The future of SafeBuckets on PvE

[Asterix1806]

The plugin SafeBuckets, the one that makes our water still by default, I feel has become more and more useless lately, and I think its future needs a serious discussion.

 

I feel that SafeBuckets needs to be unplugged, and here is why:

 

First of all SafeBuckets is very un-vanilla as a plugin, since it's not normal to see still liquid in Vanilla Minecraft, and thus goes against the server's theme.

 

Secondly the still water it gives is rather useless. While it does make water elevators and some lava killing machines easier to build, it does not really add anything irreplaceable to the game: some signs surrounding flowing liquids will accomplish the same thing still water gives to us now. And while some water elevators arguably look prettier without signs in between water blocks, I would not consider water elevators pretty to begin with. Some may disagree.

 

But most importantly I feel that SafeBuckets's primary function as a grief-prevention plugin is so unimportant that it practically does not matter. Griefers, as far as I can tell, are not persistent enough to acquire a bucket just to knock someone's flowers or torches over. And even if they were, the loss is hardly meaningful. As for more serious griefing like murdering with lava or making derpy lava walls around, those are easily traceable nowadays.

 

At worst a griefer may attack someone's rails or redstone, which is actually quite severe, but that they can do with natural liquid sources even now. A much better option would be to write a plugin that makes rails and redstone waterproof.

 

A plugin like that at least would not encumber the staff day and night, like SafeBuckets does.

 

SafeBuckets also makes a few things if no impossible, at least very hard: It is impossible to dispense flowing liquids and this must be worked around with silly piston gates. Making ponds is tough because of the glitchy interaction with still and flowing water that makes some parts of the potential pond not fill up like it is supposed to. Nowadays you'd need constant mod surveillance just to make an artificial lake.

 

The absence of SafeBuckets would obviously be beneficial for everyday building, but it would be particularly useful for making grinders. For example in a skeleton grinder getting the water to flow immediately would make building much less dangerous much faster. In an Ender grinder the benefit of getting immediate water cover is obvious.

 

In summary, SafeBuckets is un-vanilla, seriously hinders everyday building, encumbers staff, and is irrelevant against griefing. If I was king, I'd replace it with another plugin like the one described above.

 

But, all of the above was only what I think. I may be right, I may be wrong, some may even disagree. What I want here is a serious discussion on this matter. The server's interests are largely also my interests, and that's why I'd want a thorough investigation about this matter so at the end of the day we can be sure we're making the right decision.

 

[edk]

I've felt for a long time that SafeBuckets has outlived its usefulness. The disadvantages quite clearly (to me) outweigh the advantages, and have for some time.

 

I don't play on the servers any more, but back in the day (2+ years ago) I helped write SafeBuckets, so maybe my opinion of it is of some interest.

[EeHee2000]

Some pretty good points raised there, I've gotta agree. The only problems I can see with it is the building of S spawns, but that can be fixed with some signs easily, just a couple minutes lost. I'm all for it.

[coolgamerovr90]

Some pretty good points raised there, I've gotta agree. The only problems I can see with it is the building of S spawns, but that can be fixed with some signs easily, just a couple minutes lost. I'm all for it.

Or have water blocks place still water and buckets place regular, this relevant topic on our subreddit might be of interest

Edited January 4, 2014 by coolgamerovr90

[tobylane]

Water washing away rails and redstone can occasionally be useful, is that toggleable?

[EeHee2000]

Water washing away rails and redstone can occasionally be useful, is that toggleable?

 

Yeah, with a modreq for flowing water. 

 

Or have water blocks place still water and buckets place regular, http://www.reddit.com/r/mcpublic/comments/1ud8e1/region_water_flow/]This relevant topic on our subreddit might be of interest

 

Perhaps we could modreq for static water? That'd be pretty cool and would fix all problems that would come from this addition,

[coolgamerovr90]

Perhaps we could modreq for static water? That'd be pretty cool and would fix all problems that would come from this addition,

I'm having second thoughts about that, and this only applies to PvE, not survival right? SafeBuckets is very useful on Survival but on PvE, as edk said it seems to have outlived it's usefulness

Why might that be?, most of the builds on Survival seem to use static water/lava anyway, and removing safebuckets from survival would cause lava to burn right through signs, and make that build useless.

As you said, we can work around that by making modreq's, but that would get real messy real fast, imagine if you wanted to make a "trap" like I see almost every Survival revision where at the very top there is static lava and nothing until you hit bedrock. You would need to make a very long and confusing modreq or make several in different places. Now that dosen't sound that bad, but a moderator who handles that will have to look around that general area, try and find the place where the lava should go, and have to individually place static lava, one by one, not to mention the complicated configs that the tech admins would have to set that up to make that happen.

Now this might not make much sense, as all grief can easily be rolled easily back within a matter of seconds, but imagine if you have a house that has wood walls, and a pond at the bottom. Now I know firespread can and probably will be disabled, but you could just grab a bunch of lava buckets, make your way around the walls of the house, and have the house blocked off by a lava wall, and have the water underneath it gone within a few seconds, also not to mention that Survival seems to be targeted by griefers looking to cause this type of damage alot, and I have been a victim of that in the past.

Now let's talk about Creative, If we were to disable SafeBuckets on C, we would have a bunch of similar and different issues crop up. Having easily accessible static water on C is awesome for quick and easy building, without having to put a bunch of signs underneath all of it. If we were to permanently remove SafeBuckets from Creative, we would no longer have that luxury, and we would have to come up with a solution, or make static lava/water available to players, via a /kit or similar.

Again, let's go back to griefers, now I am going to talk about Hack/Grief clients, or malicious client mods in general. Most of these have auto place features where you can massively spread lava all around the place, in addition to destroying and wiping builds off the map, turning it into a minecraft type wasteland. Let's say you have a nice tower that you just finished building on C. Someone could go to the roof, put a bunch of water on the edge walls, then add lava to that. and before you know it you have an almost effortless obsidian wall, not to mention the countless possibilities and other things you could do with the lava on top of water idea. Overall it just dosen't seem worth it until we can come up with a better idea.

Now back to PvE, griefing isn't really a huge issue on that server, and SafeBuckets really isn't needed when you think about it, other than for easy building. So I would have no problem with the removal of SafeBuckets on PvE.

Edited January 4, 2014 by coolgamerovr90

[totemo]

During CTF event, the heads thought it would be a really great idea to give the staff a break from all the water modreqs and instructed me to turn off SafeBuckets.  Well, of course, it didn't take long before blue base was covered in lava, and then the staff really had some work to do.  

 

The reason we don't have much visible grief in any given place is because of WorldGuard, SafeBuckets and a lot of time donated by the staff.   Of course we need to restrict flowing liquids.  Anyone who says otherwise either has a short memory or is ignorant of the realities.

[barneygale]

CTF is not representative of regular server play.

Most other servers, including much larger ones, do not put restrictions on flowing liquids.

SafeBuckets was implemented mostly because LogBlock's recording of fluid destruction was weak. It's now much better.

Anyone who says otherwise either has a short memory or is ignorant of the realities.

[tobylane]

Yeah, with a modreq for flowing water. 

 

Most of the time I need water it's static and it's going to stay where I put it once. When I need flowing water it's while caving and I need it right now, either for upcoming danger or because I want to move on. If I need some massive use of flowing water, like filling a lake I happily coordinate with a mod at a time of their convenience. Otherwise, power to the people, I agree with giving us more.

[slide]

CTF is not representative of regular server play.

 

In terms of griefing with water/lava, it is exactly like normal game play. 

 

Most other servers, including much larger ones, do not put restrictions on flowing liquids.

 

We aren't most other servers.

 

SafeBuckets was implemented mostly because LogBlock's recording of fluid destruction was weak. It's now much better.

 

It's still fairly weak and rollbacks are no where near perfect. Griefing large rail sections behind hubs can be extremely hard to correct as the rails don't always come back in their original orientation.

 

Anyone who says otherwise either has a short memory or is ignorant of the realities.

 

You like to ignore the reality and substitute your own.

[totemo]

CTF is not representative of regular server play.

 

Nonsense.  With the exception of the base area protection and some glitz to do with flags and buffs, it's practically the same configuration as Survival.  In the base areas, the WorldGuard region makes it directly analogous to a large town on PvE.  It only takes one player with an agenda and region membership to cause a lot of disruption and extra work.  We have a steady influx of people who would do it, given the chance.

 

LogBlock does a poor job of rolling back liquids still, as slide points out.

[barneygale]

We aren't most other servers.

This really is one of the weakest things I've heard a staff member say since JA said essentially the same thing, i.e. "we can learn nothing from other servers". What makes MCPublic such a special snowflake that it has to change vanilla gameplay, to the detriment of regular players, where other servers make do just fine?

 

It's still fairly weak and rollbacks are no where near perfect. Griefing large rail sections behind hubs can be extremely hard to correct as the rails don't always come back in their original orientation.

Contrast this with when SafeBuckets was first deemed necessary - liquid rollback was nearly nearly impossible and *nothing* rolled back right. Occasionally fixing rail orientation is the price *every other server* pays for not needlessly frustrating their playerbase by nerfing vanilla mechanics and requiring mod intervention for building *extremely common* things like grinders.

You like to ignore the reality and substitute your own.

Something something pot kettle.

[barneygale]

It would be great to see a tentative trial-run of this - perhaps restricted to water only. You two are extrapolating from a *single* incident on a server with poorly-defined rules, committed by one of *very few* regular players capable of being such a troll. You have no idea of:

1. How regular incidents of fluid griefing would be

2. How difficult they would be to clean up (am I the only person who found griefing modreqs the easiest to handle?)

3. How much of a positive impact this would have on players who don't have to wait (sometimes for hours) for a mod to do something they can do in singleplayer or other servers.

If it turns out to be a nightmare then we can all STFU and try again in 2 years when LogBlock is even better at tracking fluids. I just think Asterix1806 has a very compelling case with various benefits that are not being addressed, and the impact of alleged drawbacks is far from settled.

[slide]

 

This really is one of the weakest things I've heard a staff member say since JA said essentially the same thing, i.e. "we can learn nothing from other servers". What makes MCPublic such a special snowflake that it has to change vanilla gameplay, to the detriment of regular players, where other servers make do just fine?

 

Where exactly did I say any of that? Again you are trying to fit reality to your own opinions. You stated other servers do things, I stated we aren't those servers. At no point did I make any claims about anything else in regards to being special.

[barneygale]

Could you please tell me why you think I mentioned that other servers managed this, and how "we're not other servers" is in any way a rebuttal to this?

[slide]

Could you please tell me why you think I mentioned that other servers managed this, and how "we're not other servers" is in any way a rebuttal to this?

 

Because if others servers do it or not has no bearing on the situation. You can literally use that argument for almost anything, finding some server that does it that way to support your claim, and that in no way is an argument for doing or not doing something.

[barneygale]

Just to be absolutely clear, are you saying that other servers doing something gives *absolutely no indication* that it is possible and practical in a general sense? E.g. if another server ran an anti-cheat plugin that catches hacking much better than NCP, you would give this evidence absolutely *zero* weight and say that it *does not* in any way indicate that such a plugin could be run on MCPublic?

Because you seem to be not only missing the point, but harbouring a deep, heartfelt longing for the point that burns with the passion of a thousand suns. My mention of other servers not disabling water-flow was *only* indicating that SafeBuckets is not necessary and that other people do just fine without it. It's a weak assertion but it runs completely counter to your strong assertion that "we need to restrict flowing liquids".

[barneygale]

To clarify further: my point was that *servers of MCPublic's class* do not *need* to run safebuckets. Any reasons for *requiring* safebuckets must be MCPublic-specific, and not affect similar minecraft servers that don't run safebuckets. Arguing that MCPublic is understaffed, or has a unique staff-player relationship, are perfectly valid arguments for retaining safebuckets. Arguing that LogBlock isn't good enough, however, is not valid as many other minecraft servers deal with this exact same problem and solve it in a less restrictive way.

Edited January 4, 2014 by barneygale

[slide]

Yes, I am saying that *just because* they run so and so plugin, or allow so and so, gives absolutely 0 weight on us allowing them. Now if you want to weigh the actual benefits vs cons, that is fine. But simply saying that they have said feature is absolutely meaningless.

[slide]

To clarify further: my point is that *MCPublic* chooses to deal with grief differently from other servers. The *reasoning* we have currently for *requiring* safebuckets *is* the fact that fixing things that do not roll back correctly takes much more time, not to mention mental effort, and anyone who uses their *brains* knows that can wear you out.

[redwall_hp]

 

Griefing large rail sections behind hubs can be extremely hard to correct as the rails don't always come back in their original orientation.

 

Forget rails...frigging redstone. A little bit of water can wipe out a complex circuit, which generally can't be rolled back directly. It's tedious enough to fix with Watson outlines, and absolutely terrible without.

 

It happens quite a lot already with self-harvesting farms. Someone punches a block out and lets the water flood into the circuit.

[Mrloud15]

During CTF event, the heads thought it would be a really great idea to give the staff a break from all the water modreqs and instructed me to turn off SafeBuckets.  Well, of course, it didn't take long before blue base was covered in lava, and then the staff really had some work to do.  

 

The reason we don't have much visible grief in any given place is because of WorldGuard, SafeBuckets and a lot of time donated by the staff.   Of course we need to restrict flowing liquids.  Anyone who says otherwise either has a short memory or is ignorant of the realities.

To add to this during any chaos map spawn will be surrounded with a lava wall created with only 4 lava sources and a stack of blocks. Any griefer can very easily get these items. 

[slide]

Because you seem to be not only missing the point, but harbouring a deep, heartfelt longing for the point that burns with the passion of a thousand suns. My mention of other servers not disabling water-flow was *only* indicating that SafeBuckets is not necessary and that other people do just fine without it. It's a weak assertion but it runs completely counter to your strong assertion that "we need to restrict flowing liquids".

 

Now don't let facts stop you from arguing barneygale. You seem to have a deep-seated resentment for staff. Almost every single interaction I witness from you come with accusations of either malicious intent or incompetence. Frankly I'm tired of it as it actively hurts the servers and the community. It's been a constant fact about you.

[Mrloud15]

CTF is not representative of regular server play.

It shows how it only takes one player to abuse it and create problems for players and staff. That was easily fix because there was staff around where it happened, but that would not be the case during a rev.