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Hi kmos! Thank you for your appeal. Zomise is no longer on staff so I will be handling your appeal. You're right that "your brother griefing is no excuse", but there's certainly room for forgiveness and we'd be happy to have you back. Please just make sure that you give the rules page (https://nerd.nu/rules/) a glance to refresh yourself, then feel free to hop on to the servers!

Hi Shanty, we've removed the warning point. Thanks for the reminder!

As you wish.

You need to immediately stop messaging individual moderators on Discord to harass them. You were told repeatedly that all bans area handled via the forums. If you continue to do so, your ban will be extended and you will be banned from the Discord as well.

As the rules say: Any use of xray / ore detection will result in an immediate ban and rollback of all edits. You used xray, so all of your edits are removed. You agreed that you have read the rules. Please read them again to be sure you understand.

Using xray for any time is still against server rules. Your ban is for one week and your items and builds are rolled back. Your ban will end on May 11th at 7PM GMT (3PM Eastern). If it has not yet ended, you may make a post in this thread as a reminder. I hope to see you return and follow all server rules in the future.

Please state or quote the rules you broke to confirm you understood them.

Please create a proper appeal or edit details into the body of this post.

Hi Kingman, You have been unbanned. Please take a minute to review the server rules. Welcome back and have fun!

Hi Kingman, Thanks for your appeal. I appreciate your candor and willingness to come clean. Our standard xray ban duration is one week. You will be unbanned on April 25th and I hope to see you become a productive member of the community! If it is past 5PM Eastern Time on April 25th and your ban has not yet expired, feel free to make a post in this thread as a reminder and we'll get you unbanned. Thanks!

Hi bdawg, You originally joined the server and started using a hacked client. I watched you for a little while and kicked you from the game with a warning to disable your hacked client before rejoining. You rejoined and did not do so. In fact, you then engaged in xraying and flyhacking, both of which are explicitly against the server's rules. The xray was a fairly straightforward issue - you frequently dug straight through stone directly to diamond ore. Angle one, in someone's grinder that was under construction: Another angle, showing how you dug up, over to the ore, and then backfilled it: There were a few other obvious instances, such as going into someone's tunnel and digging straight to ore here: And doing the same behavior here - entering a mined-out tunnel and digging through stone to get to diamond before attempting to backfill: The flyhacking was rather blatant, as you can see here: Regardless of your intentions, the rules of the server are quite clear, and if you're interested in the type of behavior that is permitted, I recommend giving them a read at http://nerd.nu/rules rather than "social experiments". Uninstall the hacked client and the xray. Your edits have been rolled back and you will be banned for a week. You may post a reminder update here in seven days (March 24th) if you are not unbanned.

Your friend has a long list of alt accounts with rather a rather racist or otherwise unpleasant name history, and unfortunately, your account falls right into the same pattern at nearly exactly the same time. Coincidentally, your account and a bunch of his alt accounts all went through renamings within minutes of each other on the exact same day of the exact same month of the exact same year. There's also the fact that the first thing that comes up for your username is an account on a griefing forum, which isn't a good look. However, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume maybe this was a past thing and you're older and more mature now. With that said, I want to make it clear that racism, homophobia, and other similar forms of behavior are not acceptable here. Please make sure you review our rules and abide by them on the servers. I hope we don't have any issues going forward - please play nicely and welcome back.

Please add your vote for Nels_Nelson - this poll will stay open until Thursday 17th January or when 75% of staff have voted (37 people) whichever comes first. If a staff member votes 'no', it is expected that their accompanying comments have been previously made known either within the feedback thread or directly to head admins. If not, we will get in contact with the staff member to get more detailed reasoning. If this vote is successful: We will contact the player to ensure they would like to join staff. If they would: We will contact techs to update player permissions in game, and update forum, slack etc. permissions across our services. We will arrange basic training and inform server admins when new moderators are ready for additional server-specific training. We will move this voting post to public mod forums, and inform the playerbase via the Head Admin changelog. If this vote is unsuccessful, or the player declines, we will inform staff within the post, and move it to the private closed nomination forum. Please also consider the proposal pez outlined in the feedback thread and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply here.

Hi Xennali, You have been unbanned. Sorry for the late notice! Please be sure to review our rules and welcome back.

Hi Xennali, Thanks for coming clean. We always like to include evidence of xray behavior, so for reference, the imgur album here contains some screenshots demonstrating that you did clean out an area of diamonds in a pretty brazen manner and attempted to cover some of it up by mining out additional area after the fact. Multiple staff examined your edits and came to the same conclusion. As this is a first offense you will be banned for a week, til the 29th of July, all your edits will be rolled back and inventory wiped. I will do my best to unban you on the 29th, but if you're not unbanned at that point, please leave a reply here to remind me!

The "just use creative for arenas" is a misunderstanding of the actual issue, which is that people are interested in end-to-end PvP gameplay where they can experience combat in a more unexpected or unstructured format, hence the desire to create a PvP-enabled town. Not only that, but some people enjoy putting in the work to obtain their gear. It would be similarly ridiculous for me to claim that everyone should go to creative to build because they can obtain more decorations there - many people enjoy the resource gathering aspect of gameplay. I'm disappointed to hear that you're so dead set against any changes because I was hopeful we could test some ideas next revision and it seemed like we were making progress on a compromise that would satisfy what I feel is frankly a neglected section of the playerbase. I will gladly work with you or the other padmins to help address any concerns you may have regarding any potential impact on the PvE experience. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you change your mind, I still believe that we can create a collaborative solution together if we try.

I did thank Silver for her clarification, but maybe I wasn't clear enough in explaining that I had a follow-up question. Sorry if that wasn't made clear! To explain, mainly I was interested in what the rationale was behind not using the remainder of this rev as a trial period to experiment with different PvP configurations to find out what works best for meeting players' needs and why we can't test a policy change (larger arenas) that has no associated technical changes (doesn't require plugins or tech work). It sounded from ieu's post that a significant amount of discussion and thought went into how to best address this, so I was hoping to gain some additional insight into the thought process and how we can work together as a community to bring additional flexibility to how people play. I would think it can only help for everyone to understand the rationale so we can figure out the most productive way to make future changes smooth and satisfying to all. Thanks again!

Just wanted to check in and see if there was any update since it's been a couple of weeks! Thanks all! :)

The Spawn Building I like the decorations and spawn design overall. I thought the layout was reasonable once modified. I did not like the original layout with the portals due to how it would spit you out randomly and oftentimes separate from your horse. The changes to the spawn building were 1000% better and fixed any complaints I might have had about the original design. N/A regarding different changes The Overworld Map Size-wise I think we're fine. No need to go larger, everything seems reasonably spaced out. I'd be a little concerned if we go too small that we risk running into resource issues over the span of a revision. If we ever plan a shorter rev I think a smaller map would be alright, but I'd be hesitant to go much smaller without more thought being put into how fast resources run out. Vanilla map is fine, no complaints N/A I wasn't a huge fan of smaller diamond deposits this revision. I'd prefer a return to normal size even if they were perhaps less frequently-occurring. The Nether Map I enjoyed the map. Since we're going with a regular vanilla map for the overworld, I think it might be nice to have a 100% vanilla experience in the Nether as well. ...with the above said, I liked that some of the less abundant resources were placed in the Nether such as sand, gravel, concrete powder, etc. Wouldn't mind seeing that even if we go with an otherwise-vanilla map. No issues with resource distribution in the nether. I think the Nether mobs are a great addition, with two caveats: One, they can make things difficult for new players who we typically tell "use the nether to get out into the wilderness quickly!" Two, the fact that there isn't as much gained gameplay-wise from killing them; I would like if maybe they dropped items that tied into a quest or trades or something. The End I think we can be flexible and play around with the dragon fight a little more. The way the dragon fight was done this time should make it pretty easy to configure in different ways; we could theoretically have a different dragon fight every week if we wanted. Have rarely used the end at all, so no issues once the lag issue with the dragon fight was figured out. Mapworld I do not use mapworld so I have no comments here. Portals While I understand the probable intent behind the portal rollout being slow this revision being to keep content throughout the revision, I think this really missed the mark when understanding player motivations. People want portals to build a town around, primarily, and by keeping them held back, you ensure that people will settle elsewhere - nobody is going to move their town just to relocate to a portal four weeks later, so that just ensures that portals won't be in the middle of an active town. The fact that the second portal went over six weeks with no discovery and few people hunting for it points to the fact that once people are settled, they generally don't care as much. Portals at the start of a revision encourage people to spread out; they provide a gathering point to settle around and something to search for early on. By only releasing six - and having four of those six be in the East/Northeast - players are discouraged from exploring further and towns tend to just drop “wherever” instead. This turns into a feedback loop where now that players are settled, the only way portals can be placed somewhere they will be used means dropping them near existing towns or settlements, which is in turn unfair to players who might have had a chance at finding a portal at revision start. One of the other major issues with the portals being released the way they were this time is that the lack of Elytra made early-revision travel extremely punishing due to the lack of portals. I did not enjoy this aspect at all. I think it's worth considering whether we can offer more/user-created portals. I have discussed this with pez from a technical perspective and think it is feasible, would be happy to elaborate more on this later. Amount was fine, distribution was not great with so many in the northeast. Cardinal directions to start should probably be a minimum. Iron Golem Spawners N/A didn't really build anything like this, just gave people my golem souls Custom Spawners Custom spawners are great but I think it makes the most sense to keep them in the overworld. I thinking mixing how they are distributed (found at rev start, awarded from events, etc) is helpful as well. Creeper/shulker spawners are undoubtedly the most important. Custom Drops from Ore (Fossils and Rares) Custom drops are great, would love to see something like this continue. Drop rate seemed oddly hit or miss for me - had very little luck early on, a few months later I got quite a bit. I would love to see additional decorative items on offer, especially with the fact that custom drops effectively give us a lot of flexibility to set prices in a fair way. Custom Saddles Custom saddles are neat, would like to see both options of acquiring them. Elytra One of the main reasons why people have disliked the Elytra decisions this revision is because the incentives have been counterproductive. There was no reason given in the official revision information post about the removal of Elytra, but the most commonly-floated explanation I’ve seen has been that it was intended to “promote development of infrastructure”, i.e. roads and rails. However, the way the Elytra system was implemented is completely counter to this premise. Players who invested their time this revision building road and/or rail systems have now found themselves at a significant disadvantage when it comes to obtaining proper, functional Elytra because of the lack of time spent mining. It felt like something of an insult to have invested time in building a large road network with zero payoff, whereas people who spent their time mining instead are now the first in line to reap rewards. Here's my proposal: Elytra are now craftable again, but with a major caveat: the key ingredients are missing. Whether it’s enchanted Dragon Wing leather or a familiar Essence of Flight, none of the four (or more) components that can be crafted into an Elytra will drop from Day One of a revision. Instead, players can increase their odds of achieving these rare drops by contributing to the construction of the Cardinal Roads. Upon completion of a road stretching from spawn to the deepest wilderness, one of the four key ingredients for the Elytra will have its drop rate increased from zero percent to a small value. This means that before it is possible for anyone to obtain an Elytra, all four Cardinal Roads must be completed. This incentivizes teamwork and community build projects, because it rewards all players for accomplishing a milestone that in turn benefits all players. In order to ensure that things are fair to all, currently-existing Elytra will have been removed from the End much as they have been in this revision. The benefits of this proposal: Guarantees the development of key infrastructure Rewards all players evenly Encourages participation: the more people working together, the faster drops unlock Retains an element of randomness by unlocking drops rather than offering a direct reward Provides a concrete, achievable goal to work towards (“complete the roads!”) instead of an arbitrary deadline players can not engage with (“wait six weeks”) Increases the odds that players will then branch off the main roads and create paths to their towns Expansible: development of the intercardinal (NE/NW/SE/SW) roads could offer an additional boost to drop chance Can be tied in with Livemap unlock (e.g. drops unlock, but crafting recipe not added until after livemap) Ultimately I feel that it's not a good idea to try and mandate how people travel around the server and instead we'll be more successful by encouraging people to contribute to community projects rather than punishing them by taking away an ability that many enjoy. Rails Similarly to the Elytra/road proposals, I would like to offer another proposal for rails. Just like with roads, I feel that there are ways we can properly incentivize rail building in a way that doesn’t hurt other players. To that end, at the beginning of a revision between two to four dilapidated rail stations or stationmasters’ offices are hidden in the wilderness. Upon discovering the structures, players will then be challenged to restore their station, modifying or beautifying it as they see fit, and then connect to a preexisting rail line at spawn. Upon completion of the spawn connection, they will then be permitted to place a portal within a reasonable distance (~150 blocks) of their restored station. These portals would replace or supplement the normal cardinal portals as necessary. As a caveat, these portals would not be tradeable in order to prevent players from “sitting on” the more easily-located stations in hopes of trading for a portal later. Note that for this idea, it is possible to change a building’s base structure (that is, not brick) to better suit a town’s theme. The images above are intended only to illustrate the concept. The benefits of this proposal: Guarantees rail construction to/from spawn of at least two to four major rail lines, all of which connect to a portal Rewards players who wish to put in the effort to build rails by allowing them to secure a portal to build a town around in exchange for their work Encourages formation of communities around at least two to four major hubs Changes up the usual “hunt for portal” formula by securing the portal itself early on, but deferring its lighting until after rail lines are complete, which encourages development of rails in addition to roads and portals Provides a concrete goal for players who are interested in rail-focused builds as well as an area that will be well-traveled Offers “flavor” benefits - theming of these builds can be adjusted to match the theme of a revision Gives players something new to search for that serves a purpose, not just a pre-generated structure to loot and abandon Events Slime Golems event was probably closest to my favorite this revision. I would literally punch a rabbit (looking at you ice) to get NITWITS going again.

Thank you for the clarification, though I feel like I still don't understand why it's not possible to trial an expanded arena size this revision, since we've got easily three months left and a massive map with which to experiment. I suppose I just don't see the harm in trying something and seeing how it goes rather than trying to plan everything on paper. It's very hard to determine how people will react in a vacuum, so I'd think it would be more beneficial to float a trial balloon in the waning months of the current revision and solicit active feedback rather than trying to plan for every hypothetical or anticipate reactions. But maybe that's just because I think it's easier to do live debugging. :)

Sounds good ieuweh! I'm glad to hear that there's a commitment to larger PvP regions so everyone can enjoy their preferred activities in the PvE way! I was thinking about it a bit and given that this map is so huge with tons of free space, I could easily see us moving to a smaller one next revision with no crowding. I was hoping to also get confirmation that we won't go backwards on the progress we've made here - after all, I think it's fair that when a new map starts, everyone gets equal claim to available land regardless of whether they want to build an arena/PvP region or some other project!

I'm a bit confused by this sentiment, mainly because I don't see how providing more options to players "transforms the server's brand". We already offer the ability to make PvP arenas, so we're not talking about introducing a new feature, just relaxing certain restrictions on something that already exists. The discussion isn't about global PvP or forcing people to engage in something they don't want to; we just want to make it easier for people who want to participate in PvP within the confines of PvE to do so with greater flexibility. Is there any reason this can't be implemented now? Seeing as we're halfway through the rev and there's tons of available space, it seems like a pure policy change like this could be in effect immediately. As far as I'm aware, there are no technical limitations on why this can't happen right now, and it seems like a very simple way to make more people happy. The main issue I've heard regarding PvP towns is the fact that PvP areas cannot be connected and the regions were too small to permit proper town building in anything but a vertical format (not really ideal for PvP). Was there any discussion of whether or not to change the policy regarding connected areas?

The heads was just spitballing a suggestion since the topic of "PvP incentives" came up. With that said, I don't feel too bothered by the idea of people having a player head from another person - this isn't a "get any head you want" system where you can farm decorative objects. Besides, don't we already have "free heads from killing other players" during Admin Hunts? They're trophies and nothing more. It bothers me no more that someone has 50 Shanty_Sniper heads than it does that someone dug up a bunch of emeralds and built a big fort out of it. If someone really wants to stand there and farm heads of other players who choose to let themselves be killed in hopes of triggering a drop, how does that hurt me? I'll admit it's late here and there's possibly some other use of heads I'm forgetting about - and if there is, please remind me - but right now I don't see how this harms anybody. The absolute worst I can think of is someone using an alt, changing the skin, and using that alt to obtain one decorative object - and then they can't change that alt's skin for the remainder of the revision. I also want to clarify that I said I felt it wouldn't be an undue burden on staff, not that it would have no impact. Any sort of perk or recognition is something that should be relatively trivial to implement, seeing as most of these features were already implemented back when S was around. A leaderboard page on the website shouldn't require any additional attention. However, the most important points of my post should stand independently of the ideas regarding "PvP perks". Ultimately that section is entirely unnecessary and I only included it because I felt scher raised some good points and I thought they were worth building on.

I go back and forth on this a lot because I personally do not care for PvP and never enjoyed playing on S, but what I keep coming back to is that I think that fundamentally, Shanty has a point and that there is more than can be done to facilitate PvP gameplay for those who like it without destroying the ability of others to have fun with PvE-style survival. What I would like to see is, on a trial basis, the rules for PvP regions to be relaxed for a revision. Allow anyone interested in joining a PvP-enabled town to collaboratively build a wall enclosing the town area of a decent size - something like 250x250 or 300x300 (or honestly, even larger - we have a huge map). If necessary, make it a double wall with a buffer zone and a region welcome message warning that passing through the second wall enables PvP. Post all the current signage. Since we're already using barrier blocks for PvP areas, close off the town from the top of the wall using barrier blocks to ensure someone doesn't accidentally Elytra into the town. Then turn on the PvP and see how much use it gets and if people enjoy it. With the players doing most of the construction, I don't think this imposes any undue burden upon staff. With the signs and barrier blocks, there's no change of someone accidentally wandering in. And importantly, the segment of the playerbase who enjoys PvP can enjoy it all the time, not just by scheduling a meetup at one of the arenas. One of the factors that I think current PvP arenas are missing, and why they aren't currently very popular, is that when you're playing on a server like S, an attack can come at any time and so you must constantly be prepared. It changes the way you play. On the other hand, going to a PvP arena, you're got a very limited danger window and can solely focus on the combat, which can be fun but is a different experience. What I believe the folks who enjoy PvP feel like they're missing - and can't get from arenas in their current form - is that feeling of constant threat. A PvP town would allow them to experience this and still have fun in the PvE environment. I feel that we've gone a little too far at times in trying to regulate how other people have fun on the server, whether it's by nerfing Elytra or setting strict rules on PvP areas. Ultimately, it doesn't affect my gameplay experience if someone else wants to zip around with rockets or live in a PvP town. As long as I have the option to not wander in there, why should I care if some people want to fight each other in their town? In a huge map like we currently have, a 100x100 area is honestly very small and the limit seems entirely arbitrary. To expand a bit on scher's point regarding incentives for PvP, I think one incentive that wouldn't be unbalanced would be to introduce a head-gathering system that scales based on combatants' gear. If Player A wearing iron gear manages to kill player B in Diamond, A should have an increased chance of getting a head drop of that player. This provides a neat trophy - which is technically still obtainable in PvE via dopples - but allows the PvP players to show off their skill. On the other hand, if someone in vastly superior gear is beating down on someone unarmored, their chances of a head drop will be zero. I'm sure there are some other neat but balanced perks people could come up with, such as weapons or armor with special lore/flavor text, decorative prizes for the player with the most PvP kills that month that could be displayed in item frames, etc. There are plenty of ways this could be done even without any changes to the current plugin system. I've gone on for too long here, so I'll wrap it up with this: I see zero harm in giving this a chance, and a lot of potential benefit for players who love the community here but feel marginalized due to their favorite type of gameplay being gone. Please consider giving this a fair shake, even if it's just for one revision. There will inevitably be a few bumps in the road but I think this is a very low-risk way to help provide more gameplay options to everyone here on Nerd.nu. Edit: Added a few bold lines for a TL;DR summary.

All in all, I enjoyed this event way more than any of the previous CTF fundraisers we've had in the past. I'd say it was very fun. With that said, one thing that could be improved in the future is more advance playtesting and map balancing. Totemo in particular did a great job of adjusting settings on the fly during the event to tweak lag and balance issues, but the event was nearly unplayable for the first day not solely because of the initial lag (somewhat expected, although I'd suggest starting with a lower mob count and working up rather than the other way around, especially since the highest traffic is going to be at event start), but also because the mob/plugin settings weren't set in a way to make it playable. Early on, obsidian was difficult to come by in larger than 5 block increments and that meant that building any kind of fortification was nearly impossible since most other blocks were destroyed nearly instantly, even things you'd expect to be more durable like bricks. Clearer ground rules as to material durability would have gone a long way; as it was, most people just ran around and then stuck close to spawn because they anticipated dying a lot and didn't settle down anywhere until Saturday. On a similar note, I think that a smaller map size combined with a little more personalized touches on buildings would have also gone a long way. I personally scavenged a few chests from buildings but quickly gave up on that since most floors felt extremely empty; there was little incentive to explore multiple levels of a building if you saw nothing good on the ground floor, since many of the floors were just carbon copies of each other. Don't get me wrong, the city itself was really cool, but honestly I never saw more than maybe a quarter of it (and this is from someone #2 in villager rescues and #3 in distance traveled with villagers, so I covered some ground). Regarding the initial mob settings - most people, when they join the event, are going to take a little time to acclimate, explore, find their friends, etc. The mob levels don't need to be maxed out, definitely not for the first hour or two. I'd suggest starting it low and raising it as the event goes on. This has multiple advantages. One, it reduces the lag at the beginning, which is when you draw the most people in. Two, it lets people learn the concept, experiment with some blocks and new items (guns, for example), and group up without being constantly murdered over and over. Three, it lets people start to spread out and group up, which reduces the massive cluster at spawn at event start. Four, it ramps up the challenge as people get better at the game and keeps things interesting throughout the event - turning up the aggressiveness on Sunday really helped keep things interesting despite starting to have relatively solid fortifications. From a user experience perspective, it's significantly more important for players to have a stable experience than one filled with mobs right away. It might even add to the immersion if players were given, say, ten minutes at event start to begin exploring the city before the zombies were unleashed. Please take all of the above as it is intended -- suggestions and constructive criticism, not complaints. Like I said at the beginning, I thought this event was a lot more fun than any of the older CTF events; I just think there are a few changes that could be made to make it even better in the future. Thanks in advance!