Thoughts on Portals and the Nether

[TheRandomnatrix]

Since Sapphric isn't going to do it, I'll bite the bullet. These are some thoughts I've been having for a while now, and I'd like them to be seen.

 

It seems getting portals has become something of an obsession for many towns at the start of the revision. Having one allows traffic flow to and from your city, allows nether access for material gathering, and is something of a trophy/sign of power as well. However, I also noticed that many of those towns just substitute their infrastructure with a portal. Their roads may be lacking, and in some cases their rails take a hit as well. It was definitely noticeable during the admin hunts that the map is not very horse friendly, due to poor road infrastructure across the map. Clearly towns don't need nether portals to be active or successful, as evident in Port80 and Rose City this rev. So I was thinking, what if in some future rev there was only one nether portal located at spawn. Now before everyone raises their pitchforks and torches, I'd like to some weighing of the pros and cons of having just a spawn portal.

 

The second part is more of side suggestion. In all my time here, aside from one or two updates, the nether has remained largely the same: boring, red, and full of lava. With the addition of custom glowstone ore in the overworld(which I love), I found myself barely ever going a hundred blocks or so from a portal except to mine quartz. Each rev the nether is genned at 2k*2k, and only a very meager fraction of that is used up. Perhaps accommodations could even be made to actually make living or at least exploring in the nether worthwhile for once. I also came across a reddit post  on /r/minecraft from the admin of the popular Reddit flatcore servers, in which he posted his server's own custom version of the nether. It attracted a lot of attention, and he was able to use it to bring people over to his servers. I feel that the same could be done for us.

[WickedCoolSteve]

Just for clarity, is the proposal that for the entire rev there will only be one portal and that portal will be located at spawn?

 

If so, it removes the drama and stress associated with finding one of a limited number of portals. However, it also removes a fairly significant feature of vanilla style gameplay (nether fast travel). Portals are one of those features that translate poorly to multiplayer and it seems like we're always looking for the least bad of a host of options.

[TheRandomnatrix]

Just for clarity, is the proposal that for the entire rev there will only be one portal and that portal will be located at spawn?

 

If so, it removes the drama and stress associated with finding one of a limited number of portals. However, it also removes a fairly significant feature of vanilla style gameplay (nether fast travel). Portals are one of those features that translate poorly to multiplayer and it seems like we're always looking for the least bad of a host of options.

Correct. Other variations could also exist, such as after a certain amount of time(maybe mid rev) a few portals would be hidden around the map for finding, allowing newer towns that haven't been established at the start a chance to flourish.

 

I did find the method of portal claiming using sign announcements worked very well this rev, as it eliminated any chances of arguments over who found what portal first.

[WondrLand]

Guys Random just wants us to rely on his all-powerful CARBON stations.

 

(in all seriousness I feel that it would be a very radical change but one that I can get behind)

[theclefe]

Given we can only have a limited number allowed on the server, I think the mad dash approach for all of them is a bit unfair.  I think the problem was amplified this rev given the number of portal towns that died (Driftwood, Port Aperture) or have been sparsely populated (Kalmos, Praha).  While there were some hardworking people in these towns, none of them are population centers this rev with the exception of the re-aquired Whiteoak portal.  Therefore, little work was done to connect them to the rest of the world.  It was like pulling teeth to get rail access to all except Praha in the first few weeks.

 

If we can be more creative with the distribution, I think that will offer a greater benefit to the server as a whole.  Along with a few mad dash portals, perhaps:

 

- Portal awarded to the largest Nether City after a certain period

- a floating portal that moves to the most active city in a given week.

- Earning a portal by accumulating a significant number of resources as a way to prove a town's prosperity and activity.

- a Late Rev portal to a town built after a certain period.

- A contest or event with the prize being a portal.

 

I think offering up portals as a tool to promote activity is a far better alternative to the current system.

 

 

[redwall_hp]

My suggestion: allow anyone to place portals. Portals for everyone! (What could possibly go wrong?)

[nealsmith]

I fully endorse the initial Solo Portal.  I have been speculating on building solo in the nether next rev and would welcome ideas for bringing in a larger repeat player population.  the idea of mid rev ( or throughout the rev) distribution of portal is very appealing also.  I stressed heavily this rev regarding initial rush for portal and did not enjoy that time.  Last rev, Wellspring flourished (!?!?) without a portal.  and this rev is dead.  i believe a portal does not make a town and would love to see the mid rev road structure when portals are not at town centers.

[nealsmith]

My suggestion: allow anyone to place portals. Portals for everyone! (What could possibly go wrong?)

one island .... covered in portals, going to nether islands covered in portals, going to islands... wait.

[gdavison]

I'm totally on board with the idea of changing up the portal system on P, if only for a different style of play for the beginning of revisions.  Someone suggested before that we should put the nether portals in hard-to-find places like end portals are -- in the middle of a cave system inside a mountain, for example.

 

I don't think awarding portals is a good idea though.  The admins have to work hard to avoid accusations of favouritism and drama, and having them make any kind of judgment call in awarding something as valuable as a portal is a recipe for just that.  I do like the idea of late revision portals -- what if a couple of extra portals were to spring up out of nowhere three months in to the rev?  I think it could liven up what I personally consider a pretty dreary endgame.

[Diznatch52]

The admins have to work hard to avoid accusations of favouritism and drama, and having them make any kind of judgment call in awarding something as valuable as a portal is a recipe for just that.....what if a couple of extra portals were to spring up out of nowhere three months in to the rev?  I think it could liven up what I personally consider a pretty dreary endgame.

 

Honestly, that could still be an issue with favoritism. "why are none of the new portals near my city?" "why is one of the new portals right near city x?" Even if the admins pre-decided where the portals should go, that might still be an issue.

[SwitchViewz]

This post is a bit long, hopefully that's alright and you read all of it!   One thing I hated about the beginning of this rev was the mad dash for portals as practically everyone goes crazy for one. We are the 'chickens running around with our heads cut off' and I personally hate it. Sure, the initial hunt for a portal is exciting, and being the mayor of a town that found one of the portals and experiencing the excitement of getting it and claiming it is overwhelming. After the excitement though you realize just how much effort you had to go through to get it. We had to coordinate an entire plan to find a portal - who would go where, who could be online to hunt, ETC. It was just chaos and looking back on it I kind of wouldn't want to do it again for a variety of reasons.

 

Here is what I consider to be what I like and dislike about the current portal set up. Some points are both in like and dislike, and that is because I feel some things go both ways. I'll start with the dislike as I have a stronger feeling toward that.

 

Dislike

• There is a fixed number of portals that will never change during the rev no matter what.
  An example of this, is last rev toward the end, all of PvE got together and we created the town called 'Fak' in the nether, and it was insanely popular during the end of the rev with lots of people. We made a fake portal and joked about lighting it. I always thought "Why can't we actually light it? We all got together and pulled off this awesome project overnight and it continues to grow. Why not make it even more awesome by giving it its own nether portal?" Now sure there are plenty of reasons why, such as it was in the nether and placing a portal could cause issues in the overworld, but what if such a project had been completed in the overworld? Or had it not been a town but some giant project like the current rev's uber project? ETC.
• You get no choice what biome the portal is in!
  I am the mayor of Whiteoak which is a tree theme town. We use lots of grass, leaves, and other wood materials. Could you imagine what we would look like if we claimed a desert portal? Or a portal in the middle of the ocean? I have always wanted to do Whiteoak in a actual Jungle biome or a snow biome, but because we like to go for a portal we can't. (Yea sure we could just not go for a portal, but that's not the point here.)
• The "We have a portal status and you don't. Haha!"
  We all joke around about having a portal sometimes while others don't, but it's nothing you need to brag about. I don't see it to often but on a rare occasion I do see someone bragging about it and find it rather rude. You don't need to have a portal to be successful, there is no reason to go bragging about it. There is nothing to brag about in "I found a portal before you did so you didn't get one, HAHA!" It's like "I got a rare piece of candy before the store ran out! SUCKER!"
• Bad for attracting traffic
  Portals can be good for attracting new players and other players a like, but it can also do the exact opposite. When new people join the server, what is the first thing we tell them to do? Go visit all the portal towns and see which one you like best! Wait - What about the 100 other towns that don't have portals and are just as awesome? (This brings up another issue I have about rails but I talk about that more below).
   

 

Like

• Very handy for a town center.
  What better place then to put a portal than in the center of the town with all the resources (rail, mine, ETC.)? It serves as a great point to center your town around and gives a sort of hub area.
• Great for attracting traffic
  I like that nether portals can attract a variety of players and you have easy travel to your town.
• Quick travel
  What do people hate doing? Traveling! What better way then to make it incredibly fast by going through the nether?

 

Now comes the fun part, if we don't have portals at the start of the rev what will we do? Just have one portal? Place portals later on? I'll edit in my thoughts later about this as I have to go for the moment.

[Guest]

Just for clarity, is the proposal that for the entire rev there will only be one portal and that portal will be located at spawn?

 

That sounds like a bad idea. Things would cluster close to spawn and those who choose to live further away would need to travel a bit too far for nether access.

 

Idea: How about you put portals around the map, but nobody is allowed to build on them/claim land on them? Maybe a 50 or 100 blocks buffer zone that no town could get, nor would a town be allowed to encircle a portal, but we could build roads and rails to portals still.

[tobylane]

That sounds like a bad idea. Things would cluster close to spawn and those who choose to live further away would need to travel a bit too far for nether access.

 

Idea: How about you put portals around the map, but nobody is allowed to build on them/claim land on them? Maybe a 50 or 100 blocks buffer zone that no town could get, nor would a town be allowed to encircle a portal, but we could build roads and rails to portals still.

 

A while ago we had the idea of a portal on an island in a lake, with space for CART stations underground. The lake would be nearly render distance wide, maybe not circular. A city is on either side, possibly with a village or independent builds on the other sides of the lake (and very little in the lake, just small docks and piers). I don't remember who this involved or how far it got.

[robr]

i like this idea, but i think we should still add in some other portals after that initial infrastructure (roads, rail) start getting established - maybe the general areas can be preselected ahead of time, but then when the time comes we can add in a sign/block to be found like we did for day one, but have the requirement that new portals get placed in the closest unpopulated area that remains near that initial general area that was picked..  (maybe with the added protection as mentioned above, so it's not intended to have a town built around it, or maybe even have a contest for standard portal design to be used - the fact we can do custom portal sizes makes this even more attractive now)

 

this way there wouldn't be such a mad rush day one, towns can still pop up naturally, and we still get the various open points in the nether eventually so everyone's not just stripping the area around spawn for quartz/etc..

 

i still think it'd be cool to have a large portal on both sides so we can get ghasts come through occasionally >=]

[gdavison]

Honestly, that could still be an issue with favoritism. "why are none of the new portals near my city?" "why is one of the new portals right near city x?" Even if the admins pre-decided where the portals should go, that might still be an issue.

 

Yeah, you're right.  I do think we can trust the admins if they say the locations were pre-selected though.  Hopefully somewhere out of the way, so they don't end up beside someone's house).

[Diznatch52]

Yeah, you're right.  I do think we can trust the admins if they say the locations were pre-selected though.  Hopefully somewhere out of the way, so they don't end up beside someone's house).

 

Definitely, but if the locations are preselected, it might end up being the case that a city built on top of one. Suddenly, that city has a portal.

 

I kinda like the idea of giving portals to the towns that had been consistently active over the course of the rev, though that could also be complicated.

[SwitchViewz]

Definitely, but if the locations are preselected, it might end up being the case that a city built on top of one. Suddenly, that city has a portal.

 

I kinda like the idea of giving portals to the towns that had been consistently active over the course of the rev, though that could also be complicated.

This brings up the problem of "favoritism" and drama. Sure most of us can trust the padmins but there will always be those players that will accuse the admins of favoring one town or some other stupid reason.

Edited January 23, 2014 by SwitchViewz

[theclefe]

This brings up the problem of "favoritism" and drama. Sure most of us can trust the padmins but there will always be those players that will accuse the admins of favoring one town or some other stupid reason.

 

This was going to come up.  While this needs to be taken into account, we shouldn't delay or alter initiatives that could make the server more enjoyable simply because of perceived bias.  If it happens, we call it out and correct it.  We have a pretty stellar group of admin at the moment so I don't see it being an issue on P.

[TheRandomnatrix]

Another possible implementation that could tie in with the other ideas is something like a portal ticket. I know there were chests hidden around the map for special colored signs this rev that were admin-redeemable, the same could be done in a few cases for portals. They could also be awarded through very difficult or meaningful events. I seem to remember one rev someone(Nossirom iiirc) got their own warp sign for beating the 5K first. This would have to be done in moderation of course so we don't have 30 people with personal portals, but it could definitely be used by the admins effectively to encourage participation in certain events.

[ne0codex]

I think offering up portals as a tool to promote activity is a far better alternative to the current system.

 

100% agree on this. 

 

This avoids the whole "admin favoritism" dilemma that's being discussed.

 

With the current system, nether portals are awarded to those with the most amount of players who are in search of it, or just by sheer luck of finding a portal before anyone else, wouldn't it make more sense to reward 1 city/major build area in each quadrant a nether portal over a period of time? That way they actually become useful and promote the development of newer, larger building communities within the server.

 

 As far as the secret/extra portals go, I like the idea of one being a near-end-of-rev portal and others maybe placed in unique landscapes within the map.

--

 

On previous revs, I could trust portal cities to be major hubs of activity, the areas of continuous development and areas with large, reliable, accessible inter-city city-to-city transportation. This rev, not so much, and it's going to be further exacerbated with next revs if nothing is changed.

Edited January 26, 2014 by ne0codex

[SwitchViewz]

This was going to come up.  While this needs to be taken into account, we shouldn't delay or alter initiatives that could make the server more enjoyable simply because of perceived bias.  If it happens, we call it out and correct it.  We have a pretty stellar group of admin at the moment so I don't see it being an issue on P.

We do have a amazing admin team but we can't just assume that people won't call them out for it. There are always those people that will try and stir up drama. You or I might not do it but someone out there probably will. You can't just shove something off because you assume most people won't do it, there will always be that small group that does.

 

100% agree on this. 

 

This avoids the whole "admin favoritism" dilemma that's being discussed.

 

With the current system, nether portals are awarded to those with the most amount of players who are in search of it, or just by sheer luck of finding a portal before anyone else, wouldn't it make more sense to reward 1 city/major build area in each quadrant a nether portal over a period of time? That way they actually become useful and promote the development of newer, larger building communities within the server.

 

 As far as the secret/extra portals go, I like the idea of one being a near-end-of-rev portal and others maybe placed in unique landscapes within the map.

--

 

On previous revs, I could trust portal cities to be major hubs of activity, the areas of continuous development and areas with large, reliable, accessible inter-city city-to-city transportation. This rev, not so much, and it's going to be further exacerbated with next revs if nothing is changed.

I like this idea, the only problem I see with it is that how do you define who has the most members? (This is just a example not the actual numbers) You have Seneca that has 100 people but only 10 of which are active compared to Whiteoak who only has 50 people but 30 of those 50 are active. So your going to give the town with more members but less activity the portal? Sure we could figure out who the most active towns are but that sounds like a lot of work trying to figure that out and I wouldn't want to make the admin team have to do that. Then there is always the problem that let's say Seneca has 100 active members in the middle of the rev and gets a portal but then over several weeks then drop down to 10 members, while Argoth has had a steady active 50 players and no portal. Do you now give Argoth a portal to? What I'm trying to ask is what criteria do we have for giving towns a portal?

 

I hope it doesn't appear that I'm trying to shoot down ideas, I just want to give accurate accounts to both sides of the ideas. I definitely prefer some alternative to the current system.

Edited January 30, 2014 by SwitchViewz

[theclefe]

I like this idea, the only problem I see with it is that how do you define who has the most members? (This is just a example not the actual numbers) You have Seneca that has 100 people but only 10 of which are active compared to Whiteoak who only has 50 people but 30 of those 50 are active. So your going to give the town with more members but less activity the portal? Sure we could figure out who the most active towns are but that sounds like a lot of work trying to figure that out and I wouldn't want to make the admin team have to do that. Then there is always the problem that let's say Seneca has 100 active members in the middle of the rev and gets a portal but then over several weeks then drop down to 10 members, while Argoth has had a steady active 50 players and no portal. Do you now give Argoth a portal to? What I'm trying to ask is what criteria do we have for giving towns a portal?

 

Determining the criteria for what makes a town active is difficult.  Diversifying the way towns can get a portal and setting a firm standard will make it a bit easier.  If one portal is awarded by play hours and one is awarded by resources accumulation, towns will pursue different strategies so there likely won't be 10 towns trying the same method.  Worst case, if a town is only the most active on the server for the short window when a portal is being awarded, at the very least they should have the infrastructure in place to support it.  That's still more preferable than a Driftwood situation.

 

I'm all for discussing and vetting different methods, but it still needs to be determined if the admins are considering changing the the way portals are distributed.

[kitcatbar]

I'm all for discussing and vetting different methods, but it still needs to be determined if the admins are considering changing the the way portals are distributed.

Discuss away. We're keeping an eye on this and other threads, and user input is helpful. Not saying we're necessarily changing, but we do like to hear others' ideas to see where we might be able to make improvements.

[theclefe]

I think we should also try to give towns the ability to build portals, setting the ingame price at a point where it takes a combined effort of a town while not using limited resources like diamonds or gold. To qualify for a portal, a town must have the following things:

 

1000 Iron Blocks

30,000 Wool Blocks

10,000 Wood Trunks

50 Bane of Arthropods books

*must have two way rail connections with three towns or Carbon Station.

* Must have rail or road access to at least one End Portal.

*Must have at least 5 players in the top 100 most active players (player can only represent one town)

 

Basically, make the portals difficult to get but still available to the big towns who will support it with infrastructure if they want one. This is on top of 3-4 Mad dash portals and 2 mid rev hidden portals. The numbers and resources above can change, but that standard is pretty high, and it should be.  I can only think of a few that would be able to accomplish it at this point.  If the big towns can eventually earn their portals, it makes more available to smaller upstart towns too.

Edited January 30, 2014 by theclefe

[WondrLand]

Hmm... I'm not so sure that having a strict number about what a city collectively has is a great way to determine portality. Sure that will encourage activity and city interaction, but at what point does playing minecraft become a chore? A city shouldn't have to fill a quota of materials and active members to be deemed portal worthy, I would recommend that a city should be granted portality if they are a great benefit to the server and the community sees that that particular city should get a portal.