Weekend Observations: Edition #3

[evzntv]

SENTINELCRAFT'S
WEEKEND OBSERVATIONS
EDITION: 4-4-2021

Welcome everyone to this Easter edition of Weekend Observations! This thread is a weekly recap of all the major changes that have happened over the span of the last week. As always if you have any contributions/questions you can contact evzntv in game or on discord. Before we get into this week's edition, I'd like to address the situation with "Town Spotlight." If you read last week's edition, you would know that this week's featured story was supposed to be "Town Spotlight". However, there was some incredible breaking news over the last few days that was shared regarding the servers future. Because of this, "Town Spotlight" has been moved to next week's edition. Let's get into the week!

A BRIGHTER FUTURE

April 1st is often known as "April fools", a day full of jokes, pranks, and laughter. But here at SentinelCraft, April 1st was celebrated a tad bit differently. The exciting news was broken on Thursday that SentinelCraft will be going under some big changes!

It was announced by PaulinaCarrot that SentinelCraft going forward would be transitioning to a Minecraft network. The new Minecraft network would be facilitated through Bungeecord. According to the forum post, this was done  to allow "much more modulation" and to ensure that "lag is not shared across all worlds/servers". It was also revealed that this project had been taking place since the holidays and has been in development for some time. Certain new gameplay features were also announced, including increased render distance, claimable nether/end, and more. Other notable highlights from this post included the reaffirmation of the worlds NOT being reset and the announcement that development diaries would be released every so often.

This promise of development diaries being released periodically became true as Oplegoman released the first of many on Saturday. This diary focused on the "why" as the well "the setup" of SentinelCraft in the future. It was explained that the troubles that server had faced in 2020 had caused a direct effect on this change. Specifically mentioned was the demise of SkyBlock and Dynamap, with the forum stating this was "the straw that broke the camels back". It was decided that with this new network, the server would be expanding from 1 server, to 8 separate ones. The most notable server listed was "Server 5", revealing the return of SkyBlock to SentinelCraft.

FURTHER QUESTIONS

As both the journalist and member of the community, I like many others had questions about this new setup as well as where SentinelCraft is heading. I reached out to PaulinaCarrot for an interview, and she responded.

Ev: Why did you and the Senior staff decide to release this information at this current time rather than wait?

Pau: Because we felt we are at a comfortable stage to share the news. Bungee was no longer a theory, and april has always been a month of sharing news with Sentinelcraft which is why we went ahead and decided on it. Moreover going forward we  may require community feedback on certain removals or additions into the worlds and we can't keep it a secret for that purpose.

Ev: Speaking of Bungee, could you explain into further detail what Bungee is? (mainly for people like myself who are unfamiliar with it)

Pau: We are planning on releasing a development diary with more detail but simply put: Bungee is a network of servers, each running on its separate core but they are all linked with one another thanks to the plugins we will be using.
For comparison: our current server has 8 cores and only utilizes 1, meaning we're not using the full capacity of our hardware.

Ev: Wow, very cool. How important was it that this change be completed for the future of SentinelCraft?

Pau: Very important because it would be a fresh reset for the server set up instead of a reset for people. It could allow larger borders, newer plugins, better plugin management (we are running a few outdated things). It would hopefully be a permanent set up for SentinelCraft and allow more flexibility with bug fixes and the like (now we can just break 1 server and the rest will remain playable )

Ev: I like how you mentioned it wouldn't be a reset for the people, just the server. Though I am curious, with this new setup, why was the decision made not to reset the entire server (including Horizon/Kattalox) ?

Pau: Well we would not make a decision like that without talking with the community first. We don't have any pressure to reset the current world, the old one was reset because of multiple chunks errors in the world as well the old author of Towny discontinued the plugin. I think too many have invested time into the current the world that they do not want to see it all vanish. Back then it was 1 world now it's 2 worlds and its double the size. Not to mention the minecraft drought happened shortly after, we are not interested in seeing the server turning to a ghost town and would rather keep the community we have and build on it. I'm sure many awesome people are still out there and haven't had the opportunity to stumble on sentinelcraft.

Ev: Great answer. I definitely agree it was the right call to keep the current worlds as is. My last question is for you as an Owner. This is easily the biggest project you've faced so far in your few months as Owner. What emotions do you have going into this new journey? Excited? Nervous?

Pau: Well it's definitely a constant challenge balancing current sentinel activity and future sentinel development. However I am not the only person working on it, I've successfully enslaved Oplegoman and Brenda to manage and organize things as it is their biggest strengths. I'm excited to see where things will go, and I trust that the entire staff have done and are doing their best with this project. Whetheir it is beta testing or fiddling with config I believe they're doing great at it. I hope the community will continue to have our back with changes or whatever feedback we request, in the end i'd be more nervous about that than the actual project. In my eyes the community will always come first.

Ev: I'm very excited to see the future of SentinelCraft and I know we as the community are in great hands! Thanks for your time, Pau

Pau: Thanks for the questions have fun

COMMUNITY FEEDBACK

In addition to reaching out to Pau, I reached out to members/staff of the community. I asked "What are you most looking forward to with the new changes coming to SentinelCraft?". Here are some responses:

MHGUForPresident: Honestly I?m most excited about the performance enhancements that will let players do and see more. Increased render distance and claimable end and nether are big things for me as a builder. As a mod I often see new players who have their bases in the nether or unclaimable areas which reminds me of the time where I had to move my whole base to a different dimension when I started, so giving players that option is huge

ItsThorn: Well, all these additions to an already great server has excited everyone I'm sure. Among the new things being offered, claiming the nether is quite a good opportunity to realise the many desires for a "nether base", however the new commands and donation perks certainly raised a brow, and is one of the things  I am most looking forward to!

Silver_Dragoon1: I'd say.. New donation perks for now.

Etspiritu: Well, for me it's the claimable nether and end. Once we're able to build there with grief protection, people can make things like nether highways or end bases and such.

bugsy12: I'm excited to see the nether themed builds players will make in the claimable nether, also excited for the extended render distance!

JoeArmageddon: The new server pattern is the thing that interests me the most as we will be getting more tps and a problem with one world will not interfere much with another world

Mr_RS_: Implementing new games maybe, I can't wait to check out new plugins and the new cluster of servers they implement over time

NotA: I am looking forward to everything, the most is probably to the multiple server system as that would allow for much smoother gameplay, also I look forward to the revamped donor perks and the new commands.

Blok3y: eggs

Francias: I'm really excited for the separate servers, more specifically that if Horizon crashes that Fedgardia and Kattalox could still run.

Baked_Tater: SKYBLOCK

As you can see, the community is very excited about all of the new changes. I personally am most excited about the increased render distance and a claimable nether. As someone who loves playing Towny (go Faygo Dreams!) this gives me more of a reason to branch out and start making claims. Kudos to everyone involved with this wonderful new project!

For more information on the upcoming server changes, visit these threads:

ANNOUNCEMENT: http://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?topic=10313
DIARY #1: http://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?topic=10315.0

EGGS!!!!!
THE EGG EVENT IS OVER

This week marked the end of the 2021 Easter egg Hunt here at SentinelCraft. This week featured a large mass of eggs in Pern along with some great prizes. Some of the prizes included a $5 world edit request for free, Oplegoman as a slave for 30 minutes, and more! The Easter Egg event was a massive success and saw a wide turnout throughout the days it was held. Congratulations to everyone who found an egg!

The following players found an egg this week:
March 29th: Phenix106
March 30th: evzntv
March 31st: Etspiritu
April 1st: Francias
April 3rd: Etspiritu
April 3rd: evzntv
April 4th: Loulou

Full egg results can be found at this thread: http://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?topic=10242.0/

Roll on Wednesday (RoW)

RoW is an event that occurs twice every Wednesday. This event takes both luck and skill as you must possess a combination of both to win!

I would normally take the time to write an intro for this week's RoW, but ItsThorn quoted it best as RoW this week was "prickly". Prickly was definitely the right adjective to describe the morning RoW as at one point the entire server of 15 people were participating in this event. That meant that there was no shortage of BEEF.
Devereux (Dev) was creative on this April fools edition of RoW, as twists like uno-reverse card were put into play causing an exchange of killings between ItsThorn (Thorn) and Francias (Franco). In the end Thorn would prevail as he made it to the finals after PaulinaCarrot (Pau) got to handpick who participated in the boat race! This boat race like last week's was a team event with Pau & Ev, Bug & Thorn, and & oozma. The first two laps were a traditional boat race as Bug & Thorn took a good lead. However, Dev announced the last lap would be ran! This ended up in Pau showcasing her speed to get the victory. Late RoW was a bit less filled with beef as Dev was "shitting and lost track of time". Regardless late RoW turned out to be a fun but smaller sized event. Throughout the cycle of killings everyone was eventually brought back into the final game of "Spleef". In the end, 2nd time ever participant Loulou shocked the world with a victory!

After, the morning RoW I interviewed Thorn further as he said this was the most intense RoW he had ever played. I asked him why should players be interested in RoW? His response: "It pits everybody together in a very immersive game, regardless of rank or status. The server does an amazing job at promoting good will and it shows in RoW, where although plenty of beef is shared (Francias, I'm looking at you pal), it is an amazing opportunity to meet and have an amazing time with those around you!" As you can see RoW is a game with lots of fun as it a can't-miss each and every Wednesday. For more information on RoW, visit this forum: http://sentinelcraft.net/forum/index.php?topic=588.165

Here are the results for this week's event!

Early RoW:
1st place: PaulinaCarrot
2nd place: FranciasPvP
3rd place: evzntv
Lucky Losers: ComCoffee9987 and Blok3y (BlokeHead)
Host: Devereux

Late RoW:
1st place: LouLou
2nd place: Etspiritu
3rd place: MHGUForPresident
Lucky Loser: MHGUForPresident (somehow)
Host: Devereux

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Trivia on Friday (ToF)

ToF is an event that occurs every Friday. It's a test of knowledge and speed, and the player who possesses both is the winner!

Trivia on Friday was once again a huge hit as this week's theme was "Marvel Cinematic Universe" (MCU) The early ToF was mostly dominated by JoeArmageddon as he answered questions faster than NotA collects souls. Aatif attempted to make a comeback with a strong 3 question run. However, he was no match for Joe as he took home the early victory. Late ToF was "amateur hour" as the participants struggled through most of the questions. But it was multiple time trivia champion, Etspiritu who took home the victory by an impressive 5 point margin.

Here are the results from ToF!

Early ToF:
1st place: JoeArmageddon
2nd place: Aatif
3rd place:  ItsThorn
Host: NotAWesternSpy

Late ToF:
1st place:  Etspiritu
2nd place: LouLou
3rd place: evzntv
Host: bugsy12

Congratulations to the winners!

PROMOTIONS

As part of our weekly recap, it's important to recognize players who received a promotion! The following players received a promotion this week.

mindtwisty: From Member to Donator

Congratulations to all who were promoted!

EDITOR'S NOTE

As we go into this new journey together it's best to remember to be patient towards the entire staff team. We have to remember that while our lovely staff is here to serve and provide the best possible playing experience for the community, that they are real people too. As someone who has been on a staff team elsewhere many moons ago, it is very stressful to undergo such a big change that affects the future of the entire server. Let us all remember to be patient and kind to everyone working behind the scenes, and furthermore, provide encouragement and praise for their great efforts.

As always, thank you for reading "Weekend Observations" and we'll see you back here again this time next week!

- Your friendly journalist Ev <3

[The Carrot]

Lol! This was brilliant.. but have you omitted bugsy from the early row so you could be 3rd?  :/? HMMMM

[evzntv]

Per the official results I was 3rd in morning RoW. I figured you'd support your teammate >.>

[DanteVentura]

Another great edition!!!! Good job!!!

[The Carrot]

Per the official results I was 3rd in morning RoW. I figured you'd support your teammate >.>

Carried you to 3rd place

[Joel]

Another great one evz Keep up the good work!

[Aatif]

Amazing!!❤️