Discussion MineZ - State of the Game - Q&A - 2025

Hello Survivors!

Recently, in the MineZ Community Board Discord, the MineZ Team surveyed players for questions about the current state of the game. We've compiled our answers below to serve as insight to the current direction of the team, a little information about upcoming content, as well as interesting data we've compiled to help drive our decision making. You may see some new ideas, as well as references to old projects. The MineZ Team is constantly changing, and so as always, the below is subject to change, much like some of the projects we might reference below have changed. Let's jump in!

Q&A

Roadmap?!

Question: "Will there be a roadmap or priority map of what the team is working on?"
Generally, roadmaps with specific dates lead to disappointment when the discussed content isn’t delivered on, and we’d like to avoid overpromising and under delivering. Instead, we can give you a priority map of what we're looking at currently, including some things that are actively being worked on:

• A version update off of 1.12 (1.16 or higher)
• New dungeons/dungeon reworks
• Biome reworks (South East Forest, Swamp, to name a few)
• Account progression (Achievements, uses for XP)
• Marketing (More livestreams, YouTube Shorts, Events, etc)
• New player experience (Tutorial, up-to-date wiki, clearer item descriptions)

There are plenty of things to discuss within those topics, but we’re going to avoid publicly stating timelines and due dates at the moment, but the above list should give an idea as to what the team is most actively working towards!

Question: "Are there plans for a tutorial, and other things to make the game more accessible to new players?"
The team is actively working on a tutorial. Our goal is to have an immediately accessible tutorial for players to explain the mechanics of the game that aren’t spelled out readily or are unintuitive for a new player to discover without the MineZ wiki. Additionally, a few community members have been helping us get the wiki up to date once again, and we’ve updated the Minezmap render once more. While we don't want players to rely on these tools exclusively, they are an obvious asset, and making sure they’re current with information will help. We’re focused on making things clearer to new players, such as the recent addition of particles to graves to help steer people further when gravedigging.
We’re also using player metrics to determine pain points, such as new players dying to thirst at alarming rates in spawn towns. When compared to hunger, which is more intuitive, it has close to no deaths for the year. We'll discuss these metrics further down below.

Question: "Is MineZ still planning a version update to 1.16? Should we expect content before then?"
A version update is still at the top of our priority list. While we won’t neglect the current state of the game to get there, updating to a higher version is necessary for the game's continued development and health. Once our devs have the time, this will be among the first major pieces of dev work the team plans to handle.
There are some things that are better done on a higher version of the game, but there are still plenty of things the team can do in the meantime that will still hold up after a version update. Despite the need to upgrade to a higher version, we’re never without projects to work on until that happens.

Question: "Is the team more focused on PvE or PvP content now?"
At the moment, we’re happy with how Supply Drops are helping people find fights throughout the week all over the map. We’d like to continue to expand on these things to keep PvP fresh and exciting. However, PvE content is generally more robust, and has a greater impact on the game in the long term and on bringing in new players. We’ll always keep an eye on the health of pvp and the balance of items/looting for it, but grander goals are generally skewed towards attractive PvE content to get people on the server more frequently and for longer (which is good for PvP too!).

Question: "Will Shotbow XP receive more uses? Are there plans to change PvE access and account benefits?"
Spawn kit items were recently overhauled to be more accessible, but have long remained one of the only things to spend Shotbow XP on. We’d like to add more things for players to spend XP on as a means to encourage single-account progression. Implementation must be done carefully, as plenty of players have stores of XP and there are some discrepancies on speed of XP accrual across the network. We don’t have anything waiting for implementation now, but we're actively looking for more uses now.
While we don’t have any plans to change PvE access or premium benefits at the moment, we are very focused on the new player experience, and we do want more single-account progression in the game. More reasons to feel rewarded for using one account instead of feeling the need to buy and use a multitude of alts, which is also unfriendly to newer players. This can come in the form of more uses for xp, more robust achievements, and other account specific benefits for players to unlock instead of alt accounts.

Question: "Will MineZ have account wipes in the future?"
At the moment, we don’t have plans to do a wipe. Currently, a wipe would only serve to remove items to “fix” the economy. However, MineZ currently mostly rewards a pattern of grinding for items to store them for fun or for later use, and not much else. Wiping accounts doesn’t impact that gameplay loop, and irritates long-term collectors without any real pay-off thereafter. If we eventually want to do a wipe, it will come alongside a more robust plan than removing everyone’s items outright.

Question: "Will MineZ have PvE world events, such as MineZ 2 Invasions?"
There are no explicit plans to do these things at the moment. However, more robust/interactive PvE content is an obvious need for the game to feel more fleshed out. Once we get to a higher version of the game, we’ll spend more time thinking about such things, but it may take a backseat to other more pressing content once we do.

Question: "Will Quests be implemented from the PTR?"
This is not something the team is actively working on. More work was needed to push Quests to live when it was first put on PTR a few years ago, but the project was dropped. There is general interest in revisiting this project in the future, but to be fully transparent, we aren’t working on it at the moment.

Question: "Would the 'Zombie Down! Zombies this Life:' counter ever be re-added? What about stat tracking on weapons?"
Small rewarding things for grinding are always nice, and we’ll be looking at things like this to further encourage people to engage with content, especially if it further incentivizes single-account progression.

Question: "Will events be hosted again on the Event server?"
Yes! We had some changes made to the event server that allow us to host events again, like the events WTDPuddles, SuperWolfster, and BasicAly have hosted recently. We’re still running into a few snags (such as server performance), but having the server running and available for use again is a big step towards ironing out the remaining issues and hosting things on the event server more regularly.

Question: "Are you aware of any ongoing player-to-player transactions involving real-world currency on Shotbow.net servers?"
Like all servers, we don’t permit the trading of items for real-life currencies. Any attempts to do so are at your own risk.

Question: "What motivates the MineZ team to work on MineZ?"
Those who work on the MineZ Team largely due so out of personal motivation and dedication to the game, similar to why players do. Our goals are to keep the game alive and fresh and to hopefully improve it on a regular basis. We'll continue to work on MineZ so people can experience the same things we all have with falling in love with the game.

Builds

Question: "Will other dungeons be remade like DCS was?"
In general, we’d like to revisit extremely dated dungeons to refresh them. Some may get a smaller update to modernize them slightly while largely retaining their existing content, whereas others may get a full rebuild. The scope of something like DCS, both in size and effort, will likely be reserved for things like other Elites or dungeons like Byesford Labs, which needs to be reconstructed from the ground up.

Question: "Will the map ever be expanded?"
MineZ is already a decently sized map with a lot of dead space and idle walking around. Currently, we don’t have plans to expand the map. Reworking existing portions and adding in more builds to flesh the map out are a higher priority, and if we eventually reach a point where we don’t have space, maybe we’ll consider an expansion. However, anything like that would be a long, long way away.
The idea of expanding northward specifically has been thrown around as areas like the volcanoes and floating islands are cramped if a major biome reimagining were to take place in them. The map would only be expanded in this direction if it feels necessary while building them, so this wouldn’t be considered until we eventually tackle those projects.

Question: "Are there any plans to remake biomes?"
We're currently working on some biome rebuilds. These are very expansive projects, and may take time or be shelved depending on their progress. The Halloween Biome in the southeast forest will not be returning, but we do have plans for the Southeast to be updated to more modern standards in the future. Similarly, we would look to freshen up many of the existing builds in the area, such as Romero, and continue to implement more Dungeons in spawn towns for new players to have access to meaningful content early on no matter where they choose to spawn. Depending on how this progresses, we may have more info to share in this regard in the coming weeks.
Swamp is in need of a major overhaul but faces numerous issues with travel, interactive content, and isolation from the rest of the map. Per our data, a large percentage of players who quit and do not return do so shortly after leaving Kaocho and before reaching any greater content, so it is an obvious pain point. We’re of the opinion that a full rework of the swamp is needed, but we’re thinking of further ways to make the initial experience of the swamp less terrible to avoid the above issue until something major takes place for the biome as a whole.

Balance

Question: "What direction is the team considering for the overall speed of gearing?"
We’d like to slightly reduce the one-stop-shop feel of the game. At the moment, several locations provide everything a player needs, and people are able to ignore a majority of the map. Over time, we’d like to make PvP kits less reliant on legendary items, and return to towns having more unique identities for the gear they provide. Balance of the game can change routinely for what is "meta", but at the moment the map as a whole is a bit inflated with equipment, and the ease of stocking component bags further inflates this issue. We’re also moving towards less items being given away during supply drops, and dungeon legendaries being given out solely through their respective content. Over time, you’ll see unique items put into Supply Drops to replace these. We don’t want to drastically reduce the time it takes to start enjoying the content you like, whether it's pvp or dungeons, but we do want the process of getting there to be more intentional.

Question: "What are the current plans for the smite changes? Is staff planning to keep, tweak or revert them?"
With the recent smite changes, we’re monitoring the smite balance in different areas like elite dungeons, northern zombies, and elite mobs. We would rather let things sit and see how they play out instead of having a knee-jerk reaction to change multiple variables within the same update. Just for transparency, there have been talks about changing smite 5 to 1 hit elite and northern zombies, and having smite 4 be 2 hits in elite and in the north. This will make smite 5 more viable in end-game situations and smite 4 be the more casual choice. There still needs to be more discussion about this change internally, but it is something the team is considering. As far as other tweaks, we have noticed that the frozen giant fight is a bit too quick now, and we will likely increase its HP to reflect its ability to take damage from smite now.

Question: "Are there any plans to introduce different bag sizes?"
Not currently. Managing inventory space is an important part of MineZ, and making it easier has a lot of impact on the game. We’re happy with Small Bags where they are at the moment.

Question: "Are there any plans to make gravedigging more viable?"
We’d like for gravedigging (and other forms of interactive looting) to be more viable. Part of that is making it more accessible in additional towns, and another part is to remove its ties to Z-coordinates. There are plenty of towns that could do with high-tier grave loot, but fall just shy of the cutoff.

Player Data

In addition to the above, Rinjani and J Chris were able to pull data from all of 2024, yielding a lot of useful insights to the state of the game and hotspots for certain kinds of activity. We have a few heatmaps below (thanks Rinjani!), as well as a video (thanks Chris!) to look over trends that you may find interesting!

Deaths
Starting with Deaths, you can see some expected data, with deaths concentrated around PvP hotspots like Hasa and Crowmure, as well as lots of PvE deaths around Ravine, Floating Islands, and especially Fire Spire. We also know from our data that a large number of players still drown themselves at spawn instead of using /mzkill. As mentioned in the Q&A, we know a lot of players also die of dehydration, mostly in the gravel, a few dungeons, but a ton in spawn towns too. Comparatively, only 5 people died of hunger in 2024.


Let's look at fall damage specifically to see just how problematic Fire Spire was. Here, we can see that nearly 20% of all fall damage deaths came from Fire Spire. There are a few things to infer from this. First, Fire Spire remains a common attraction for new players, an imposing build that brings people to it. Additionally, we know from previous player surveys that parkour is among the most punishing part of the game for many players, new ones especially. Combined with the need for Old Gnawed Bones for the Eclipsed Quest, and its presence just over the PvP border, Fire Spire is a hotspot, and it kills an enormous number of players. Earlier this year, we made the parkour a bit easier and slightly less punishing to help with this, but looking at parkour in early game areas (looking at you, swamp) may further help the new player experience. To put it in perspective, Somnia Tower and Drowned Tower are killing more players than Floating Islands!


Below you'll find PvE related deaths. In regards to mobs, a majority are of course due to Zombies, but Shivers make quite a mark in the Snow biomes, as do Giants at their respective spawn locations. Pigs, Revenants, and Forsaken seem to have an even impact across most of the map, and it seems someone even managed to die to a Shiny Toe.


Here, we can see which dungeons are the deadliest. You may be surprised to find that the deadliest dungeon doesn't belong to any elite or T5, that title was earned by Arid Temple! It's presence south means many new players happen upon it, and we've determined that the spike trap within it is a likely culprit for why it kills so many people. While this does reinforce the idea that having dungeons accessible shortly after spawn is great for new players, Arid Temple may be a bit problematic.


Not too much to say here, PvP deaths happening largely around the areas you would come to expect. Fun to see some still happening near spawn towns!


Logouts
Logouts are useful to see where players may be getting frustrated and quitting the game. Let's start with our problem-child, the Swamp.

Here we can begin to really see the effect the Swamp has on players. Compared to the areas around Grimdale, where people frequently escape further into the map before leaving. Meanwhile in Kaocho, people hardly make it off the boat or the town, and even when they do, don't find any meaningful content before quitting. We also know that many of the ones that do make it out, just die at Somnia & Drowned Tower instead. The heatmap doesn't quite do it justice. An overwhelming majority of people who quit the game for the final time do so in the Swamp, and it's a major problem area. This is a result of a number of things: Lack of content, difficulty in navigation, and it is also the first spawn listed in the Meridian NPC, which further drives players here.


Below you'll find a variety of maps of players logging out in various areas. We can infer which dungeons people are running the most, what towns they're likely (or not) to visit, which places people are not running into content, and even the results of a few bugs.

Below, you'll see a map of Dungeon logouts, which may be skewed by alt accounts or players logging for safety during a run. However, this data is useful to see which areas are run the most often. We can see a high volume at spawn towns, which is great, as well as a lot of elites and Body Offload for their valued content and legendary rewards.


As expected, a majority of logouts happen in the spawn towns, but we also see a good number around other gameplay hotspots, like Al Hasa & Crowmure, Floating Islands, and other places of intrigue.


Again, further reinforcing the fact that many players don't leave spawn. However, we do see that even the far reaches of the map are getting visited, at a rate that's to be expected from their remoteness.


Here we see that people are more likely to be engaging with content in the middle and northern sections of the map, spending less of their time in the east and west.


Items
Check out the below video for an in depth review on items over the course of 2024, as well as some key takeaways the team is using based off of them to drive our decisions around how/why items are implemented.

Closing Thoughts

As always, the MineZ Team would love to hear your thoughts. Player feedback helps inform our decisions and is integral to ensuring you all are enjoying the game, and we're always looking to improve the game further. We hope these insights provide some context to the direction of the game, and answer some outstanding questions that have been circulated for some time. If you have more, please ask them here, in the Shotbow Discord, or the MineZ Community Board Discord, which are all places where you'll find staff. Thank you for your engagement with us, and we hope you've enjoyed this look behind the scenes at what we're doing and where we're headed.

We can't wait for what's next!

- The MineZ Team

I cant wait to be back on minez!