Look, I have said that I am done making decisions for everyone but watching the voting thread and reading the comments in game is driving me to despair. No one is thinking things through and considering the consequences of their choices so I am gonna have a little rant here. This will not change my position - I wont decide what happens with the server - but everyone needs to be WAY more informed:

- A new map fixes NOTHING. Maps are maps. The current map has a tonne of space (Homestead is less than 30% full) and Bedlam can be regenerated any time. The new features coming in with 1.3 are very slight and will change very little so you are not missing out on cool new things: chances are you will never see them. Simply making a new map is a downgrade, as I argued in the poll thread, as you just lose everything that has gone before and it makes your server look stupid. Who wants to join a server with no established builds, with no community and with no infrastructure? I sure wouldn't.
- A joint map for Guests and member+ is a fine idea as it reintegrates the community but it has to be handled VERY carefully. All the block tracking plugins (logblock, hawkeye) are dead and their replacement died in committee - how will you handle the 1000s of cries for a rollback per day when everyone gets griefed?
- New plugins like Factions are very interesting but unless deployed with meticulous care will kill the server dead. Go find a server with Factions on it - they are battlefields. No one builds there, there are 1000, 1 man factions and every single chunk in the game belongs to some bugger. It is literally a nightmare.
- Making it easier to travel. I deliberately removed TPs, warps and the /spawn command as well as limiting the /home command for a very good reason. If you want a server that runs residence and is based on an economy then items need value. You have to be able to sell the things you mine/make. If you can TP around as much as you chose, nothing has value as nothing takes time acquire. Moreover instant TPs lead to PVP griefing (people TPing in, killing people and vanishing) and will allow grief teams and determined solo griefers to do staggering amounts of damage before they are caught. As it stands now you have /home, you have the portal system and you have the Dynamap if you get lost. It takes 10 minutes to get from anywhere in Hub to the Nether - Frimple and I checked this. Nowhere is out of reach or hard to get to.

Now, there is a flip side to all this but involves a different kind of server. You don't have to have an economy based server but you then run the risk of boredom. People will mine what they need to build what they want and then...? They will just leave. Moreover, if you remove the economy, how will Residence work? Everyone can just build free Residence's? How dull would that be?! If you don't use residence though, how do you deal with grief? People will always grief - its a fact of MC - so you have to know what to do with them.

The temp servers we have had were - by a LONG way - the most popular server we have ever had and had the largest amount of building on them. Look to that massive wooden town a group of guys built on the last one. The question you have to ask is WHY they are so popular. Bedlam *IS* like the temp maps yet no one ever goes there. I was hoping for groups to get together and forge new cities out there but its just a wasteland of mud boxes built by clueless guests. What is the factor that made people show up? I have no idea but I sure as fuck wish I did.

The way the server stands right now it has everything: a place to be free and play it like a temp map, a place to build in safety with Residences and a place to build colossal, server funded builds in the Theme Zones. On top of that we have the Arena with its multitude of uses, the spare zones for running stuff like the Hunger games and even a far more interesting and difficult Nether, thus ensuring that the trade in Nether items stays profitable.

And yet everyone wants to swap this for a new blank map, the chance to build a spawn city and option to get the shit griefed out of you by new guys.

I just don't understand...

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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

Maybe the safety of Homestead is detracting from the popularity of Bedlam?

That is to say, people prefer having the ability to create infrastructure and shit instead of playing a rough-and-tumble survival game where anyone and everyone is potentially an enemy?

I like the idea of a single map, personally.

Thats not really the case. People in bedlam (like in hub) can group up and build together. I remember back at the start of the map a whole group of like 10 people went to live in bedlam, consisting of Op's and vets. They actually seemed to have something nice going there

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

yeah, and the whole idea is to make those alliances and such and do the best you can to survive. I mean, it IS called "Survival Multiplayer". Just, like, thinking about what SMP was originally designed to be compared to what it is now. It's about sticking it out and staying alive, while flourishing at the same time. Killing monsters, mining, developing and eventually losing everything and starting again, learning from your previous mistakes.

Except that in actually just turns into "Someone gets lucky and ganks you, taking all of your stuff. Then when you log off, someone messes up your base." Though I like the survival concept, the problem with Bedlam is that you really can't make much that lasts without attracting raids.

And while that's fine sometimes, I really prefer to survive without "PvP" being an excuse for people to gank constantly.

Dear people of the SpA smp server,

I have been checking some other servers for the way they deal with things.

There is at least ONE thing I learned from it and I want to share you guys:
This also is a compliment so listen carefully:

The SpA community is the best community there is, as far as you can find open community's or servers. The people are nice, we have good Owners and everything is well thought. After reading Howards posts I had some complaints, after visiting tons of other servers those ideas of Howard were not bad at all.
He knows what the best for our server is.

I'm gonna leave your actions open for youself. But I think we should listen more to Howard, instead of counteracting him.

Regards

hwin

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School is sucking up my head.
Luckily I left it in my bed :3

It's in the human nature to try and topple over everything that is right :U

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL502D6BAD7E3A5EB8 – My compositions :U
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“If I myself had to portray the term 'people' by drawing it, I'd draw a mere gaping mouth, a clamouring mouth.” ― Pentti Linkola.

We arnt counteracting him we are discussing differnt options if we diddnt do this then people will just complain again straight away its better to discuss option as its everyone server there is no dictatorship.

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

Actually there is a dictatorship - a dictatorship that is "good" and constantly thinks of ways to make the server more interesting for both old and new players. Sure, the players can and will be heard in times of distress, but the final decisions come up all on one man (of course Cat and Don have a "big say" in things, but Howard is the SpA Minecraft Manager in charge). That man may seem like an evil godmother from time to time, but without him we would wither away in total chaos. I can relate to Howard's anger about kids believing in their false supremacy over him, but at the end of the day we know who keeps the server running.
      On top of that - as Howard keeps reminding us - the whining never stops. Folks just can't be happy with what they have.

That went a little off-topic... Gotta open the wine bottle next...

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL502D6BAD7E3A5EB8 – My compositions :U
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“If I myself had to portray the term 'people' by drawing it, I'd draw a mere gaping mouth, a clamouring mouth.” ― Pentti Linkola.

Guys I know you are just debating with me - its what I asked for. Don't get sidelined - I am fine with everything and anything being said here

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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

Personally, I think herding the guests into bedlam was one of the greatest ideas since making minecraft in the first place. Anyone who's ever been to Bedlam knows it's a terrifying grief-hole that looks like the nether with grass and cobblestone 1x1 towers strewn all over it. Yes, I'm exaggerating; but not by much. You see, Bedlam was designed (from what I ca tell) as a way of allowing guests to play on the server without registering. Those serious enough about playing in HUB would actually go to the trouble of registering online, thus reducing the already horrifying number of griefs throughout the main server. Sure, I want to build together, but not at the cost of coming on to seeing lava spilled all over a quaint little hut and obsidian penises towering above the landscape.

And this is what no one will address, Velo, and the reason I am becoming increasingly frustrated. Bedlam was and is the perfect solution. It offered the much demanded "temp server, do as you like " play form and it kept the griefing idiots away from where you all built.

But, as with every other thing I have done on this server, all the player base did is abuse it. Either they saw it as a reason to completely ignore the Residence plugin and just build massive, sprawling, ridiculous (and may I say, fuck ugly) builds everywhere without fear of grief or they saw it as a way to have some fun entirely at the expense of the guests through PK, theft and grief.

I am, in no uncertain terms, fucking appalled at how this map was treated and at how just about everyone on there has behaved.

90% of the builds are not res'd, of those that are res'd 90% are either admin builds (free) or fake (again, free). Bedlam is never visited and, up until a few days ago, no one built there who was not a guest. The entire purpose has been willfully disregarded and the server utterly fucking ruined.
Theme zones were rendered farcical in 10 seconds flat thanks to Islerlohn (which also destroyed all trade and travel) and Spawn City was never even visited (even before the Citizens failed).

And so the game slipped away. OPs declared themselves "bored" after screaming at me that they could not handle the grief on the last map so they just left, players declared themselves bored because "I've finished my house - there's nothing else to do" and Guests hated the server as everyone else just fucking abused them.

Nice.

And so we just go back to the old game. A big map with a stupid market (that no one will use) and everything griefed into the ground. Within 6 weeks of the new map going up, the server will be dead. No one will res so everyone will get griefed, the guests will have no structure to follow as we have no OPs on (and anyone who thinks a "voluntary" teaching section will EVER work needs to up their meds) and it will all collapse. Factions, if added, will kill it 10 times quicker and half-baked ideas like Hunger Games will add nothing.

So you all have fun now.

The need for players to disabuse themselves of the notion that a new and miraculous solution to all this can be found is paramount, but still they dream.

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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

Perhaps slightly pessimistic.

Saying that bedlam was the perfect system is analogous to saying communism was the perfect system. It's just the people that let it down ? Well people are part of the system.

The previous map worked and worked adequately, it is not likely to work significantly worse is re-established. Naturally people have a little nostalgia for a time gone by and aren't viewing the downsides with all the clarity that could be wished for, but at the end of the day the important part of implementing server alterations is getting general agreement to them.

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骨

It is entirely analogous to it and rightly so. The reason communism fail(ed/s) is because it has never been implemented properly. This server was implemented properly but it was abused. Sorry if people think that is harsh or it is a criticism (it is both, and deliberately so) but it is also the truth.

Going back to the old map's ideals is a stupid idea - a fatal mistake in my opinion. The last map failed - utterly. The map itself was destroyed, griefed to death and back, towns were a plague and their whiny owners a huge burden that drove the OPs away, Iron City was a ghost town, used by 3 people to grind money, the spawn was useless as no one read the boards and we had to spend ALL our time, screaming at people and TPing them back there to read the rules. Leo's castle was a farce with people teleporting instantly to it via Babel to put their crap on sale - or rather the X amount of people who had stalls; the rest had to do without.

I would rather go to a temp map than return to an Iron City setup. My option in the poll is slightly better - SLIGHTLY - but still has no answers for addressing grief. Simply handling it passively by replacing land from backups is idiotic in the extreme and the whole debacle of Res still hangs over us.

We need a solution that works and will be worked with.

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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

On the other hand.

Leos market generated an active if inflationary economy. People bought and sold to the point of fortune and bankruptcy.
We had a thriving population and community that was growing rather than shrinking.
Iron City I would note was built under the same principle as the current Spawn City and its services used an equal amount. Consider that a good half of Iron City was filled with a maze and a duplicate admin market because no-one could think of anything of value to put in it [as well as a sort of inn system in the nominally useful half everyone knew wouldn't get used], only to have its replacement be on an entirely larger scale which I recall vividly we had a devil of a time trying to even fill with token items. And, it comes back to me, an admin market that was at all possible to use, and was. The current admin market, diasporically scattered throughout the byzantine labyrinth of Leos, is next to impossible to find let alone shop at so no wonder the economy is dead, stabbed at every point we could find to do so short of removing money entirely.
The Ops may have been complaining back in Iron City days but I also remember them being more and happier than they could said to be now. And lets be frank, were a lot of those complaints not, towards the end of the map, driven by some unhappy interpersonal conflicts and hoarded grudges, more than actual workload.

As to the map being destroyed, surely this map has only fared better [if it has] because there are fewer people building fewer things. The standard of which is adversely effected by the lack of instructive feedback on building a healthy community could bring.

Also: You hate towns, portals, rails, bridges, big builds, ugly builds, floating builds, builds made of spawned items, and unres-ed wooden builds; but hark back fondly to the temp map town that was built in its entirety of spawned wood, wooden bridges and wildly ugly wooden boxes in the portions built before older and wiser players took the residents in hand and taught them how to build better.

The halcyon temp map days were likewise principally marked by the blasted crater stretching within 5 minutes walk of the spawn, rampant theft and destruction of everything within 10 minutes walk and almost all players building listlessly waiting for a more permanent map, a slow drop off in interest and people checking in for seconds to check if 'the map is back'.

We all hate griefers and idiots, people who don't bring any value to the server. But it's those same people who, if the server community operates correctly, are drawn in and turned into productive and valued members. Almost no-one came here knowing what to do, to build, and being any good at it. We have to stop chasing them off or we'll end up with the perfect server. An empty one.

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骨

Well, Leo's market simply killed the economy, making it impossible to sell anything as essentially the value of everything was brought so low as to make the whole endeavor pointless. Sure it was busy still, but in the end, most shops stood unattended, their ridiculously cheap items unsold.

As to Iron City - yes a lot of it was unused or set for dubious purpose - this was my point. It was stupid easy to get to and had an admin shop replete with wares yes no one used it. Well I would refute this to be honest. I hate towns built by one person, portals of such quantity that it renders the scale of the map pointless (and its economy), rails that sprawl everywhere and are filled with abandoned carts (which cause MASSIVE server side lag), ugly builds 'cos who doesn't and floating builds 'cos they are blithely ignorant, server no purpose and are just a MASSIVE eyesore. The res issue is different as people are being made to operate to different standards which is unfair and spawned-item builds are just a mockery of the standard player. I have nothing against bridges however.

I know that the temp map was a farce (and I am intrigued to learn that the wooden city was spawned though am not surprised given who built it...) but it was at least BUSY! People PLAYED ON IT. This is all I want.

Saying that the fight against griefers leads to an empty server is just insane. As far as I am concerned a) most of the "builds" on the current map are grief (if only to my map!) and b) people can grief the living shit out of the place: the stuff I build will be protected.

The issue is that MOST of our players are lazy and will not res. If we have a server in which Joe Public can stroll in and fuck things up, he undoubtedly will and I for one will no longer tolerate the whining and raging that this grief will yield. As is, I will likely not install a block tracking plugin. If things get to damaged by crashes or organised grief I will just reset the server. The players, however, will be driven away and we will end up with an even emptier server than we have now, the same as it was with the Iron City map and its emptiness come the end is something that its (suddenly formed) advocates are conveniently forgetting.

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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

Well my last post was perhaps a tad bit more rhetoric than truth but I hope you take me point.

As to the lack of res-ing, and the probably avalanche on grief complaints. I for one am prepared to take a hard line of 'res it and/or stfu' with this. I imagine you are too. People will either learn or drown. On the subject of block tracking though, if it's possible to have it in it's a good way to find griefers who, after all, we have no reason to want on our server. Punishing griefers can be done independently of the person who was griefed.

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骨

Your points were, as always, taken well. Pleased just to actually have debate!

Well I agree with res's and our attitude towards them but my concern lies with the reception of this policy amongst the players. Pleas of ignorance regarding the rules will be rife and there will be many a rage quit when person X's precious village burns down.

As to the Res issue, I have a new idea, but it is not fully formed. This is as good a time as any to try and articulate it though so give me your thoughts:
We keep Res as is but lower the prices on buying and rental, possible by as much as 80%.
However, we remove the bounties obtained from mobs and drastically increase the amount of mobs, specifically adding Blazes to the normal world, thus discouraging the building of flammable houses.
To allow the players to make money to pay for their Res's we add in a new plugin (it already exists but if it gets abandoned it should be easy to replicate). This plugin installs ATMs in the game at which the player can trade in "valuable" materials such as Gold and Emeralds. The worth of these items is then deposited into your account. This encourages Res, travel, working in groups and mining. Money will still be reasonably easy to make but nowhere near as simple as it is now.

Discuss.

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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

Lowering res costs could work and removing mob bounties is interesting if not necessarily the right way to go, I'm not sure hOw that would ultimately work out.

As for blazes, it's a nice idea and i'm all for wooden houses burning down but I wonder how we'd stop baiscally all the forests burning down. If theres a solution to that I would also suggest easing in blazes slowly as a lot of people probably ate completely ignorant about them.


Ps. If its any consolation I'm having a hateful time trying to put together any kind of guest spawn.

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骨

To combat grief and blazes I will be looking at plugins that auto replant trees anyway.

And yeah, making a spawn that fixes all the reported issues is tough

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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

Possible solution to low residence usage - late night jottings

Set up a storage, allow people to claim one double chest [anymore and we burn their stuff] perhaps if MBL or whoever can set it up allow them to place a sign with their name but that's not really needed. I'm of two minds, either tell them they can take anything but diamonds, or let them take diamonds as they'll really be a waste of space that should be taken up with seeds and so forth.

Give some warning then introduce guests onto the homestead map. Tell people, you get griefed you shoulda resed.

Then, when 1.whatever comes in, rekajigger the map. That'll let us have emeralds and whatever pointless blather is being brought in. rebalance the biomes and change the shape of the world to reflect the reduction in theme zones. Less ocean, more small continents.

Then people aren't starting entirely from scratch so they don't feel like they've wasted their time, particularly if we keep a few player built things deemed of value for one reason or another. Anything less than 50K blocks would be super simple to handle. And having had guests come round to fuck their shit up a bit they're starting out knowing the importance of res, but that what was griefed previously has been wiped away.

And then we all do a dance.

the end.

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骨

I will mention 1 thing...if we eliminate the mob bounty what will happen to those who specialize in hunting mobs such as neo?

will any mob drops be deemed worth tradeing in?

just a thought that maybe we could make a few special mob drops like ender pearls worth something...

They will ahve to do something else. People have to change too, not just the server.
Most things dropped by most mobs are valuable and people will still buy standard blocks.
Don't see the need given that they already have uses and are valuable in their own right. Gold currently has no use at all so is a much more sensible suggestion.

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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 remember that, best place I was ever involved with, even over Islerlohn when it was still being built. I had temp op then with creative, so I was admittedly the one spawning all the stuff

But as you said, it was active. I tried to pull people in who could help, I asked guests, members, and everyone if they wanted to join. If they were there to grief, they got kicked out of the city. What could they do? We had tons of members in the city who could just kill them and send their asses back to spawn. On top of that, very few knew i spawned the items. Most of the new members in the city thought we were just readily prepared to build and had gotten supplies beforehand. I still have that map because I personally requested it a dozen of times because of the fun we had building and living there.

The problem I see for this topic, is indeed bedlam. I don't care how perfect it was, it just didn't work. Take that city(I even forget the name ), we got people involved. They felt needed, and stuck around. Right now they get thrown into bedlam to rough it out till they figure out how to register, and once they do, they are still on their own unless they get to know people who are willing to do a group build.

Also along with this, anyone up to a group build allowing everyone to build(as long as they follow a simple wood theme) for the map?

hehe, it all started with one simple house me and GB set up and a few days later there were a whole lot people going in there, looked pretty neat

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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

If I were a ghost I would be floating around everywhere going "Commuuuuunity" right now.

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