Introduction
I play survival games way too much so here’s all of my ideas for what could be the next big update for Hive’s take on the game. First of all, I want to say that survival games might even be objectively the best minigame, even better than bed/treasure wars if done right. But that’s just the problem: across all versions of Minecraft, only the Hive has a respectable version of the game. Everything the Hive had added so far fit the theme of survival games perfectly. Almost everything is great about it, so the developers should expand the game with new stuff, and slightly fix some more broken and useless items.
Bow Nerf
First of all, bows are kind of broken, but not by a lot. The damaged should be slightly nerfed, and they would be balanced. Also, they will no longer tell you the health of your opponent. The entire reason for the player having only 20 health is that it’s easy to estimate your opponent’s health based on the events that took place in-game. Not knowing your opponents health allows for more strategy-based combat and requires quick mental calculations, as nit picky as it sounds.
Boom Box Inventory Fix
All boom boxes would have a custom item texture within the inventory (not just the model). Then you could easily tell them apart.
Boom Box Effect Fix
Boom boxes shouldn’t affect you or your teammates in any way aside from knockback boom boxes and the blocks spawned them (like webs, fire sources and ice blocks.)
Frozen Boom Box Buff
Next, frozen boom boxes are kind of useless. They could be fixed by applying blindness for up to even more time, and adding slowness (maybe slowness II if it’s not too overpowered. Frozen boom boxes would be worth using then against opponents trying to flee, or to spawn temporary ice blocks in water fights.
Blindness Boom Box Removed
Now that frozen boom boxes will be doing the job of both blindness and frozen boom boxes to make it worth using, blindness boom boxes will be removed.
Poison Boom Box Removed
Fire boom boxes have always just been poison boom boxes but better so those should also be removed. Fire boom boxes add more strategy since you can possibly put yourself out in water.
Knockback Boom Boxes
There used to be a strategy used called TNT jumping, where you could use your own boom boxes to repel yourself forward, but was recently removed. This is a good setup for a new boom box from skywars called the knockback boom box. It would be used as a dash attack or to flee by lunching the player by about 10 blocks.
Ender Pearls
Next, we need ender peals. You could find single pearls in the game with the same rarity as a diamond sword. They would be an overpowered but rare item that can make you unpredictable. There might have to be modifications to some maps so that people don’t use it to skybase, but the rarity alone makes the issue very small anyways, which deathmatch fixes this issue for the most part.
Full Sets of Diamond Armor
Fights are just too short. Diamond swords just shred through people. A good way of balancing this out is by adding in the diamond chestplate and leggings. This would give more players a fighting chance against juggernauts if they loot a supply drop.
Enchanting
Now in the center of the mid chests would always be an anvil. You could find enchanted books in the top tier loot table, only being sharpness, power, and protection I. This would make fights longer and more interesting in endgame, yet still well under five minutes. This would also be cool because you have to go back to spawn to apply the book(s) to a specific item(s). People could strategically camp spawn to prevent the anvil from being used, and you’d also need to be careful about which weapon or piece of armor you put it on. They would be named spell of (sharpness, protection, power, etc.)
Spells
Expanding on spells, there are spell books in skywars that would be great additions to survival games. The swiftness spell would give you speed for 10 seconds. The fire trail spell is great for fleeing, with it creating a fire trail behind you for 10 blocks.
Crossbow
This item is used just like in vanilla. It’s most useful purpose though is do a projectile combo, which only can be done otherwise with snowballs, or very rarely a bow. This item would be almost as good as a stack of snowballs so take that into account when balancing. It should be about as are as snowballs.
Spicy Sword
The spicy sword would be the same rarity as diamond boots, but it is a gold sword with fire aspect I and knockback II. Sharpness I can further be added to make it do five damage compared to a sharp diamond doing eight. You can yeet people away and make them take fire damage for a bit with it.
Campfire Buff
Campfire rates should be increased by two times to be a good replacement for life spells. Life spells add less strategy while campfires only heal you if you stand near them over a period of time. They should also be stackable.
Flare Fix
Flares would not let you call at an area where the supply drop would land somewhere that is unreachable.
Totem of Undying
Having a totem of undying in your inventory at all will cause your indicator dot on your enemies’ trackers to turn purple instead of red To indicate that you are now the most stacked player in the game. Totems of undying would the only item of the new top tier (even rarer than the current top tier), and would have a 3% chance to spawn in a supply crate only (1 in about 33.33 supply crates would contain one.)
Excalibur
This item would be the same rarity as the totem of undying and turn your indicator icon purple. It would be a custom netherite sword with a twist. Every time you hit an opponent with it, it ignores armor and does up to 16 damage to both you and your opponent, and adds 4 extra damage to your opponent if the wielder lives the hit, effectively killing them. Let’s say either you or your opponent are on 10 and 3 health. Since one could only take 3 health, you both only take 3 damage, killing the one with the least health. The extra 4 damage isn’t applied to the opponent if the wielder dies to the blow.
Team Modes
3 new game modes: trios (3 teams of 8), quads (4 teams of 6), and chaos (2 teams of 12)
Maps
All the maps are great for all games modes (even the new ones), more would be great though.
Conclusion
The goal of all these changes is to fully bring survival games up to par with skywars. These changes would require a lot of balancing and further testing but I feel like it would make survival games without question the best version of the game by far. Unlike skywars, survival games is across a big terrain, which is way more interesting in my opinion, and unlike treasure wars, you can die at any moment, raising the stakes. That’s why survival games is my favorite game on the Hive and I decided to give all this feedback. Hopefully survival games becomes refreshed one again and crazy fun if these changes were implemented.