The main ideas behind survival

• We like to reward "real" work rather than automation
  • One way of preventing automation is by having mobs of different sizes which makes many farms less effective and pushes players to either come up with new, clever ways of their own OR make "natural" farms where the mobs can roam free and are only butchered when needed
  • This also cuts down on the excess of resources you sometimes have in Minecraft. Especially when combined with a simple design you just copy off the internet, it can be more demotivating than motivating as you don't even feel the accomplishment of coming up with the clever design yourself and figuring it out for hours or even longer.
• Built to last, even after years
  • This is why chunks for example reset after 30 days of not being visited if they are unclaimed. It allows for new chunks with new content really close by even after years.
  • We also add to the long term motivation by adding skills and custom enchantments which you can grind for.
  • Inactive towns will eventually fall as they lack the flow of cash from active players which means towns need active maintenance to stay alive.
• Incentivise playing together by for example making it cheaper if your town has more members or having physical chest shops rather than a virtual auction house
• Long term motivations through quests, skills, custom enchantments and being able to grow your town!
• Try to make all game changing systems optional
  • Which is why there are quests to unlock things such as custom enchantments, skills and so much more
  • You also don't have to claim if you don't want to BUT your chunks are in danger of being reset for the reason mentioned before
• Power to the user, apart from what vanilla provides we don't want to interfere too much with what's happening or being created.
  • This also goes for events. We do not have the resources to make new events happen in the game every week or so just to entertain people, instead players are welcome to create their own events in whatever way they want :)
• No teleportation, also partially due to not being vanilla but mainly because it takes away from the experience of exploration and getting an idea of the size and direction people and towns are in. It also supports in getting players to strategically pick where they want to live. This is non negotiable, it's been this way for years and it won't change now, sorry.
• PvP is entirely optional for each person individually. Everyone can decide for themselves if they want to participate in PvP or not. This is mainly because having PvP on for everyone causes too much confusion and drama (often resulting from said confusion)
• Exceptions to vanilla things we have changed even though we want to stay as close to it as possible. These have been disabled:
  • Mending as it creates items that never break again and make anvils unnecessary for repairing. There are alternatives however which make your tools, armor etc last longer!
  • Elytras as they are superior to every other way of transport and it takes away the need for any infrastructure between cities which we think enrich the survival experience drastically, especially for newcomers!
• Try to cater to different kinds of players
  • Making PvP optional makes it so those who want to fight are allowed to and the ones who don't can still play without interruption
  • Skills and custom enchantments are for the people who like to grind. They'll give you an advantage and bragging rights but you can also just leave them entirely untouched.
  • You can make extra money if you want to but you also get some if you just play regularly without focusing on it
  • People who like to build and be creative can do so through the use of skulls or the armor stand editor, giving even more possibility to bring life to your builds.

More of the philosophy

People also tend to ask for special gear or magic or something which sounds like a cool idea but goes against several philosophies. Firstly it would make us depend on a certain plugin (custom enchantments are the only exception here and Towny perhaps but you could probably migrate to another plugin if that's ever required) as any item created by said plugin will only work as long as that plugin works and that then also goes against "Built to last" because these things are only going to last until the plugin is no longer maintained and we really want to avoid depending too much on specific plugins. Almost all extra features/plugins are "locked" behind Quests and locked is used very lightly here. While it does indeed lock those features behind quests, it also means that people have to actively unlock them and they will be more likely to understand what they've unlocked. If you have to actively select what you want to unlock, you're more likely to know what it is about rather than just suddenly seeing a Farming bar pop up and you have no idea where to even find anything about this Farming. This does make progressing a little slower but it's also not as overwhelming to someone new to the server as if they're just suddenly flooded by custom mobs, custom gear, custom enchantments, custom skills and probably even more! So we want to keep that sentiment up - try to make people actively pick what they want to unlock, so they actually know what's going on while going through that process.

Ultimately we try to cater to people that like to grind, to progress further and need more content but you might also have to ask yourself at some point if what you're searching for is to be grinding forever. Do you just want us to add even more things so you can find strategies to optimize the way to get them so much that everything else becomes irrelevant? There is so much more to explore and it is so much more enjoyable if you just slow down a bit and don't try to focus on just one goal cause once you get to that goal, all you realize is that you just need yet another goal to have more "fun" and quite frankly we can not and will not provide that. Find enjoyment in other things, too <3

This entry might be edited as time goes on but the main philosophy hasn't changed in several years and it most likely won't in the future.

This video (really lengthy, you don't have to watch it but you can if you're interested) also explains quite well why some things should not be made easy to obtain and why we like to keep things a little challenging at times. In short, if you endure something challenging, especially with someone else, you give a certain emotional value to things that you get from doing so and if we remove all of that, it will obviously be lost.