Alright. Let’s get the basics out of the way first.
PvPManager, the plugin that is used to give the highly custom PvP experience we know and love, is stuck in limbo after the 1.4.5 update caused any changes to be met with a sturdy brick wall with “updoot your plugin lmao” written all over it. As we all know, Rofle is currently focused on Planetora, and while I can’t say that is a bad use of his time, PvPManager still hasn’t updated since January, which means the following issues are concurrent with the current spoofing of this server:
-You can’t use /i to get the 1.4.5 pvp items, only by getting them in /items
-Ram Rune can’t be banned for the sake of balancing PvP, so nearly everyone silently agrees to not use it
-Magic Yoyo Bag (and Magic String to a degree on its own) allows for yoyo counterweight spam causing repetitive high damage
-Crystal Serpent projectile speed is so high that it acts as a spammable psuedo-sniper weapon now
-Revolver has higher (albeit more attentive) fire rate despite having a high maximum damage of 91
-Paladin’s Hammer has its launching attack
-New weapons and whips do not have damage values at all
-Loadout chests don’t work, alienating new players who may have wanted to pop in and try out a weapon or two (?)
Despite this, PvP is somewhat active thanks to a budding community of dedicated players who enjoy the game for what it is, and thanks to the previous contributions to the plugin that allowed modification of armor damage and defense values, the scene is more open-ended than ever, although it is somewhat stale in the sense that Molten and Frost Armor completely changed the metagame for sheer damage through their armor bonuses combined with the avenger and destroyer emblems.
With all of that laid out, what can be really said? What’s my point? If Rofle doesn’t update the server past its spoofed 1.4.4 connection, we can easily see a decrease in playercounts in the months to come, along with a stale and static PvP scene that is actively competing with Terraria SNG and losing. Does anything really need to be done? I don’t think so. Do I want it to be done? Yes. Will I force Rofle to do it?
No. Why would I?
It should be said that DG has one of the most open-ended PvP systems I have ever seen in a game like this, taking partial utilization of Terraria’s mechanics to create a gamemode that lets you use almost anything you want and win trying. As a result of this, this server can’t really take full advantage of that when its impossible to make any changes to the weapons and armor at all due to the new update breaking PvPManager’s capabilities. After all, it isn’t just a straightforward plugin, but uses other systems like SQLite to send its packets or whatever to the client to subtract the appropriate amount of damage, so weapons like S.D.M.G don’t become the norm. There’s a lot of untapped potential to be had here, but I can’t be asked to learn SQLite or anything similar at the moment when I’m actively working on a Minecraft SMP for a popular game dev youtuber’s discord server, so I’ll leave it off at this…
Shoutouts to ZaiSensei for reaching a couple hundred views on Youtube Shorts for showing Terraria PvP gameplay. You’re the reason people are confident they can play PvP on Mobile proficiently.
PvPManager website for tracking balance changes: PvP Manager
