Posted on 13 October 2014 - 06:32 PM

Hey guys. It's been almost 1 and a half years since we initially released PotPvP 2.0 on Badlion and I joined the development team. We felt it was time to give PotPvP a huge revamp with more fun activities, an easier to use system, more donation ranks/perks, and more.

For any of you who have not yet seen the post in the Octovon forums, we are looking to replace most of our arenas with new ones to give a fresh and exciting twist to the revamp. If you are interested in building arenas checkout the post to request a plot: https://www.badlion.net/forum/thread/15130 (Read everything)

I will start by getting a little nerdy and then going into the overall/feature ideas. Basically I did not build this system to grow as large as it did. We band-aid'd the code along the way with new features/tweaks. For those of you OG players you will remember when the signs on the Chinese theme'd spawn would all stop working randomly. This was our first breakthrough in terms of our player base crashing our SQL connection. Over time new features such as party/lms/war etc have been added to the system, but with each of these features the code base has become messier and messier. At this point it is so disgusting and un-reusable that none of the developers want to touch it or add features because it is simply too complicated. Our first step is to rewrite the code base to make it more future proof/easier to add new features in the future.

To give a quick estimate at how awful this code base is, i spent a few hours yesterday cleaning up a single file in our code base and cut out over 1000 lines (this is a lot) from it of code that was either copy and pasted, outdated, or not being used. I am super excited to rewrite this plugin to be built for easier future development.

Now onto the new features/plans with less nerdy stuff involved. Here are some of the features that you can expect to see in the new version and some reasoning behind them:

- Show hearts/durability/potions at end of 1v1 match. This is one of the biggest things we see in chat about how close they were to beating their opponent. We want to make this easier to see.
- /inv [name] - See your opponent's inventory at the end of your last match ([name] argument is only needed for party matches)
- /spectator - We are revamping this system to prevent you from being in the spawn with the 300+ players that drop your FPS. We will move you to a new section and prevent you from getting back into spawn to prevent lag.
- /follow - In spectator mode you will be able to type this command and follow a player between matches if you wish to. This will be useful for our moderators when watching cheaters as well
- /duel will be kit based. You can now specify to do a duel with a certain ladder and have all of the rules applied. No more issues with trying to force certain items to be brought. You will be able to select "no kit" which means you can bring whatever you want.
- /party duel will have a miniature matchmaking system built in to find other teams of size 2+ that want to fight in a certain ladder. We will have more details on this later.
- New Events. We have a few event ideas to keep the server more fun/interesting. The last event we added was War which was almost a year ago.
- War event will now be kit based. Instead of it always being vanilla we will have it be based on one of the ladders (UHC, Vanilla, HCF, Kohi etc).
- Events will be automatically ran based on the player population. Donator+ will also be able to start events every 30 minutes to an hour (we will talk more about this in another post).
- Being able to modify all kits. Right now you can only modify certain kits. We will be changing this in the future so that you can modify the arrangement of items in other kits such as UHC, Iron OCN, etc.
- Default kits for ladders that require a kit will now be included (Vanilla, HCF, Kohi, etc). You can still use your own custom kit of course, this is just to help new players to jump into matches faster.
- Ranked/Unranked messages will be disabled by default. The amount of spam these messages cause is unreal at this point. It was meant at first to show that there were these features and encourage the gameplay. everyone knows about them now and we will turn them off by default.
- A buffed up filter system. We do not support bad sportsman like behavior here on Badlion. It's rude and just uncalled for. Saying gg or gf is a much nicer/friendlier way to say "thanks for the fight" even if it was completely one sided. It's just plain bad mannered. Our chat filtering system will be getting an upgrade to combat this bad behavior.
- Possibly a slightly new matchmaking system. This simple improvement will stop you from being matched against a player that you cannot win a single point from (mainly aimed at the high elo players getting matched against 1200 players).
- An automatic tournament bracket system that ties directly into the website. Randomly a mod might decide to start a tournament for 32 players in 1v1 Vanilla. This system will allow them to do it with a bracket system that is automatically updated online. We had plans for this feature for around 6 months now and part of the code is there, but simply put the code base is too messy to make this easy to do at the moment.

There is also a community poll that needs to be taken. Currently we rotate the unranked ladders around and let you play certain ladders unlimited amount of time. We either are going to leave it like this and only have a few ladders available each week with unlimited matches or add all ladders with unlimited ranked matches with a limit of 20 games a day. This limit of 20 games a day is separate from the 10 limit for ranked matches. This way you can have all the ladders and just be limited as to how much you can play. Donators of course will get the ability to play unlimited ranked matches as much as they want as well.

http://strawpoll.me/2773068

We are also open to suggestions for new features to make the server more fun/interesting/easy to use. We want to reach new peaks during this coming school year and we are looking to bring back the fun and excitement that we had with our player base when Party matches/War was first introduced. Even I who don't play this game much had a ton of fun playing those matches.

We will probably have a beta test server setup later in this month for the new PotPvP 3.0 features to be tested by our donators and staff. As per usual we give donators the first opportunity to try our new features as they are the ones that help to keep the bills paid for the servers.

Thanks and looking forward to the feedback.

TL;DR Lots of stuff, take 5 minutes and read through it all, all important.

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 06:39 PM

hyep

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 06:59 PM

The future of Badlion…This is gonna be fun. >:)

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 07:11 PM

This is amazing! I've been playing badlion for about 1 1/2 years and the server has been by far my favorite over any other as we have amazing and great mods and admins to make this server successful and better everytime I log on. I love the new features you guys are adding as this will increase donations and player base and make it better overall. I love the idea about the /duel command and the change your kit arrangement, as it makes the players how they want it and not how there forced to have it. And the duels will be better as everyone will get the same kit in the fight and nobody will have the advantage/disadvantage. I love the Badlion network and this is befar the best idea I've seen and I will be soon donating on my new account Ecliptek. I'm so excited for the new badlion pot Pvp 3.0! And the new matchmaking will be great as well. The lag is not that much anymore and I haven't had any server based lag in a while. Only time I lag is when Itd my own internet, so thank you mods/admins for the hard work and the greatness you have put into badlion.

-Camdog4soccer/Ecliptek

Quick question, will there be an elo reset after the new Badlion Pot PvP 3.0?
@MasterGberry

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 07:14 PM

Cant wait :)

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 07:14 PM

With this release we will definitely have a rating reset/new season.

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 07:46 PM

This is really cool, I'm excited fo this, it sounds like new features will be able to happen more often. My only concern is the longevity of Bukkit, unless you guys had a plan already in place for that. Either way hype.

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 07:52 PM

We have reason to believe that Spigot is working on a 1.8 version. Although 1.8 did not bring any major/amazing features that are a must. Sponge looks like it might be promissing…but I don't see as much activity/development from that as expected, I don't think it will make it through.

To be honest, I am not sure this game will be around for more than another year or two, Mojang is already digging it's grave and Microsoft will probably help them to do it. In the meantime we will continue supporting Badlion as long as we can afford it and if that time comes where we no longer have a large player base or donations to sustain the server we will turn it off like anyone else would have to.

In the mean time we do plan on trying to keep Badlion as long as possible :)

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 08:09 PM

A Kohi/HCF Faction Styled server would be nice as well.
@BetterSprint :^)

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 08:17 PM

Yay more events\o/

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 08:17 PM

A bit off topic, but do you think md_5 will be releasing Spigot for MC 1.8? And if so, would he be doing it via the patch method or some other way?

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 09:24 PM

Add /duel certain kit, like /duel vanilla, so you can make sure people don't cheat you out in a 1v1. Also, allow us to add comments to our own fights against someone on the website or something. Maybe, if we got killed, we tell ourselves why, for when we explain it to other people, if you're a high elo. Also, if a player gets banned for hacking, all elo that was lost from them should be given back. I hit 1900 again, and some guy droped me 120 elo. Niquex later banned him, but it was very agrivating, and I haven't been motivated to play since. Make the wins a minimum of 5 elo per, like a 1900 vs a 1200, just make us vs the lowest rank, that will give us a minimum of +5 elo. Have the system try and pair you more based on elo. Higher vs higher, lower vs lower. Maybe set up signs, that only certain ranks can click on. 1200-1400 on one.

1400-1600. And on, you get the point.

@MasterGberry
@Archybot
@Viprite

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 10:35 PM

I suggest that system, however, say 1600s and up and duel other 1600-1700, yet also be able to click the 1200 signs if they want too.

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 11:29 PM

I'm really excited about this.

Here is a suggestion (Might sound stupid).

Honestly, if you're looking for a new start. I would say RESET THE BAN LIST. Give EVERYONE a new start. Give them ONE MORE CHANCE no matter WHAT THEY DID to prove themselves.

If they are caught cheating, then ban their asses no questions asked. However, I feel as if this were to happen… Then more people would see the fun in it.

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 11:44 PM

Yeah, to let the hackers right back on the server. Only a few have changed, but most will just hack again. I worked hours and hours for badlions ass to get rid of these hackers and that'd just be.. undone? Fuck that.

Posted on 13 October 2014 - 11:51 PM

I cannot wait. The hype is supa real! :D

@MasterGberry

I have a question, you talked about how the light purple chat will be removed due to the amount of spam it has caused. Does that include the chat when you win/lose a game? I assume not.

Posted on 14 October 2014 - 12:11 AM

He has a point… fresh start, new beginnings for ALL :D

Posted on 14 October 2014 - 12:28 AM

I'm sorry, but this would be a horrible idea. I would love to think that people have changed, but it's quite the opposite. The # of cheaters has gone up rather than going down. I mean we were just discussing the other day on Skype about how people get banned on here for autoclicking or forcefield and then go over to Kohi because they aren't as strict over there.

Only way to do something like this would be triple our staff which just isn't happening at the moment.

We will be allowing users to purchase unbans soon though, more info on this coming soon (everyone is still entitled to a free appeal [or multiple spaced out over time])

Posted on 14 October 2014 - 12:28 AM

Correct, you will still see your match information.

Posted on 14 October 2014 - 12:29 AM

I think you didn't read the part about the 1200 vs 1900 thing. The "new" matchmaking system will not let you into a match where you cannot win more than a few points.