Tharine

Putting this in Mod Chat as we're not doing anything private that we need to keep staff-only, and it might interest others to see what we need to do in order to make sure we have everything prepared day of the launch. I would propose that we take down the current chaos events perhaps at least an hour prior to the proposed launch time for the new revision, to ensure that we get everything covered in time. I'm unsure how many tech admins are going to be available to help us with this launch, but if any of you would like to begin preparations earlier, by all means let's do so! I'll plan to be waking up roughly 3 hours before launch time, so I should be around to help out from around that time onwards (following the mandatory cup of tea, of course). That said, here are the things that I think we should ensure are ready for final launch, please feel free to correct me on anything or suggest anything else to consider, i'm horribly forgetful at the best of times: Bring down s.nerd.nu, load up the prepared map, set up the appropriate config things (I know we've been messing around with a few different things on event.nerd.nu), and whitelist for staff only. Test that WorldGuard regions are still working properly, particularly the spawn and spawn_nopvp ones. Double check region flags for spawn and its child region(s). Check that warp signs at spawn still function correctly. Check that the nether works alright. Check that portals all connect and work fine. Check that pvp is enabled. Check that things like TNT and creeper block damage are disabled. Check that crop trampling is disabled. Check that PvPTimer is set so that respawn invulnerability is enabled, but the first-join protection is turned off (will be turned back on a few days following map launch). Check that ModReq is running alright. Check that Enchantism is working and running the most recent build and updated config. Check to see if Rebalance Villagers affects already spawned villagers (not an issue if it does, just worth checking). /thor buzzie71 for good measure.

I won't speak as to whether such a thing is possible, but putting limits on people's gameplay is not something I am personally keen on seeing happen. Hard no from me personally on the idea of alt-tracking too - i've no need to monitor or track who your alt accounts are unless you're using them for evading a ban or malicious/rule-breaking purposes. I'm not comfortable with the idea of us freely monitoring what accounts you own, unless you're doing something wrong with them, that's your business and we don't need to know.

Took far longer than necessary for me to revisit this post, but i've been catching up on old threads in order to get everything organised for the new revision, and I feel this is a good one to prioritise updating. We'll move ahead with giving moderators access to the Survival modreqs page, maintaining the current address of [redacted] (or perhaps if a change in name is desired, that's fine). I've moved this thread over to the Private Mod Chat section of the forums, so moderators are now free to view and comment on this thread. Emphasis is to be made on the fact that unlike the Creative and PvE modreqs pages, this is not a public webpage for modreqs. The reason it was removed in the first place (and the reason it will not revert back to being listed at [redacted]) is because players were making use of it to harass each other about accusation-based modreqs. I'm not sure why the link was removed from moderators entirely in the first place, as this webpage was intentionally very public prior to being taken down and mods were not at fault for its removal, but there is a distinct lack of trust in our moderators as a whole based on the actions of the few that i'm not going to support, especially when it begins to hinder everyone else's ability to moderate. That's obviously an entire other issue in itself, but i've heard this in other forms of conversation as one of the things to consider in making this link available to moderators, and i'm not in favour of that stance at all. If you're found to be passing this link out to non-staff members for viewing, then we will understandably have to take your position as a staff member into consideration. PvP servers are a breeding ground for hacking accusations, and players need to feel comfortable reporting such issues to moderators without concern of being further targeted of the person they're reporting. Chat gets out of hand every now and again as well, and issues of sexual harassment (among other forms of harassment) are not uncommon at all - for similar reasons, this one particularly moreso than others, players should feel safe reporting such things to us. Obviously, most people go about doing the latter through means other than the modreq system, but this isn't always the case and the point still stands. If we were/are able to filter out the modreqs so that these more 'private' ones weren't visible, I would be more than happy to restore the regular Survival modreqs page, but as it stands, this needs to be kept to staff only for the aforementioned reasons - so please respect that, and do not pass this link onto non-staff.

With Survival's Revision 22 launching this weekend, the chaos events running on s.nerd.nu will understandably be coming to an end. The current round hosting PvE's Revision 10 map will be the last, and around a couple of hours after this post goes up, we'll be setting up the appropriate item signs for the free-for-all TNT mess that usually accompanies the end of each round. We hope that everyone has enjoyed the chaos events so far, and that this was an interesting change of pace from how we usually handle the time inbetween old and new revisions. If you haven't already had the chance to experience some of the changes we're bringing in with the launch of Revision 22 (particularly Enchantism), now is a good time to test them out without concern of how it will affect your regular gameplay. Keep up-to-date with any changes on the subreddit and forums, as well as in-game using the command /alert list - which will show all of the messages in the [server] broadcast rotation. I'll be making another post on the topic of Revision 22 in particular later today, just to round some things up and reiterate a few points ahead of tomorrow's launch, so keep an eye out for that when it gets put up. This thread has been cross-posted from the subreddit here, and I will be doing the same with the post for Revision 22. As always, I hope everyone is having an enjoyable end to the week! Signalling the end of an era - chaos puppies, over and out. Previous threads for the Chaos Events: Revision 21 End of Revision Chaos - Round 2 of Chaos - Round 3 - Round 4 - Round 5 - Round 6 - Round 7 (Current)

Prompted by Barlimore's recent post for their Creative admin nominations, we would like to hear from people who they might be interested in seeing joining the Survival admin team. Tradition dictates that we have three server admins at all times, so with cmchappell having left the position early last month, we're officially down by one. However, Draykhar and myself have long been of the mindset that we won't restrict ourselves to simply three admins if there exists a need for more. While we've not participated in any formal discussion on the topic just yet (what with Draykhar having been on vacation until recently, and my tasks being otherwise prioritised), we would like to follow Barlimore's lead and get some official input from the playerbase. I know that some people will have already spoken to either myself or Draykhar about this sort of thing - whether as of recent, or just as a general topic of conversation that comes up quite often - but I would like to hear from those people again, as well as anyone else who hasn't already, to be certain that you're still interested in seeing those people become admins. As a sort of 'two birds, one stone' sort of thing, and as i've received some feedback on this for the most recent mod nominations post in particular, I will also welcome any names for who people might like to see brought on as moderators (whether Survival-specific or not). If you have in mind someone you would like to join us on the Survival admin team, or have some names for suggestion to become moderators, please send me a personal message through the forums with those names. Your input can be completely anonymous if you would prefer, but please state in your message if you would like that to be the case, so that I know to include this when I pass your suggestions onto the other admins. I know there have been some concerns about ideas/issues/suggestions not being well-met because of individual characteristics - if you're worried about this, please let me know and your suggestions will be known only to myself and Draykhar (or just to myself, if you would prefer),

I'd just like to reiterate that when asked about this last night, I stated that at that very moment there had been no changes made to potions. We're not overlooking this matter, but come on guys, as with several other changes for proposal, there has been a significant lack of discussion from the playerbase on what they actually want. Most of the feedback i've gotten is 'strength is too overpowered' but not any formal suggestions for how to remedy the problems it causes. I've appreciated the feedback given here wholeheartedly, but I honestly wish more people would provide their input on this sort of thing. I took a greater look into this last night, and the buff to strength potions is apparently a result of the Attributes system Mojang brought into place with 1.6. I don't quite understand how this works, but if this is possible to mess with on our end, we can definitely fix it at its root and lower the buff. I'll be asking the tech admins about this, and what the best solution might be (including providing your link, thank you IDANUB), but in the event that a proper solution can't be met within the next week - likely as a result of indecisiveness about the best method of fixing this, rather than not wanting to do so - we'll probably fall to using banning the brewing of strength potions as our backup until that's sorted out. Personally speaking, i'm all for bringing strength back down to its 1.5 status. The whole point of Enchantism is to make getting good armour easier. People have been complaining for the longest time that no one wants to fight in good armour because it's so easily lost as a result of lag or similar issues, and this should hopefully be remedied somewhat by making it easier to replace that armour. We can adjust the levels to balance that out, but again, I need solid feedback from people on what they want to do with this. I updated the config file for some more reasonable experience requirements here, but that's definitely open for more improvement. The -1 signifies an enchantment that will be removed, which i've only done so far for the redundant ones (i.e. Silk Touch 2-4, Flame 2-4). I was hoping to get this put onto chaos for this current round (not sure if it has been yet) to give everyone a proper feel for the difference in requirements compared to default. That said, let me know what you would like changed/removed from that updated config. I've tried to make the levels all pretty reasonable, e.g. Infinity is a damn good enchant and deserving of level 30 (especially because you can choose to get it); Punch II might be more deserving of 20 levels because it's a good enchant, but not as important as Power, Flame or Infinity would be on a bow. I've left the non-vanilla-levelled enchants in there just for now because there was mixed feedback about them. We can definitely move to remove them if they seem far too out of place. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to incorporate the need for bookshelves into Enchantism, you would need to direct your questions about that to smiler100 in particular, as he wrote it.

(Cross-posted from the subreddit, so please forgive any formatting errors) Proposed launch time and date: Sunday 11th August, 9:30am Australian Central Standard Time <- Click to convert to your own timezone! Hellooooo everybody! With map preparation finalised, and with our update to 1.6.2 accomplished safe and sound, we're finally able to set a proper date we can launch Revision 22 by. This time and date (seen above) is pretty much as secure as it can be, the only thing that might delay or hold us back is one of the admins falling ill or otherwise being unable to make it unexpectedly. If something comes up we'll let you know as soon as possible, but we're not waiting on anything in particular to get this revision up and running. However, we are announcing this a week in advance for a couple of reasons. One being that we're done with map preparation and we would like to make that known, another being that a weekend works best all around for map launches, and it would have been an unfair amount of short notice to spring the new revision on you this weekend. Chaos events will be ongoing on s.nerd.nu until then, and we're looking to bring in a more reasonable config for Enchantism in the upcoming round, so keep an eye out for the post for round 7 when we have more concrete plans for when we'll be available to set that up. Have a complimentary chaos puppy in the mean time :) General details about the upcoming revision Map size will be the standard 4000x4000 (i.e. from -2000 to +2000 on both the X and Z axes) We're running with the four cardinal roads this map, with portals located at the 300 and 800 block marks down each road. There are also four 'hidden' nether portals further out up for discovery. Roads are protected up to 25 blocks above and on average 5 blocks below their surface. Roads are protected much further down in the ocean biome(s), check those out when you get a chance. If you want to build in the space above the road between yourself and a neighbour, you must have their consent before doing so. We'll also monitor any builds that take up large portions of the road and contact anyone we feel is taking their claims with these a bit too far. Portal zones are protected up to sky limit, but only around 6 blocks below their surface. Similarly, we'll monitor any cases where it seems people might be abusing the protections offered by these areas. Changes being brought in with the new revision Enchantism - Currently setup and working perfectly fine on the chaos events, we'll be going ahead with this for the new revision with the aforementioned updated config (accounting for any suggested further changes, of course). PvPTimer - We'll hold off on bringing this on board until at least a few days after the map launch, to ensure things are as dangerous as ever in those early couple of days. However, once it's in effect, players who have first joined the server will have (an optional, they can turn it off if they choose) 1 hourof gameplay free from PvP. PvPTimer also comes with an option for protection upon respawn - we'll be keeping this as well unless there's any serious concern with it. Rebalance Villagers has apparently been facing some issues. Per totemo, "RebalanceVillagers is not building because their repository for downloading dependencies has been down for many days at this stage. I'll try to work around it when I have a moment." It seems to be mostly out of our hands, but if we can't get this ready prior to map launch, we'll progress with vanilla-style villagers. Crafting recipes for horse armour and saddles should hopefully be available upon map launch, if not shortly after. We'll let you know what these are when we've come to an agreement on them. Creeper spawners - An idea suggested a short while ago, we've gone ahead with putting a few of these around the map. Being that abandoned mineshafts are much more easy to locate than individual mob spawners, what i've done is replaced a number of cave spider spawners across the map with ones that will spawn creepers. These are spread out randomly across the map, and i've tried to ensure a reasonable distribution in each of the four quadrants of the map. I can't guarantee which abandoned mineshafts out of all of them will be discovered, so the numbers i've replaced are done with that in mind. We've dropped the 5 minute timer on despawning carts, however this change was made following putting the map up on event.nerd.nu. I've repopulated a number of abandoned mineshafts within the proximity of spawn with physical chests (all with sweet loot) to account for the chest minecarts that were lost, and hopefully those further out into the map should be unaffected. Things that aren't changing/will carry over into the new revision Your clan chat should still work fine from the previous revision, i've noted that these have persisted throughout the chaos events. Books will still only require 3 paper to be crafted. PlumpXP will still be in effect, continuing an experience plump of 8X the vanilla amount (correct me if this is wrong, couldn't find the appropriate subreddit post for this). Armoured head drops will continue to be in effect. Any additional changes similar to this can be found listed on the second floor of the spawn building. Some pointers for the first day of the revision To combat the concerns of a complicated spawn setup whilst maintaining that we do need the additional floors to hold information relevant to newer players, there is a warp sign directly off the respawn podium for each of the roads that will teleport you down two floors right before the drop. Roughly about a week after we've settled into this new revision, we will update the signs so that the warp takes you down to belowthe drop, and into the PvP-enabled zone. This is to make sure that people using the warp signs aren't given a massive advantage on the first day over those that prefer to walk their way down, as well as to give a second chance to those that might have accidentally clicked the sign. Land claims - Bolded because it's a hassle every revision, land claims are by far the biggest issue we have to deal with as staff on the first day of the new map. These are many, and they are often complicated and require upwards of 30 minutes of our time to dedicate to, so please, in the interest of freeing up the workload for us and making things easier on everyone involved - talk to the person you're contesting the land claim with first and see if you can't come to a resolution between yourselves. Getting a moderator involved often means we'll check the LogBlock timestamps of whoever placed what first, and more often than not all we'll end up doing is separating your claims down the middle if they overlap. Please try to be reasonable with one another if you end up having claim issues, and please make a modreq rather than personally message a moderator if you need it to be resolved on your behalf. Modreqs go into a queue, and we handle them in the order they come in. Hopefully i've covered what needs to be said about this upcoming revision, and please, if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask! I'm incredibly forgetful at the best of times, so chances are i've forgotten something completely obvious. Some additional interesting ideas about changes have been thrown about behind the scenes in the past couple of days that we could consider bringing onto Survival with this upcoming revision, but i've held off from mentioning them until there's anything concrete there. I'll be keeping everyone up to date with any further changes, both here and on the forums! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend :D Previous subreddit discussions for Revision 22: Revision 22 - Keeping everyone up to date! (6 days ago) General Post: Round 3 of Chaos; General updates regarding Revision 22 (19 days ago) Revision 22 - Spawn, Arenas, and more! (1 month ago)

For the crafting recipes, there was a subreddit post about this roughly a month ago, and this response got a lot of positive reaction. Would we like to go ahead with those as the crafting recipes? I couldn't find one for what saddles were meant to be in the snapshot, but in thinking about them from a realistic standpoint, maybe leather and a couple of pieces of iron for the stirrups? Edit: Putting this here as a reminder, we should have PvPTimer turned off for the start of the revision, and turn it back on around 5-7 days after launch so that the early days are still as hectic and dangerous as ever. Edit 2: To the tech admins: Barring anything you want to double check, the map should be ready to save/backup and taken off event to free up room for others to use the server. I've done some testing on the spawn protections and things look good. I'd like to make sure we get some time before map launch to do some final last minute checks of protections, particularly pvp free zones, as well as set up the appropriate warps, /alerts, and locks for the chests in the admin room and spawn secrets once the map's up on s.nerd.nu.

I wasn't aware of that at all, which is a bit worrying. Was this change made in response to [redacted Private Mod Chat link]? I know we got no official resolution to it. We've definitely had the despawning feature enabled for chest minecarts for several revisions now (prior to hoppers being introduced), as I remember fielding a couple of complaints a while back when players weren't aware it was on - so I figured it was a remnant of that. I'll throw out an ask to the other tech admins as well, but with this said, would you be comfortable with me making an announcement that we'll be going ahead with the proposed time? That's a shame. I'll make a point of mentioning this in the announcement post I end up making, so that people are aware that it's out of our hands.

To separate my comments for clarity, everything map-wise should be good to go aside from allowing Draykhar to fix the missing signs on his clan hall, and I would like to double check with Mrloud15 if he is completely done with his portal (it looks it, but just want to be certain). We'll give the go ahead to backup/save (whatever it is that's necessary) and pull the Survival map off of event so that it can be used for CTF planning when both of those are done. I've handed the updated Enchantism config over to totemo to hopefully host on the next round of chaos, PvPTimer is again good to go, Rebalance Villagers apparently is having some issues but we'll see how that goes. We're probably looking to launch the new revision next weekend, at around this time (it should convert from my time in Adelaide to yours) - depending on if we have the tech availability. We won't confirm that without making sure we do have tech admins available at that time, so that we don't have to reschedule. Both Draykhar and myself will be available on that time/day.

Ah, I actually went out to check a bunch of abandoned mineshafts today and found that any chest minecarts I went near ended up despawning. I'm not sure if that's some kind of issue with regards to 1.6, but from what I understand it's only chest minecarts (and not regular ones) that spawn in abandoned mineshafts, and they had definitely despawned once I loaded the chunk and gave it a few seconds. totemo's since turned this off for us (it's caused us some unnecessary issues in the past anyway), but it might be good to test it again at some point once we've moved the Survival map off of event.

I keep forgetting we even have that section of the forums. I'm putting off the Survival update post I intended to make today until tomorrow when I can finalise some details with totemo, but i'll make sure to cross-post it there and i'll add all the previous posts i've made as of late as links as a sort of archive. I'll do the same when we announce the next round of chaos. Thank you for keeping us well organised on this front, I know you've prompted similar use of the forums elsewhere that many of us have forgotten about.

beastbruiser came to me with the concern recently that we perhaps disable the feature we have in KitchenSink for despawning carts after five minutes, as abandoned mineshafts (since 1.5) come with chest carts on rails, instead of (or perhaps in addition to?) the chests you would usually find in them. I've considered this and I can see no major issues with removing this feature, cartspam is not an issue on Survival like it is on Creative, particularly because of the cost of making a bunch of minecarts.

Hey jjoe2012, thank you for appealing. Your ban came from further logging to avoid PvP encounters with other players after you had been given an earlier warning that this was against the rules. You also apparently evaded your ban using another account, which will stay banned as per our policies on ban evasion. It's been almost four months since your ban was issued, so i'm not going to keep you banned any longer. Please keep in mind that any further logging to avoid combat on our regular Survival server (we're currently running chaos events on s.nerd.nu, where logging to avoid combat is not against the rules), will earn you another ban. Make sure to familiarise yourself with the rules in spawn (both on our chaos events, and when the new Survival map eventually goes live) when you're online next, you're unbanned Ban reason for future reference: Ban for jjoe2012 on c.nerd.nu for Repeated incidents of combat logging after warning nerd.nu/appeal by Tharine on 2013-04-12 14:16:15 (no more bans, 1 notes)

Just confirming that this was also an issue on the Survival usage stats before they stopped working. Not sure to what extent, but the numbers would fluctuate at odds with real time (e.g. an impossible amount of numbers in the 24 hours between checking it last).

Don't quote me on this as being exactly correct, but I imagine it's tied in with the fact that you also cannot give more than a certain number of downvotes per day - which I believe is there as an effort to stop people from downvoting everything in a blind fit of rage. Were you able to determine at all roughly how many upvotes you gave before receiving that? I'm kind of curious to see what the limit is and if it's reasonable/something we can be flexible with.

Rewriting the checklist here just because the formatting went wonky after I added the tick marks into the list. I'll highlight green for done, orange for in progress, and red for not started yet: Selecting designs for structures is already completed fully. WorldEdit/Pasting in: Spawn (kiwi99's) Arena (Unce's) Clan Hall (Draykhar's) - Draykhar is just repairing the signs that were lost in the schematic save. Roads and nether portal areas - all road portals now lit and working too Building/Creating: Nether roads and developing centre of nether to look nice Admin room Guideline room for new players - utilised second layer of spawn for more in-depth beginner signs. Spawn secrets - Have at least a few spawn secrets in now, if you need to finish any please do so :) Hidden portals - JohnAdams1735 has the -/- quadrant; TheRandomatrix has +/+, Ozomahtlii has -/+, Mrloud15 covered the remaining +/- quadrant. Protections: Spawn, including no-PvP zone Arena - Just want to double check these when I have the opportunity. Clan Hall Roads Portals Nether roads and portals Hidden nether portals - All are protected both top- and nether-side! End portal - will protect it once it's found and opened by players, as we've had some minor issues with this before. I already have the location of the end portal noted, so i'll be sure to check back on it once the dragon's been killed. Plugins: Testing PvPTimer on chaos, looks to be working well. Developed a config for Enchantism that we should get put in for the next round of chaos with more realistic level requirements for enchants and took out the redundant ones (e.g. Silk Touch 2, 3, and 4). Rebalance Villagers config prepared ahead of time, see Draykhar's comments below.

Personally speaking, i've always been of the mindset similar to buchanman's in that i'd like to see positive (adding things in) changes made to the server where an issue arises, before trying to remove parts of the game, particularly when it comes to something so contentious and complicated as enchanting. I don't like the idea of capping enchantments or potions for this reason. However, i'd like to make it clear - as whenever myself or Draykhar comment on these kinds of threads it tends to get taken as the final word, which is why we hold off on commenting for so long - that this is my personal stance, not an official one. Speaking properly as an admin, I can see that changes need to be made and I would like to help work out a solution that best fits as many people as possible. I had toyed with the idea of suggesting a sort of 'grace period' of two weeks into the new revision, where we allowed everyone the opportunity to experience all of the newer plugin changes we're making (Enchantism being of particular note) without these proposed changes in effect. However, in thinking it over a great deal more I realised that all this would mean is people would stock up on Protection IV gear within those first two weeks and hold onto it for the remainder of the revision, essentially meaning people who joined following that grace period would have no hope of surviving a fight. Instead, I would like to suggest that we perhaps take inspiration from the chaos events that are currently running and (providing that we have tech admin availability, and of course the ready plugins) make sure we host a decent 1.6.2 round of chaos with all of the changes we're going ahead with making for the new revision. I suggest this not from the perspective of someone who doesn't trust the judgement of those that have already commented here, but because our Survival community is a bit more segmented than it might immediately appear. I recognise the handful of people that have commented here with their experiences so far, but I know there are a bunch more players on Survival that play either predominantly solo, or are not anywhere near as involved in the subreddit/forums, ultimately meaning that they might not have had the chance to experience 1.6 gameplay on other servers so far. I'd like to give everyone in our community the chance to experience the 1.6 changes, so that they can make an informed decision on what will affect them. With that said, and given that it's been a couple of weeks since this thread started, I would like to ask those more experienced in trying out the 1.6 PvP changes (i've played only 1.6 PvE so far myself) whether the initial proposal of "protection III with sharpness II swords with no strength or regen potions" is still considered a good solution. I see that buchanman has recently suggested removing strength II potions only - what do others think of this idea / does anyone have any different suggestions for how we can work around this problem?

I've mentioned in a couple of my posts on the subreddit (and to whoever has personally asked me) that i'm planning to assess our whereabouts with the new Survival revision come the end of this week (Friday), and i'll still be going ahead with that as we've gotten things up and running properly on the event server and things are being pasted in and built as we speak. For anyone interested in seeing progress prior to my making a post, here is my checklist for Revision 22, and i'll be including the progress on that (minus any details that need to be kept a surprise) in my upcoming subreddit post. There was some brief consideration of the order of server updates/CTF stuff in the -admins IRC earlier today, but it didn't sound concrete and i'd like for one of the Head Admins to be able to weigh in on that here if they have the chance. I'm on a roll with map building today, so i've not bothered to stop and ask further about whether we have any solid plans for that sort of thing.

Said I would corral things on Monday (it being at the time of my comment, 8:09pm in South Australia, 11:39am in the UK, and 3:39am in California), and i'll check in when it reaches somewhere into the afternoon in California, but this is how things look thus far - counting comments of support, rather than explicit 'votes' as some of us commented in support of multiple designs for a particular structure: Spawn: kiwi99 - 4 comments of support Unce - 1 comment of support graymansnel - 1 comment of support zifnab06 - 0 comments of support Arena(s): Unce - 3 comments of support Ozomahtlii - 1 comment of support Hydralisk - 1 comment of support Clan Hall*: Draykhar - 3 comments of support maxweberh - 0 comments of support kiwi99 - 0 comments of support * I couldn't include smiler100's comments for Clan Hall as they weren't definitive - if you have a particular preference for this, please let me know! Roads: Tharine - 2 comments of support kiwi99 - 1 comment of support Several mixed comments about ideas for road structure. Because there are so few of us involved in this decision making process, i'd like to kind of get a reign on things and properly decide what we should go ahead with. With that said, and keeping in mind the comments of support as above**, I would like to propose that we go ahead with the following: Spawn: kiwi99 - and to take a look at how we could address making spawn more simple and straightforward. Arena(s): Unce - and to set up a barrier for the stands so that players can't walk onto the arena floor, and also to adjust it to be operated as both a hosted and a public arena. To be placed at the end of one of the roads. Clan Hall: Draykhar - to be placed at the end of one of the roads. Roads: kiwi99's road design, using the supports from mine. To go ahead with a strict, four cardinal road design with the portals at 300, and 800 marks. **I'll factor in any more comments that come in between my posting now and when I check in again later. How does this sound to everyone? I've tried to counter some of the issues that particular suggestions brought up, and tried to factor in as many of the different positives that each design provided. I would like a genuine 'yes/no/let's do this instead' sort of comment from everyone that wants to be involved, as time is of the essence and I would really like to start getting stuff pasted into the map this week. I know that totemo is going to be alternating between the new S map and the CTF for hosting on event.nerd.nu, and he has said he'll give fair warning to switching between the two, but with that in mind i'd like to use as many opportunities as possible to get stuff worked on. I have a lot of spare time this week to work on things, so I don't mind at all if I need to shoulder the bulk of it, but the decision making is something I feel unfair doing by myself (as it can imply personal selectiveness/bias, and I wouldn't want anyone to feel that's the case at all). So with that all said, please do let me know what you think of this, I really appreciate everyone's input so far :)

Went to double check the submissions thread for any last minute entries (and to check up on BSchilli2's design, but i've received no response from them on that), and there have been no new ones but I noticed that I did neglect to include Graymansnel's entry when I looked the first time. I've added it to my earlier comment but for ease of viewing, here are some screenshots I took of the design he made for spawn. To comment on it, I do really dig this design. My major concern is the limited room for rules and explaining some of the important changes that were listed in Revision 21's spawn room, but I can see us working around that by including the aforementioned warp-to-and-back room for more in-depth guidelines for new players. I think I would still prefer to go with kiwi99's design over this one, but this is a very nice and compact spawn.

Spawn I think I love kiwi99's design the most out of the submissions, but I do understand the concern of a complicated spawn. I know the issues regarding complicated spawns had a lot to do with the separate tiers Revision 21's spawn had, as even regular long-time players would get confused when I tried to explain what tier I was referring to when both the punt and KotH were introduced. I do know from speaking with kiwi99 (back in May when he first told me about the design he was doing) that he had no issues with us editing the spawn as necessary if he went ahead with submitting it. I think if we intend to change anything about the designs given to us, that it would be great to ask the others ahead of time too. With that in mind, I can see us changing the floors in kiwi99's spawn so that they're not so complicated. I've walked through the building and it does face the same issues that Revision 21's spawn had, and I think if we broke those down and took a look at what might work best, we could get around the issue. I do really like Unce's design for the ease of exit it provides, but I worry about how much extra policing that would require to ensure things like spawn camping don't happen in the absence of moderators being available. And that sort of thing doesn't end at adding region flags, people will taunt each other incessantly about that sort of thing and toe the line wherever they can, and i'd rather not deal with it outright than try to consider the number of scenarios we'd face for that with a spawn that's so open like this. It would be a lovely design if we had the most ideal playerbase ever, but we simply don't. Arena(s) I do really like the idea of using one arena for both scheduled events and public use, and if we use 'public' as it's default state, that means we only need to change things around when staff need it, rather than the other way around. I'm a bit conflicted on which of the arenas I prefer, but I feel like Unce's hits the most points as possible. The arena floor is quite flat and easily changeable; the stands (although actually missing a barricade it seems, but we can add one easily) are pretty straightforward and easy to walk the entirety of; and the arena itself isn't that large, which would eliminate a lot of the annoyances people have with people pearling and running away (which, whilst still possible, would be quite limited). Clan Hall I think of all of the designs, Draykhar's would be my pick. I really like the theme (heads on pikes, medieval-type walls) and how that reflects on what Survival tends to be like at times. I think all of the clan hall submissions are great, but i'd have to go with Draykhar's design of the three. Roads Said I wouldn't comment on this one as i've submitted a design, but i'll only iterate that the railway thing was more for novelty than anything. I can't imagine them ever going properly used, I just dig railways haha. Other suggestions As for the creeper spawner idea, I wouldn't see any huge issues with going out and randomly changing spawners to produce creepers instead, but I feel like that would be a huge task to locate them and appropriately select what is a decent distribution of creeper spawners versus other, regular ones. I'll look into this a bit more when I have the chance and see if there hasn't been anyone else who's wanted to do something similar. I believe Draykhar had the idea of allowing people to request that a particular type of spawner (pre-determined and unchanging, e.g. zombie spawners) they found be turned into a creeper spawner. I do like the idea as it has a lot of benefits (simplicity, no implied favourtism as people actually have to go and find those spawners themselves and request the change), but I have contemplated how well met the idea of moderating 'vanilla' aspects of the game like this might be. I know we obviously have an effect on how things run as it is as moderators, but on Survival we don't really change parts of the game at request like that unless it's to fix damage caused by other players. In response to Cheesety's suggestion about horses, spawn is actually going to be in a plains biome this time around so there will be horses running around as it is from time to time (when they actually respawn after having been killed off/run away with). There exists separate region flags for denying mob spawning and denying the spawning of particular mobs, so I wouldn't be against setting things up so that horses are the only mobs that spawn there. That would remedy some of the issues of them being a bit hard to come by (especially if killed off), as well as add a bit of a nicer atmosphere if you've got horses mucking around in the spawn region (Goddamn are horses a great addition the the game, seeing them traipse around spawn would be hilarious). As for your comment, Ozomahtlii, I think we'll have to play it by ear and just treat them as we did when cows were a coveted item and not impose any kind of rules on them. They are a rarer spawn than other non-hostile mobs, but not to the point that I would consider adding in a horse spawner, to be honest. When the warps idea came up last time, people were generally pretty clear about not wanting them. I had offered the suggestion in the past of having only two wilderness warps (e.g. North West and South East), but I feel that depends on the road design. Were it a cardinal road system, I might offer this suggestion again, but not if we go with something more grid-like. As a bit of a rounding up point, i'd like to finalise our decisions for what designs we'd like to go ahead with by this Monday (US/Canada Monday, not Australian) as i'd like for us to get working on pasting as much as we can into the map in the next week. If you would like to give some input on these designs, please do so before then. I think by Friday of next week I would really like for us to have a solid grasp on what needs to be done so that we can provide some kind of timeline for the players to expect the new revision to be ready by.

Ah that's a great idea, Barlimore! As a sort of a general list, here's what we need to do in order to make sure this revision's fully prepared: Selecting a design for: Spawn ✓ Arena(s) ✓ Clan Hall - As a sidenote, the intention was to place this at the end of one of the roads, similar to how the public arena typically is. ✓ Road layout - What physical structure we would like the road system to have. ✓ Road design - The actual appearance of the road, including what 'colour' roads we would like to have this time. ✓ WorldEdit-ing/Pasting in: Spawn ✓ Arena(s) Clan Hall Roads (including portals) Centre region of nether and roads (including main portals) Building/Creating: Admin room - Including a chest room for land disputes, as well as a jail, and any additional fun admin room secrets. A room with more extensive guidelines for new players (?) - This one was suggested elsewhere that I thought might be a good idea in lieu of the absent in-game rules book (and in addition to, when it gets added in) as a warp-to-and-back area in the spawn region with some more detailed understanding of what's different on our servers compared to some others (e.g. things like SafeBuckets, the armoured head drops, etc.) Spawn secrets - basically any of the cool hidden spawn features that anyone's interested in creating. I would advise making note of where you build these, just so we don't overlap with each other when making them. Hidden portals - These were admin-only last map, personally mostly from a standpoint of not wanting to ruin the surprise of finding them as mods, but I feel if we make sure to use spoiler tags in here when stating the coordinates (but not the +/- quadrant) then we can keep to working on our own portals and not spoiling the location of the other ones. The hidden portals are usually anywhere between +/- 1500 and the edge of the map, so I would recommend teleporting out that far first and locating somewhere that looks nice for a hidden portal. Honestly, you can totally go all out in designing these, and this is one of the big reasons I don't want to limit these to being admin-only. Here's one of the hidden nether portal sections we built for Revision 16 (taken post-chaos, as I had none saved prior to the map going live it seems). It was an incredible amount of fun to build, and it added a bit of story to the map for those that were interested in that sort of thing. If you're especially keen on designing one of these, please make a comment in this thread to say which quadrant you're picking to work in. No limitations at all on how many people can work on each or anything. I'd only recommend not making whatever you build too large, as it is intended to be hidden (but not too obvious or impossible to find). Protected regions: Spawn - General spawn region as well as an inner, child region for blocking PvP. Arena(s) - Separate regions for stands, arena floor, control box, etc. Clan Hall - Sky limit; perhaps all the way down to bedrock, given size. Roads - 25 blocks above; 5-10 blocks below. Portals - Sky limit; may want to consider ideas suggested by beastbruiser here. Nether roads - 25-50 blocks above; maybe all the way down to bedrock. Hidden nether portals - dependant upon the final design of the area. One end portal Plugins: Ones that we're certainly going ahead with at least at this stage. PvPTimer - Provides protection from PvP for new players, as well as a few other options, including protection upon respawn. Enchantism - Complete rework of the enchanting system. Rebalance Villagers - Takes control over what trades villagers have, how much items are sold/bought for, etc. Placeholder for the combat logging plugin we go ahead with, which will most likely be either Combat Tag or CombatLog. I've been typing this up in the background of doing some other tasks today, so there might be some things i've neglected to think about completely that we need to do, so please comment if there's something alarmingly obvious that i've missed :P I'll add my own comments on the design submissions stuff when i've got a bit more time. Edit: Should have mentioned as well that i've whitelisted on event.nerd.nu everyone who explicitly asked to be added, so if you're not on there currently please state if you would like to be in order to help out.

I hope it stays that way this time, i'll be recommending a permanent ban from our servers if you continue to use xray on them. Unbanned. Previous appeal for future reference: https://nerd.nu/forum/index.php?/topic/73-kyle-yardley-tharine/

Submissions for structures to be included in the upcoming revision One thing that we need to definitely get sorted out is which of the designs submitted in this thread we would like to see put into the new revision. I had given until the launch of the end of revision chaos for submissions to be handed in, as suggested here and stated finally in this most recent post. I got the understanding however from talking with one user that the deadline might have slipped by some who weren’t looking out for it (as I mentioned it in various ‘Survival’ subreddit posts and not explicitly in it’s own post on the subreddit), so i’m just going to put out a brief reminder on the subreddit with an allowance of 3 more days for any further people that might not have caught the deadline previously set. I feel we can review what’s already been submitted and just take into consideration any more that come through in the next three days. The submitted designs/ideas are as follows: Spawn Arena(s) Clan Hall Roads Sidenote: I will not be commenting on this section on the basis that i've submitted designs myself. And for some general comments: beastbruiser suggests the idea of introducing creeper spawners in the new revision. Cheesety provides a response to several components of the new revision, quite detailed and worth the read as in-depth insights like this are rather uncommon. GetaFever advises against using warps as part of our setup this upcoming revision.