Shotbow

What's up, Shotbow? My name is Mistri and I'll be your host for the 10th Anniversary edition of Dentril's New Moon for July 2022! Let's dive right into this month's updates.

Network Updates
10th Anniversary
Shotbow is incredibly excited to announce our 10th Anniversary celebration. Thanks to each and every one of you for an amazing 10 years of Shotbow! You can read all about the festivities here, including giveaways, XP multipliers, and more!

Voting Rewards
Individual voting rewards have now DOUBLED, meaning you get 100 XP per vote! That’s up to 600 XP per day, and 18,000+ XP per month! Vote for Shotbow now.

Team Applications
Ever wanted to join the Shotbow Staff Team? The following teams are accepting applications:

• Development Team
• Annihilation Administrative Team
• Localization Team

Social Media
This month, we launched our brand new TikTok account! Follow Shotbow on TikTok here.

Gamemode Updates
MineZ Updates
MineZ has seen a ton of updates this month. The return of patch note videos for MineZ has arrived - check out all that happened in the month of May, and be sure to keep an eye out for more to come!



Additionally, the staff team has taken a hard look into the future of MineZ! Check out the MineZ Team's thoughts about the state of the game, and where we want to head next. Check out the thread here!

Finally, we've released a trailer for our next new MineZ update: The Road Less Traveled. Come check it out starting July 2nd!



Mine Theft Auto Updates
The wait is over. The first Mine Theft Auto 3.0 Beta was hosted June 24-28. Thanks to those who showed up and helped us identify issues! We'll be back soon with more MTA!



Warband Updates
Warband has officially hit the beta phase! Check out the Open Beta trailer here:



Statistics
SMASH Rankings
The spring season has just ended, and the results are in!

• 1st - Rozlina (1286) - 75,000 XP
• 2nd - _BrightDarkness_ (1269) - 50,000 XP
• 3rd - sunbreathing (1191) - 25,000 XP

Network in General
Staff updates:

• Sevy13 rejoined the Administrator and BAC teams
• otcathatsya was promoted to Administrator
• BasicAly joined the MineZ Mini Admin team
• Goldly has joined the team as a MineZ Jr. Specialist
• Rinjani joined the BAC team
• PigboyYT joined the Film Crew
• sdf007_dada joined the Localization team

Other statistics:

• 895 in-game reports were handled in the last month
• There were 610 players banned in the last month
• There were 59 support tickets resolved in the last month
• This month we achieved a peak playercount of 209 on June 12
• 25,763,412 XP was earned by players this month

That's all for this month. I'm your host, Mistri — thanks for flying Shotbow!

Hello Shotbow!

We're excited to announce that Shotbow’s 10th Anniversary is on July 5th! We have a LOT of plans and fun rewards for everyone. What does this entail?

XP Rewards
We are going to be generous with the XP multipliers during this event! Here’s what you should expect:

• 2nd of July - MineZ gets 10x XP
• 3rd of July - Annihilation gets 10x XP
• 4th of July - All games get 4x XP
• 5th of July - All games get 10x XP
• 6th of July - Wasted Control and Smash get 10x XP
• 7th of July - Death by Void and GG get 10x XP
• 8th of July - All games get 4x XP
• 9th of July - Annihilation gets 10x XP
• 10th of July - MineZ gets 10x XP
• 11th of July - Warband and Slaughter get 10x XP

We encourage you to try out games you normally don't play on their respective XP days - and earn those sweet sweet XP rewards!

Gifts for You!
It wouldn’t be a good anniversary without some gifts now, would it? Be on the lookout on our social media for giveaways and special events taking place during this event…

Annihilation
Some builders dedicated some time to give you guys an interesting twist when it comes to Coastal. We’re happy to introduce Cakestal! This map has a revamped mid area which will play much different than Coastal is traditionally played. Big thank you to Orcahedral and Syphia for making such nice treats for the Anni community!

MineZ
We have a special Anniversary update coming out for MineZ! This will feature:

• Two major locations for this event
• Unique loot and a special one of a kind item for a limited time only! Traders, this is for you!
• Party areas along the ice rivers.

Lobby
We have put together a special lobby to celebrate the occasion! For those who love ARG’s… we have something in store for you.

Closing Words
We wanted to thank each and every one of you for an amazing 10 years together. Whether you've been with us since day 1, or just joining Shotbow for the first time today, thank you for making Shotbow what it is today! Enjoy 25% off everything in the store with the coupon code 10YEARS.

See you soon, and thanks for flying Shotbow!

Hello Survivors!

It’s been a little bit since we gave players a good look into the future of development for MineZ. We’ve been tirelessly working behind the scenes on a myriad of updates, and while none are launching today, we’d like to go over some of our thoughts on the current game state and our intent and goals in the patches you’ll see in the coming months. That said, let’s jump right in.

MineZ has largely been the same game for close to a decade. With a 10 year anniversary on the horizon, the MineZ Team has been all too aware of what has and hasn’t changed over that decade, and we’re looking to ramp it up. MineZ has sorely lacked progression for many years, and the Bank was a nice first step towards players feeling some sense of progress. But the bank is not enough on its own. Player numbers fluctuate, and though winter saw some great return to the playerbase, we’re still nowhere close to what we were at Origins release, or the days of old with multiple full servers. We’d like to begin to turn that around with a number of more impactful updates, beyond just tweaking numbers and adjusting the meta slightly.


Creating More Gameplay Loops
Future updates will look to innovate progression and content within the game, and while it’s been said before, we’ve made great strides internally to set up more depth to our content, add replayability to the game, and give reason to log in each day and continue playing. Recent updates should hopefully reflect some of that intent. See the change to Shivers, which now join the roster of mobs that have a rare drop worth grinding for. Expect more changes like this to many other mobs, including potential new ones! You can check out some survey results that help highlight why we’re looking at mobs, too. Though this is a small-scale example of replayability, we hope to continue to head down that path to provide good reasons for people to keep playing, and to expand the scope of what there is to do in MineZ beyond PvP and the existing Dungeons. While we don’t want to reveal our hand just yet of what exactly this is, you should hopefully see a PTR in the coming months with a large system that should be the beginning of a new future for MineZ. Our intent is to make the game bigger than its current systems by adding more gameplay loops that don’t currently exist, while supporting existing ones by creating more depth with those new systems.

Looting and Consistency
While we are introducing some grind heavy elements like stated above, one thing we also are looking to tackle is looting in MineZ. For many years, one thing has remained consistent: the inconsistency of looting. MineZ has thousands of chests, and looting gameplay as it stands is not too engaging. Despite that, players have to spend much of their time looting by passing up worthless chests. A big contributor to this is the inconsistency from loot chests. When opening a chest, it is not uncommon to find one worthless item within. We want to reduce these meaningless interactions, while keeping progression relatively similar. We’re happy with gear speed currently, and want to preserve that, while cutting down the meaningless interactions within that time frame.

Additionally, we want to ensure that endgame gear is still viable, but not necessary to participate in your favorite content. Alongside these changes to consistency, we’ll also likely have changes to loot tables you should keep an eye out for. Keep an eye out for a PTR server in the coming months to test out these extensive changes we’ve been working on behind the scenes. Our intent is to make the existing gameplay loops more engaging by cutting down time spent doing menial tasks and removing “bad luck” when looting, so people can get to their preferred content of choice, be it PvP or PvE gameplay.

Statistics, Achievements, and Progress
This is not the only method of progression that there is in gaming however, and we’re well aware of the desire for more senses of progression when playing MineZ. The broken state of stats and achievements has been as such for quite some time, and we know how even something as small as stats can be a big motivator when playing. We’re looking to address such things soon, which will hopefully just be the beginning of more long term progression. This will come in the form of a better achievements and stats system, as well as other achievable feats in game, such as rare drops, detailed above. Our intent is to allow players to see more defined progress over time via stats and achievements, and incorporate rewards into that as well for tangible senses of progress.

PvP - Phantom Blades Galore
Regarding PvP, there is always much discussion about the perfect meta for MineZ, and it’s rarely fully agreed upon. Our recent PvP player survey provided much insight to the current state of the game, and we have a few ideas for what to tackle to make that aspect of the game more enjoyable, as well as making PvP better for those who don’t want to partake in it. Though much of these thoughts are in the early stages due to the recency of that survey, we will be continuing to engage with the community through surveys such as those to gather feedback and hear your thoughts on what parts of the game need our attention. We thank you for all your honest and direct feedback on this subject and others.

Current info suggests outnumbering and the inability to compete while rat-geared are roadblocks to people enjoying PvP, as well as certain legendaries being too oppressive in god geared kits. You can check out some of the survey results from our active PvP community to see how some of these changes were supported by their thoughts as well as ours. Our intent is to begin adjusting things so outnumbering is less oppressive, rat-gearing becomes a reasonable option/endgame gear is not required for PvP, and potion inventories are a healthier mix of drinks and splashes, while also addressing the amount of mobility that Phantom Blade provides.

Closing Words
All of the above is still somewhat vague, and we know that words are meaningless without action. We hope to have PTR server playtests in the coming months for content that we want to get perfect for you all to enjoy, while also setting the server up for future growth. MineZ has been around for a long time, and we certainly don’t want to see it go anywhere but up. All of these changes are still a little bit away, but you should still look forward to another update that is soon to come, chock full of awesome content, including the much requested return of a certain feature. As always, thank you for all the patience and wonderful feedback you’ve given to the staff team, as it’s a tremendous help in making the game as great as it can be.

We can't wait to show you all what we've been working on!

- The MineZ Team