Sorry to go off topic. Is there a thread that has some detail about this or is it just a plan to have this. I've never heard of something like this and just wanted some info. I did a search but not much came up.
Krysyy, you have to consider how long 3 years is. In case you've forgotten, DT isn't the only long update. It took more than 7 months to release name changes while other servers had released it Feb. 4th (The day it was released). I don't know if you've noticed, but players are leaving. Some due to lack of updates, others due to the community, and others for reasons I don't know of. People are sick and tired of this stuff such as myself
Please tell me how well you know Java? How well do you know the internal systems of EMC? Aikar had a temporary solution of just setting the name back while on EMC. Which worked, quite well. At the time, it was pretty much just Aikar doing the updating for name changes. It's actually quite difficult to change a lot of code that was made around the idea that names cannot change.
Finalysm, many games/servers or anything really that needs code has a timeline for what they want to do in the future, this timeline can go up several years. I am no coder, I know how long years is, its about 1095 days actually, and I also understand that 4 coders making custom codes and scripts for a server with their custom system, does take awhile. These people do not get paid anything (if anything for this very minimal), and they do not devote their entire day to work on these things. They are not full time 24/7 coders and they all probably have their own full time jobs and responsibilities. I would just be thankful for how much they HAVE done and not what they haven't done. And I also think that Aikar is letting us in on a pretty tall part of his timeline so I wouldn't expect any major things to be released soon. They are not just working on one thing at one time. Also be respectful of them as they are taking away part of their day to make this server plain AWESOME!
I already said, as I do not know how to code, 3 years is a ridiculously long time. And as I had also said earlier, there are coders within the community. My suggestion to that is to make a thread, or if there has been, bump it. You have to understand that this is ONE project that has been in the works for for about 3 years now. Yes there is real life, but this is 3 years
Finalysm, once again, 3 years ago they ANNOUNCED it. On their timeline. So they worked on it when they could but also taking care of more important bugs.
Final, I completely understand what you mean - I agree with you, too - but this isn't an argument you can win. Three years is way too long of a time for any feature to be developed, but clearly not many people agree with that, or just haven't been here for the long wait. Even with bug fixing and residences and all the other minor updates, EMC should have seen more than just the mere foundation of DTombs. One thing I do want to know, though, is if it's actually true that DTombs hasn't been touched in years, like Aikar said. There was a possibility (confirmed, again by Aikar) that DTombs would be released in August 2012. So until the development team decided to let the community vote on what they wanted to see, and decided to work in Empires... what has the dev team been doing? Not 'bug fixing' or 'residences' - those things are great, but what about major features? The Survival Update was the only real wild update that I can even remember, and that was in May 2013. Has no work went into DTombs, or Empires, or land claiming, since then? I can understand announcing a feature too early, but if no work went into it at all in years, as I suspect is the case, that's just... unfortunate.
Look in this forum for a whole list of things that have happened since then: http://empireminecraft.com/forums/empire-updates/ Here's 2015 (about one update every 2 weeks and that's not including fixing things or most overall improvements to keep things from crashing): The Marlix & Mini Improvements Update! - 11/19/15 Let's Be Friends! Friend System Update - 10/15/15 Misc Bug Fixes and new Feature - 10/8/15 Player Notes, XP, Survival, Bug Fixes + more! 9/26/15 Survival and Group update! - 9/12/15 Misc Updates / Performance - 8/30/15 Name Changes are here! 8/24/15 Misc updates - 8/13/15 Misc Updates/Bug Fixes - 8/2/15 Ignore List Update - 7/28/15 New Feature - Residence Permission Groups! 7/22/15 Misc Updates - 7/3/15 & 7/13/15 The Major Update - 7/1/15 Bug Fixes / Features - 6/19/15 Major Update "Hope Nothing Broke" - 6/17/15 Misc Updates / Bug Fixes - 6/2/15 Misc Updates / Bug Fixes - 5/28/15 Empire has updated to 1.8! EMC Anvil Update / Bug Fixes - 5/20/15 Misc Updates / Bug Fixes - 5/18/15 300k Members/New Features - 4/25/15 PvP & Misc Updates - 4/14/15 Server cap upped to 45 - 4/2/15 The Wall of Death has been fixed! 3/10/15 New Features! Signs & More - 1/30/15 Voting Improvements - 1/14/15 Misc Improvements - 1/6/15
I've read every post in that forum. :P But still... the development plan being announced only very recently coupled with a lack of DTombs related features makes me suspect that no work has been done on it... It's aggravating to have been told we'd be getting DTombs in 2012, and now it's almost 2016 and DTombs has been pushed off of the development status by a different feature... which still isn't being worked on according to the home page sidebar. I don't mean to bash on what the dev team has been doing, because I know it's been a lot, I'm just a little bit annoyed at their priorities. And no sign of Dragon Tombs.
Most of those minor bug fixes here and there, minor updates, etc are to make things better in the long run. Some of the changes are actually going to affect land claiming, etc with every residence update we do, because those two systems will be very closely knit. I know it's been a long time and I know that you, along with many others are anxious, but other things push DT back because those other things are either a) easier to fix to improve quality now, b)needed for DT/land claiming anyway, c)a result of minor updates to res, entities, etc being broken, or d) all of the above. Aikar and the devs can't drop everything and work on DT, letting the stuff in the interim go abandoned. I know for instance that there is major lag associated with Hoppers that Aikar is trying hard to fix recently because it's causing massive lag spikes. I don't even know if he found the true source yet, but I know players don't want to lose their giant item sorters. Name changes, 1.8 updates, etc all pushed DT back because the fact is that they were more important. Maybe not to those waiting for DT, but for the overall ability for the server to continue running at all. I'm not saying that the devs are perfect. I'm saying that, as is with development, sometimes other stuff gets in the way and those little things have added up to make a huge difference on the Empire, just as DT will eventually do. We don't promise ETA's because development is quirky. The devs spent the better part of the last few weeks scratching their heads over this entity bug they finally squashed. Then, they have to go and fix when they spell things wrong, etc or they get hounded for it =P It's not a quick process, but Aikar and the devs are constantly busy working on little aspects that will overall make DT smoother and better than we originally could have imagined it.
You should be mad about the community's priorities. http://empireminecraft.com/threads/poll-what-upcoming-feature-do-you-desire-more.57718/
You're right. No work has been done on DT part 4 since 2012 and that was all thrown away and going to start over once we get to it. More important things came up. It's a fact of life you have to deal with and accept. No more discussing dragon tombs on this thread. Your welcome to create another thread to have players repeat what's been said already, but we have nothing else to add. For the miniboss changes. I'll likely bump it to 6 hours and also make combat extend timer to avoid despawn mid combat. Also if it's taking people 2 hours on difficulty 5 then we will revisit the hp too.
I'm not mad at the community's priorities at all because as much as I want DTombs more than Empires I completely understand why people want Empires more than DTombs. Dragon Tombs is an extra gameplay feature - and a huge one - but isn't really necessary in the long run. Yeah, I'd love it, but I understand why people want land claiming more... ...to protect what they've done. Griefing to me is more annoying than not having DTombs. If I built in the wild, I'd want land claiming more that DTombs. But as I don't, and whatever happens with land claiming doesn't affect me very much, I'd prefer DTombs first. But I think prioritizing land claiming would be more beneficial to the overall community more than DTombs. Of course, critical bugs/features like 1.8 and name changing should come before DTombs. I'm not saying drop everything and work on DTombs, because I know that's impractical. But as I said before, it's not an argument I can even possibly hope to win. Just my opinion. I'm happy that other features are being pushed out, just wish DTombs would be pushed out a bit faster. I understand why it can't/shouldn't be. :P Edit: Damn, ninja'd by 19 minutes lol
Well, I wrote a short piece related to my perception on this topic. Usually I stay silent, allowing Krysyy to do her thing, but time for me to break that silence as some words shared, are ... slightly irritating. It is going to be okay. No need to freak out about these things with such passion. We acknowledge that there was a mistake to create hype for Dragon Tombs in 2012. That was literally the only time that actual Dragon Tombs work has been in direct development. At that time, Aikar was only going to work on that, things change though. We can go on and on about the other issues or projects which have taken over the priority from Dragon tombs since 2012, always leaving it as the "next". As we all know, this has given the project a bad image to the point; I do not even want to work on it as a result. So much negativity, ignoring the hundreds of changes which have happened instead of Dragon Tombs. I assure you, that the future result of the Dragon Tomb project will be incomparable with the original concept that Aikar envisioned 3 years ago. So many infrastructure changes to the Empire have happened since with the hopes to make it an experience, not just a mini-game. Originally that is all Dragon Tombs were going to be. You wander in the wilderness finding dragon tombs with the opportunity to fight and earn a dragon egg. That is it. No custom mobs, no tokens, no custom items, before wastelands, and with the hope to tie into land claiming later. Beyond the "excuses" we rebuttal with as to why this project has not been completed, I see EMC dev work to be purely about a balance of time: time available to devs; time available to finish projects; is this an efficient use of time when compared to other projects; are enough visible features being released over a time interval, rather than just background infrastructure. An example of this is the website upgrade which is long time coming. Literally will take Aikar weeks to complete, but it will also put a complete hold on ANY other dev work during that time. I would not want to justify here our past priorities regarding dev work, but in addition to finding the balance with time , there are hundreds of other desired issues/features which we would like to add to EMC. It is easy to push off something when it works currently. What is my point? It has been our mistake of giving the perception that Dragon Tombs has been being worked on for the last 3 years. We never made that claim, but we also did not explicitly say otherwise. Sorry, but Dragon Tombs will be a while longer yet. There is nothing wrong with looking forward to an update, but I would discourage 'waiting' for it. With life in general, this is dangerous to live: solely either in the past or future. It is easy to lose touch with what reality is... I am currently writing code to modify Residences to allow for something other than a player to own them. (Empires). This is one of the many steps I need to tie this all together. Please don't hold me strictly to a certain date; but as a full time college student, I am hoping to complete the residence related work over my winter break before I begin student teaching in the Spring semester. A reminder that Empires and land claiming are coming first. No longer directly tied to the Dragon Tombs project. It is a priority of mine to get this finished.
I know aikar wants the dragon tombs thing squashed but there is some disinformation by both penguin and chickeneer here. Not that it is intentional. Dragon tombs was not mentioned before land protection and land protection was not a foot note of dragon tombs. Land protection was announced before dragon tombs by about a week when aikar was made staff(or maybe when he was made a dev, I think it was just staff though? I'm sure things ran differently with different leadership and I don't feel like hunting that down again) As far as dragon tombs not having been directly worked on since 2012 that is incorrect as well as we are moving into DT part 3 there has actually been major steps forward JUST RECENTLY in the release of dragon tombs. Dragon stones have been here since I have been and I don't know the history of them but we have those too. I can't imagine they have been around since 2012 but what a troll that would be xD Groups from my understanding was a dragon tombs advancement as well as the whole empires thing which was supposed to be the point of going through the dragon tombs anyways. Recent flag work is dragon tombs related. So... there has been quiet a bit done on dragon tombs since I have been here for less than a year but if you don't want to see it then don't, that doesn't change that there HAS BEEN PROGRESS. Pre-chickeneer you can hardly blame Aikar for putting it on the back burner. When I got here chickeneer was preoccupied with school(I think that is what it was?) and since he has returned and socks and breezy have been here there has been obvious progress if you are actually following it... which I'm pretty sure none of this is news to chickeneer or penguin ;-) Edit: actually I think this is the first update I have seen since chickeneer has been back and we have been 1.8 that I didn't see something in it related to DT... ironically enough
You are right. Many regular features have been added with the intent to be used in the Dragon Tombs feature. I stated otherwise in reference to the fight/tomb itself. It simply has not been or our primary focus at any time since the original announcement. It can be wearisome to get caught up in past details as specific details can change sometimes. And yes, school and my cocurricular activities limit my dev time significantly. Scheduled school breaks are when I make the largest contributions.
In the mean time I tried this out a few times and also heard from a few other players and confirmed that this doesn't solely apply to players but mobs as well. So I'm wondering if there isn't an option to restrict this change to players only? Thing is: while this may protect Marlix from unwanted fighting it can also severely hinder survival gameplay whenever you meet up with a group of skeletons. It's not so much the damage which counts here but getting the skeleton to pause with its shooting, which can give you an option to attack. Especially when there are two or three this can become a crucial aspect of the fight, depending on how far away you are. The closer you get the faster skeletons will shoot at you, and although the damage also gets less you still get knocked back, which can especially become an issue when you're fighting a group. As such I'm wondering if there would be a possibility to change this behavior for players only and not the mobs.
Finally tried fighting Marlix after the update. Gonna give my impression of the fight: The fight wasn't any easier, but it sure was much more fun. It is obvious that Marlix's movements are much less erratic, making it easier to aim on longer ranges, but at the same time this made him faster (can cover more distance in the same time) despite its movements having been slowed down, which in turn makes it harder to hit him on short range. Another thing that impacted the fight were the changes to Guardians. Before you could lure the Guardians away, or Marlix could simply fly too far away from them and wouldn't be able to spawn anymore after a while due to hitting his spawn cap, which made him an easy target. Now Guardians despawn after a while, so Marlix can keep spawning more of them. This would be a nightmare with the previous Guardian spawn rates, but the new lower ones should counterbalance this effect. I still didn't try to use a sword on him, but I usually bring wolves to fight him so I know for sure that the Thorns will make the fight a lot harder. Other than that, I liked the idea. The fight with Marlix was supposed to be long range after all.
