On the Origin of conflict...and other changes :)

Recently, I have noticed a disturbing trend among players.

Players are joining the server, playing for a few hours and coming back the next day or so, but after that they only play during the weekends until they stop playing at all. We're hoping to change this so we get a larger dedicated playerbase for a better community.

Players are also starting to have feuds, fighting, arguing over property, and abusing powers. Because of this, fabledBino and I have decided to hold a little meeting soon to discuss a few changes. These changes will coincide with the staff changes(we may have to downsize our staff list), a complete final change list will be added shortly.

Changes we're considering:
-Staffing changes: downsizing staff
-More plugins/features
-New map: will provide download for current map
-Reworking donation benefits: trying to limit the amount of people that have creative/can fly/can spawn
-Overhauling economy: no more adminshop, completely player-managed signshops
-Outlawing raiding/griefing again
-Disabling PvP or severely limiting it.

We need your feedback as we discuss these changes, our goal is a simple survival server where players work together to create awesome stuff in a purer minecraft experience. Leave your thoughts/opinions/suggestions as a reply below.

Meanwhile let's set a few things straight:
-No one with spawning abilities is to spawn items for other players, this includes staff and donators.
-If you have an issue with another player, ask a staff member to help resolve it.
-Griefing(as in destroying blocks/stealing items only, not lava/penis/nazi) is CURRENTLY allowed for unclaimed builds, however this may be subject to change in the near future. If we disallow griefing we will require more staff, if we allow it we will have to downsize.

So first what kind of plugins when will this take place also what kind of downsize are we talking about like how many and whats gonna happen..and do players have vote in this?

UMMMMM new map so my kingdom is gonna be deleted including everything ive built and other players and staff have built!!!!???

I agree absolutely 100% about everything. i understand the staff thing. and with the vip's i feel like has got outta hand. I would like to talk to you more about this.

We're hoping to change some things that make this a weekend server, as stated in the OP. For those of you who want your builds in the new map (if we do decide on a new map) we will schematic your best creations and transfer them over (Note: schematic-ing builds in not etched in stone. jb and i need to talk about it first)

Below are my views; fabled and I haven't discussed it yet and we haven't gotten much feedback yet so its subject to change...

Downsizing staff: I say we demote the less active ones and put them on a 'reserved list' so whenever we need more help we can use them; the problem with this is that they are inactive for a reason so its not like we can rely on them once we re-promote them. Fab and I will have to talk about this some more.

More plugins/features: a lot of current plugins have updated, adding new features, we're also adding signshops(see economy). Adding new anti-cheating measures to prevent xrayers

New Map: As some of you may know, we used to be a 'freebuild' server, basically we gave creative away if people had a decent reason to want it. When we decided to be more strict on survival, we moved spawn ~4000 blocks away but previous players still had access to their old /home and /warp so they could easily bring their old hordes of diamonds and share it with newbies, ruining the purpose of survival. With a new map everyone starts out fresh, we'll probably schematic and transfer a few creations given they aren't made of pure diamonds and look reasonably nice. I'm thinking we hold a competition/vote where people vote for what they want transferred in.

Reworking donation benefits: I'm looking into a plugin that only lets players in creative place and break items. They are not able to drop items on the ground or place items in chests/furnaces/etc. There is also a separate inventory for survival/creative. However I feel like it defeats the purpose of a survival server when you see people flying around in creative, I find it discouraging and unfair whenever I play on other servers that do so. Hopefully we'll find a few 'fun' plugins that reward donators with something fun to play with, without giving them an unfair advantage. I realize creative can be more convenient at first, but I think survival is the better gamemode because people spend more care placing blocks they had to mine themselves, which in turn leads to nicer-looking buildings. Of course every server needs a few impressive builds that just can't be done in survival, so we may give people creative if they work on admin-approved public projects(Cities, Parks, New Spawn, etc.).

Reworking Ranks/Permissions: I've been thinking about removing the 'Default' Rank so that it's Member --5hrs--> 'Cool' --20hrs--> 'Cool^3'. Donation wise I'm thinking making it subscription based, VIP for 3 months = $5 VIP for 6 months = $10 or something like that. Also thinking about adding a 'Helper' rank that does not have banning or other disciplinary privileges but are responsible for answering questions and helping new players with claiming and what not.

Overhauling economy: At first I visualized a system in which players were rewarded for mining ores and in turn could go to the shop to buy wood to make a house, then return and get more supplies to go mining. This turned out to be a bad idea because it basically made 'survival' too easy. I think a player-driven economy would be more fitting with survival because there is a relatively finite amount of items, leading to supply and demand, bartering, haggling and interacting with other players as you try to find a buyer/seller for an item. Considering having people use /pay for transactions(Player A 'Q' drop 5 diamonds, Player B does /pay PlayerB 500) or using signshops.

Outlawing raiding/griefing: The purpose of allowing it was so we didn't have to ban everyone, with block-logging, we found pretty much everybody destroyed part of someone elses creation at one point or another and we'd rather not ban everyone, also to allow players to scavenge materials from abandoned builds and allow staff to spend more time on more important stuff. We now realize that our staff have nothing else to do(XD), and that players were griefing each other like they do on PvP servers. Instead we'll make it clear that griefing is not tolerated and make it easier for players to protect their builds. With the economy, donation, and new map changes, we'll remove the temptation of diamond blocks being used as a building material in houses; by the time you mine 9 diamonds in true survival, you probably know how to protect them.

Disabling PvP/Limiting it: We've always struggled to find our identity as far as PvP. Initially we planned to allow PvP as long as both parties involved gave consent. However, this wasn't possible as usually more experienced players will kill newer players to take their stuff and not give it back, causing the newer players to leave. Hopefully we will figure out a way to allow minigames and arenas to continue.

taekwonjoe98 wrote:

So first what kind of plugins when will this take place also what kind of downsize are we talking about like how many and whats gonna happen..and do players have vote in this?

Unfortunately the ratio of people with spawning abilities(staff/donators) to normal players is really out of whack, which is a major reason most people leave. Who would want to play on a server where everyone else but you can fly and spawn? No, players will most likely not have a say in who stays who goes and who joins, that would lead to an overwhelming incidence of bribery.

taekwonjoe98 wrote:

UMMMMM new map so my kingdom is gonna be deleted including everything ive built and other players and staff have built!!!!???

I think we might have a vote to allow players to decide what structures to carry over, as long as it meets certain criteria(can't have a whole floor made purely out of diamond bricks). The purpose of the map reset is because no matter how pretty the creations on your server are, eventually people will get bored when they realize they can never make stuff like that because it was made in creative; or they get bored because they found an unprotected house made of diamond blocks so they are able to mine tons of minerals, get paid lots of money, enough money to buy whatever they want from the infinite admin shop and then, they can build a diamond brick house of their own- once they do that there's nothing else to work for so no reason to play on the server.

Lol I'm the abusing powers
and penis

idk about the new world idea. i mean like we could lose alot of ppl just because they lost their derpy house. There has been so many builds on this server so idk... EVerything else i pretty much completly agree on.

I agree with cj on the map thing because some builds are precious to certain players but others that vote may be like i dont care about your stuff i want my stuff...this may cause conflict...and trying not to ask the same questions but what about the people who have donated are we gonna be getting like creative taken away or something it is true we have to many vip+ but the whole reason they donated was for creative mostly and if thats taken away they might get mad idc really ill donate no matter what but others may not come back.

Yes, we understand the complications involved, we're trying to figure out a solution that leaves everybody happy. Currently, the server is really unfair, people who play true survival as advertised often get killed by people wearing full enchanted diamond armor they got from a donator that spawned it for them. And the only way to get rid of all those spawned diamonds is to generate a new map, moving spawn far far away does not mean we get rid of spawned items, people will find a way back. If we remove the warps and /homes and reset everyones logout location to spawn they'll still be able to walk back to the coordinates, plus there would be no point in keeping the old areas if we're going to restrict access so no one can see what they made. Map resets are common among all minecraft servers, some have dedicated 'newb' and 'mining' worlds that get reset weekly. Also, losing your stuff isn't unfair since everyone else is losing their stuff as well, I have plenty of stuff that I made that I won't be carrying over(if we do decide to allow things to carry over), we'll probably even redesign the spawn cube. We want to make it fair for everyone, if we do end up taking creative away from donators i promise we will give them a new perk thats fun and a neat party trick to show everyone how much we appreciate donations, but also appreciate hard work. No one likes pay to win games(games labeled 'free' but in actuality the only way to win in the game is by buying powerups/items with real money).

We do appreciate the feedback, please encourage others to get involved as we want to make sure the final decision satisfies the entire community.

apologies for big walls of grammatically incorrect text btw

If we do decide to get a new world, the old one will be provided for download so you can play it on singleplayer. Honestly I dont see what the big deal is, its really common among minecraft servers to reset the map whenever the world gets too crowded to prevent people from getting too jaded.

I think the current map is unplayable because it's overcrowded, filled with worldgen errors and other ugly land areas(cough sneaky), also there is no point in mining because you can get free or extremely cheap diamonds and other items easily by rummaging around a few old chests.

If we don't do something about the illegitimate items, it'd be impossible to rebalance and fix anything else; business as usual, new players join and get killed by people with diamond items. They could get lucky and stumble upon some free illigitimate hardware themselves from other players. Then they realize there is no point in trying to survive when they have more diamonds then they ever need, so they decide to find a real survival server. SignShops would be useless because it'd mean people with spawning abilities and their friends an advantage, even if we remove creative they probably have stashes of items somewhere.

The only alternative to resetting the map would be to move spawn really far away. That wouldn't work because people would just /warp or /home back to their stashes of illegitimate diamonds. Removing the /warp /home and all other access to the area would be worse than resetting the map because if we reset at least you can still see it via download. Also, consider this, we can't keep this current map forever; sooner or later the world will become too large for the server to handle, at which point we'll have to dump it and we won't be able to provide a download.

I agree on the new map now the only thiing i want carryed iver is the kingdom i built not to be selfish but thats what i want carryed over if i can because i put alot of wrk on it but like i said no matter what happens i wont leavee the server so I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING NOW!!!

um ok sooooo i understand and hope it works out.

i think that their is simply no over choice and i think that for the carrying over buildings think shoul only be applyable to people of cool and above becuz overwise you will probs be overloaded with work

We should do a multi wrld with factions and survival because more people are looking for a faction serer instead of survival...and if we got factions we can just have seperate chats we can still downgrade the donation options and add more donatiion slots..as in like donate 50 for something in stead of having 3 slots lets do like 5...and if we have faction and survival people have a choice or can do both and we would most likely have more players and end up like a huge server like the big ones displayed in planetminecraft but like i said ideas so plz consider oh we can also have a creative wrld maybe idk but we should try this i feel like its better for the server!!!

I think a map change is a good idea. I don't, however, think that taking too much of the stuff we've built in this map over to the new map is a good idea.

Don't get me wrong. I've spent countless hours building my farm up, and I will hate to lose the work I've put into it. I'd say about 97% of my farm was legitimately mined, with the exception of some of the wood I used to build tools later on and my original melon seeds. But if I were to ask to bring my things with me, how would that decision be made? By popular vote? I usually play between 2-5AM Eastern Time... I very rarely see other people, and no one really knows me, so who's going to vote to take my farm with us? Maybe I could offer to pay people out of the resources I'd carry with me. Is it going to be an admin/owner decision? It would be very easy for people to cry "favoritism". No, I think the best thing to do would be to take everyone, wipe the slate entirely clean, and let us start over.

But the map's not the only thing that will need to be changed to wipe the slate clean. We need to look at how the hierarchy of the server is structured. I perceive a massive imbalance between the VIPs/donors and the "common player". I saw a VIP complaining about something one night, while a normal member was also requesting help. The VIP got everyone's attention, while the regular member eventually got tired of waiting and logged off. I don't know if it was a matter of "squeaky wheel gets the grease" or if there was actual preference being shown, but I'm not interested in a pay-to-play server, and if that's how it looks like it's going down, I'll leave. I bet there are probably a few others who agree. I know you guys have to cover server costs, but that sort of idea just doesn't sit right with me.

PvP is another issue that does need to be addressed. I'm personally a fan of a "PvP in certain areas ONLY" sort of approach. Set up arenas in towns, or section off various pieces of wilderness in which PvP play is sanctioned. Raiding should only be allowed in these pre-approved zones, so that anyone building there knows that they're in danger of that sort of thing. I would recommend looking into the Residence plugin, which is used to great effect on other servers, to see if this might suit both your anti-greifing/protection needs and your zoning needs. http://residencebukkitmod.wikispaces.com/

Also, if we have a lot of people popping on and asking about factions, why have we not considered implimenting them?

A new map might upset a few people but I doubt they'll leave in hordes; when they find out they have to start out fresh they might leave to find a new server and start out fresh anyway so theres that.

fabled, quantum and I have already had the discussion and have agreed on a few things, I'm working on a future changelog to post but for now, we have agreed to a new map. We will be carrying over a few superstructures. In order to be carried over the structure must be public, and it cannot be a business. We can carry parks and sculptures but not stores, private houses etc. Items will not be transferred(can't put your entire diamond stash in your inventory and bring it to new map), one of the reasons for resetting the map was to get rid of the overabundance of illegitimate diamonds before people got too attached. Instead players will be compensated with starter kits(i'm thinking 1 set of iron tools, a few seeds, some wood and stone)

As far as donations, yeah, we realize the server is becoming too pay2win/pay2play. Hopefully we will be able to add more donation ranks and push the rank with access to /gm to a more expensive rank(current donators will be bumped up a level if this happens) as well as adding an anti-creative sharing plugin for both staff and donators. This is tentative, if anyone has a better solution please tell us.

We are familiar with residence and think it doesn't quite suit our needs. Residence has hundreds of commands and cuboid regions are hard to explain in of itself. While it is more powerful and feature-rich(disabling pvp in regions, restricting movement, teleporting) its also resource heavy and we're already planning to add heavyweight anti-cheating plugins(orebfuscator, anticreative sharing).

Ah factions...fabledBino doesn't like factions, and I'm not too big a fan of it either. Its been done to death in minecraft servers and they're all the same. It's confusing for inexperienced players to figure out. The gameplay factions offer is too different from what we are aiming for, we want a friendly survival server where people team up, go mining, trade, start towns and buisinesses, with factions theyd always be on their toes ready to kill anyone who they aren't teamed up with.

i still agree 100%, just one thing i think would be better is if donaters would get a diferent rank name besides vip. i find it being mis-leading to new players and going to them instead of a moderator like me because a lot of people dont know what a "mod" is.

ok and when is this all taking place?

hi im excited to get a new world and all that but I'm also mad because i built some stuff like my hotel which took a few weeks and i know that i can download the old map but will it download on multiplayer or singleplayer?

dehepicduck4000 wrote:

hi im excited to get a new world and all that but I'm also mad because i built some stuff like my hotel which took a few weeks and i know that i can download the old map but will it download on multiplayer or singleplayer?

Maps can be used for singleplayer or multiplayer just by deleting a few folders. Hopefully we'll be able to upload both versions so you don't have to convert it.

@CJ: All this will be sometime next week, more details soon. Update will take a few hours so we'll have to find a time that works for everyone. During this time the server may be off while we download the map, or whitelisted while we do a few last minute tests.