Gameplay Overview

King of the Ladder is a continuous competitive minigame built around climbing, positioning, and control of the highest point. Players enter a configured game area, climb toward the pressure plate, and fight to claim the crown before their opponents.

Every valid plate activation awards a crown score. There is no waiting countdown or round state: the arena remains available while it is enabled, and players can move into or out of the competition at any time.

The Game Loop

A player walks into a registered and enabled game area.
KOTL saves the player’s inventory and applies the configured arena state.
Players climb the structure and fight inside the same arena.
Stepping on the configured king plate attempts a crown claim.
A successful claim updates statistics, announces the king, applies cooldown and knockback rules, and can launch fireworks.
Leaving the selected area restores the player and saves statistics.

Automatic Arena Entry

KOTL detects whether a player’s location is inside the selected cuboid. Only arenas with both ready: true and enabled: true can accept players.

Two detection modes are available:

Scheduler Type	Behavior
`1`	Periodically checks every online player at the configured tick interval.
`2`	Checks transitions when a player moves to a different block.

When a player moves directly from one arena area into another, KOTL removes them from the old game and then attempts to add them to the new one.

Becoming King

A crown claim begins when a player physically activates the configured pressure plate.

The claim succeeds only when:

The player is already registered inside that arena.
Repeated claims are allowed, or the player is not the current king.
The player is not on the arena-specific king cooldown.
PlayerBecomeKingEvent is not cancelled by another plugin.

On success, KOTL:

Stores the player’s name as the current king.
Sends either the new-king or king-retained announcement.
Adds 1 to the player’s total score and current arena score.
Adds 1 tour to every player currently in the arena.
Updates the arena’s last king and top king record.
Refreshes all arena scoreboards.
Applies plate knockback and optional fireworks.

Combat and Protection Rules

Players in the same arena can attack one another, including through projectiles. KOTL sets direct event damage to 0, while still allowing normal hit and knockback behavior.

Cross-boundary combat is blocked:

Arena players cannot damage players outside an arena.
Outside players cannot damage arena players.
Players in different KOTL arenas cannot damage each other.

Inside an arena, block breaking, block placing, inventory clicks, food-level changes, and item dropping are blocked. Fall damage can also be disabled through config.yml.

Death and Respawn

When a player dies in an arena:

Drops and experience are suppressed.
The normal death message is hidden.
The player is respawned automatically.
A valid player killer receives one kill.
The dead player receives one death.
The player is removed from the arena and respawns at its end location.
Saved inventory and player state are restored.

Disconnecting also removes the player from the active arena. When they return, KOTL sends them to the arena end location and restores their saved state.

Statistics and Records

KOTL stores five persistent statistic groups:

Total kills
Total deaths
Total crown score
Total tours played
A separate crown score for every arena

Each arena also stores the last king, top king, and top king score. Players can inspect these records through /kotl stats [player].