[Zz] Datapack/Plug-in - Suggestion & Discussion

[Mellorian]

After some talking in a Zedkin meeting, we decided to make a thread for discussing what plugins/datapacks you'd like to see or wouldn't like to see on Zz.

Generally, Zz's plugins are Quality of Life and Cosmetic only, such as /glow, /sit and /treesfall, though feel free to suggest others for consideration.

Nothing will necessarily be decided here, this is more a place for discussion and gathering the general feelings of us the players.

Please respect each other's opinions, even if they differ from yours! <3

[Zedwick]

[Reserved, in-case I want to add something here later]

[Tezcatlip]

Correct me, if I'm wrong, but if we find datapacks, then they can be implemented onto the server in a somewhat quick and easy manner, right?
So far I have found plenty of stuff. First, I'd like to suggest looking into this list from "Vanilla tweaks" (https://vanillatweaks.net/picker/datapacks/). Some options seem to fit our format:

1. "AFK Display", to track whether player is away.
2. "Dragon Drops", to get some eggs.
3. "More Mob Heads", is worth disscussion, very debatable.
4. "Multiplayer Sleep", Personaly I love the night, but some players don't, so maybe we could look into at least ignoring afk ones?
5. "Wrench", wrenches in general would be pretty nice quality of life tools.
6. "Silence Mobs", good for farms, but might be exploitable for traps?
7. "Tracks", not sure what it really does, but I imagine adding maybe some seasonal or event based tracks (like finding "eggs" during easter) would be interesting.
8. "Sethome", for the memes.
9. "Spawning Spheres" and "Workstation Highlights", seems interesting for farm builders.
10. "Wandering Traders", not sure of all possibilities, but some custom trades from these guys would be interestng, maybe a sponge trade?

also there is an assortment of crafting recipes (https://vanillatweaks.net/picker/crafting-tweaks/). These ones seem intersting: "Dropper to Dispenser", "Renewable Coaral", "Universal Dyeing".

Second, found a clean implementation of invisible item frames, disscussed during the meeting: https://www.planetminecraft.com/data-pa ... -survival/

Third, I would like to suggest implementing voting command in a manner:
/voting 1 min return of "/home"
system: voting on return of "/home" initiated. 1 minute left.
p1:/aye
p2:/nay
p3:/aye
system: 1 minute expired. Voting on return of "/home" finished. 2 ayes, 1 nay

In addition I would very appriciate having an access to a command that will give access to server perfomance from client side, let's say on a per chunk basis to evaluate contraption/entities "lagginess", or even track something like faulty hoppers (pulling items1 into a container filled with items2 - causes a lot of lag). Something like this mod (it is primarily for modded MC, but still): https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/laggoggles There was some other more vanilla mod with simillar functions, I can't find it right now. Maybe something from "carpet mod" package?

In regards of cosmetics I should point that /glow and /sit are essentially cosmetic features, so fully discarding cosmetics would be rashly, but cosmetics overall feel to me far from the vanilla spirit of MC.

[Mellorian]

Afk Display We did used to have an afk display, which would turn names grey in the <tab> screen after a few minutes.

Dragon Drops I feel a way for every player to get one dragon egg would be useful and multiplayer friendly.
Having multiple eggs takes away from their rarity and cheapens them greatly though - especially having one every fight.

Mob Heads More mob heads is certainly an interesting one, though I'd personally avoid player heads completely, else relegate them to event prizes.

Multiplayer Sleep I think being able to sleep without afk players stopping others would be great, though I definitely feel we don't want to take away the choice to make use of the night from anyone. I'd also personally not want any sort of message in chat/on screen for sleeping. I feel that takes away the communication aspect, and can be spammed.

Wrench Personally (I mean, all my opinions here are personal ones xD), I'd be against the "creative stick" which lets you rotate stairs/terracotta and such. There's certainly a skill to placing these, however silly that might sound, and I'd also want to avoid impossible rotations such as stand alone corner stairs.
That being said, we do have stick functionality for finding claims, and similar uses like that might be interesting. For example - seeing the inventories of villagers from a right click with a "wrench". (I know that's really difficult, Zed, and probably wouldn't work - just an example)

Silent Mobs Just turn down your mob noise settings lol I do feel if you make a big mob farm in your base, you're asking for mob noises. If you want it to be silent, don't live next to it. That being said, I can see why people would want to silence the 827 dogs/cats/parrots they may have about their base. But overall I think it'd just be abusable.

Tracks? Event plugins are a neat idea, we all loved the Vex waiters Zed made, and his fire extinguisher is legendary!

Sethome lolnoregionpostsbutheh

Spawning Spheres/Workstation Highlights I can see why workstation highlights would be nice, but I believe this is fixed anyway in 1.16 with workstations being more intuitive. Spawning spheres I think aren't really necessary since you can see chunk borders using the f3 menu, and only the tech savy really want to do mob farms 100% efficient anyway. That's just from my perspective though, as someone who's played a long time, so maybe it'd be useful for newer players, or have a more advanced use for older players that I've overlooked?

Wandering Traders We have discussed this a little in the past. It's a neat idea, though I'd say it'd need a lot of deliberation on what they could have added. We wouldn't want to devalue anything, though sponges are a neat idea given the rarity of them in terms of multiplayer. (It would devalue sponges, but I feel to an acceptable level, rather than quasi invaluable only lend not sell right now - since you can't really farm them).

Crafting Recipes I'd be weary of adding crafting stuff, since Mojang might yet provide ways to achieve these through other means. Such as if we'd added the ability to remove shulker dye before they added the ability to just use cauldrons. Renewable coral follows the same vein as the sponges from wandering traders. We did discuss this when 1.13 first came about, but ultimately we found there's enough coral going around. It is worth pointing out that destroying a warm ocean just for some coral isn't nice, so a renewable way of farming coral would avoid that. Though now that I think about it, you can buy coral from wandering traders, albeit in small amounts - but I have gathered several stacks of it so far just from random traders. If you wanted to do a big build, though, this probably wouldn't be enough any time soon.

Voting (We have a !vote command :3) In terms of a vote command like !roll and such, that could see some use. Obviously not for plugin deciding, but for everyday use. "I think this build needs more cobble!" "I don't, it needs stone!" "Alright, let's vote on it! /vote more cobble?"
Could be spammy idk.

Seeing Lag I feel giving too much info to players could possibly be bad, idk the specifics. Warnings that an area is lagging the server, or starting to, would possibly avoid a lot of lag - I know I'd re-access my designs if it told me it was causing lag.

!define Cosmetic I'd say /glow has functionality in finding other players, especially when working together on a project (I was using it as such just yesterday, and often aside), though I see what you're saying. /sit isn't as arguable, though I feel it is vanilla in the sense that it follows the idea of minecarts as chairs and such. There's definitely a balance to be struck, and I wouldn't want the server to become full of rainbows, excessive particles and thousands of rolling pets following people around. That being said, a few touches here and there can be nice, and serve as a nice reward for players who support the server.

I hope all my opinions were well thought out - I tried to think through each point, at least. I don't want any fear/wariness of change I may have to possibly take away from the future of the server. Though hopefully we have varied enough views throughout the player base to explore these ideas and others thoroughly.

Thank you for the ideas so far, Tez!

[SneakySkeleton]

A lot of good idea here, I'll list the ones I would be in favour of/indifferent/slightly apprehensive about.

For:
AFK Display
Multiplayer Sleep (only if it were to ignore afk players)
Wrench: I'll elaborate on this one a bit more. I feel that if we have things such as /treesfall, which is extremely useful for farming things such as trees, and region posts for travelling across the world in a second or two, the wrench is hardly the most game-changing addition, and IMO is quality of life more than a new feature. The option is always there not to use it, same with ./treesfall.
Sethome

Indifferent:
Dragon Drops
More Mob Heads
Tracks (mainly because I don't know what it is)
Workstation Highlights: Workstations are indeed being fixed in the update.
Seeing Lag: Would be great to have less laggy farms, however a lot of the time it is fairly easy to judge from F3 as it is. If there was a data pack which added more information to F3, I'd be all for it.
Voting Command

Apprehensive:
Silence Mobs: see Mellori's point.
*Spawning Spheres: I have an alternative suggestion to this, doesn't do the exact same thing but it is equally as useful.
Wandering Traders: I think it would devalue anything unique that it sells too much. Mojang have been good recently about making sure any new additions are easier to obtain.

My alternative to Spawning Spheres is 'Light Level Detector' : https://www.planetminecraft.com/data-pa ... -detector/
It is useful for reducing mob spawns for mob farms, without giving too much information otherwise. It is really annoying having to walk about every block looking for one which is a level too low on light. Again, there is always the option to not use it, but I think it would prove popular with mob farm creators and builders alike.

[Mellorian]

Sneaky's suggestion for a light level detector is very interesting, and I think would see much use.

However, perhaps it could be better to implement it in a more vanilla way. One idea we threw around before was a potion that lets you see dark spots more easily (i.e. making dark spots appear very dark) - kind of the opposite of night vision, in a way. Or even, perhaps, making it so night vision gives this effect. I feel this would allow us to easier spot dark spots without, as Sneaky said, going around with the debug menu up, checking every single block.
Alternate ways of getting information without using f3, in a vanilla friendly way, is always a win imo.

Reiterating that point, we have also discussed in the past having a way of detecting biomes without the f3 menu - perhaps using compasses crafted with saplings and such, to located specific biomes nearby.

[Dax23333]

I know I'm a smelly smellvs'er, but I will throw some thoughts out there as well.

The ones mentioned so far:
For:
Afk Display seems like a good idea.

Indifferent:
Various tools to seee things better is somewhat good. It is ignorable as well. I rather like the idea of lag goggles, if something like that can be done.
Dragon Drops, honestly the dragon should drop something useful but more eggs I am not sure of. It's very odd in vanilla where the respawned dragon fight is very very underwhelming loot wise, with the only significant drop being the breath.
More mob heads I am not too keen on and coming down on the side of no if it devalues the mob heads we can already obtain. Plus they're player heads with mob skins put over them, which is odd.

Against:
Multiplayer sleep Night is useful and staying up in the dark is needed for many things. I don't like the idea of having night fall away because one player decided they wanted to sleep. If there was a veto, maybe? But if I'm busy catching zombie villagers or something I am NOT paying attention to anything else so will miss a chat clicky or whatever, and then the sun comes up 8 minutes early and burns the zombie I just caught.

Some other thoughts:
Region posts - is the current way of doing them the best way? What if players made a region post in an area rather than them being pre-generated?

I am told upcoming changes to minecraft allow dimensions other than the overworld/nether/end even in vanilla. Could some good things be had out of having multiple dimensions? Possibilities include worlds for the pillaging of recources, alternate terrain generation, possibly even challanging dungeon type dimensions with non-vanilla enemies. Are any of these things that would be wanted on Zz?

There is also a lot that could be done to change up the game quite a lot if that was wanted. Custom recipies for custom gear with special effects crafted from drops from custom monsters. Again, as Zz is semi-vanilla this kind of thing is probably out of scope. But the possibility is there! Personally I'd be more interested in things providing new and interesting effects than cosmetic items such as the more mob heads.

Something that would be good that hasn't been mentioned is something to rid the world of the phantom menace. Maybe they could spawn on high mountains only like mojang said they would when the 9 year olds voted for them rather than on top of your head every single minute you're not under cover.

[Tezcatlip]

Sneaky, Mellori, I think you have completely missed the point about the spawning spheres. The purpose is not to determine, whether light level allows spawning, but to measure the distance from the specific spot. Imagine nether mob farm that sweeps mob into a killing platform like the one we had. The question is will mobs be able to spawn on that hanging cliff overthere inevitably disabling spawns inside the farm, if you camp at the killing platform? Reverse can be applicable: do mobs actualy spawn at the farthest corner of the farm? Light level here is irrelvant, mobs can spawn withing 120 radius sphere (not a cube!) so while math is not that difficult, checking significant amount of space can prove to be tedious. I'm not entirely sold on this myself, but I don't want it to be misinterpreted. Again it's to measure distance, not light level.

Something that would be good that hasn't been mentioned is something to rid the world of the phantom menace.

Well, vanilla has already implemented means to avoid phantoms. You just need to tag the bed once an hour, you don't even need to sleep. Alternatively have a ceiling, phantoms don't spawn, if player is not open to the sky. As of 9 year old voting... As far as I remember each of four suggested mobs, had some specific mechanics to increase difficulty of some aspect of the game (I think pig-like thingy speculated to be able to destroy items dropped by dead player). In other words making the game harder in some way was a deliberate game design by Mojang. It is very intentional and easily avoidable, so removing phantoms is like removing creepers from the game.

[Mellorian]

Sneaky, Mellori, I think you have completely missed the point about the spawning spheres. The purpose is not to determine, whether light level allows spawning, but to measure the distance from the specific spot.

Spawning Spheres/Workstation Highlights Spawning spheres I think aren't really necessary since you can see chunk borders using the f3 menu, and only the tech savy really want to do mob farms 100% efficient anyway. That's just from my perspective though, as someone who's played a long time, so maybe it'd be useful for newer players, or have a more advanced use for older players that I've overlooked?

The chunk borders as I mentioned allow you to see where things will spawn. F3+G lets you view them, and I think that eliminates the need for viewing where things will spawn?

The light viewing thing is sort of a separate suggestion by this point, definitely.

[SneakySkeleton]

Sneaky, Mellori, I think you have completely missed the point about the spawning spheres. The purpose is not to determine, whether light level allows spawning, but to measure the distance from the specific spot.
The light level here is irrelevant, mobs can spawn within 120 radius sphere (not a cube!) so while math is not that difficult, checking a significant amount of space can prove to be tedious. I'm not entirely sold on this myself, but I don't want it to be misinterpreted. Again it's to measure distance, not light level.

I did understand what you meant by spawning spheres and their purpose, however, I should have elaborated a little bit more on this.

I suggested the alternative mainly because the light level detector is helpful for all sorts of players - mob farm creators, builders who don't want to be hassled by mobs, and presumably many more purposes too. It is just a visualisation of a section of the debug menu. I guess the spheres could be argued to be a visualisation of maths and coordinates.

In hindsight, I may change this to something I'm indifferent towards (instead of against) but if it were the light level detector vs. the spawning spheres, I would pick the light level detector. I think if there was concern over small areas of mob spawning, I would deal with them anyway regardless of distance.