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.
