The Empire of the Future - My vision! (Updated: 7/13/18)

It's been a while... Was dragon tombs ever finished? I wanna try!

Nope, it's still being worked on.

Hmm, I could have sworn I posted something already and now it's gone. Take 2 it is then.

I'd argue that we have something like this already. For starters the /friends system which allows not only for your friends to help secure your items if you lost them from dying outside town, but it's also the center of the new anti-grief system.

Or what to think about the ability to add players and groups to your residence and give them specific permissions to do things there?

Then we have the groups system (see /invite) which allows you to group together and earn all sorts of perks and bonuses from doing things together.

The only thing left to do is to actually use these things.

But quite frankly I don't think it's the system which should stimulate these things, it's the players themselves. If you think there isn't much going on in your town chat, then why not start something yourself? This is the reason why I often share some small talk in town chat when it's getting quiet, and often it's picked up by others which then starts a new chat. Of course you need to be careful not to overdo things, small talk could easily be picked up as being spammy.

And there's another reason why I don't think the system should be handling this: what if those players don't want to be bothered?

The only reason I came online last week was to get my mind of work. I was dead tired, I didn't feel like doing anything and the least of my ideas was starting long conversations with players. So I kept quiet and instead did some minor mining and sorting out a few things on my residence. If there was a system which tried to motivate me to 'do' things then trust me: if I wasn't capable of turning such a thing off then I'd log off for the evening and find something else to do (probably watch television), because at that time the last thing I needed was something (or someone) telling me that I should be more active.

Which is also the other side of this story: what if those players are already active?

When I'm on Utopia these days then I'm usually working on my residence: I'm building a whole event res. for my upcoming (but long overdue) anniversary celebration. And during those moments I have little attention for town chat. Sure, if I see something happening like someone being completely stuck then I'll probably pause my work and help them out, but I can't be bothered for any other trivial things, because quite frankly: I got enough work to do as it is.

Now, I'm lucky enough to have a Utopia residence for this, but there are also plenty of players who are busy on their own residence. Sometimes alone, but in many cases also together with friends. Just because you don't see them in town chat doesn't mean that they're not there (a lot of players use residence or local or even group chat).

I'm pretty sure that I can speak for them as well when I say that having some system which keeps trying to tell us that we should be more active would be highly counterproductive. If I can't turn that stuff off then seriously: what's the point of being so active when all it gets is me getting bothered all the time?

It's not the system which should encourage players to do something, it's the players themselves who should use everything they already have and actually start doing something. Motivating or persuading others in the process to join them or help them out.

Don't forget: Minecraft is first and foremost a game where you get to decide how you want to play it.

Last I checked it had yet to be even started lol.

Nope, and it's a pipe dream at this point.

Wow, do you know why? Seemed like it was going to happen.

About Dragon Tombs... There has definitely been some work done already, because how else would you explain the dragon stone fragments and the dragonstones? Those are dragontomb related items, and they didn't appear out of thin air...

Also, the work was halted / paused and I seem to recall that this started when the rumors about 1.9 and its features started. One of the ideas has always been to have the ability to fight the Enderdragon again. And that is exactly what we got with 1.9, as we all know. In a way Mojang has created / filled in a large part of the Dragontombs themselves. And I hope you'll agree that Aikars time was spend much better on Anti-Grief than trying to recreate something which Mojang was already going to build themselves.

So yeah... I don't think it's fair to say that nothing has been done about Dragontombs at all. Because there has.

Note: planning and coming up with ideas and features is something us regular players wouldn't see, but is most definitely part of the whole process as well. Worse yet: it might very well be the hardest part of it too.

But just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it isn't there.

Thanks!

The Dragon Tombs related items were just random items. There isn't much in relation to Dragon Tombs. They may have a user later on, but currently they're just items that glow and have a name. In relation to the time period in which Dragon Tombs has been an idea for, there has been nothing done. The game-mode itself appears to just of been an idea which never materialised.

It was an idea that never materialised but was advertised like it was under heavy development. Three years later staff are just like "oh yeah we never actually started work on Dragon Tombs lol."

This isn't even an isolated incident. There's multiple features that have been shown off and promised a release to the public but, years later, still haven't shown up. Even had someone show me the inner workings of something some years ago and just flat out tell me "organisation is pretty much non-existent, doesn't look like this is ever going to come out." - and what do you know, it hasn't.

Behind the scenes is like this too. I remember there being a big push to get contributors to publish stuff on the blog, and there's content there waiting to be published, but it's been left to go rancid. I get that people don't actually read the blog, but if you're asking people to put work into stuff for it, would it not make sense to publish it?

Maybe, just maybe, the next thing on the "Next update" category will be DT. The chances are lower than 1% but we can only hope xD

And a mechanic behind them: 9 flint turns into 1 coal.

You definitely make a good point, and to some extend I agree. It's something I've criticized myself a few times: the lack of transparency. I can understand that staff wants to keep things hidden away in order not to spoil the surprise, and I think everyone can respect that (they should IMO). But on the other hand I also think it's fair to say that getting no updates or news at all for a longer period of time makes it harder for outsiders to believe that something is actually going on.

First and foremost: I still believe that plenty of effort has been put into dragontombs. How much and what more I obviously don't know. But just because you can't see it, or just because something looks simple enough doesn't automatically mean that it also is simple.

Quite frankly I often wonder if staff doesn't sometimes make the classic mistake of time schedules. I think everyone who has done (or led) an IT project has been there: you're asked to make a time estimate on when something is done and dozens of people will go wrong with that, because of different reasons. Totally offtopic, but it's one of the reasons I became a vivid user / supporter of UML and project management software. I'll spare you the details, but the main issue is keeping an overview of what you're doing and how far the project has come.

However, I also think it's important to realize that in the end this is still a hobby based project we're talking about. Although EMC might be a professionally ran server it's still first and foremost a hobby for all those directly involved. And therefor it should be fun.

Of course that comment goes both ways, which is also why I think it would seriously help if staff were to share a little bit of info every once in a while, even if there's nothing substantial to share.

Aikar, I know, you have a great team to help you, but if you need any redstone...command block...or game mechanic help, ask me!! Im great at it. I will help you with whatever you need! Rock on!

aikar doesnt use command blocks because he wants it to rely on the servers/code and not MC's glitchy code

Ahhhh, thanks for the info

i dont care what anyone says ive been waiting for dragon tombs for what feels like three and a half years and i will three and a half more. they're comin. #soon

Um... is this only me? When I quote this post and click the "Use BB Code Editor" button, I get "The server responded with an error. The error message is in the JavaScript console."

Nope, same for me, so it's definitely an error in Xenforo's code. Stalk PM Aikar about it and link the post in question.

In regards to Dragon Tombs, you have to think that a lot of things happened in between the time it was first announced to where it's at now. There was a change of server ownership and a big change in staff structure after it was first mentioned, and Aikar wanted Dragon Tombs to be split into parts instead of one big update as well. The ideas changed so that there will be a better experience for all once the updates came. Parts 1 and 2 were released. There was then a poll about Empire/Land Claiming and Dragon Tombs, and which should come first.

Dragon Tombs was voted last, as much as I want to see Dragon Tombs sooner rather than later myself as well, this is how it was voted and we can't change that. This meaning parts 3 and 4 will not be out until Empires/Land Claiming are out. You've always got the first part with the build protection/anti-griefing just being released, and with constant updates from Mojang right now, it slows down the other ones we're trying to churn out, so we've got a bit of waiting time but it will be coming eventually!

As for the Blog, it does seem a bit dead at the minute. Krysyy and Matheus have been super busy with other things on the Empire and in real life as well, but I will mention it to them to see if we're getting it back up and going again. If some of you remember my status from back in February, you'd know that I submitted my blogs back then, and there still hasn't been any approval on them. That means it's been about 7 months since submission and still nothing, so I'll bump it up.

tl;dr: Dragon Tombs will be out after all the Mojang updates and Empires updates because that's how it was voted, and yes the Blog is a little bit dead at the moment but people have been super busy.