Hello all,

This is a multifaceted suggestion, which hopefully allows for both the dev team and the userbase to voice their opinions and help refine my rudimentary ideas. Optimally, we find something that is relatively straightforward to implement AND makes playing the game more fun for users. I am, in no small part, spit-balling here, and hope others can help refine these ideas.

A few months ago, for really no good reason, I was motivated on /skyblock to begin working toward hitting the /leaderboards. I made some excellent progress, but was dismayed to find somewhere around a third to half of the players on /leaderboards have their islands locked and / or are inactive. Since there is no automatic or forced calculation of /level, those players who, in the past, exploited issues with the island level algorithm by placing gobs of slime (now nerfed) remain in their spots. No fault of theirs for doing so (though I wouldn't want an island full of slime, or stone bricks, personally), but their spot on the leaderboard would no longer hold under the current circumstances which newer players must accommodate to compete. It may seem arbitrary, the leaderboard, but two benefits could come from occasional force-calculations of island level:

1) Purge those users who have exploited the algorithm against its intentions
2) Provide a motivation for some users, increasing long-term user retention by at least a small margin

If the /leaderboards on survival are unchanging, they become meaningless. They've been about the same since I joined 6-7 months ago.

Achieving a spot on the leaderboard is not the end-all-be-all of our server, but obviously some people are motivated by it, and in my mind, it's free advertisement space to direct a few extra users to one's island, which can be very useful.

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As for suggestions beyond forcing occasional (once a month with the Nether reset?) calculations of /level:

Possibly no one is ever going to overtake the balance leaders on Economy. Who knows? I certainly don't think it's possible unless a few players all-of-a-sudden are inclined toward extreme spontaneous charity. Not holding out hope.

So as a secondary suggestion, I would like to propose that there be other ways of highlighting achievements on Skyblock. Not quite competitions, but tangential to that sort of idea.

For example:

1) I have always thought it would be hilarious to get the usual MC death messages, at least of friends: "Slagomizer tried to swim in lava" ??? My pals would roast me if they knew how often I got my butt kicked. This would probably overwhelm the chat, however, perhaps even if limited to only the friends list. I would like to propose a new /survivor sort of leaderboard in which playtime is measured against last-time-user-died. Did you play for 100 days and not die once? Pro. Even with godmode, my idiot self dies occasionally trying to be a hero in the Nether (and props to the like... two people who play on hardcore mode!). Wanna be silly? Make a /DarwinAward board. Who has died the most, or most recently, or maybe most frequently given their gross playtime? Fun ways to die (already coded in normal MC): being impaled by stalagmites, discovering the floor was lava, and not wanting to live in the same world as [mob].

2) Bork the algorithm, create an additional leaderboard. Goof the whole thing right up. I wanna know who has the MOST blocks placed on their island, irrespective of type: who's closest to just ending up with a sad cube of cobble? Or, who has the most pink wool placed? Quartz? Who has the most rail? The most different types of blocks placed (is there anyone who has... one of EVERYTHING on their island??) Switch it out periodically, highlight all the goobers with 80% of their builds consisting of one thing, or who have dedicated their efforts to obtaining one of EVERY type of block and placing it.

3) Some people love killin' stuff. Minecraft already tracks how many kills of a particular type of entity a player has achieved. We could do gross kills of ALL mob types per time period, or we could even have a monthly "mob hit" out. Most pigs killed, most shulks killed... (heck, goad people into the scary 1.19 Nether- most hoglins / brutes / striders killed!). It would be great to re-invigorate /warp hostile and the Nether, get people active there (the market always needs quartz and shulkers, eh?) Rotates monthly (or whatever... weekly? Idk). If there were a monthly / weekly thing about it, it would have the same sort of effect as quests in Economy: something new, fun, and different that motivates players to dig themselves out of ruts (and ultimately, makes play more engaging).

Tl;DR let's force a recalculation of island level so the /leaderboards aren't so stagnant and meaningless, and / or provide new achievements for players to fight for. I have tried to suggest things that are already calculable similarly to /level or are already statistics captured by Minecraft innately. New and fun things keeps long-term players interested, and highlighting player achievements (or... funny failures) is nifty.

Please comment any critiques or provide related suggestions of the same ilk below

 

I SUPPORT THIS AND literally AGREE!!! I at one point in time almost made a suggestion for server reset(which ik won't happen ever) to fix this problem bc it was the option I seen however; you're smarter than me

 

Fair point, even if those islands couldn’t compete with the current algorithm, it might not be fair to just chuck them aside. Hmm, well what if islands were subjected to a forced recalculation of /level, but instead of being purged from the leaderboard into oblivion, there were some feature on the forums to note their former prowess? An announcement? A thread keeping tabs like we do with historical DP heads? Then it’s not like they’re totally stripped of what they did, they still get the tidbit of recognition, but also it would still allow for newer people to move up if they’re working hard at it? That seems like a good option, no?

I would … guess? …that SkyBlock wants to stay a friendly-competitive server and not get too harsh about competitions but I think more things to stir up building efforts or fighting efforts would be great. The way you have phrased it seems as though you mean that the category would be a surprise? Do you think that’s better? I think it would be spicy to know on August 1st that last months top three were the islands of Becca, Bob, and Betty, that this month’s announced-on-July-1st parameter of “longest length of rail ridden” commences now, and that September will be “smallest cobblestone to island size ratio”. We could even segregate, actually, a category for build superlatives and a category for feats (longest distance walked, most brutes killed, etc)

 

agreed


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Ooh! Smaller thematic weekly build competitions would actually be awesome! Definitely not to overshadow 52’s big one, but I love this idea!!!

 

Bumping, because I thought the discourse was good and because I think these are all ideas worth considering.