Let's make these servers popular again

[pusur44017]

Well, just to make things harder for you all, there is the possibility of having some of the coders here in this community write a plugin for the server (i.e blocktopia's AoD server and MineZ) that migth workout.

-pusur

[Juwayyid]

I think what emperor means is that there are two worlds.  A flat map and an actual map.  In the actual map, you can have games and play survival.  In the flat map you can build the home of your dreams.  You can then move that home of your dreams from flat map to actual map where you can set up home. 

The player can build all they want, they just need a mod there to approve their build and bring it to the actual map.  As for defense against grief...  The "plots" thing may work out here and maybe we can just deactivate lava and TNT from guest use.  Mods can still use it.

I sort of like the idea, but there would need to be a price on building a house and getting a plot.  Could be fun.

[Emperor_Quimby]

Bren: When mod arn't there they can figjt with each other in PvP areas, trade and do jobs, which the system should take care of.
Juw: you are in on the right thing. But the price could also be the best fighter or one with the most emerald.

[bren4q]

Two things I can see as being an issue with building on a flat world:

1. For the player, it is not the same as building on a natural world. You can't take advantage of the natural shape of the terrain or pick a good vantage point to build on. You just build a flat based house or castle or whatever using any materials you like, which you don't have to work to get - they are all free in creative mode. It takes away the challenge of mining for good stuff and finding a good build location.

2. When a mod copies the build from a flat world to natural world, the terrain will inevitably not fit correctly and will need all manner of correcting to get it to fit. It could be a time-consuming task to get a flat based build copied into a natural terrain location.

You mention that the players can do jobs and trade - what jobs are there to do in Minecraft other than mining, building, and gathering materials? If the main world cannot be mined then there is nothing to work on and nothing to trade.

This type of server would essentially just be PVP in the main world and creative building in the flat world. There would be no mining or crafting, which means it would be very different from the vanilla-ish experience we were planning. If we made this kind of server it would probably make more sense to replace the Creative server with it, because it sounds more like what Creative is than what Survival is.

[Juwayyid]

The rain has fallen upon our parade!


He is right though Quimby.  It really wouldn't work all that well...

[Emperor_Quimby]

Flat building grounds could be placed in the main so you can deside where it should be.
Yes, the basic is to gathering ressources: bones, flower and what ever job you get. I think we also could use our fantasy and make something like: a shop owner or a gaurd. Also for making a building how about this then: the players with a area can take wood, dirt, stone and all the kinds of blocks the jobworkers get's into their hands and sell. Then we could make survival mod on the flat map and bedrocks as the marking area block. And yes it would take time to find a good place, but meaby we could make small towns around the map where we already have planned some buildings could stay.
When you get a job you get a rank, where every rank allow you to cut those blocks you need: wood, stone, sand, and all that.
Also everything expect minning can get respawn (animals, tree, wheat) which is the only thing i can't find a way to respawn again. Oh yeah and you can't not just go out and break a tree or start to mine, there will be mines and lumbermills.

Again just a though out of the box... And now that I think about it, it looks like the minecraft version of Sims.

Anyway just a mod to control the wave of buildings of crap that would come and grief if we made it just free for players.

[Mendez]

The anti-grief plugin we've used up to now, Hawkeye, has been hit and miss. It didnt work on WorldEdit stuff and rarely fixed lava bucket grief (e.g. TheSquirrelman). There is another grief-repair plugin called CoreProtect, which I have used briefly and it seems a lot more effective - being able to rollback lava, broken signs, and other quirky things.

Fixing grief would still be slower in retail (it can be fixed so quickly in classic) but if it was reliable then it might not be so bad. Having the confidence in being able to fix grief would make us more inclined to advertise and get more new people onto the servers.

I'd still lean towards the idea of having a server that was more autonomous, that we didn't have to be constantly checking for grief and repairing. Something like the grid plugin where you get a predefined plot of land, or the ProtectionStones plugin, where you claim a radius of land by placing a special block, might be better for us. In either case, we can solve the problem of having to walk for miles by setting up portals or warps at regular intervals so people can quickly go to a part of the world near a free location.

dynmap (the live map) has an optional plugin which makes it show WorldGuard regions on it. You see a colored border on protected regions. Perhaps it is possible to show claimed areas of land so that people can see what parts are free and go there relatively quickly through a nearby portal.

The trouble with this type of server, where guests can just join and start building/mining, is that the landscape will probably end up looking like crap as guests harvest everything in sight. We would need to make sure to restrict the area that guests can mine.

What would stop people from griefing on the other world/flat map?
Where do people get the materials to build if they are unable to mine blocks on the main world?
It would be extra hassle for everyone involved - players would have to wait for a Mod and ask them to copy their build, and Mods would have to be constantly having to deal with player's requests to copy stuff.

I think this style of play is too far from the normal Minecraft experience of being able to do things with the freedom to mine and build as they please.

First sorry for the very long post, we can all blame bren and his logic!

Although I reckon bren is on to something and already has answered most of the questions about griefing and protection here. I don't pretend to understand how all the servers and the various server listing websites work together, though after a year of watching and hearing 'things' in one average MC server, I noticed what a few things people like and might want to see in a server. So in keeping to the topic of contributing some 6 points for a system to attract people to these servers and without dismissing any of bren's points, everyone so far had at least one helpful point to contribute to this, except for Kidd2000's dwindling answer he isn't giving! (tongue in cheek!)

This isn't in order of importance to the topic, I started with the small things of bren's first then to the bigger things in Juw's plan, that could incorporate some of Quimby's suggestions, of course with bren's acceptance.

1) The WorldGaurd pluging for 'players ownership' on a server was the first thing that attracted me to Minecraft's appeal of making personal creations after seeing on a Dyna-map by another player how griefing happened. Whether this is from other players, creapers, lava or TNT the WorldGaurd will stop it.
It wasn't just the wonderful creations and builds by themselves, that were all over the place there, which was the second thing that attracted me, these meant nothing to me without the first thing.
WorldGaurd works with most of the other major plugins mentioned and can be helpful with some of the other points Quimby mentioned as shown below.
This may solve player's greifing problems, though not the Spawn's attractfullness needed, without having incomplete builds or lack of many buildings, rather having that theme for the WOW factor!

2) A Spawn needs more than a great transport system, giving credit to the transport master Nickykim, not only a few small well designed builds. This is where the Survival Spawn could benefit from a large area protected by a WorldGaurd with permissions given for any proven builders that bought or earned it, like most of you guys here, who should build up the Spawn areas first, done in creative mode of course for the WOW attraction to new players, (this would also be an anti grief solution to saving time for the Mods). A shopping center mall or a market place of shops for trading with predefined plots of protected land, in a small city or village with 'Town hall' near the Spawn, that could be bought by players and which could include an Economy pluging to make it interesting.
The Survival server would need something like this before trying to bring a lot of new players into the community if you want an interest for them to stay.

3) The Survival Spawn would need portals and/or signs for warps to the shops, signs would also be needed with Forum & site address for instructions, a dynamap site address for a guide to the free areas including, as bren mentioned; "by setting up portals or warps at regular intervals so people can quickly go to a part of the world near a free location" which they can immediately start building, or when they have a chance can ask a Mod for protection after or even before building.
This is as simple as selecting a favorite plot, not protected as shown on the dynamap, then marking two diagonal corner coordinates with any stated blocks approximately 100 x 100 (or less) eg. 2000,65,-50 & 2100,65,50 and with the existing building permision requests this wouldn't "make the landscape probably ending up looking like crap" [sic] any more than normally allowed.

4) This is all elaborating on bren's words to keep the style of play of "the normal Minecraft experience of being able to do things with the freedom to mine and build as they please." and "the challenge of mining for good stuff and finding a good build location."
This should be a system that doesn't rely entirely on Mods and would make the server that was more autonomous, fix the main grief and should make you guys more inclined to advertise and get more new people onto the servers...
Yes and as Quimby obviously stated, more players would also find more frequent and suitable players to become extra Mods for this.

5) This would then make it worthwhile for Juw to incorporate with this a great plan for popularity with the MWC movie series, an adventure map and to market it like crazy.
Of course the enticing part for new players to "flock in" would be a movie of a map which "would include characters created from existing members of this community." that they can be part of that community and play in it.
Juw's encouragement of "We just need to make sure this map contains and maintains quality, difficulty, something new, and something keeping the map fun." and the rest of his enthusiasm is what is needed to make a bigger and more enthusiastic community here. All of course not without bren's Casual gamer extraordinaire approval also...

6) There were a lot of other points made about making the game more interesting after a player was first initially attracted to the server and 'found their way around' though can be left up to the individual players to deal with, while the main problems to make the server attractive can be sorted, without me involved in all the politics of it...

I hope this is helpful or even useful and it didn't seem to be confusing things for anyone, I was trying to summarize what I read and explain how I saw the best points would fit in a way I believe could work, without changing what is already working.
In Quimby's defense it wouldn't hurt for long time trusted players, who have proved themselves with creative and established builds already in Survival, being able to 'pay' for a project built in creative to be copied to their plot in Survival.

Please feel free pick this to pieces or just simply ignore this point of view...

[twin_lite]

From what I've read of the thread so far (the last page) this all seems really cool. (Hopefully this hasn't been brought up, but....) I feel like if we made cities/towns where you could buy plots of land while the rest of the world was free reign it would be really cool.

[Mendez]

^Yeah, what he wrote seems a lot easier to understand.^

Is twin_lite the only one who agrees all this seems really cool?

Or is everyone holding out and still waiting for the new server upgrade?

[bren4q]

Yes, your idea sounds good. I didn't comment because it seemed to be pretty much repeating what I had said on a previous topic a while back. But it turns out that topic was on the staff section of the forum, so non-staff people didn't get to see it.
A server is currently being worked on by Darthjahona, with some config help from me, which is like this. Nothing is finalised yet so it is still good to get other ideas at this stage.

Anyway, here's is a copy of my similar idea back in October:


[spoiler]If we start advertising we need to be sure that people can join relatively easy. We also need to make sure that it doesn't become a huge chore to keep it free from grief. I think the more autonomous it is, the better. Ideally people would be able to join and play without requesting build rights.

The type of server I have in mind is a survival server with a mixture of PVP and normal friendly mining. It borrows elements from other servers I've seen. We could combine full-on PVP and griefing, with relaxed mining and trading and helping each other. It would rely heavily on WorldGuard zones and another plugin that allows non-admin players to place predefined zone sizes around their own builds to protect them.

tl;dr coming up, so at least check out this rough idea for a world layout that I have.

Black Regions - safe spawn areas where there is no PVP, no mobs, and no building.
Green Region - non-PVP area for ranked players to mine and build. Mobs spawn here. Griefing is not allowed.
Red Region - Bandit Country for all players - PVP, looting, and griefing are all allowed. Unranked guests must travel to this region to build. They can go to SpawnNorth, SpawnSouth, SpawnEast or SpawnWest using /warp or portals. Buy Protection Stones from the shop to claim and protect land in this dangerous area.


Within the world there would be 1 very large area (green box) designated as non-PVP space. People can mingle, mine and build here, just like regular survival, but PVP would be disabled. To be able to build here you need to apply for the minimum builder rank.

Outside that big green area is the bandit country (red). Anyone can build and mine in this area, even those who have not applied for builder rights. Everything is allowed - PVP, griefing, stealing, etc.

At the very center of the world would be main spawn area with shops and stuff. It would be completely zoned so no-one can modify it. There would be portals to bring you out into the bandit country directly to save you making a long walk. 4 portals to 4 other spawn areas out - north, south, east, west. That way new players could join and go straight into the wild to mine or kill or whatever, without having to apply for rights.

The Protection Stones plugin allows people to make their own zones around their builds. These would be available to buy in shops.

There would be a restriction on how far people can travel, so that the world doesnt get remote sprawling areas going off in every direction. But it would be very large so that there will not be a shortage of space or materials any time soon.

By doing things this way we hopefully don't have to worry about griefing that much. We will zone the spawn areas and teleport points. Players can buy their own zones and place those protection blocks. If they dont protect their stuff thats their problem. There will be a large area for PVP that want it, and a large area that is safe from PVP.

I'm not sure if this could be applied to the existing survival world if there are builds scattered all around the place. It just something we might consider if we are thinking of trying to get more people on.[/spoiler]

[sifitis]

Sifitis's plan for advertisment:

1) go to other servers and spam the IP until you get banned for being a pain in the *ss

[Jaysers]

A sound plan Sifitis mein fruend, a sound one indeed..

In my honest and personal opinion, in order to make these servers something many will know to enjoy and love and envied by other servers, this is what I think:

TOP SECRET
[spoiler]When people with a minecraft account are sleeping, we create an inception where they have an idea to go to Insomniac Servers. While we're doing so, we make sure to make them forget every known server other than Insomniacs. Once we've finished that, we edit and hardwire their brains so they only want to go on our servers. They will become mindless drones with something they feel like they need to do (cough Kraw-knows-what-I'm-talking-about cough)[/spoiler]

If you took what I wrote up there seriously, I fear for you.
Well I WAS about to go on a very long rant with a lot of details and such, but I saw that Quimby had everything I was going to say covered, except for these small details:

1: Quimby covered that there needs to be an easy transport system and ease of navigation. I completely agree with this and was about to emphasize on this if he hadn't already stated it. But players have to feel welcomed in the first place. I don't want to overextend, but I think having a number of cordial players on when newcomers get on would help.

EXTRA EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT!

           Forum use. I'm going to heavily emphasize this, and I can't emphasize enough, so bear with me here -puts seatbelts on- because this is going to be a long ride. Newcomers should have fun and know what the servers are about. Encouraging forum usage would be big to help these newcomers to feel welcomed.
            On the forums, we have so many fun topics that many players, even if they're new, can hop in and have a laugh or have a discussion about (and not get immediately shot down for their opinion (this may vary) and such). We have topics people can laugh in such as Juwayyid's most recent one, "Would you rather" or Butler's "Twas a night before Christmas". There's even topics where newers (got lazy of typing newcomers/new players) can have a voice in and suggest things, such as the plugins and projects. If they're bold enough, newers can even help with filming, since this server is quite filled with people who want to help film, and there seems to be a constant need of actors. In fact, Juwayyid is currently working on somewhere between 61 to 14,582 projects at once, including creating a series called "The Story of ______", where it's about origins of players. Here is a prime example of that. The Story of Kurizmaah
If players want to become active in something or anything related to Insomniac servers, they need to know about what they want to become part of in the first place. If there's no forum, how can they know what to be part of?

LOST CAVERNS?! FORBIDDEN CASTLES?! WARS?!

          Events are always the center of attention of a lot MC plays, no matter which server. On survival, there was Darth's "A New Adventure Awaits!" thing, where players must undergo a journey to see what was uncovered. On Creative, there's so many possibilities that I don't know where to start. Arenas, build offs, skill testing, Oh my! I'm not just talking about a small project where only a couple players do things. I'm talking huge, official, large build where a lot of people helped create and more can enjoy doing, from arena battles, to build offs, to parkour maps. If those players play survival, create prizes where they can get things if they win. If not, we put their names on a wall, saying they accomplished this. Competitions are there to make someone be recognized. Now all this needs to be pre-planned, which IS WHY FORUM USAGE IS IMPORTANT!!!

BUT I WANT TO PARTICIPATE!!

          Timing is ever so important. We need to have a universal time clock or the sort and whenever an event is planned, we need to make sure WE HAVE A SPECIFIC TIME ZONE DESIGNATED so it's easy to convert into our own time zones! A minor note to this is that maybe events should be planned on days where most can participate? Food for thought.

Well, this is my take on that. I most likely have many flaws in there, not to mention things already repeated in past posts that I didn't read about (for those who I repeated things about, please don't feel like I stole the credit you thought of). The biggest thing however, is GET THIS SERVER KNOWN! and FORUM, FORUMING, FORUM, RUMS-FO EVERYONE!!!! FORRRRRUUUMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Juwayyid]

Jay makes some good points here.

For one, imagine yourself, a new player on a new server, who sees that community members are getting fun little videos made about themselves.  I think that right there could draw in a lot of people.  They would want the chance to get their own film!  Now, would I give it to them?  ...

Also, the idea about events really seems great!  We can do some sort of "Event of the month" where we implement some sort of dynamic adventure or game or festivity into the server.  It could be an adventure map even if we ever run out of in server ideas!

And I do really believe that getting members involved on the forums will truly help them to stay with us and spread word.  If the participate in the community, well, there ya go.  They are in the community.

[Jaysers]

Now, would I give it to them?  ...

-insert juwayyid's evil laugh here-