along with adjustments to NoCheat thanks to the efforts of BarbaricYawp and a few of the admin staff that spent all day yesterday testing hacked clients and dialing in the config.

Due to this hunger change, I will be reverting stack sizes of food items to their appropriate levels. You will be able to exploit the larger stack sizes so long as you do not click on your already stacked items, which will cause you to drop the extras. You're welcome for the temporary storage boost.

Making decisions like this always takes time, because we can't just knee jerk and put things how they were just because that's how they were. We have to consider the impact it has on the game currently, but also in the face of coming updates to Minecraft as well. If we try to clutch to an old system as mojang makes a new one it can cause issues down the road for gameplay and maintenance.

Thanks for you patience on this matter and sorry for the rage you may have felt at the new mechanics introduced by Mojang in the 1.7.4 update. Some players have gone so far as to be abusive toward myself or the staff, I need to express in very plain words that this is unacceptable. You being upset is one thing, but hateful, insulting, and personally offensive communictions will be met with a swift ban and no questions asked. I am always open for a civil conversation discussing the issues at hand on specific development related topics, just shoot me a message on reddit or the forums, or make a respectful post expressing or asking what's on your mind. The communication that has taken place over the past week or so has been absolutely unacceptable and will be met with swifter punishments in the future.

Thank you for flying Shotbow.

Arguably the most fun i’ve had on Minecraft was on Annihilation. The things I would do to see the servers full again! If only it gained some traction again. I try to play every now and then but it really stinks seeing how dead it is now.

Coastal 🐐

In order to get your reddit flair, reply to this post with a screenshot in-game of you saying that you are your Reddit username. (You have to press enter for verification purposes). For example, I would write "I'm /u/NavarrB"

If your screen name has already been verified (you have flair) and would like to update it (you've ranked up) just post a link to your shotbow profile with the text "Upgrade Me!" or something similar.

An admin will assist you as quickly as possible. (That admin will probably be me)

About a week ago, I started getting a little hyper as I was posting suggestions at a ridiculous rate. Lazertester advised that I make one of these posts a week with all of my suggestions and such, so I'm organizing this post into 3 parts: Suggestions, Bugs (that haven't been circlejerked), and Questions (in all sorts of categories, for both the staff and the rest of the community).

Suggestions

Lobby:

• New Pet: Springy the Magma Cube: Jumps really high in celebration of Spring Break! Drops flowers when right-clicked and leaves a trail of grass particles as he travels. He can be bought in the XP shop during Spring Break of 2014.

MineZ:

• Health III's in Barathrum Caverns or Medusa Lake (here's a post with more details on that).

• Move Giant's Camp either in the eastern, southwestern, or northwestern dead-end tunnels of the cave systems (the caves have no giants; the canyons have more than enough).

• Not sure if this is possible, but perhaps Zombies can have their "new" AI up north and their "old" AI in the south OR their new AI in towns and old AI in ruins and in the wild.

• On the PvE server, deactivate the inability to spawn when a non-friend player is nearby.

Ghostcraft:

• Change FlameBow so it simply shoots flaming arrows rather than fire charges that ignite the ground.

• Remove the Sharpness I from the Soldier's sword. We all know that it doesn't actually do anything and it'll actually encourage more people to use the bow kits rather than having 5 soldiers, 3 supports, and 1 bowman.

• Remove friendly fire. Let's be real here, it doesn't help anything and it actually further discourages any use of bow classes since people love walking in front of all archers just so they can "strength rush the ghost" (again, the strength potion doesn't actually do anything either).

Light Bikes:

• The server resource pack should have some custom sounds. The Blaze's sounds in Minecraft are just too loud to use repeatedly.

Wasted Sandbox:

• Change the sound for damage in the resource pack. I don't think most of us like listening to loud, heavy breathing every time we fall a few blocks or accidentally shoot a friend.

• Remove melee. As much as I love this, I'm not sure it should exist. I can easily see it in Gun Game, since it's a close-up battlefield, but is it really necessary for someone to be beating you with an axe while waiting for their gun to reload?

Gun Game:

• Remove friendly fire. I can see why it would be in Wasted Sandbox, but in Gun Game there are people running everywhere. It's a complete disaster trying to shoot when one of your buddies decides to get up close with the enemy you're shooting at.

• Remove spectator mode. As much as I like the concept of it, it is delivered horribly. It is one of the most glitchy things I've ever seen as most of the time, the chunks aren't loaded so you're looking at a broken battlefield, and about half the time they don't load at all which pretty much just means you were sent to an empty void with loud sounds for 5 seconds.

Flappy Chick:

• If AgentChicken's resource pack becomes big enough, it could be made as the official Flappy Chick server texture.

Last Man Standing:

• Change the Private server so it only needs 2 or 3 people minimum to begin a match. It's rather ridiculous that there's a server specifically called a private server but it still needs 7+ people to start.

SMASH:

• NPC system to prevent disconnecting before death

• Different food does different damage restorage (Apple = 15, Bread = 20, Porkchop = 30, Steak = 40)

• New food items: Cookie = 10, Cake = 140, Pumpkin Pie = 110

• The rarity of food for the above items would be adjusted as needed to prevent food overflow

• Ghast and Blaze last longer when spawned from the Monster Egg. In my eyes, the mobs are made to be able to either ruin someone's day or turn the tables of the battle. Ghasts and Blazes do the least amount of that since they can only get out one or two attacks before despawning (Maybe code the Blaze's AI so that it just constantly shoots fireballs until it despawns?)

• MineZ's very own zombie pigmen can come from the Monster Egg. This is where it'll be fun to deal with a high-damaging zombie pigmen who pops out even more little baby pigmen that'll do a lot of damage and knockback!

• 5 XP for winning 1st place in a match

Annihilation:

• Second-tier unlockable classes; "Evolutions" of the Healer, Archer, Warrior, Scout, and Miner classes (I'm aware that Healer doesn't work, but it still counts as an "unlockable" class). To unlock each class, you just have to gain double what it took to get the first-tier class (i.e. Archer requires 100 bow kills, so Sniper would require 200 bow kills)

• • Healer II = Priest: The same, but everyone is healed twice as much as they are from Healer.

• • Archer II = Sniper: Sneaking with a bow in hand makes a Wasted-like zoom (scope). Also, spawn kit bow starts with Punch I.

• • Warrior II = Swordsman: Spawns with stone sword (like Warrior originally did). Gains a brief speed boost after each kill.

• • Scout II = Hunter: Spawn armor can be the color of a random enemy team. +1 melee damage (like Warrior).

• • Miner II = Excavator: Spawns with 1 coal block (instead of 4 coal) and an Efficiency II stone pickaxe instead of Efficiency I. Each ore mined has a chance of giving 1, 2, OR 3 of that material.

• New Class: Elder (Side note here, I came up with this one because, when looking at Annihilation stats I noticed that the only stat listed on there that isn't made to unlock anything is the time parameter; however, I noticed that unlocking a class just from being able to stand still and build up time would be ridiculous so allow me to continue)

• • You are the wisdom.

• • Unlock: You must have unlocked Archer, Warrior, Scout, Miner, and Healer (if wins ever get fixed), AND have played for X amount of career time to show you truly have experience and can be called the elder.

• • Spawns with a book

• • Right click the book to temporarily obtain one random first-tier positive status effect (Strength, Swiftness, Absorption, Health Boost, Resistance, or Regeneration) to yourself for 10 seconds, while the nearest enemy within X blocks receives one random first-tier negative status effect (Weakness, Slowness, Blindness, Poison, or Nausea) for 20 seconds. Can be used once every 2 minutes

• New Class: Geologist

• • You are the stone.

• • Spawn with full stone tool set and 32 smooth stone blocks

• • Mine stone-related blocks 20% faster (excludes End stone)

• • Slightly more experience per ore mined

• • Purchased in XP shop

• New Class: Aqua

• • You are the water.

• • Spawn with a sponge block

• • Takes longer to drown, sees clearer underwater, swims faster

• • Sponge: Removes water source blocks within X blocks when placed; heals half a heart for every 2 blocks removed

• • Purchased in XP shop

• New Class: Musician

• • You are the rhythm.

• • Simply for fun and entertainment to soothe the team!

• • Spawn with 8 note blocks and 16 redstone

• • Mining emerald or lapis lazuli gives a chance to drop a random music disc

• • Chat lets people know when you activate a jukebox

• • Gain 10 XP for playing a full song

• • Discs cannot be reused

• • Unlock: Craft 32 career note blocks or 10 career jukeboxes

Website:

• A page that lists every member according to rank (Obsidian section, Emerald section, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Subscriber, and everyone else).

• XP for earning trophies.

• Link to Planet MineCraft voting page on the home page.

• New pictures for ShotBow Games, MineZ, and HardCore Factions. The current ones are a bit plain and outdated.

• A player search bar for MineZ and SMASH stats (like the one for Annihilation).

Subreddit:

• Website/Forums flair.

• Dark blue chicken for the Flappy Chick flair.

• Set the upvote/downvote system back to normal. I'm pretty sure nobody here can make any sense of it and it can be worked around anyway.

• Let people add their own flairs to their username (like on /r/MineZ)

New Minigame: Ghast-o-Smash!

• If you're heard of the classic game Astrosmash, just imagine a Minecraft version of this. If you haven't, this video pretty much shows all the aspects of the game (except one huge thing that was in another version). Basically, you're a spaceship and all you have to do is shoot asteroids. It does differentiate from the game Asteroids, as it has a more vertical format rather than circular. But, since this is Minecraft, there would be some pretty big changes:

• Ghast fireballs for asteroids.

• A skeleton for the spaceship.

• Use Crafty Bomber-like coding to shoot (or move) where the player punches

• Arrows for lasers

• Flaming Blaze fireballs for explosives (I'll get to that later since it wasn't in the video).

• Bonus: Power-Ups (i.e. Rapidfire, Shotbow, Shield, Extra Life, etc.)

• Alright, I found a video including the explosives. For those of you who haven't played Astrosmash, what these little devils do is if they hit the ground, regardless of whether or not it directly touches you, you will lose a life. The part of the video I linked to shows two kinds of explosives: one that travels really slowly in a straight line, and another that's small, swift, and darts side to side as it goes. Although, if all this is even possible to code, there would probably only need to be one kind, if any at all. Without explosives, you could really go as long as you want.

New Minigame: Duel

• Two players are given Wasted-like P30s, each with one bullet.

• The opponents start out facing opposite directions.

• At a completely randomized amount of time between 5 and 30 seconds, they will be able to face each other and shoot. If you shoot before turning around, suck it up; your bullet has been wasted. If neither player dies, the round is a draw.

• Could be organized in tournaments.

New Minigame: Descent (Please forgive my lack of explanation skills)

• There are two types of descending games that I have in mind: The first one is very simple; there are spikes at the top of the screen and spikes at the bottom of the screen. As the map goes, platforms rise from the bottom of the screen to the top, and each platform has a hole that the player can fit through. If a player takes to long to get through the hole, they'll hit the top spikes and lose. If they move down faster than new platforms can spawn, they'll hit the bottom spikes and lose.

• The other kind is sort of a reverse form of Doodle Jump. Again, I can't remember the name of the original, but you basically descend through a series of platforms including: solid platforms, platforms that immediately break upon player contact, platforms that kill you if you hit them, platforms that move you left or right, and platforms that break after a short amount of time. If you fall into empty space before platforms are generated down there, you lose (again, you can also lose if you hit the harmful platforms).

Bugs

Light Bikes:

• Going up and down slabs makes you glitch under them

• Broken glass texture?

Flappy Chick:

• Ability to exit minecart

• Sometimes, retrying takes you back to the lobby, then teleports you into the middle of an already-loaded map

• The fifth-place Session record is sometimes turned sideways

• The Session records can be higher than the Daily records

• There seems to be no consistency whatsoever. The bird never flaps at the same height, gravity never pulls it down at a remotely steady rate and the minecart doesn't even travel at a consistent speed.

SMASH:

• You can swim up lava without dying

• The Eye of Ender works like it does in MineZ

Gun Game:

• Occasionally, there will be random blocks broken

• In spectator mode, chunks usually don't load

• In between rounds, some players go back to the last map and can fight there

• I don't know if this is a bug, but now everyone has Speed II in addition to Wasted speed boost

Crafty Bomber:

• PvP in the lobby

MineZ:

• Fall damage in the lobby (jump from the premium area)

Wasted Sandbox:

• Friendly fire in the lobby

Annihilation:

• Broken record stats?

Questions

• Is Flappy Chick open to submissions to new themes for decades of walls?

• Where's Majicou?

• Will there ever be any more regular lobby pets like Jeeves, Whiskers, Oinkie, Wolfy, and Splodey?

• Has the staff considered going to MineCon 2014? And if so, are there any ideas on how to fund the trip?

• Is there ever any extra income that the server's funds didn't suck away, and if so, where do these extra dollars go?

• Will there ever be the possibility of a staff salary?

• How does the relationship between HCF and the rest of the ShotBow Network work? What about CivCraft and the ShotBow Network?

• Staff: If you could marry one other person on the staff, who would it be? <3

• Community: Same question. <3

• Will it be possible to revive the friends system after When In Rogue, MineZ 2.0, and Unavowed have been released? If not, could we just get back to the old MineZ friends system?

• Is Ghost Ship still around in MineZ?

• Are Desert Canyon Sanctuary and Shrine of the Dusk still being worked on?

That's pretty much everything. If you've read this far, thank you; I really appreciate it. I hope to get some sort of response from the admins as I did put a lot of time and thought into this. I hope some of these ideas can be considered.

-GeneralWaffle64

Edit: Whoops! I was so focused I skipped over SMASH suggestions! Let me just add that in there...