roastnewt

To a point, obviously. Too short revs, and people won't bother with large builds, and the server isn't very attractive to new players if everyone just lives huts filled with chests.

If up and down votes are based on whether or not you agree with an opinion, then you would expect that people who share the same opinion would vote the same way. I don't think it's a team battle, but just a sign that a lot of people hold the same opinions on recent threads.

I've got a few questions, as we get closer to the start of the event, so that we can work out our "strategy." Will the server be daytime when the event starts? You say that you can create portals. What is the worldborder in the nether, and does it contract? Is the nether 1:8? Will the map be generated with structure-generation on? (i.e. will there be abandoned mineshafts, villages, etc?) Is it possible to spoof the x,y,z coordinates of the observers, so they can't call out positions? Will the worldborder contract smoothly, or in jumps (like, a 40 block contraction every 10 minutes)? If there is a sudden contraction, will there be warnings? Will the "final area" of the map be centered on (0,0)? Will books require leather? Is animal breeding still buffed? Will there be server restarts? Did you come to a decision about how to handle people logging off? Is combat logging against the rules, or is it "chaos" rules? Will there be enchantism? Are there any rules about alts? Will strength potions be nerfed, as they are on Survival? Thank you for your time, we're quite looking forward to this event.

Roleplay is against the rules and this sounds like a really cool event, please don't do this.

Sounds awesome! How will you determine a winner if multiple players are alive at the end of the 4 hours? Number of kills?

Where did you hear it was based on the leaderboard? Slide says in the OP that there'll be applications. I imagine that they wouldn't apply if they can't be online.

That's kind of the point

I agree that giving someone a 24 page long rule book, and having them run a rule-sign obstacle course gives the wrong impression of the server. Their first impression should be an impressive build, or something. I think the in-game rule book can just contain extremely simplified versions of the rules, so that people will actually read it. The book doesn't have to say much more than: No Hacking Keep Chat Respectful Don't Break What Isn't Yours Type "/modreq please flow this" for flowing water Follow All the Rules on nerd.nu/rules To be honest, those are really all the rules that a new player needs to know for their first few hours on the server. Then the rest of the book can contain stuff about what makes the server special and interesting, so that it serves as a "why you should play here" to new players, rather than their first impression of the server being "We have 1,000 rules, follow them all or you're gone!"

I'm 4th, and I haven't killed anyone who was wearing armor.

The first thing I'd do would be to talk to the current head admins, and get up to speed. As normal players, we have basically no idea what the head admins get up to on a day-to-day basis, so I'd try to get more informed before trying to change anything. Then I'd have to talk to the other heads, and find out what they think about the future of the server, since it seems they make decisions by consensus. But that's how the management of nerd is set up. It's set up to maintain the status-quo, and provide players with a consistent experience. However, if I were made solo-head-admin-dictator-for-life-doesn't-need-anyone's-approval, I'd make more drastic changes. First, I would try to make the servers more nimble. I would experiment a lot more. Maybe I would try letting PvE players flow their own water for a week, then gauge the community's reaction. Stuff like that. I'd set aside a percentage of donations (20-30%) to be used for advertising the servers. I'd leave PvE pretty much how it is. PvE has a successful formula of "community-oriented survival-mode building." I might rename it "Vanilla," or "Survival Mode," to better describe what kind of server it is. I'd get rid of Survival. Survival is my favorite server, and the server I play on the most, but it's too close in gameplay to PvE, and PvE is more successful. I would make a PvP server. To be clear, this is NOT Survival. This would be a server whose concentration is exclusively PvP. This could either be a completely Chaos map, a hardcore-deathbans map, or a factions map. I would divide Creative into two worlds. I would add a plot world where WorldEdit is allowed (limited in total number of block changes, to eliminate lag issues). The second world would be an open world, as it is now, with no worldedit, and no flying. In this way, the first world would be a place you can test designs and patterns, and build impressive structures quickly, and the second world would be the "community" world, where you can build together, and the lack of flying would promote the building of infrastructure. I add a rotating experimental fourth server, running all the time. This server would run minigames and other non-persistant gametypes, like Skywars, Hunger Games, Kit PvP, The Walls, etc. I would take votes, and anything wildly popular could be added as a permanent game type. The fact that the servers are now on a Bungeecord setup makes this feasible. On the "permanent" servers, I would KEEP the philosophy that all players are the same, and there are no "donation" ranks. On the rotating server, however, I would allow players to purchase unlocks that benefit the entire server, like new maps, temporary XP boosts for everyone, expanding the worldborder, etc, depending on what gametype it is. Thus the fourth server would serve as a permanent donation event. 100% of the donations would go towards advertising the server, server costs, and development of custom plugins. Finally, I would divide the staff into each server. When someone is made a mod, they would be a mod on their "home" server only. If someone plays on multiple servers, then they are free to earn staff on each server separately. The responsibilities, rules, and culture of each server are too different for "foreign" staff to moderate effectively, and it just causes conflict. To be clear, I'm not recommending that the current Head Admins do this stuff, this is just what I'd do in my feverish dream of being server-dictator.

You only say that because you're losing.

I don't. Based on the demographics of my home town, I doubt very many people would vote for me, even if I did.

I think it's against the forum rules for me to say.

I'm going to skip going into detail on this one. She wasn't faithful.

Pay-To-Win is a loaded term. The term implies an imbalance, that playing on such a server is unfair to the people who are playing for free. I do think servers that offer $1000 ranks, pay-for-staff, etc, are shit servers, but people vote with their disconnect button, and those servers inevitably fail. If you look at the most successful servers, they strike a pretty good balance. They employ full-time staff of developers, making custom gamemodes and server software. They're using Minecraft more as an "engine," for their own games that they've developed. And, like any other game developer, they can only do that at such a scale because they can be reimbursed for their time. On these servers, it looks like you're paying for little bonuses, but what you're really paying for is thousands of man-hours developing games. People can pay for small advantages, for the ability not to take fall damage, or get access to a different MMO class, or the ability to veto maps on minigames. These perks don't harm the free players, or make the game unfair for them. In fact, it's in their best interest to make the game fun for noobs, so they'll stick around. In order to kill the minority of servers that fall in the first category, Mojang is trying to force all servers to give away their products for free. So, if by Pay-to-Win, you mean all servers that offer in-game purchases, then yes, they've been a huge net-positive for Minecraft. They've turned Minecraft from a procedural-generation-tech-demo into a full blown game engine. They're like Day-Z if Mojang made ARMA II.

Probably around 6.

Today, there are really two types of Minecraft server. There are the large server networks, which are run for-profit, and there are the "hobby" servers, which are run for fun. The metrics of success for each is very different. A successful large server network needs to provide an enjoyable experience, offer a unique experience, serve a large number of players, and, of course, needs be financially successful. For a "hobby" server like nerd, the only metric of success that matters is that the server be fun to play on. This can be accomplished with unique gameplay features, or, like nerd, by having a community of people that are fun to play Minecraft with. Yes, someone kept joining mumble with names like "FatherWest," "StepMotherEast," etc. With or without the buns?

Hello! I am roastnewt / FatherSouth. I am primarily a Survival player, but I did play Creative for a little bit back in 2010, when there was no other option. I played on the roastnewt account for a long time, and used my FatherSouth account in order to not be recognized on other servers. Eventually I gave up trying to keep my identities separate, and now play primarily on my FatherSouth account. I have an abundance of free time, so AMA!

We ARE the reddit servers. I think it's time for ( ? | ? ).

Yep. I joined the servers in August 2010, and the servers had already been running for quite a while. This was when Alpha Minecraft first came out, but the servers had been running InDev Minecraft (which was browser-based!) since June 2009!!

The size limit means you can't put images in your comment, either

I think that's exactly the point of a tempban, Wayne. It wouldn't supplant bans, just complement them. If you need someone's assurances that they know the rules and won't break them again, then straight-up ban them. If you just think they need a few minutes, or even an hour or a day to "cool off," then give them a tempban. Like I said in the other thread, a tempban shouldn't be a "free unban," it should be used as a "time out" or "cool down period."

I actually find this extremely interesting, and would love to hear more. I also help run a large network, which includes a PvP and factions server (the factions server has a max player count of 200-300 in the evenings, the network as a whole has 500-600), and we use tempbans all the time, to great effect. Most people come back after their bans are over, and most players do not "re-offend" more than once within a year. All of our peers in the server community (of similar size) use tempbans too. Since there are only a few dozen servers of this size or greater, we have close, professional relationships with most of their owners. I'd be interested to know which server you ran.

So, uh Regardless of all that, I think having the ability to make players "cool off" or "sit in time-out" with a tempban, without having to go through a whole ban/appeal rigamarole would be a nice tool for mods to have.

The issue that I spoke about was the fact that this system is almost entirely unique to nerd, and new players don't KNOW that's how it works. They think the ban is permanent, and that the appeals process is like the appeals process in a court of law, i.e., a place to argue their innocence. Like I said,