PART 6: Non-Player Gang Wars, Player Turf, and Behind-the-Scenes | Hytale Gang Wars

DISCLAIMER: This series is speculative and based on pre-release information and Minecraft. This is not to be taken seriously; this is just for fun.
I know I had fun doing this series.

Finally! Welcome to part 6 of my 6-part series about Hytale gang wars: the last of the immensely hard work I put over the past few months while I wasted away doing school work.
Just in time because this is the last week of December and will be the first week of January. Advanced Happy New Year! (Not you, school work. Screw you for planning to drag me back on January 11.)

As part of Hytale's goal of making a living, breathing world, I think gang wars will not be limited to the player fighting against other factions or the other way around. I think factions will constantly fight each other, not just in coincidental encounters like Minecraft wolves seeing sheep, but through serious, large-scale warfare.

To begin with, we already know an official rivalry between factions: the Ferans and the Scaraks, where the Ferans want to exact revenge on the Scaraks for enslaving the Ferans. Some rivalries are implied or speculative, such as Kweebecs being rivals with the Trorks because Kweebecs wear Trork teeth as accessories, and Gaia being a rival of Varyn.

The bottom part shows a Feran enslaved by a Scarak.
Concept art by Thomas Frick from Hytale

This adds an extra challenge into the standard navigation of Hytale's worlds. Unlike Minecraft where worlds are generally free of dangers except for environment hazards and hostile mobs at night, gang wars may randomly occur in Hytale as factions compete for territory, get revenge, or in the case of good factions, defend themselves from evil and eventually destroy evil.

If the gang war is large enough, it can be tough to walk around the battlefield without running into an angry soldier, especially a hostile kind that attacks humans. Players may have to spend lots of time digging/building their way through or finding a detour past all the fighting, if they choose not to charge straight ahead and get caught in the crossfire, or even crazier, actually participate in the fight. (I bet these four choices would work very well in a Telltale Games game.)

If you ask me, though, I'll just run straight ahead! I can dodge all the attacks just fine! If some of the soldiers go after me instead of their rival faction, I can lure them away from the battlefield and take them out one by one.

What if they have a gang war...near my base?

In general, I'll ignore gang wars that occur near my base and command my allies to hold their fire to avoid diverting attention to us, unless an enemy faction is involved in the fight, they attack us first, or our base or allies take collateral damage.

If we do decide to join the fight and the enemy didn't intentionally attack us first, I'll wait until the enemy is cut down to a reasonably small number. This reduces the chance that a large number of enemies will divert their attention to us.

If I want to grind for items, though, I'll charge in regardless of how many there are.

Once the enemy's numbers are manageably small, I'll order our defenders to attack, and I'll attack as well from ground level.

Let's just hope there are no griefers involved. I don't like repairing holes in the ground.

Firetruck this.
Thumbnail from "Creeper triggers your anxiety for 10 minutes straight"
by The Original Ace

What if factions you're friendly with fight each other?

Okay, while this is a tough question, this is also something that I came up with very recently. (I have a bad habit of predicting questions that my readers will ask. I guess it's because I ask a ton of questions about the things I read.)

First, though, I want to stop such fights from happening in the first place. The cool thing about being friends with two factions that hate each other is that I can help both of them make peace (unless both are eternally bitter enemies such as the speculative Gaia vs. Varyn rivalry).

For example, if Kweebecs and Ferans are enemies with each other, I can enter a Kweebec territory while disguised as a Feran and accompanied by other Ferans, then do friendly things for the Kweebecs.

Note that, depending on the moral alignment (good, neutral, or evil) I choose in my playthrough, the factions I choose to help in making peace will be different. For example, in a good playthrough, I won't help Ferans make peace with Scaraks, assuming Scaraks are evil. You bet Ghean, who plays Chara the Oath of Vengeance paladin in D&D, will smite Scaraks in an instant.

When a fight actually breaks out, I'd probably incapacitate the soldiers harmlessly such as by putting them all to sleep.

If I get intentionally attacked while I'm trying to stop a fight, I'll just block or parry attacks.
If I become their enemy or I'm desperate, I'll fight them as if they were hostile mobs, though I'd make peace with the faction(s) after the battle.

Suggestions About Marking Player Territory...with Lots of Math

Player territory, used for triggering enemy faction raids, may be any of the following:

• Any player-made structure with a surface area of more than 100 blocks (not counting the bottom blocks, but counting gaps in walls to prevent cheating through minimal block usage), has been inhabited by the player for at least 2 in-game days, and contains at least one utility block like a crafting table or bed.
• Any territory visited within the last 5 in-game days whose faction is friendly to the player.
• Visiting a friendly or neutral player's territory counts that territory as "shared territory" for 1 in-game day after leaving that territory. It remains shared territory as long as the player stays.
  Enemy player territory will not count as shared territory.
• Any area with a certain item, like a custom flag, placed on it. It's up to Hypixel Studios or the player to decide what item this will be.

Additionally, the following types of player territory may determine what kinds of factions attack or at what "hate" level a faction can attack, including the special equipment they use:

• Open spaces that are at least 10 blocks below the surface and have a volume of more than 200 blocks. These count as "underground" territory, allowing subterranean factions like goblins to easily raid them.
  Surface-based factions will have a harder time finding this kind of territory, so they may avoid looking for this territory until they hate the player to the point that they can't wait to kill the player. When they do attack, they're more likely to bring pickaxes and explosives.
• Underwater territories fit mostly the same criteria as an underground base, except all 10 blocks between the surface and territory have to be made of water. Non-aquatic factions are much less likely to raid this type of base, but when they do, they may bring boats, submarines, scuba diving suits, and/or potions of water breathing. Stronger invaders may not take super effective damage from lightning and/or plant-based attacks.
• Any floating area of blocks whose lowest block has at least 10 blocks of air between it and the block directly below it, and is also at least 16 blocks away from any non-adjacent block. This forms a sky base, which may be raided by flying mobs or faction members that wear flying equipment or have flying vehicles/mounts. Stronger or angrier fliers may not take super effective damage from bows or lightning.
  Additionally, a sky base with 10-16 blocks between it and the surface may be raided by ranged attackers who can't fly.
• Any area of blocks that is at least 32 blocks away from the nearest land block and whose lowest block is at most 2 blocks above water level. This forms an ocean surface base, or epipelagic zone base, which aquatic factions are most likely to raid, followed by air-based factions, then land-based factions riding boats, aquatic mounts, or wearing swimming equipment.

This stuff, admittedly, is hecka complicated, but come on, guys, it's Hypixel Studios. I mean, I bet even Mojang can pull this off, like they did with villager mechanics.

And if Hypixel Studios doesn't want to do it, maybe a modder can. :p

Lazy Conclusion

Factions are an important feature of Hytale, as they contribute greatly to the history and gameplay of Hytale as a whole. In addition to the interactions already known, I think gang wars, whether or not they involve the player, will further highlight these two important aspects through their fighting styles, reasons for fighting, and relationships with the player.
Gang wars should not only make one faction stronger and the other weaker; the factions' behaviors should be changed accordingly to make them (and Hytale as a whole) more memorable to the community, whether it's the friendly factions holding festivals with the player to celebrate victories, an enemy faction trembling in fear, or increasing hatred towards the player. In other words, gang wars should contribute to Hytale's goal of creating a living, breathing world.

Behind-the-Scenes

• Before I split this into multiple blog posts, this was going to be my longest blog post so far at 8000+ words. I'm amazed at the sheer effort I put into this. School work will never get me to match this level of quality and detail.
• I spent 3 all-nighters doing this. One of those all-nighters was actually an approximately whole day of writing--from morning to past midnight. Dad caught me staying up all night.
• I initially gave up on writing this post because I didn't have a lot of ideas at first to pull from other games besides GTA San Andreas, whose gang war system was rather simplistic. I also had no interest in Hytale that time due to the lack of official blog posts.
  I regained my interest in Hytale, as well as my motivation to write this post, after reading Shadrok's theories--I recommend you read them as well. He sees a lot of stuff that I miss even after looking at the same pieces of official Hytale media multiple times. Kweebec Corner and Hytale News have given Shadrok's theories some spotlights in their own videos.
• When Ghean told me about Dungeons & Dragons heavy armor putting the player at a disadvantage in stealth, I researched into D&D...and got hooked. A few days later, I binge-watched D&D videos and built my own D&D character. Now I'm happy to say that D&D has become one of my main interests.
• When designing my gang war mechanics, I took into consideration the fact that Hytale will have its worlds and creatures act as realistically and lively as possible, just like in games like D&D and The Sims. So when I shared drafts of this series with Shadrok, he introduced me to Middle-earth: Shadow of War, which has surprisingly similar gameplay mechanics to the ones I made up for Hytale that aren't in GTA San Andreas, like assigning allies to defend a base, powerful mobs having unique resistances to certain damage types that other mobs of the same species don't have (such as a fireproof Kweebec), and enemy territories rigged with traps. Shadrok additionally stated that allies live their own lives when the player isn't telling them what to do, which is what I expect Kweebecs to do as well...and why I respect them too much to the point that I don't want them to die in combat, unlike Minecraft wolves which have robotic AI and are easy to breed.

i hate school work

I'll be having...yet another hiatus from blogging since school has started.

My term ends on April 5...but not before taking exams where I have to leave the house and go to the university.

I'm planning to make a "My Opinion on Every Fire Emblem Heroes Unit" on mid-February, though.