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CU Updates #48 - SkyBlock and Future Update Changes
haloman30 -
Hey, everyone - we've got updates to share in regards to our Minecraft server, and some changes on how we'll be approaching game updates going forward.
First and foremost, you can now connect using MC 1.21.3! Some newer features from those updates may not be available yet - the reasoning of which we'll be going into a bit later - but if you tend to play on the latest version of Minecraft, you'll now be able to connect without issue. If you're still on MC 1.21.1, however, you'll still be able to play - which, for some of you, may give an indication as to what we've introduced. However, we're gonna save that for a bit later.
SkyBlock and The End in Survival
In terms of features and functionality, we've finally reintroduced The End in Survival, allowing for Durite (and the newly introduced Durite Temples) to be discovered - along with the other goodies in The End, of course.
However, more significantly, SkyBlock has finally been reintroduced - and has been given a brand new spawn area! Inside, you'll find an expanded shop, weather controls, the new selection of various crates, and most of the other stuff you've come to expect from Survival. Additionally, the old system for using Cobblestone as a currency is no more - kind of. SkyBlock now has a proper economy, much like Survival. Some SkyBlock challenges will reward money, however the primary way to obtain currency is, in fact, still through Cobblestone. Inside the shop, you'll find a sell shop that allows you to sell any Cobblestone for 1$ per block, sort of like a Cobblestone ATM of sorts.
Going forward, we'd like to expand this and allow for additional ways to earn currency - however we're going to be approaching this with care. For now, though - we figure it's good to get things switched over, removing the need to haul huge amounts of cobblestone back and forth to the shop.
What Took so Long?
Now, some of you are likely wondering - why is it that this took so long? We first updated to 1.21.1 in early September, and only two months later are major features and gamemodes finally being introduced. What gives?
Well, it all comes down to plugins that we rely on - as well as technical changes with Minecraft and some of these plugins.
The reason we had to delay The End in Survival for so long was because we rely on a plugin, Custom Ore Generator, in order to generate Durite Ore throughout The End. This plugin relies on something called NMS, which is short for net.minecraft.server - to avoid getting too technical, this means the plugin interacts directly with Minecraft code, rather than the Bukkit API. This Minecraft server code does not remain consistent between server versions and will break with every update, no matter how minor. There's no real way around this - outside of using only the Bukkit API. This API is what plugins are intended to run through, and in most cases, old plugins will just continue to work throughout many updates. There are exceptions to this, and larger updates can and do still cause breaking changes, but many plugins often do not need to be updated with every Minecraft version change. We've even got a few that have remained in place since CU relaunched in 2014, never having required any updates of any sort.
There have been a number of cases where plugins we relied on were discontinued or simply stopped functioning - where we ended up taking the plugin and running our own private fork, with our own customizations and compatibility fixes. The most significant example of this is MobMoney - the same plugin that old CU used for dropping money rewards upon killing mobs. We've continued to update it to add support for dropping money when mining certain blocks (mainly ores), as well as some security fixes to prevent some potential exploits.
In theory, we could have, with enough effort and time, done the same for Custom Ore Generator - but then, we're on the hook for continuing to maintain this fork. Additionally, the initial time investment is significant - and given that I work full-time outside of CU nowadays and have other projects I like to work on, this isn't ideal.
Thankfully, in the case of that plugin, there was a development build which was available - which has support for MC 1.21.1. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our SkyBlock plugin of choice, uSkyBlock - which hasn't been updated for 1.21 at all, and still requires MC 1.20.x. However, we didn't go to the effort of updating it ourselves, either - so, if that's the case, how do we have SkyBlock back again?
Changing our Update Approach
Thus far, our update approach has been fairly straightforward. A new Minecraft update comes out, we wait for Spigot/Paper to release stable builds for that new version, we wait for any major breaking plugins to update, and then we update. In the past, this was a fairly simple affair, and didn't take too long. However, with the switch to BungeeCord, despite this process being relatively simple, the time required to actually perform an update has ballooned - because we have to do this entire process for every individual gamemode.
This results in the entire server being offline for several hours at the point of an update - and if any major breaking changes come up, we're often stuck and unable to downgrade. This has come up a few times, and has resulted in some gamemodes being offline and unplayable for some length of time after the rest of the server is up-to-date. This, to say the least, is not ideal whatsoever. Additionally, Mojang has recently announced a new approach for updates on their end - with smaller, more frequent updates being released, similar to how they did updates in the early days. For Minecraft, that's great - for us, that means even more time and work required just to keep the server up-to-date.
So, we've decided that we are not going to keep these servers up-to-date.
Going forward, we're going to be relying on ViaVersion - which allows newer MC clients to connect to older servers. This means that we don't have to update the backend servers at all, or even all at once, in order to support the latest version of Minecraft. This is how we're able to support MC 1.21.3 already, and is why some of the newer features of the update won't work yet - most of our servers are still on 1.21.1. As for SkyBlock, it's still not up-to-date either - and so we've opted to just keep it on 1.20.4, in order to get it up and running once again.
As Spigot and Paper are updated, along with the plugins we rely on, we'll be doing updates more selectively - things such as Minigames and Hub will likely update very infrequently, and may end up remaining on 1.21.1 for a while. SkyBlock may end up falling into that category for a while as well, until uSkyBlock gets updated or if we decide to update it ourselves. Survival and Vanilla, we'll likely still try and keep these running on the latest version of Minecraft whenever possible, since having all of the new features is a bit more important with those gamemodes.
Our hope is that this will allow us to remain "up-to-date" much faster, and remove the need for us to update so many servers constantly - reducing workload for us, and reducing the likelihood of new bugs being introduced with updates. When we do major backend server updates, we'll continue to announce them, and world resets will be handled similar to before based on these updates. However, in cases where we simply support newer versions of Minecraft through ViaVersion, we likely won't announce it whatsoever outside of changelogs and the server MOTD.
For now, though, that's all we've got! If you run into any new issues as a result of us using ViaVersion (or if you find a more basic server bug somewhere), be sure to let us know on our bug tracker, or with /bugreport ingame!
Minecraft 1.21.1 Update
- haloman30
Hey, everyone!
We're pleased to announce that we've updated our Minecraft server to 1.21 - and with it, we've introduced a number of changes and improvements. If you'd like to find out firsthand what's new, spoiler free - feel free to just hop on to the server. However, if you're interested in the deep-dive, keep on reading.
A couple quick things to mention before we dive in, however - currently, The End in Survival is inaccessible, and SkyBlock is also unfortunately unavailable at this time. Both of these will be restored in the near future, once the plugins required for custom ore generation and SkyBlock functionality are updated and compatible with 1.21.1.
Vote Rewards
One change we're personally excited about is the introduction of Tokens - formally known as CUPoints. For those newer, CUPoints became a sort of running gag - the idea was to implement them as a minigame reward, many, many years ago. That idea was an evolution of NDPoints, a secondary current on Nuclear District's MC server back in 2014 - and that leads directly into the present day.
Tokens are the new name for an old idea - a global currency. As of now, Tokens can be earned via a few methods:
Voting (1 token per vote)
Playtime (1 token per hour of playtime, with a limit of 5 per day)
Parkour (varying token amounts based on course and difficulty level)
This does mean that you won't get double rewards on Survival and Skyblock anymore, however - to help make up for that, we've expanded what you can get with those Tokens.
Instead of just having a single Vote Crate that you can earn winnings from, we've introduced a number of additional crates, that each have different, more specific rewards. Currently, the available crates include:
Resource Crate (2 Tokens) - A crate which offers a variety of resources - including logs, ingots, and other minerals.
Builder's Crate (2 Tokens) - A crate which offers a selection of common building materials - including stone bricks, grass blocks, sandstone, along with several other building blocks.
Mythic Crate (200 Tokens) - A crate which offers a few rare items - including a Nether Star, Elytra, and spawn eggs for Skeleton and Zombie Horses
Animal Crate (10 Tokens) - A crate which offers spawn eggs for many passive/neutral animals.
Monster Crate (20 Tokens) - A crate which offers spawn eggs for many hostile mobs.
Pets Crate (20 Tokens) - A crate which offers spawn eggs for several common pets - including wolves, cats, axolotls, parrots, and others.
Additionally, the classic Vote Crate remains - exactly as it was, and you can purchase a Vote Crate Key for 1 token - the same cost as before, essentially.
In the future, we want to have additional means to earn these Tokens - such as via other minigames, for instance. Additionally, these Tokens will never reset - so, if you like, you can bank them - even for years if you like. You can also pay tokens to other players if you'd like to use it as a standard currency. And, as such, you can also see who has the most tokens by doing /tokens top in-game.
World Resets
Yeah, yeah - we know, these often aren't exactly fun or exciting - but from time to time, they become necessary. The last time we did a world reset was MC 1.18 - and with several updates releasing since then, there was a great deal of newer Minecraft content that was either extremely difficult, or even impossible to find. The Deep Dark, suspicious gravel and sand, Mangrove and Cherry forests - all things that have been in the game for a bit now, and things that will hopefully be easier to locate and experience now.
Survival and Vanilla have both had their worlds reset. As per usual, we're working on packaging up the previous worlds and getting them ready for download - so in the near future, you'll be able to keep a copy of these worlds forever.
You may have noticed, however, that Semi-Vanilla was not on that list - which leads us right into another major change.
Removal of Semi-Vanilla
For those active in our Discord voice chats, this won't be a big shocker - but for the rest of you, this might come as a surprise. We've made the decision to remove Semi-Vanilla from the server outright with the update to 1.21. This is fairly unusual for us - as the last time we've removed a major gamemode from the server was probably the first time we dropped Semi-Vanilla, when we updated to MC 1.13.
This time around, our reasoning isn't wholly different - however, we've gone about it in a different way from before. When we removed it back with 1.13, the basic reason was that Survival would sort of morph into a half-step between what it was in 1.12, and what Semi-Vanilla was (you can read more on that here). We removed mcMMO and Jobs, economy became isolated to Survival (as previously, minigames and other things would reward Survival money), and tried our best to streamline the Survival experience and keep it a bit more traditional - while still keeping the bulk of the perks intact for all of the various ranks.
Over time, however, many of those features found their way back in - along with some new ones. Jobs came back for a bit, though didn't stick around beyond 1.15 due to balance issues. More recently, mcMMO was quietly reintroduced with 1.20. On top of that, we've gradually worked on expanding the library of custom content (though this is still in its relatively early stages in terms of the amount of content).
As this direction began, we ended up bringing Semi-Vanilla back as a more permanent offering during 1.16's lifespan (which you can also read about here) - as Survival had already deviated far enough from the typical purist offering to warrant its return. This was, however, until we introduced Vanilla. Vanilla started off from a few members just playing Survival on an internal testing server - which annoyed me, as of course I'd rather people play on the actual mainline MC server. This ended up resulting in me adding Vanilla - which ended up becoming relatively popular, enough to where I decided it would stick around as a permanent offering.
At this point, we had three "tiers" of Survival - Vanilla, Semi-Vanilla, and Survival - with each one being a step up from the previous in terms of features and functionality. What ended up happening was that most people preferred the extremes - with Semi-Vanilla being in this sweet spot where almost nobody touched it. Those who wanted a more feature-rich experience stuck to Survival, whereas purists enjoyed the raw, unadulterated experience of Vanilla.
Given all of this information - and the fact that the dedicated server is running a bit close to the wire - we made the decision to bid farewell to Semi-Vanilla. I won't say it's gone forever - this will largely depend on future demand - but at this time, we feel that what it offered is better found in either Survival or Vanilla. In all honesty, this is something that's been a long time coming - you might have noticed that Semi-Vanilla has basically been left untouched for a while, not even getting a new spawn with the last reset. A key reason for this was one major problem that Survival still had, that we felt was important to iron out...
Solving the "Pay-to-Win" Problem
Now - I don't consider Chaotic United to be pay-to-win, and from what I can tell, a majority of our players don't see it that way either. However, some have called it that - and while I rejected this notion outright for a long time, I have come around somewhat to see the other side of this issue.
While Survival doesn't really have a "win" condition per se - there are undeniable benefits that are experienced when purchasing or earning one of the various ranks. And in a sense, this isn't exactly a new problem - it's one we've been working to try and address for years, going all the way back to the original Semi-Vanilla experiment during MC 1.12. We've tried to offer an alternative that strips these perks out entirely - but this splits the playerbase between two gamemodes and doesn't truly fix anything. More recently, with 1.18, we experimented with nerfing and dialing back several of the perks - but this was generally deemed unpopular as well. And still, that didn't solve anything either. All of these partial solutions have been flawed - and it seemed as though the only true solution that would last would be to just gut the perks outright. But this, too, isn't good either - as it'd be a complete slap in the face to people who paid or played for these perks, and enjoy using them.
Clearly, something has to be done. Back in the day, a common complaint was that players would get to a certain rank, and then just become bored - as there was no real challenge or difficulty in playing the game anymore. That's what we tried to address with the nerfs, but it wasn't enough - and going any further would be an insult to people with those perks. At the same time, it became apparent over time that being able to zoom around with fly mode and use veinminer on a mass amount of ores, and in doing so, rack up a ton of money and XP (which can then be sold for money) is, in a very real sense, pay-to-win.
As such, we've come up with what we believe will be the solution to truly, actually, for-real, solve this problem - and do so in the most fair way possible to everyone involved: the Perks Toggle.
The core idea is dead simple - anyone Donator or above can enable or disable their perks at-will by using /toggleperks. This will allow people with perks to enjoy them freely as they always have, without any nerfs or limitations - and when they want to play legitimately, they can simply disable their perks.
The perks toggle separates most player data between these two modes, including:
Inventory
Health/Hunger
Active Potion Effects
XP
Ender Chest
Homes
Current and /back Locations
Bed Location
Gamemode (Survival, Creative, Spectator, etc)
Everything listed above is tracked independently - meaning that you essentially have two sets of each of the above items: one for when you're playing legit, and one for when you're playing with perks enabled. Additionally, we've tightened up what's considered "not legitimate" - previously, only items that were specifically spawned in with /item were counted as illegitimate - with any other item being counted as legit. Now, any item held by any player with perks enabled will be considered illegitimate. We have built in a command for our Moderators to "legitimize" a non-legitimate item for cases where it might be needed (ie, your hard-earned sword that you got just the right enchants on got picked up by someone with their perks on) - so if such as situation arises, don't panic! Just fetch a Moderator and they'll get you fixed up.
Additionally, when perks are enabled, some economy and similar features are disabled, including:
Earning money from mobs or ores
Selling XP for money
However, it's not all bad news - as a result of the toggle, we've also rolled back the majority of the nerfs we introduced with 1.18. As such:
All Tools and Armor (excluding custom ones, ie - Durite) can be spawned with /item once again
/god and /mobgod no longer have any time limits
Player Vaults have been reintroduced - with their contents only being accessible with perks enabled
VIP will once again have death chests placed upon death, when players have perks enabled
We recognize that some of the restrictions may be seen as heavy-handed, but we feel that this is the only real way to prevent the server from being pay-to-win, while also still keeping the perks that people paid or played for intact.
Survival Changes
One thing we've wanted to do - and plan to continue doing - is expanding what content is available in Survival. This of course can come in the form of custom blocks, items, and so on - but it can also come in the form of custom structures. As such - we've introduced several new structures that can generate in Survival, in both the Overworld and The End.
Durite Temples
These are small pyramid-like structures that can be found in The End - and inside, will contain both traps - and treasure. Grab an Elytra and fly around - see if you can find them!
Ancient Shrines
These are small underground structures which contain a bit of helpful loot - as well as some new items that, in the future, will be key components of the successor to our old MagicStuff plugin.
Abandoned Crypts
These are old, abandoned crypts which can spawn underground - and among a variety of loot, will also often contain keys to unlock the Teddy boss room.
That's right - you'll actually be required to dig up these old keys if you want to take on Teddy. The sign that used to be located at the gate entrance is no more. This also technically means that only now is the Teddy boss fight able to be considered truly "complete" - several years after his introduction. But hey - better late than never, right?
Bug Reporting and Registration
For a while, we've also been wanting to make it easier to register for Member. While the current process is a bit of an inconvenience - and still needs some work - we have managed to introduce a new feature that'll help improve it: automatic registration approval. Previously, registrations had to be manually validated by a Moderator or above. And, while Member hasn't been a requirement to actually play for a while, it's still annoying and inconvenient - for both our players and our staff team. As such, registration approval and in-game promotion is now handled entirely automatically by our old friend, @FORUMBOT (the very same one who was elected President of the Earth and Galaxy, if you recall).
In addition to registration, bug reports are another somewhat sore spot. While the process isn't particularly difficult, having to leave the server and pull up a website is still another barrier - a barrier that many are likely to just not bother with. In order to remedy this, we've introduced the /bugreport command - which lets you submit a bug report directly from the server. It'll guide you through the process of reporting a bug, and can automatically collect some basic information from the server as well - such as your position, world, and so on. Once finished, it'll be posted on our bug tracker by FORUMBOT - allowing us (and anyone else interested, including you) to see it and keep track of it.
We aim to increase integration between our website and MC server as time goes on - we've got a number of ideas, but we're gonna keep those to ourselves for the time being 😉
Website Changes
Along with the changes on our MC server, we've also made some updates to our website - in the form of a new default theme: Chaotic United - 2024! While this theme is still primarily a derivative of our previous theme that we've been interating on for years now - it's probably one of the more significant updates in a while.
One thing we've realized is that, at least in some situations, our forums are a bit... cluttered. Not the forums themselves per se, but there are certain situations (such as viewing forum threads) where there's a lot more information shown than is really necessary. As such, we've gone through and stripped out a bunch of this clutter, in an effort to make things a bit more easy to digest. If you're not a fan of this particular change, we've gone ahead and built in an option to restore the old UI elements - simply check the Customize Theme menu (the paintbrush icon next to the search box) and check "Extra UI Elements".
Along with that, our News & Announcements subforum has been given the Elaztek treatment in the form of an updated UI all its own - each topic is now displayed with its image, in a more elegant format, similar to the Elaztek Studios news section. Additionally, News topics now display with a larger font size and with a much more simplified page design - where replies are displayed more akin to comments.
We recognize that this may be a bit of a departure, and that not everyone may like these changes. While we do of course value feedback and encourage you to share it - we also currently, and will continue to offer all past forum themes as an option if you desire. If you'd like to go back to the previous site design, simply click the Theme button, and choose Chaotic United > Chaotic United - 2022.
Wrapping Up
And with that - that pretty much covers all the major changes made to the website and MC server. We hope you enjoy the changes and improvements! As per usual - if you find any bugs, be sure to report them on our bug tracker, or by using /bugreport ingame.
Beta 1.7.3 Registration Changes
- haloman30
Hey, everyone - we've got an exciting announcement for those of you who play (or wish to play) on our Beta 1.7.3 server!
The registration requirement has been removed - all users now default to Member! If you logged in previously and find yourself in the old Guest spawn, just do /spawn to start playing!
If you happen to experience any grief, be sure to let a Moderator or above know as soon as possible so we can get it rolled back - we've got proper backup and rollback plugins in place now, ensuring that any damage done by griefers can be properly rolled back.
For those of you curious as to why we had this system in place - and why it took so long to finally deal with it, keep reading. Otherwise, feel free to stop here and hop on the server!
We had initially implemented this system due to repeated griefs that kept happening on our Beta 1.7.3 server. This normally wouldn't be a big deal - in theory, undoing the damage would be as simple as rolling things back. Unfortunately, the plugin we were using for rollback, HawkEye, was having a great deal of trouble - and would often fail to roll things back properly. As such, virtually every rollback had to be done, at least in part, by hand.
Eventually, we decided to implement forced registration as a temporary stop-gap, to limit grief damage going forward. This was supposed to be a relatively brief solution, while we sought out a replacement rollback plugin. At the time, it seemed that the best option would've been LogBlock - but we were unable to locate a compatible version for Beta 1.7.3. As such, we left the registration system in place for a while yet.
Recently, however, we decided to look again - and while we did locate a proper jar for LogBlock, it wasn't able to connect to our database server. Despite this, we now at least know a version of the plugin that could work - and as a result, we were able to locate the original source code, get it patched up to work with our database server, and get it running.
Along with this, we've recently implemented daily backups - adding another layer of protection to the server. As such, we feel confident now that we can, at long last, lift this admittedly awful system from the server. It's hard to say what this system has cost us in terms of getting folks to stick around - but hey, better late than never, right?
At any rate - if you're looking to hop on, you can do so now at b173.chaoticunited.net - no registration necessary!
Introducing: The Chaotic United Wiki
- haloman30
Hey, everyone!
We've got an exciting announcement to share - as of now, we are finally re-introducing the Chaotic United Wiki!
The Wiki has been an idea we've had going all the way back to 2014, and have re-introduced a few times over the years. As of now, though - it's been built directly into the website, and unlike previous iterations, it's actually got some useful information on it!
As of now, you'll primarily find information about our custom Survival content - past, present, and planned for the future. Down the line, we intend to document the various communities associated with CU - such as Nuclear District, Hurricane Craft, United AlyCraft, and even some more obscure ones that were all but forgotten. We also plan to add pages detailing some of the notable users and staff members that CU has had over the years, as well as details on most of our custom plugins.
For now, though - that's all we've got. Just keeping it short and sweet today.
To check out the wiki, head to https://chaoticunited.net/wiki!
Servers & Services
Minecraft
Our Minecraft server is our flagship service. Featuring a wide selection of gamemodes, custom content, and more, there's something for everyone to enjoy!
Age of Rebirth (Modded MC)
Our Modded Minecraft server features a custom modpack, designed specifically for our community. It features a combination of technical, creative, and immersive mods to create an experience that just can't quite be had anywhere else.
Valheim
Our Valheim server is a simple, vanilla Valheim server - set up for members of our community to play together easily. No fancy bells and whistles here - just pure, unadultered Valheim.
Minecraft Beta 1.7.3
Our Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 server offers that old-school, retro Minecraft server experience. Featuring economy, a livemap, and a large world, this server is sure to scratch that nostalgic itch.
Forums
Our forums act as the go-to place for long-form discussion within our community, as well as the primary place to hear about new announcements, report bugs, and much more.
Discord
Our Discord server serves as the hub for our community. Announcements are posted there alongside our forums, and many members of the community are frequently active on Discord - even if they aren't online elsewhere.
What is Chaotic United?
Chaotic United (or CU for short) is an online gaming community that can have its roots traced all the way back to 2011. What first began as a World of Warcraft and Runescape private server later became a Minecraft-focused community, which it's become known for ever since.
Throughout its earlier years, it underwent several changes of ownership - and very nearly closed for good. In early 2014, many of CU's team branched off into Nuclear District - in order to create a healthier, better community, free from the clutches of their previous rogue owner. Then, later that same year, the "new" Chaotic United was born - under new ownership. While first treated with skepticism, it later joined forces with Nuclear District - until the original leadership and team decided that their time was done, and complete ownership was transferred to Chaotic United's new administration - who continue to carve the path forward to this day.
While we deeply treasure our past - and go to immense lengths to preserve as much of it for the future as possible - we are equally focused on our future. We continue to focus on our Minecraft server, introducing new gamemodes, features, and content - all with two goals in mind: Build the best Chaotic United we can, and build something that those who came before would be truly proud to witness.
The true core of Chaotic United, however, is its community. The people who've stuck around since the early days, the people who've only been around a little while, or the people who joined yesterday - whether you're on Discord, Minecraft, the Forums, or any combination, you'll find our loyal, tightly-knit community. They are the backbone of Chaotic United, and each member - new, old, or even the ones who have yet to find their home - plays a key role in Chaotic United's long and storied history - a history that will continue being written for years to come.