Dumbo52

Dobreira, Thank you for your patience throughout this process. The head admins have discussed your ban, and we have decided to reduce your ban length to 5 months. First, however, I'd like you to understand that the rules are not a toy to be played around with. They are in place for a reason: to promote positive experiences for players on our servers. The reason you have such an extensive ban history on our servers is that you have continuously pushed the boundaries of our rules. When you come back, this needs to stop. Stay away from that boundary like most players, and you'll be fine, but I don't want to see you here again for crossing the line; if you are banned again, your ban length will be significantly longer. Please submit a new appeal on or after Saturday, September 20 to be unbanned, stating that you have read and agree to our rules, and citing the specific rule that you broke.

With permission from the OP, I'm closing this thread. It's clear that everyone with a vocal opinion on the topic has responded, and despite several people asking for the thread to continue on topic, it has been completely derailed and there is no point in allowing this discussion to continue, as it is clearly going nowhere. We have received a lot of feedback from the players, so we will be posting a decision on this topic in the near future. Thanks for your patience.

Pitcka, You were banned for destroying this on the Creative server: You are banned for three days from your ban date. Please reply here on or after Thursday, August 21 stating that you have read and agree to the rules and quoting the rule that you broke.

For what it's worth, I don't agree with the decision to close the thread, but I understand the reasoning. I believe the situation could have been better handled by explaining that while moderators would not be separated by server, discussion of ways to improve our current system would be welcomed. I believe the best option currently is for players to continue discussion on this thread, which has adopted the intent of the thread which was closed.

A public poll was recently held on this topic, and votes were evenly split, so the decision will be deferred to the admins. This poll will close in three days, on August 22, and hopefully we can implement the chosen option shortly afterward.

I believe that some productive discussion could have come out of the thread, but the admins have concluded that we will not be separating moderators into ranks according to which servers they frequent, based on reasons which have already been mentioned in this thread. The thread was closed because it would be misleading for us to suggest that the proposed policy could happen. While we're not interested in implementing that policy in the form in which it was originally proposed, we are open to suggestions for how our current system could be improved upon. I believe that a thread with the goal in mind of developing changes to an existing system would be more constructive, more open to compromise, and less contested than a poll asking whether or not people believe that a certain change is a good idea. I apologize for not making this clearer, earlier on, and in the future I'll make sure we do our best to provide sufficient explanations if similar actions are taken.

We might want to get some tech admins to weigh in on whether one method would be any more demanding on the server than the others. From my experience, mobs won't put too much stress on the server if there are only a relatively small number of them loaded at a time (which I expect), but if a bunch of players group together, there is potential for a lot of mobs to be loaded at the same time, if we go with the per-player limit. A couple ways to further combat possible lag issues: Apply a per-chunk mob limit on top of the per-player limit. Players can spawn mobs up to their own limit, but whenever a chunk is unloaded, any mobs within it over the chunk limit will be sent into limbo. Periodically cull mobs belonging to inactive players. If a player hasn't been online in at least a week or so, all of their mobs will be despawned. Depending on what the cadmins want, I'm willing to start writing this plugin, and we can test it out on the planning server.

That one's pretty good. A couple more seeds I found. If you guys would like, I'm willing to create this map, too (WorldPainting and importing amplified areas). I'll document my work so that you're aware of my process when the next map needs to be created. I'll also be able to host the planning server until the end of August, at which point I won't be able to host anymore.

So, this is an idea I brought up in Creative's planning thread which I'm posting in a separate topic for visibility. All too often, I've heard complaints from players about how we have 77 pages of rules, asking how we expect players to read them all. While I normally ask them to get to the table of contents on the third page in order to see that the rules are only a fraction of the book's contents, I can understand that before being told that, seeing a 77-page book named "The Rules" might be a bit of a turn-off. The problem and possible solutions were briefly discussed in this thread, but with no resolution. Here's the text of my proposal from my original post: Any thoughts on these ideas? I'd also like to consider eliminating the book cooldown, at least on Creative. Particularly since the cooldown timer is obscenely high (48 hours), it doesn't seem to serve any purpose on C other than preventing players who accidentally threw their old book out from getting a new one.

I think the proposed policy should fairly effectively deter banned players from alting. While it's fair to players who have played on alt accounts once or twice but learned their lesson, it's also a strict punishment against those who continue to do so. Since this constitutes global policy, I'd be interested in hearing opinion-based feedback from more of the heads on the topic. If there are no dissenting opinions, I don't see a reason not to bring this topic to the public.

We had agreed earlier to re-enable /me, but apparently that hasn't happened yet. I'll see if that can be enabled. We've decided to slightly relax the rules on role playing. Instead of being completely disallowed in global chat, role playing will be allowed to an extent, but if it becomes disruptive and people ask for it to be moved to a clanchat, that should be respected.

I would be interested in seeing something like this. I'm not a huge fan of those "Dumbo52 is now AFK" messages in chat, so a more passive mechanism like this would work well in my book.

So, we should start planning for the next Creative revision. Here are a couple of ideas from me on how we can improve Creative; let me know what you guys think: Books The current rulebook on C is 77 pages long. While only 12 of those pages contain the actual rules (the rest is about banned items, commands, mod requests, FAQs, and useful links), I've seen too many people open it, look at the number of pages, and throw it out without getting to the table of contents. It's too long, and I think our current system could do with an overhaul. I suggest we create a setup that is more friendly to both the users and the admins. I propose that each server should have a list of available books. Admins would be able to edit this list from in-game; for example, running the command /book publish <name> while holding a book would add the currently held book to the list under the specified name. Players would spawn with a "simplerules" book which contains four or five pages of basic explanations of the rules. Players will also be able to use the /book command such that: Running /book <name> will give the player a copy of the specified book. Running /book <name1>,[name2],[name3],... will give the player a book compiled of the multiple specified books, complete with a dynamically generated title page and table of contents at the beginning. We would additionally have a couple of aliases defined. For example, /rulebook would alias to /book simplerules, and /guidebook would give a compilation of all available books aside from "simplerules". This would also give text from the book "rules", an expansion upon "simplerules" which details all of our rules and their basic corollaries. We may also want players to spawn with this book as well, to make it easier for new players who are legitimately interested in playing to get started. All in all, I think a change like this would make the servers a lot less intimidating to new players by cutting down on the amount of information it's necessary for them to read at first. This should also make things easier for the server admins, eliminating the process of having to go through the techs to update a rulebook, in addition to making our rulebook format more consistent (I've noticed that all three of our rulebooks look very different.) I'd be interested in hearing what some of the other server admins' opinions are on this. Spawn From talking with Marting and LetsB, it sounds like we might want a spawn that's a part of spawn city - possibly one of the buildings in the city, as opposed to the chateau that was built in the middle of the lake. We might also want to consider placing spawn near one edge of spawn city, rather than in the center; this would allow players to explore spawn city by traveling in one direction, or go out into the open world by traveling in the opposite direction. Spawn City Spawn city this revision turned out to be a pretty great success. I think we should try to do something similar for revision 27 - something fairly realistic, where the plot locations and roads actually make sense. Roads I love our current road design, but I am worried about stuff like this happening again. I'd rather we not have to plow through anyone's build, so I'm wondering what people think of pre-building the cardinal highways. We should then be able to work on secondary roads around the map throughout the revision. Since these roads would be more flexible (and probably smaller), it would be significantly easier to route them around the map without interfering with anyone else's builds. Map Size I liked the size we used this revision (starting at 3200x3200). I think we may want to consider switching back to our system of expanding the map when we feel the need to, though, instead of using a schedule. There's no way of knowing ahead of time how rapidly people will build or when the map will need an expansion, so it can be difficult to judge when the map will need to be expanded again. There have also been instances in which people have complained about the map expanding too early while there was still a lot more building area available. It also seems like no one's really been paying close attention to the expansion schedule in addition to it being difficult for new players to find, so I don't know how much good it's been doing. For this reasons, I'd be interested in once again expanding only when we feel that the map is getting a little crowded. If we announce these expansions a week or so in advance, that should be sufficient notice to players. Reset Date This revision began at the end of March, so some time in early to mid September makes the most sense to me. Let me know what you guys think of this. The End We're currently using the Nether as our alternate dimension. However, I don't think it's worth it to continue this next revision. Hardly anyone's built there, so there's little point in keeping it next revision if no one's going to use it. Instead, I think we should create a blank End dimension. This would create an area in which to put pretty much anything that doesn't belong in the overworld. This could include moved builds, speedbuild winners, plot-based build contests, temporary events, and possibly BigTown (which I believe was having a little trouble expanding this revision). We may also want to include some minigames in that dimension, if we decide to pursue that idea. Terrain It sounds like people generally liked this revision's map, so I'd like to try a similar combination of vanilla, amplified, and WorldPainted terrain. However, a bit more WorldPainted terrain than we currently have sounds like it could please some people. I'll begin looking for some good seeds to use. I'd also be happy to begin preparing next revision's map as well, unless one of you would prefer to do it. Once we get a map prepared, I'll be able to host it on my server again, but only until the end of August or so. Mobs We've discussed this together a little, and it sounds like for the most part, we're ready to take the next step in giving mobs to players. Techs, let us know if there are any problems with this plan, but I think players should be able to spawn a limited number of pets. Now, there are a couple ways to implement a cap that I can think of, and I'd like to know which one you guys think would be the most effective. Chunk-based. Each chunk allows a limited number of animals to be spawned in it. This would cap the number of animals per chunk, effectively providing an upper limit on the amount of lag due to mobs (since only mobs in loaded chunks have any effect on server performance), but this severely limits the ways in which players can interact with these animals. Additionally, this gives players little accountability for their animals; it would be impossible to attribute any animal to an owner, and as such, there would be no way of 'protecting' animals, since no chunk has an owner. Region-based. Each WorldGuard region allows a limited number of animals to be spawned in it. This provides reasonable assurance that there won't be too many mobs in one place, in addition to giving each mob a set of 'owners'. To further deal with possibly lag sources, the per-region mob cap might even be determined by the size of the region. Animals would still be limited to their respective regions, though, meaning that they couldn't be carried elsewhere by their owners, and we would need to constantly check animal movement to ensure that they don't exit their region - a task which may exert a significant amount of stress on the server. Player-based. Each player is given a limited number of animal slots. This obviously gives each animal an individual owner, but it also runs the risk of allowing a large number of animals into a small area, if a number of players were to make a concerted effort to lag the server. Thus, some control would need to be given to staff to be able to despawn nearby mobs if anything gets out of hand. I'm currently in favor of #3, though I'd like to see what you guys and the techs think. Such a system could also give us leverage when it comes to giving prizes for contests. For example, one of the prizes from winning a speedbuilding contest could be an extra animal slot or something. Inventories If we go through with this idea, players will be able to use an enhanced/personalized form of kits. Using commands, players would be able to save and load personal inventories. This could be useful when, for example, players wish to switch between builds and want to quickly get the materials they were last using on the other build, or if players want the same weapons they used when they were last PVPing. A player is currently working on writing this plugin. Unbanning Items I'm in favor of unbanning more projectiles, including snowballs, eggs (without the chickens), and fishing rods. I think these are advertised in the rulebook as lag-inducing, but any lag caused by these is insignificant. Also, let's allow /me again. I believe we asked the techs to earlier, but it looks like it's still disabled. I'm almost certainly missing some topics that still need to be discussed, so please add further points of discussion to this thread.

Another rollback just occurred at 9:02 PM EST (18:02 server time). Interestingly enough, though, the rollback appears to be chunk-based, as opposed to time-based. You can see here that the more recent edits were retained, while edits a few seconds older were kept, disproving the idea that the rollbacks are exclusively time-based. Additionally, the difference between what was and wasn't rolled back occurs exactly at the chunk border, pictured in the screenshot. Further information from jchance supports that only certain chunks are being rolled back. Based on this, my theory is that only loaded chunks are being rolled back. That is, chunks are saved normally when they are unloaded, but restarts aren't always properly saving loaded chunks. I was located to the west of the chunk border at which that screenshot was taken when the restart occurred, so it is likely that the chunk to the left that was rolled back was loaded, while the chunk to the right which was preserved was unloaded at the time of the restart. Speaking with jchance about his rollback further confirms the plausibility of this situation. This problem has become rather annoying over the past few days, so I hope this information can contribute to its resolution. I'll be trying to run more tests during restarts to figure out more specifics about these strange rollbacks.

The carto of Creative 25 is available here, but I'm not sure where the missing Survival cartos are. However, I agree that, for the sake of consistency, all of the cartos should be located at either nerd.nu/maps or redditpublic.com/carto - not split between the two.

Looks like this rollback was about 15 minutes. I've submitted a modreq for you (slide) on Creative at the location.

Another rollback on C when the server came back up at 7:03 PM EDT. At least 10 minutes, probably more. Some blocks that were rolled back are in the area around (-1794,64,2054). Would it be a good idea to force a save a few minutes before each restart, so that while we can still report when this happens and continue to debug the problem, the rollbacks won't be quite as devastating?

This is continuing to occur. The server rolled back around 30 minutes when it came back up after the restart at around 5:02 PM EDT on July 24th. Some rolled back blocks included some stuff I was working on at (-201,66,2694). Since LB retains the block logs, I was able to redo players' edits since the rollback, but this is still a big problem.

I do like the idea that people would have an idea exactly what they're donating to and what their money's being used for. I'm really not sure how players will split their money between the two causes when donating, but as long as it's public how much money we need for each account, people should be figure it out. We should also think about how separate we want to keep these two funds. For example, if we surpass our advertising goal but don't quite reach the goal for our general funds, are we going to leak a little from one into the other, or should we respect that donors donated to a specific fund for a reason and keep the two funds completely disjoint? Whatever we decide, we should try to be as transparent as possible when it comes to money so that people know exactly what their money's going to.

Thanks for being honest about this. Closing.

I agree that permabanning alts doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and we could probably come up with a better way of dealing with such situations when they arise. Additionally, we don't have many guidelines on how the original ban length should be altered due to ban evasion. Instead, we should create a policy based on the philosophy that we ban people, not accounts. From this point of view, all of a player's alts which were banned due to evasion should be unbanned at the same time, but these instances of ban evasion should compound the original ban length. My proposal is that if a banned player is caught alting, the new unban date will be set to the latest of either: A) Two weeks after the previously declared unban date; or B) The addition of the previous ban length to the time of the most recent evasion. For example, if I were banned for one month for x-raying (we'll say 4 weeks for simplicity) and I evaded one week into my original ban, two weeks would be added to my ban, pushing the unban date to 6 weeks after my original ban. On the other hand, if I were to evade my ban 5 weeks into my original ban, the new unban date would be set to 4 weeks after this ban evasion, or 9 weeks after the original ban. When my unban date is reached, both my main and alt accounts would then be unbanned. This method of banning would ensure that at least two weeks are added to the ban for each evasion. This length can, of course, be changed depending on how severe an offense we consider ban evasion to be, but I think the basic model is sound. There is also the bridge we would need to cross between compromised accounts and ban evasion: where do we draw the line? It's not infrequent that we have griefers on Creative who repeatedly log in from other accounts as soon as they are banned, but from my experience, very few of these players tend to appeal their bans. If a player with 20+ banned alts were to appeal, we can't necessarily unban all of these accounts, as they are more than likely compromised. If this situation does arise, I recommend we just unban the main account after the given ban length (the main account being the one which was first used to log onto our servers), and keep the rest banned as compromised accounts. In most cases, it isn't difficult to tell whether a player is using legitimate alternate accounts, anyway.

TirdonPCK, As is the case with any account which has changed ownership since the ban, I will first ask you to change your account's password and to confirm that you have done so here. However, while your XxPAUxX220 account doesn't appear to have logged in using your IP, I am interested in why this account which you recently bought was banned only two days ago from our servers. Do you have an explanation for why you are appealing your ban immediately after it was issued, in spite of the account's ownership change?

Unbanned - welcome back!

REXREXREX146, Thanks for being up-front about your actions. It's been two years, so I'll unban you if you reply here stating that you have read and agree to abide by the rules.