TheRandomnatrix

What a fun little coincidence. I've been working on something in singleplayer over the weekend that people familiar with my work on Spire may like. I was planning to let it rot in my world after/if I finished it but I'd be happy to offer it up as a lobby instead. Here are some pics of it so far for those interested However it's a tad bit larger than 300 by 300 as it stands, so I hope that won't be an issue.

I hate iron grinders so very much. People say it's a PvE thing to "conquer the environment". It takes less than a day to "conquer the environment" on P, given minecraft's shitty tech tree. With a couple players you can have a 8-12 pod grinder up in a week or two and never have to worry about it again. If you want to never have to worry about resources play creative mode. Do you want to know what people did before iron grinders, villagers, and OP enchantments? They went out and traded for stuff, or asked for help. You know, actually collaborating with people and not pretending it's singleplayer? Some of my fondest memories from my early days of P were carefully monitoring chat, setting up trade deals, and walking half way across the map to see some town I previously had no incentive to go to. With the ever increasing self sufficiency of the average P player, I see it less and less every rev, and towns have become these isolated bubbles that barely talk to each other(which is a huge problem). I was really happy to hear Rose and a few other towns had an iron problem this rev, because there was actually scarcity to overcome, and there was actual discussion of trading which I haven't seen in a long time bar some bulk cobble/dirt trades. The iron golem spawner idea was terrible btw. Classic rich get richer which is even worse than just having normal grinders or the tiered ones of r18. It's a repeat of end of rev r10 Wellspring where they had that ridiculous amount of custom spawners. Seriously, can we just try a rev without iron grinders? We'd be so much better off. I don't care about what's "vanilla" anymore, since clearly we don't actually bother with that these days. Vanilla mechanics can be just as much a detriment to the community as it can be to the server performance. I barely considered iron grinders a vanilla mechanic anyways, since they've always been based on an exploit and the only reason they weren't removed is because /r/minecraft got in a hissy fit over having their easy mode iron removed.

Looks great. As others have mentioned, so long as we avoid the cancer that popular servers are known for with doing with their 10 colors screaming "come here so we can rip you off!" I think we'll be fine.

Silver don't leave me!

Greetings PvEers! We’re about a month into rev 17 and while there is still PLENTY of time to build, we’re looking for feedback so we can start planning for the next map and make it even more awesomer. The things we’re mainly looking for feedback on are: Iron grinders: Did you guys like the setup we had this rev? Was it confusing to use? Should the cost:benefit ratio be adjusted? Are they too easy to get considering their benefit or are they fine the way they are? The nether: How’d you guys like this rev’s nether? Should we spend some more time making a more fleshed out nether in the future? Custom flora: Aside from the initial leaf decay issues, how’d you guys like the trees? Is it something we should continue to do in future revs? Portals: Always a hot topic. Too many? Too few? With additional increase in rail infrastructure this rev alongside easier access to iron grinders we’re curious how people have felt about them. Ore distributions: How’d you guys feel about ores distros this rev? MapWorld: Is this something we should do in future revs? Terrain: We went with mostly vanilla this rev with some WP stuff in. What kind of features would you suggest we consider for next rev? Too much ocean/too little ocean? Too flat/too hilly? Spawn: Was the flowercopter cool or not? Is silver a silly padmin? Was food accessible enough at the start? Spawn challenges. Did you guys like those this rev? Should we do more in the future? Custom mobs: How’d you guys like those? Should we try to introduce more types? Did they spawn too much/too little? Should current configurations of existing mobs be adjusted? Do you have any ideas for future variants? /help: How are you guys liking /help instead of rulebooks? Are we missing any sections or useful info?

The last time we visited this issue the PAdmins were quite receptive to the idea. I believe it was smiler who was working on a way to disable TNT exploding but was unable to deal with an edge case with Redstone before leaving. If the plugin was complete or another avenue was found I'm sure we'd be happy to revisit the topic.

This bugs me that you say this. I've seen both ends of rules see their extremes. Towns have a tendency to strongarm independents on the outskirts of town during an expansion. I saw this many times while i worked with seneca back when it was the largest town on the server. Independents have just as much say as a town does, and saying otherwise just means that it becomes a game where the bigger group bullies the other into submission. That's not a kind of environment I wish to promote. However, I will admit I've also seen a few large group projects(town or otherwise) get stalled indefinitely because someone built a shack on or next to a claim. A problem with towns is that they are projects that expand as a rev goes on, and they constitute land that might not even get used. There is also difficultly in determining what constitutes terraforming. I recall a discussion amongst the padmins a while back and we had problems reaching a clear consensus. Survival has much fewer issues because usually the disputes are between two small groups, usually just two individuals. Towns are very rare on S and usually isolated. Building is not a central concept to S, nor do they use protection plugins like P does.

If we're going to talk more specifically about portals, it's worth mentioning this thread: https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/1584-thoughts-on-portals-and-the-nether/ It's from like a year and a half ago, but it's still pretty relevant. It touches up on a lot of different problems and suggested solutions. I consider portals to have massive influence over map infrastructure, and it's a very careful balance between making enough to satisfy basic travel needs, but making too many devalues building infrastructure(roads, rails, canals, etc) that both give people something to do, as well as showing off the industrial might this server has. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this problem, as a player and now a padmin. A primary concern with benchmark based portals is that Minecraft is a sandbox game and resources are essentially limitless. Were it something like basic town infrastructure (farms, houses, whatever), that can lead to too many places getting portals, as well as opening up potential accusations of bias. It's a big can of worms and can lead to a lot of drama and paperwork. The reason current portals have announce signs is because it cut portal drama down to basically zero. Both event based portals and nether ratio(actually suggested this to the last batch of padmins. Stole it from loud) are something that can definitely be toyed with. The events would have to be considered fair, and the ratio can be implemented with a plugin. I would not co sided something as extreme as 1:1 though. Something in between 1 and 8 is reasonable. These would need to be discussed with the other padmins though(which is kinda what the thread is for I suppose :p) A custom nether is also not out of the question currently.

Just had a crazy thought(so normal by my standards). A difficulty when dealing with portals is that they tend to discourage infrastructure. What if not all portals were active at any given time? They could rotate once every <insert time span>, making them only use able every now and then. The pattern would be easily predictable to make event planning easier, but general purpose map traveling would be more difficult. I'm just throwing that idea out there to chew on, since I haven't heard it mentioned before.

Advertising is worthless if we can't accurately gauge how useful it is. I know we have fortytwos thing for server pop over time, and I know we count unique visits over a rev. I propose we start recording the number of unique visits on each server with timestamps, tracking unique visits of all time(so, a veteran joining from last rev does not change anything). Then we take those timestamps and divide them up into intervals to better understand trends and growth. I feel this is necessary as a function of advertising(which we badly need), otherwise we're spending time, effort, and money on products we don't know the effectiveness of.

I knew tom was from CSI:Miami!

To clarify, our network is set up around c.nerd.nu. If you look on mcbouncer it will also show us as c.nerd.nu, for example.

For starters, raw cash prizes are really bad. Not everyone has the ability to claim said cash. Steam gift cards/games of certain value are far better as everyone can make a steam account with relative ease. Second, irl prizes for general fun stuff(SAL, spleef club, whatever) are a recipe for claims of foul play and drama. Basically the opposite of the intended effect. Third, the only thing I can see justifying a prize that costs money is if we're outsourcing for something that directly helps the servers and would require semi-professional help(for example graphics design). Even then a lot of people are willing to work for free if it means helping the servers. And fourth, when we were raising money for the last drive we specifically mentioned that it would be primarily server cost+advertising. Using it for unnecessary stuff that wasn't mentioned is a good way to make people mad.

Suggestion: Been toying with this for a while, thought I'd share since CTF is on the way. Was thinking we could have a mumble karaoke night either this week(or for a future event) where people can donate money to have a chosen staff member sing a song of their choosing(within reason). Maybe at something like $5 a song. Ever wanted to hear scher sing gangnam style? Sort of a silly way to raise funds while showing we aren't all robots(well, *most* of us). Thoughts?

Were there any additions to S you always wanted but were never feasible/never had enough time for? what was your favorite project you've worked on on nerd? You said you liked backpacking? What kind of places have you gone to? If you could ban one PAdmin which one would it be? :P