Version: v2.3.9 for Spigot 1.8-11
Before I get into the review, please note that I absolutely love this plugin, but due to many, often custom-coded or edited plugins on my server and configuration glitches, you will notice me comment on some bugs as I go.
This does NOT mean that the plugin is full of bugs and will fail with every server, in fact, xeRicker is very helpful and has helped me sort out a few problems I was having and you probably won't encounter a single bug on your server. Anyways, on with the review! :p
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Mystery Boxes (MB) is an great plugin that is easy to implement in almost any kind of Minecraft game. I have it running on every game of my server, even sometimes in the Hub for cosmetic collections.
If you've ever played Hypixel, this plugin works exactly like their version of MysteryBoxes, however the dev ,xeRicker, updates this with new fetters all the time, which is both a blessing and a curse as I'll explain at the end.
The boxes themselves are beautiful. The particle types are customizable, the boxes appearances are customizable, and you can run any command plus more with them. They are the most feature-filled crates plugin that has such aesthetic pleasure to date, not to mention the catchy tune: Do do do do DO DO DO DO DO DO DO POOF! *wins the internet*.
That joke is half-serious, another great thing the plugin does is keep you in suspense before you get your loot. These factors make your players want to win more, and players that want to win more play more, and buy more too.
Speaking of which, remember how I said the boxes can give anything? Well, you can make them give cosmetics OR in-game perks like diamonds depending on what other plugins you have installed. The limit is your imagination. Some things you can do:
- Rank specific crates that give cosmetics (permissions support included)
- Cosmetic crates
- Kit crates
- Lucky blocks (good/bad effects)
You do need to know your commands to do some of this, like /effect
But that's easy to do, just look the default ones up and read the plugin pages before you download them (lol).
There are many other features like crafting boxes I didn't even mention, and be assured more are coming. In fact, there may be too many features. I mean it, at some point you hit such an insane amount of features no one understands them and they end up getting in the way.
Maybe instead focus on revamping and adding more options to existing features? For example, add different patterns of particles you can display other than just rings. Nevertheless, the existing features are fun, exciting, and interesting to fool around with in different combinations.
Something I'm not very fond of is that recently xeRicker has been updating his plugins more often, and including less features with each update instead. I get what he's doing, bumping the plugin to get more Spigot users to notice it (and sometimes adding China IP's to antipriacy, no issue there at all*) and I don't have a problem with that, it's just that this can get annoying because it spams your inbox (really, it's that bad) and for reasons I'm going to talk about in the next paragraph. I would much prefer updates that include a few important features at once (plus all the numerous bug fixes and improvements), rather than this new trend of his.
When you get the plugin, you'll find a few kind of boxes in the config ready for you to use. You'll notice a LOT of config options which is real nice, however xeRicker updates this CONSTANTLY, I mean literally no less than once a week to date, and often makes changes to the config.
This is the only reason I didn't rate this 5/5, because with many updates he edits the default config. MB's config is VERY picky, and one mistake can mess the whole thing up (errors occur even if boxes work). I often have to try for hours on end to apply the latest updates while still retaining my configured boxes, otherwise I'd lose even more hours of configuration.
With xeRicker's other main plugin, DisguiseAbilities, this is more excusable and I've come to simply accept giving up configuration of the plugin entirely and running the default config. I had to edit my game around the default config, but it was worth it and my life is much easier, though I still miss the options I once had as tedious as it was to apply them.
So, what's the best thing to do when an update comes out?
1) Copy/change name of your old config, save it as anything except for "config.yml"
2) Delete your config
3) Install new version of plugin, reload server
4) New config should be generated
5) Open two windows, one for old config and one for new.
6) Copy and paste whatever you can into the new config.
You might be thinking "James, you're an idiot, you obviously have to do this with any plugin" or something, but in my experience that's rarely the case. In fact, in most cases if something is missing from the config that isn't essential or you just paste in the new variables from the recent update it works fine, but that's never happened with DA or MB.
That being said, it's awesome how many options you have with the configuration, but it will really bite when an update comes out if you have a lot configured.
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That's about it, if anyone has any other questions of a customer, you can ask me via PM if I missed something you want to know. If you want to see how powerful this plugin is, I've written a games which took me many months to complete where you can try out some the boxes I've made for a little demonstration of what they can really do on my server (play.time4events.us).
Again, with a few other supporting plugins, MB manifests into the highest-quality crates offered by servers in which many thousands of kids are opening right now. Does this mean you'll instantly get 1000's of players? Nope. But that's totally unrelated to what any plugin can do. MB is a great way to enhance your server despite how much work it is to set up, and it is difficult to compare it even to other high-ranked crate plugins. Overall, a top-quality plugin!
Cheers, Spigoteers!
James
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Thanks for the review.
However, I think that your point about the updates makes no sense.
At first you're saying I should add less features and focus on developing the existing ones - Then in the next paragraph you complain about exactly the this, by saying that I updated the plugin more frequently but add less features each update.
Most of the updates right now are in fact smaller adjustments, while I've tried to add atleast one bigger feature per week before.
However, as you said, there is a point when you reach an insane amount of features, where it's simply not possible to do this anymore - so I focus on smaller ones.
The amount of improvements is the same - While the updates are getting smaller, I'm doing more of them. I don't see a reason why I should hold back updates just to release a bigger one. If that's what you wish, simply skip 2 updates every time and install the third one, which will end up being the same as having 1 big update per week.
If you have any wishes for updates, you can always PM me.
About the config:
Whenever possible, I'll try to add a new config for new features, making your old config still useable. However, for some features it's simply not possible.