My original plan for Themes has completely fallen apart and as a result we are running into issues with new applicants.
Initially my idea was that Theme zones would be hard work. You would get given the zone free of charge but then have to terra-form it to your needs and mine out the block you need to build that theme you want. It was still SMP, you still had to survive, but you were safe from griefers.

What they are now is Creative mode. Islerlohn is 100% spawned and world-edited and its markets and rented property has completely destroyed any interest in Leo's Castle, thus expanding Islerlohn to be a de facto part of Homestead. This is not really how I wanted it.

But its there now, so what do we do? As people apply for and are accepted to make Theme Zones, they will look to places like Islerlohn and say "but they got Word edit and block spawning, why don't we?" and I wont have an answer for them. Thing is I am NOT handing out these powers, or Creative Node, to that many people. It is just NOT happening. Partly its a strain on the server but mostly there is no way to limit these powers to the Theme zones.

So, what are we doing? How should Theme Zones be run? You guys need to come up with a solution to this that I can implement. It's down to you!

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I think the themed zones should have a creative role, because where you mine, is where you live, and no one wants to live alone, they want to live in homestead. Mr Green and Held are working on Teufort using mined materials, and the pay off for that is they get to have Teufort in homestead, likely to be visited by people heading for spawn. I don't think the themed zones should be used again for homes or cities, you'd go there to make a statue or a purely aesthetic build. Something like an arena, or a dungeon is like the spawn, it provides a service.

The other thing is the themed zones will then only be useful to op+, they can teleport out of there, and can make use of compass porting, flying, world edit, all useful admin tools that double up as great building tools also. Ideally people should be to apply to build there, have as close to a freebuild experience there as possible, then when they return to homestead, they are back to mining with no possible financial gain from their themed project. The trouble is obviously is enforcing this, all I can say to that is that we're currently trusting people with access to spawning items as ops, perhaps reintroducing WB again to people who can be trusted to not take advantage of spawning items, and can have the rank removed while not building. Is it possible to remove build and container rights for a rank while they are in homestead? Or make it so a WB can only actually move around within a themezone?

I must admit, we have spawned everything. We have sold houses.
If your upset we sold houses, take the money its all in the res bank account. We don't need the money, its so the "economy" isnt full of free houses.

If your upset that Leo's is declining, place a representative to manage it, don't leave it dead.

If your upset about the spawning, remove our permissions. You yourself said it was up to us how we built it. Why is it a problem to use tools we were given.
We built the town and its working, keeps the economy going, keeps people happy, and follows all the rules of the server.

If anyone disagrees, rightfully remove our permissions.
If you want proof of our "sales" go to : www.tinyurl.com/islerlohn

Whoa there, tiger. I wasn't complaining! I was just pointing out that a precedent has been set and we need to decide what to do going forward.

I am in no way annoyed with anyone involved with Ilserlohn - its still a great build!

EDIT - and yes, the reason Leo's has fallen into decay is no one does anything with it and its a nightmare to navigate. no arguments there.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Also, what exactly were we doing with World Builders before? and how did that work out?

Basically it didn't. As people had the power to god mode, compass port and pawn items, they did it all the damned time. It was a farce.

The only way I'd be willing to let that happen again is if the Theme zones were on a separate map so they could have permissions but that would be a HUGE effort...

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

As for I feel, the WB got removed because of me.
I'd really apologize for abusing that things, as you said.
It was a really new rank, very new to me though, I did not really think of when to use it and when not.
That's my fault, and I know. I feel sorry for this to have Howard needing to take effort for this because I did some things wrong in the past.
Though, I'm always in for a new themed zone, and I don't care how to get the resources for it.

As again, I apologize for what I did in the past what probably screwed tge WB rank..

Regards, patogy

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<@UNICORN_XD> i are a goast
<@UNICORN_XD> yes, having exams this week has made me stupid
Whiskers: Shoegaze music is great music to poop to - I feel like I've just fought an epic battle

I think it's possible to reintroduce world builder, make sure the person using it is trustworthy enough, if they abuse it potentially like any op+ could abuse their commands, then they lose that privilege. Make sure they're clear on the rules of using it. Also if it's done via /spawn it should still come up in the chat like it use to, so if someones spawning diamonds people are going to call them out on that. I think with Patogy before, he saw it as an actual rank, rather than a temporary tool used for building, and that led to misuse, and misgivings when WB was removed from him. Maybe this could have been avoided if the idea world builder was as clear to him now as they were then.

Is there no way to just make it so WBs have no move permissions in homestead using residence? Maybe a map wouldn't be a terrible idea, the bottom half of the map has quite a lot of stuff on already, and we've only had it for a couple of weeks

I tired of all this "loosing privileges " stuff to be honest. We believe we can trust a person with a set amount of commands and tools. If that person can not handle those new tools, they should be demoted till they can prove otherwise, why ruin everyone else's game.

Back on subject

1. Lets get someone in command of Leo's. Would be a huge job and favor for the server. Set it up how the Islerlohn finances work, the money just gets shoved into a pool and no one touches it.

2. Themed areas, i always thought, should be on a separate world. That's what the very first idea was, and we should have stuck with it. This way tools and powers can be limited in certain ways, and improved in others.

3. Spawning items and World Edit is really a 50/50 for me. I think items should be obtained fairly, but seriously when you have a 1000x1000 plot with 8 or so builders, its not really feasible. If Islerlohn had done that, we would still be on the harbour section.

4. World Builder rank. No need really. I don't see a point in it. If you have a great build idea, there a people who can help you get some items. Not hard, just need a good idea. World Edit and spawning items can be done by every supop+ and one or two ops. If you really want to be able to use world edit, either gain our trust and rank up or build it the hard way.

Off Topic, we need to find a new shop plugin! This current one isn't working well. Because of the plugin, Islerlohn will have to, for the THIRD time, rebuild the markets.

The problem is that there is no real way of checking if someone abuses their powers without trolling through very long logs and even they don help that much.

And no, can't residence Homestead. If we did, no one else can make a residence in it...

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Sure but we are talking an ever increasing number of people who will be working on Themes including Guests. It really can't go that way anymore.
Great idea. I'll look into it
Well, our limitation was the number of maps. Bedlam and Nether HAD to be on separate maps. Putting Themes on a 4th map would KILL our performance. Plus its just too late now...
Well true, but it keeps you busy. Seriously, the main joy for Theme zones HAS to be building them! If not, what else are you gonna do? They don't "do" anything after all...
Sure but again, I just don't like people building with WE. It is just plain dangerous and causes CHRONIC lag.
Errr? Plan better? The market plugin is fine as far as I know. I know it has requirements as to how far your sign can be from your chest but that was the feature I wanted. Remote chest/signs fucks the server up like mad!

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

This might not make to much sense, my mind tends to go blank after 5 hours of studying Please Do
Ehh, i wouldn't say too late. Only 1 theme has been built out of the 8. I would rather do it now then later. Also, nether is pointless, we all fought to have it(even i did), but, its just a map that never gets used. We could remove the nether and place a themed world so we can control what permissions are there.

• Would allow guests to build
• Ability to remove spawning and World Edit(if decided)
• Allowance to create "hidden" ranks that would could control each zone. EX. Place j_mon5 in the rank of Theme2Owner so he could have specialized powers that only the owner should get in only the themedworld
• etc etc

I agree, that's why only supop+ have it, because they are trusted enough to use it. So basically, the world builder rank shouldn't be put in place, because it includes World Edit. That's the main point of the WB rank is to easily create/duplicate massive builds.
The chest and sign distance is fine. The problem i find is with a small market stall, a double chest can't have two shops. Another big factor is that, two shops can't be placed on one block by two different people. So basically, the walls inbetween a stall have to be two wide, or those walls can't be used to hold shops.
Not sure if that makes sense so:

No I've always been against admins having perks that aren't available to other people. Like Op+ only maps on freebuild, they were bullshit, we see them done away with. People are admins purely for the sake of the guests and their enjoyment, not to to enchance their own enjoyment. It's for people who are eager to help out, it's not a game of earning status and we can't close of access to materials to guests-vets because they're the actual playerbase.

You know were talking about world edit right? Not one of the "fun" tabs in the bukkit plugin list. This is a serious command that can't be thrown to users and is primarily used as an admin tool and large editing tool. I would completely agree if World Edit couldn't fuck the whole server over.
Also your mention about OP+ maps on freebuild. what about when your a guest, you can't build on member, builder, veteran, mason, or arch. When your a member, you can't build on builder, veteran, mason, or arch. Etc etc. Its not really anything different, just a rank getting a rank only map as did all the others. Not on topic

Well I was talking about world builder having the building tools that ops did, not world edit. We can't give everyone op, or free items so WB was the best answer to that, so that's why I don't believe it is pointless.

I know you crossed it out, but it's important I say this. Guest-member-veteran they're all just general players, here for their enjoyment. Guests shouldn't be able to build on veteran maps no, we need something to seperate the experienced trustworthy builders, from the new likely to be griefers. Ops+ however they don't deserve their own maps, they can build on vet maps, their rank is for administritive purposes, not some fun perks for them to enjoy, infact the idea is you're selflessly forfeiting some of your own enjoyment to enhance that of the guests. Basically, not to say it is for you, but the rank structure isn't a game where you level up to trustee, it's lending a hand with the server sacrificing a little of your own time and enjoyment.

This is why I was very vocal against us getting our own op+ maps, and supops+ making there own maps for themselves willynilly, while everyone else had to apply, donate or not get one at all. Very glad we got rid of that, guests individually may not have much value to the server as a seasoned admin, but the whole purpose of an admin is oversee guest enjoyment collectively.

Further off-topic:

minecraft isn't an RPG game where the point is to get to the highest rank. It's to build and enjoy building. The reason we have so many building ranks is because trust is required to use commands. You can use nuclear fission to power a city, you can also use to remove the city from existence. A more extreme model, certainly, but can you trust guests with draw commands and limits? If we could, we would only have two ranks: Owner and Player. Owner would have server moderation commands (That is to say, shut down the server and such.). There would be no kick command.

But we don't live in a perfect world, and so we have ops, mods and supops to moderate. Then we have administration and management in supop (partially), trustee and owner. These are not building ranks. They have different purposes, so why give them dedicated building worlds? They can build with the other vets, masons and archs depending on their personal ability.

It is off topic but it is an interesting and somewhat relevant point. I never got the "OPs + have their own maps". Once you are Vet, you are safe in the Vet+ maps from the general rabble but I don't see the need for further segregation (Does this still happen?)

To get back on Topic. In an ideal world, only a very view people should ever have World Edit. Even with limits in place it is cataclysmically powerful and I believe it should only be used for fixing things or helping prepare land for large projects. It is not really even a case of trust. I trust Frimple and sniper but they both fucked the map over royally, crashing the server and losing everyone about 30 minutes of work plus every item that was on the floor at the time. It is just TOO easy to fuck up even if you have best of intentions. Plus, even when used correctly, it causes lag and that lag build exponentially with each person online and using it.

I really don't want people in Theme Zones having World Edit. I know its easier but even if we go beyond the dangers, I think having WE ruins themes. As I said higher up, once Themes are complete...then what? The point of having theme was to have massive, cooperative building sessions between players. Just WEing everything in seems utterly tedious to me. (Note I am not talking about spawning items. That can be arranged separately either by giving people the rights to do so, kits or any number of others ways.)

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Off topic, I see where you are all coming from. Ti early in the.morning to explain what I meant.

On topic, in Islerlohn, we used WE solely on city. I don't really think were going to need world edit outside the city, because there, people can create their own city. Our main goal was to get the main city, Islerlohn, up and running before we gave anyone rights to build. Islerlohn, for the most part, is done. We have about 1/8 left to complete. As I said, im 50/50 on WE, im not gonna argue with either side

what i know of so far for city is this:

1. You will have to get the items needed for a city build yourself like the original idea.

2. NO spawning of items no matter what.

thats for deffinate atm

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"Do you hear that?"--Sarge
"Yes, that noise is called water. It is very wet and very sloshy."--Caboose

Oh yeah I don't think anyone wanted world edit for non ops, that really is too much, at the least you can call someone over to do it. Spawning items however I think that needs to be done by the builder himself, and they'd need compass porting, and well I think that's all they need really. Godmode would make it more pheasible to build during the night though.

There's obviously risks with having World Builders, but there is with any rank I suppose, you'd just have to be picky with who can get WB. I'd even be happy with people only having WB while an op is online to demote them after a building session, or to be demoted when they log off. At least until a more failsafe solution is devised.

We still need a conclusion here. The application thread for the Zones has gone up but before anyone can be accepted we need to decide how they will be run.

The only thing certain so far is that I will not be handing out World Edit to Theme Zone managers.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

if you would allow people to get certain people who already are trusted with world edit to "generate" a terrain like for instance a flat grass land or a sky islands looking area then allow people to build after that with no more world edit after the first generation of terrain.

I think that would be best IMO

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Fear Me for I am The God of Death And Fire

Well that is fine. A one-time piece of terra-forming to set teh zone up is fine but no more.

That done, how are people to manage their zones and build them? This is still not being addressed.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I think that building should be with spawned items, makes things a hell of alot easier. When I het home ill add to this

Well, to throw my view in, I think that no items should be spawned. Were I to run a Theme zone (a distinct possiblity at this point) then I would take great pleasure in first setting up a construction site. Marking out the lands in preparation, planning build orders and priorities then setting up an abolustely epic mining system, complete with carts and tracks if needed. We could work to pull the materials we need form the ground, building a mighty store house to hold it all, all carefully labelled and organised. Then, when enough materials have been gathered, splitting the workforce up so that we had a construction crew and setting them to task laying the foundations of the build.

This, to my mind, is not only the entire purpose of such a zone, but it is also the entire pleasure of the thing. If I just want to run about, knocking up a city (or whatever) in a few short days, I'd go to FreeBuild.


Just my 2 cents - not saying its the final answer...

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

I think the issue there Howard is that people are only as wealthy as they choose to be in smp, how much time they're prepared to do mining and resource gathering. So they'd then have to do much more of this to do something that's probably a huge project, now personally I would just do the project in homestead if that was the case so it will still have all the mobs and players around, to have it in 'real world' you could say. The theme zones should be pure creative, but because they're not in homestead, someone can't just build a super awesome fortress and claimed they mined and gathered it all.

Super mines for super builds are already underway in homestead. Also if Leo's is made from gathered materials, why are there so many mossy/cracked stronghold blocks?

No one ever said Leo's was made legitimately.

I am saying that this was the idea I had for Theme Zones and the idea that you all accepted when I put it forward.

Sure we can build the Themes out of spawned items but...then what? The whole purpose of the Themes IS the Themes. Them being completed is final moment, when we up and start a new project. They offer no functionality beyond the aesthetic so building them is their purpose.

As for people not being rich enough. I assume you mean that their lack of wealth would leave them unable to devote the time required to join this epic mining/building idea of mine. well possibly, but anyone who hasn't gotten all the money they will ever need by now is just not paying attention. Look at the Top 10 of rich people. Anyone could have done what they have.

My core point is that Themes are about construction over a long period. We should be setting out to make these massive builds and planning to give an enormous amount of time to them. Sure, they may never get finished but: so what? Planning, gathering and building is the pleasure in MC - not seeing the final product.

If in the end though people disagree and just want to spawn items and knock up a build in a few days then fine. If that's what people want, they can have it. I simply do not see the point and I will be awaiting the time, less than 2 months from now, when everyone involved with a Theme is bored 'cos they have nothing to build and are starting to make demands for the older Themes to be demolished so they can build something new.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

If that happens so be it, I don't come down strongly either way on this issue but if we come to clearing old themes to make room however we choose to do things then that's just a kind of purification.

Take the best from the old and make way for the new, natures way or whatever.

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骨

Oh I thought issue with Islerlohn and Leos, was that one was spawned, the other wasn't. My mistake.

I do see the purpose of mining the materials and really working for them, because that makes a build a ton more impressive, but if I wanted to do that, I'd just do it in homestead and probably live there, like how Teuforts being done, all legitimately. I think people should apply for themes though still, and sell a good concept for a project. Just for the to experiment with the builds possible in surival, even projects on freebuild can take forever with fly, and cuboid, smp allows builds to have a sort of pseudo functionality to them, although they wouldn't be used and lived in, they could be.

We could even do a server tour thing at spawn taking you from gate to gate seeing our most epic builds, while retaining survival in homestead. Best of both worlds.

The themed zones idea was great and well planned out, but as we have now tried to implement the idea, it's apparent that we need changes.

One of the main issues in my mind is the management on theme zones. As it is now, one person is "given" the themezone, and he chooses who to work with. The themezone manager then goes MIA, and the group ends up falling apart, since they all need the owners permission to do anything. Instead, I would like to see it changed so that a group of individuals are given charge of the themezone, and they will each be given the exact same responsibility of the themezone. If people wear out, it's up to the group to replace these people.

On the issue of spawned items, I don't see the problem. On the old map you had to apply to build big stuff, this including cities. Thus the old map ended up having very few cities, and lots of spread out builds. On this new map, we seem to be more tolerant of cities like D9 popping up. I love visiting these cities, and it amazes me how much people have built without spawned materials. But let's face it, for a themezone build you expect something extraordinary and grand. The new Islerlohn is a good example of this, and Islerlohn 2.0 would have never happened without spawned items, and with people wearing out, I don't think it ever would.

Tbh., without spawned items, the only difference between Islerlohn and D9 would be the free residence. Themed zones should be considered "World Builds", somewhere were people can enjoy the grandness of a big city, and thus they should be allowed to be built with spawned materials.


One issue I am having, that noone has brought up yet, is the emptiness on most of the servers continents. The problem is that there is only one real continent for R+M to build on (West of the spawn).This means that this area is clogging up pretty fast, with cities much too close to one another and little free space inbetween. At the same time, we have two large continents to the north and east that are nearly empty, because they are reserved for themed zones. In my opinion, all the themed zones shouldn't be all clogged up on one side of the map, but rather be spread out, so you can allow others to build inbetween them.

I would like to propose that resses 1, 4, 5 and 8 are unzoned and opened up for normal people to build on. This would mean more foot traffic to and from both Fade's future city and Islerlohn. Future themezones (when the map widens), should be placeed west and south of the western continent.
Finally, maybe we should make the themezones slightly smaller. Islerloohn is pretty fucking huge, yet it only fills up about 1/8th of the theme zone it's in.

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<@Howard_s> usa just has a made up economy - they can't really go broke

JuncoPartner: I could barely hold it up for long.