## The rant and reasoning

I started playing TNTwars a few years back on perkelle, and never really liked cubed for it's horribly competitive and sweaty TNTwars community. Since all alternative servers have now died off entirely, the only remaining option to actually give TNTwars another chance for new players (including me, I guess) is to overhaul the gamemode in a way that is more beginner friendly, easier to grasp, less based on muscle memory gained from many hours of building the same cannon every game, and that would actually allow for variety in games.

As many have already realized, the game is not beginner friendly. There is an active community of ... *checks notes* ... about 20 active players that consider themselves "OGs" or "Pros". They seem to have made it their business to conserve the game as it is right now and not permit any change, which would be direly needed since the gamemode is slowly dying out. According to the self-proclaimed "Pros", there hasn't been a change in the meta for over **six** years. The meta being to build the same cannon or slight variations of them every game. This is neither particularly beginner friendly, as often don't have a good idea how to build cannons, nor is it fair as the game-determining first few minutes of every game are determined by who can gain fire superiority first, as in, who has the better muscle memory for their cannon. As the meta has never changed, all cannons ever build overwhelmingly follow about three central designs, that are very simple, and not particularly fun.

As was my suspicion, which has been confirmed by "Pros", the meta can only be countered with itself. To me this comes down to the fact that the game dosen't impose enough restrictions upon the players, which doesn't encourage creative problem solving strategies or any kind of change. As I'd argue, we have hit a hard upper limit in effectiveness about six years ago, when the meta was established. Any changes since then were merely cosmetic and didn't change anything about the characteristics or fun of the cannons.

## The idea

My idea is now to impose restrictions on the players, with a new unique take on the game concept of TNTwars:
Each player has their own island. An island can be saved in a total of five slots. The slots should come pre-filled with some very basic designs to teach totally new players about the thoughts behind TNT cannons. An island build has certain restrictions e.g. an upper limit to the amount of blocks that can be placed. By default, every player has a limited quantity of a few core block at their disposal, which they could however extend by purchasing new blocks via credits. Players could then build and test their custom island without and kind of time pressure. Due to the hard limit in blocks used, cannons have to be built with efficiency in mind. When inspecting and building an island, it should come alongside a test environment where you can test your build against itself in a test battle. An island can be chosen before each game starts.

A game of tntwars is always a battle between equal amounts of teammates (1v1, 2v2, ...). A game would always have certain random modifiers that modify specifics of the gamemode. In an ideal scenario, a player would have individual island builds for more or less any scenario. When a higher level team fights a lower level team, the chance to blow up blocks and the score gained from a kill is reduced. A player is free to surrender at any point, at which the score for their kill and all remaining blocks is split equally between the enemies. Dispensers are not filled by default and have to be manually refilled, which is however possible with the tnt from a source on every island. Level differences also change the spawn rate of TNT. One source of TNT is always shared between the whole team to force strategic use of the TNT. Every so often each player's progress is reset to make it easier for new players to get a grip of not only the game, but the reset can also be invoked manually. Upon reset, the player's level is converted to "prestige" credits, that allow the player to purchase small but permanent buffs for the own team, e.g. faster TNT spawn rates and such (some random game modifiers might however disable prestige upgrades)

When a player kills another player or destroys any blocks, they gain credits for which they can buy not only blocks, but maybe also a higher block cap, as well as e.g. upgrades for temporary walls, as well as pre-installed TNT in their dispenser and other stuff. All of the blocks that weren't placed in your island build (either because you want to save them or because you reached the block cap) are there for you to be able to build during the battle. You might build a secondary cannon or just replace blown-off blocks on your island.

## Possible game modifiers
- Decreased blast resistance
- No dispenser pre-load (disables purchased modifier)
- Increased tnt gravity
- Decreased tnt gravity
- Increased blast radius
- Decreased tnt spawn rate
- Decreased block explosion chance
- A block of tnt spawns one more tnt upon explosion
- Increased starting blocks

## Possible player perks (can each be taken multiple times)
- An additional water source block
- Dispensers come with additional 16 TNT (does not apply to any dispensers placed manually)
- A single-use temporary wall
- reduced chance of blocks being blown up

## Summary

The main idea of my concept is not to deter the pros from playing, but to integrate them dynamically with new players and still give them an inceptive to win and continue playing. You want a battle between a newbie and a pro to still be equally difficult for each sides, without it becoming boring.
I want to create a game concept that is in itself so varied that there is no single meta to beat them all. Randomized game aspects will result in many different cannon designs because every player has their own preference for what kind of modifiers they want to be able to cover with their cannon.

Note: This is not fully finalised. Check the top comment in the thread for further additions or edits