Citizens2 is the successor of the deprecated Citizens plugin but I have read the topic about that request and it doesn't fully cover what Citizens can do.
Link to main page:
https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/citizens.13811/Link to builds:
http://ci.citizensnpcs.co/Link to wiki:
https://wiki.citizensnpcs.co/Citizens_WikiFree?
YesWhat it does:- NPCs can walk, stand and talk naturally to players.
- Easy to use API for developers. This allows for brand new Traits that enhance your NPC experience.
- NPCs can be anything! From talking bats in a tutorial to creating player imitations or respawnable pets.
- Ridable and controllable NPCs.
- Robust text editing. The new text-editing interface allows for adding, removing, and editing NPC text.
- Player- and server-owned NPCS. Server-owned NPCs can be edited by anyone with the citizens.admin permission.
- Admins can optionally charge for NPC creation and limit the number of NPCs per player.
- NPCs can be used for anything. You can even program them to give quests without having an actual quest plugin.
- Factions integration.
- Vault integration.
- Towny integration.
- Every single aspect of Citizens2 can be configured with permissions.
- You can toggle whether and what NPCs drop upon death.
- And so much more!
Example use:I used to be a server owner myself for well over 6 years I have used this plugin and its extensions.
It was a rpg/survival server with PVP enabled much like this one, I used to create scheduled battlefields in a seperate world where two server owned factions duked it out.
Players could slay soldier NPCs and other players from the opposite faction alike, obtaining tokens that could be used to buy stuff.
In addition with enough Renown a player could ride and control a NPC enderdragon into battle and fight even more epic.
However, because this enderdragon was a NPC I could decide whether it would destroy blocks or not.
I am not saying you should do this on the server, I am only using it as an example to highlight the infinity of possibilities this simple plugin offers.
On a practical note, how can the plugin realistically be used here?Well, wouldn't it be awesome if town owners could hire guards that patrol his borders?
These guards would not respawn upon death and you can limit the amount of guards a town owner can have at a time.
You can increase the limit of purchasable NPCs based on donation perks too, so it can earn you extra money too.
- NPC guards can be bought by town owners.
- NPC guards have perma death, when they do they die for good just like any other mob.
- NPC guards will not drop their armour upon death, that would be unbalanced.
- A free player can own only 1 NPC guard at a time.
- This limit increases by ? per perk.
- A NPC guard would cost in game money.
- A NPC guard will only attack when provoked to avoid PVP abuse.
- A NPC guard will target hostile mobs.
- Perhaps better and stronger NPC guards in the shop for a higher cost, maybe for donators only.
Lag/memory concerns:The plugin consumes memory based on the amount of active NPCs currently loaded in the chunk. On my server where
hundreds of NPCs resided and interacted on a tiny map expect a 300 to 500MB usage with peak usage during the battlefield. If every player would own and use 1 NPC there would be on average less than 0.01 NPCs per chunk with this massive map. Given that less than 10 people are online at a time this would result in approximately 10 up to 40 NPCs active at a time, using my own server load as an example this would be a minimal tax to the system.
Conclusion:Amazing plugin with infinite possibilities, more taxing than the average 'useless' plugin, it can generate additional revenue and it is a hell lot of fun for mayors to play around with but it requires in depth know-how to use. Something a mature server with a mature community should be able to handle.