One of the main draws of CubeCraft Skywars, in my opinion, was the more strategic gameplay. While you can get your kit, rush other islands, and die in 10 seconds on any Skywars server, CubeCraft generally had islands further apart. Your starting island generally had ores, wood, and hay bales, meaning there was an actual trade-off between rushing, and being able to open the chests on mid, or staying on your island and preparing yourself a bit more.
However, rushing also had more upsides. The mid island(s) generally had a few diamond blocks, iron blocks, lapis ore, an enchanting table, etc. To add to that, this may seem like a minor detail, but the maps had a lot more verticality, meaning it was easier to defend yourself. So if you captured mid, everything might have been in a tower, and if you were the first one there you simply destroyed the ladders. This meant you had at least a few seconds to actually loot the chests. So there was also more value in getting to mid first.
The verticality is a big thing. Mid being higher and more difficult to access meant you had a natural advantage in pvp if you got there first. It also made pvp more balanced. A pvp noob could every now and then win against a good pvp player because they hit them off of a tower or had the high ground. Maybe the good player fell in lava (lots of maps had lava, traps, or other environmental hazards). Good pvp players will not like this, but casual players will, because it evens the playing field.
On some maps, you don't even have to bridge anymore, you can just straight up jump onto other islands or mid. And at least when that used to be possible in the past, like the ice cream map with 24 players, your islands where easily defendible and attackers jumped to where they could easily be hit off.
What I don't get is, survival games basically died when skywars became popular because everyone preferred skywars. But now it feels like everything that made skywars different from survival games has been removed. It's just survival games in the air.
However, rushing also had more upsides. The mid island(s) generally had a few diamond blocks, iron blocks, lapis ore, an enchanting table, etc. To add to that, this may seem like a minor detail, but the maps had a lot more verticality, meaning it was easier to defend yourself. So if you captured mid, everything might have been in a tower, and if you were the first one there you simply destroyed the ladders. This meant you had at least a few seconds to actually loot the chests. So there was also more value in getting to mid first.
The verticality is a big thing. Mid being higher and more difficult to access meant you had a natural advantage in pvp if you got there first. It also made pvp more balanced. A pvp noob could every now and then win against a good pvp player because they hit them off of a tower or had the high ground. Maybe the good player fell in lava (lots of maps had lava, traps, or other environmental hazards). Good pvp players will not like this, but casual players will, because it evens the playing field.
On some maps, you don't even have to bridge anymore, you can just straight up jump onto other islands or mid. And at least when that used to be possible in the past, like the ice cream map with 24 players, your islands where easily defendible and attackers jumped to where they could easily be hit off.
What I don't get is, survival games basically died when skywars became popular because everyone preferred skywars. But now it feels like everything that made skywars different from survival games has been removed. It's just survival games in the air.
