Duels

A duel is always a chosen opponent: there is no queue and no matchmaking. Two players play the same drill from the same spawn of the same arena, at the same time, and a round goes to the higher score. Both engines are built from the same rules and the same random seed, so the targets appear in the same places, in the same order, on both screens.

Neither sees the other. Each duellist sits in an isolation group of their own, because an opponent standing in the line of fire would be a target that is not one.

Sending a request

Two ways in:

• /aim duel <player> [drill] [bestOf]. The drill defaults to the first drill in config.yml, not to training.default-drill; the format defaults to match.default-format. An unknown drill reads "Unknown drill <drill>."; a format that is not offered reads "BO<n> is not an offered format."
• /aim duel alone, or Duel in /aim, opens the opponent picker.

The picker lists everyone online you can see except yourself, free players first, each with their rating, accuracy, wins, losses and win rate. A busy player stays on the list, greyed, with the reason and no click. The list refreshes every second while it is open, so somebody who walks into an arena drops out of reach.

Clicking a player opens the duel screen: their head and record, the format picker (only the formats offered), and the drills, fourteen to a page. Clicking a drill sends the request. The format is remembered on your profile for next time.

The request is refused, with a message, when:

A plugin listening to AimDuelRequestEvent can also cancel the request before it is sent; see API.

The request

The target receives a centred block naming the challenger, the drill, the format and the seconds left, with clickable Accept and Decline buttons that run /aim accept and /aim deny. The challenger reads "Duel request sent to <target>."

• One request per target is kept. A newer one replaces the old without a word to its sender.
• A request expires after match.duel-request-expiry seconds (30 by default, never under 1). Both sides are told when it does.
• /aim deny tells both sides the request was declined.
• A target who quits drops the request aimed at them silently; the challenger is not told.

Accepting

/aim accept checks both sides again — either may have walked into something while the request sat open — and both read "Duel accepted." Then the duel needs an arena:

• A ready arena with room. The one hosting the fewest players is picked, a duel counting as two, within arena.max-players-per-arena. With none, both players read "No arena is ready. Ask an administrator." and nothing starts. See Arenas.
• The arenas loaded. Right after a start, until the arenas have been read from the database, an accepted duel does nothing at all.

Both players are claimed before anything moves. If the second claim fails, the first is undone — inventory included — and nobody is teleported. Then both read "Duel against <opponent> is starting…", are teleported to the arena's spawn, emptied and put in adventure on arrival, and see the match-found effect.

What both players shoot

The rules of a duel are fixed when the request is sent, from the challenger:

Each player's HUD choices — sidebar, boss bar, hit feedback, sounds, particles — stay their own and are read at the start of every round. See Settings.

Formats

match:
  formats: [1, 3, 5]
  default-format: 3
  allow-even-formats: false
  use-preferences: false
  round-delay: 3.0
  result-delay: 5.0
  duel-request-expiry: 30.0

A best-of n is won by the first side to n/2 + 1 rounds: two for a BO3, three for a BO5, one for a BO1. The series also ends once n rounds have been won, which is what an even length needs: a BO2 that stands 1–1 goes to whoever won the second round.

A round

How a round is decided

In order, until one differs:

1. The higher score.
2. The better accuracy.
3. More hits.

A full tie is a draw: the round-draw effect plays ("DRAW", "Same score — replaying") and the round is replayed under the same number. The drawn attempt is kept but the series does not move. Three draws in a row cancel the duel: identical rounds mean nobody is shooting.

After every round both players see the round-won, round-lost or round-draw effect, the matching chat line and a round summary: the winner, your points, hits and accuracy, the opponent's points and the series so far. Then round-delay seconds pass and the next round counts down.

The end

When a side reaches the rounds to win, both see match-won ("VICTORY") or match-lost ("DEFEAT") and the result is stored at once: both profiles' duel records and one history row per player. Then the duel summary is sent — the score, the format, the drill, your hits and accuracy across all rounds, the duration — the players stay in the arena for result-delay seconds, and both are restored and sent back. Storing first means a server that stops during the pause loses nothing.

Once back, a player whose duel ended less than a minute ago gets the result screen: VICTORY or DEFEAT, both players' rounds, points, hits and accuracy, the format, the drill and the duration. Its Rematch button, while the opponent is still online, sends a new request to them with the same settings — the same drill, format and seed, so the same target sequence. The request goes through every check a new one does.

See Statistics for what the record holds.

Forfeit and cancel

A cancelled duel has no result screen. Both endings fire AimMatchEndEvent, with a flag that says which.

Inside a duel

Everything that is blocked during a drill is blocked during a duel — damage, hunger, drops, pickups, blocks, contact with players outside, commands outside training.allowed-commands — and the movement freeze holds for the whole round. That is on Training, because the same protections cover both.

With chat.isolation: true, the two duellists are in separate groups and do not read each other's chat either.