As determined in this thread on Spigot, there seems to be an incompatibility when using these three plugins in conjunction with one another.

I am using PaperSpigot 1.8.4 as my server software (git-PaperSpigot-5136053-db5fd9c (MC: 1.8.4), which is the latest as of the time of filing). I am using Build 83 of the EssentialsX suite (EssentialsX, EssentialsXChat, EssentialsXSpawn), Vault 1.5.3, and zPermissions, and Build 7 of Spigot-zPermissions.

Upon testing with the original Spigot-Essentials build of EssentialsChat, my chat prefixes worked fine. However, when switching to EssentialsXChat, my prefixes no longer appeared. I tested this on two separate servers, both with zPermissions Build 7 and Build 83 of EssentialsX; however, one server did have Vault and the other did not. The server without Vault did not lose the prefixes but the one running Vault did lose prefixes. Through this, I was able to determine it shouldn't be an issue with the software that I'm running.

Upon looking through zPermission's config.yml, I saw a few settings regarding Vault and I wondered if these might have to be configured in a certain way to ensure that EssentialsXChat and Vault got along nicely.

However, the weirdest part is that the Spigot-Essentials EssentialsChat worked fine but EssentialsXChat had issues displaying the prefix.

If any other information is needed, please just ask and I can provide.

Also having this issue on 1.8.3 Spigot.

Can reproduce on 1.8.3 PaperSpigot as well. I suspect this is because md_5's UUID zPermissions changes to Essentials aren't here. I will PR the change.

@jflory7 can you try the latest build and see if it fixes it? Build #87

@drtshock Confirmed, fixed! Thanks!

Actually, while servers using Vault are fixed, it appears servers that do not use Vault no longer have prefixes. I have another server which only uses zPermissions and EssentialsX suite (using b106 now) and all of our prefixes have disappeared. Any idea what's happened?

@drtshock @vemacs I'm not sure if this was known or not, but running my server without Vault last night allowed several players to gain access to some administrative commands, like /getpos, /nick, and several others (although not ones like /gamemode, /tp, /give, etc.). Installing Vault instantly fixed this for me. I read through all of the changelogs on the CI server before updating my EssentialsX from 83 to 106, and I didn't see any note of Vault being required as a dependency anywhere. You may want to broadcast this change somewhere on the Jenkins CI server as well – anyone who is using newer builds without Vault could be risking player-initiated damage to their server.

@jflory7 That shouldn't happen as permissions checks would still be performed with the exact same code with the Vault-less implementation. Do you have any logs?

Actually, never mind, with ConfigPermissionsHandler, it uses the Essentials config which seems dumb. I'll see how to properly fallback (or just stop the server) without Vault.

@jflory7 We removed the individual permissions plugin implementations due to them generally being pointless and not UUID updated. Install Vault, I've updated the readme to reflect this.

@vemacs Alright, I see. I added Vault and everything is working well now. Cheers!