The wilderness.

[Mateusz_Zboj]

Basicly first thing that made me want to play and is definitely important.

Dark night, big forest, wild animals everywhere. Felt almost like in Gothik 1. (old times ,old times)
So basicly I just though: How about developing the forest a little bit more?
Say maybe, make it more dangerous. More bloodthirst animals! Like wolves or wolverines. Would be good, ALTHOUGH people use Enders. My thoughts are, why not implement some little bonus for not lighthacking enviroment/highlighting animals? (dunno how are you going to do that- maybe make some modified enders aside of normal official client? that is of course if Enders agrees since the code is his) Maybe 10% more LP for not using it constantly for 3 ingame days? The effect could be activated at any time and would last 1 ingame day and would pause on logout. Or something like that.
Then a player would feel it's both profitable and climatic to play in the dark and without magical instict telling them where are the animals at any time.
Aside of that basic idea, maybe implement some other way to notice animals, an option that would work like prospecting, would take 4 secounds and spoiling the locations of animals. More realism, possibly more climatic, than when using Enders highlights.
From expirance I can also say that weather helps to build up climate (e.g. Minecraft), especially when playing in the wild.

Also post your own ideas, modify mine and feel free to comment.

[bmjclark]

I almost wish they would just make the default client have the 3 hotbars, no night vision, no hide, no x-ray and full screen (zoomable) and make it so moding the client isn't possible =\. It would just bring back some of the danger of actually being out in a forest (you never know when that ninja bear is gonna jump you)

[teengames]

I almost wish they would just make the default client have the 3 hotbars, no night vision, no hide, no x-ray and full screen (zoomable) and make it so moding the client isn't possible =\. It would just bring back some of the danger of actually being out in a forest (you never know when that ninja bear is gonna jump you)

the solution... get a mac

[Potjeh]

and make it so moding the client isn't possible

That'll happen when people invent uncrackable DRM.

[AnnaC]

Or make it so animals aren't always displayed; and depending on you perc*exploration is how close you can detect them. Would make boar and bears dangerous early on even with the modded clients.

Anyway, most of these ideas aren't that great, and in general I prefer the game to be more atmospheric and the like (less nightvision and all of that).

But torches need to be improved, there needs to be non-metal candle options, and other lighting options to be used before I'd suggest ways to remove nightvision altogether. Most of the "features" on modified clients are there for a reason. Regarding hide/x-ray; the game would have to have a better see-behind-objects function, or a rotate camera function, before you can fairly remove them. Sometimes when the server is running slowly, you can't even see the default outlines when stepping behind objects on the default client. In an isometric game with tall objects, this is inexcusable. If the player can not see or interact with usable game objects right next to their character, that is a very poor interface.

As far as darkness and stuff goes, I think maybe darkness should give buffs to stealth, and stealth should actually matter with your hearthling being detectable toward wildlife and other player's hearthlings. This would give tactical advantage to moving at night (I remember reading a comment from NaoWhut who said something along the lines of how fun nighttime used to be to do raids before nightvision clients).

In general it's useless and unrealistic to expect to restrict the usage and creation of modified clients; it's best to figure out what advantageous aspects the mods affect, and modify or adapt existing game rules for them.

[chivoloco]

More bloodthirst animals! Like wolves or wolverines.

I agree, also it would be rad if wolves could be tamed and used for hunting other animals or as guardian dogs

[ninja_yodeler]

A lot has been suggested before regarding this,

I agree with Bmj that the best solution would be to ban modded clients, though as potjeh said. people would make them anyway.

The problem with the default is that that;
1. Zoom. you cant see shit.
2. Everything is in a fixed position. if you were able to move the stuff around, it'd be better
3. Map. it cant be zoomed, or anything

[Procne]

You could also change the way in which server sends information about map. For example to send info only about the tiles that are visible in darkness = x nearest tiles.
Still, custom clients could simply remember those tiles and store them locally for display purposes

[MagicManICT]

There's tons of changes that could be implemented to negate many of the bonuses of the 3rd party clients. They would all require server-side implementation, though, and would thus need beefed up processing on the server. However, making a Java client that isn't hackable isn't even close to possible. Harder, yes, but still hackable.

[Potjeh]

Making *any* language client that's unhackable is impossible.