Thoughts on Portals and the Nether

[theclefe]

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.

I don't disagree about resource collect being a chore in some respects, but if the concern is bias, then this absolves us of that.  Is digging rail tunnels a chore? Is building grinders a chore?  PvE is a chore if you choose to look at it that way.  If Minecraft is only about building pretty things to a person then he pr she can go to creative.  I view PvE as a serious of challenges to accomplish what one wants to accomplish.  Lord knows I don't want to cut down 100 trees to make a house, but I do. This would fall in line with that. If my town collectively wants a portal, we do the work for it.

 

I do think that a town should have active members to be deemed portal worthy.  Activity is the probably the most important characteristic we are looking for in a player.  We can bring in 5,000 players, but if none of them play more than 10 hours, they really aren't a great benefit to the server.  Sure, there are qualities that make people even more valuable, but it all starts with activity.

Edited January 30, 2014 by theclefe

[schererererer]

The other problem with these is that placing portals is a zero-sum game. You could have a few more of them than we do now, but allowing anyone who has passed a certain threshold of activity or resource collection to get a portal will inevitably result in too many or too few portals. You could have the first N cities to reach a certain set of conditions, which really isn't that different from the current portal exploration rush. Awarding portals by admin decision is also problematic in its subjective nature. I am strongly opposed to a single portal at spawn; you negate essential elements of vanilla gameplay for the sole purpose of reducing conflict - effectively making things fair by denying something useful to everyone.

Part of the purpose of portals (and stargates in the past) on pve has been to facilitate the dispersion of population away from the center of the map, hence the placement of portals from the very beginning. Without this, you will assuredly see a clot of concentration around spawn with an accompanying spike in land disputes and complaints about not being able to find land.

Combining portals at the start with the ability to make one with intense effort isn't really fair for the latter aspirants. You'd have to set a threshold like 1000 obsidian for it to not be a wide rush in itself, and to me that expense seems a waste, compared to the relative ease of rushing a portal. Perhaps instead having a portal be a prize for winning an official contest of some sort could work.

[theclefe]

The other problem with these is that placing portals is a zero-sum game. You could have a few more of them than we do now, but allowing anyone who has passed a certain threshold of activity or resource collection to get a portal will inevitably result in too many or too few portals. You could have the first N cities to reach a certain set of conditions, which really isn't that different from the current portal exploration rush. Awarding portals by admin decision is also problematic in its subjective nature. I am strongly opposed to a single portal at spawn; you negate essential elements of vanilla gameplay for the sole purpose of reducing conflict - effectively making things fair by denying something useful to everyone.

Part of the purpose of portals (and stargates in the past) on pve has been to facilitate the dispersion of population away from the center of the map, hence the placement of portals from the very beginning. Without this, you will assuredly see a clot of concentration around spawn with an accompanying spike in land disputes and complaints about not being able to find land.

Combining portals at the start with the ability to make one with intense effort isn't really fair for the latter aspirants. You'd have to set a threshold like 1000 obsidian for it to not be a wide rush in itself, and to me that expense seems a waste, compared to the relative ease of rushing a portal. Perhaps instead having a portal be a prize for winning an official contest of some sort could work.

 

Well, speculate who would be granted a portal with those hypothetical conditions.  Seneca, Port 80, Alias, Rose, Pico, Manta, Whiteoak, Argoth?  That would be a good list of portal towns.  Now say a town like Kowloon, New Market or Edgestone got their stuff together late rev, they would still have an opportunity to join these ranks.   Or, with the above list, there would be no portal in the SW part of the current map, so a bunch of folks get together and build a new town or alliance to accommodate that region.  Whose to say what is too many or too few?  If there is a sweet spot, then tweak the formula.  It would be a different experience, but I doubt a negative one.

 

I don't disagree with the strategy of using portals to disperse the population.  This could lessen that.  But at the same time, I'd imagine most big towns want space to work with anyway so we'd still get portals and towns on the outer half of the map.

Edited January 30, 2014 by theclefe

[schererererer]

What I'm saying is tweaking the formula is tricky when the only feedback on whether 1000 iron blocks or 10000 is a more appropriate value is through the rate of portals being built during the rev. Leaving it low or high will result in dozens of portals or one portal, respectively; changing the value during a map would only work if you start high and reduce, returning the difference in cost to whomever already bought a portal.

 

If we want to continue the important principle of population dispersion, portals have to be there at revision starts. Thus, we need to continue at minimum the current system of portal claims by clicking an announcment sign, to avoid conflict over portal claims. Adding a new portal in a location of choice would need to be very expensive, otherwise individuals could easily spam them wherever they please (and then we'd might as well allow the travesty of unrestricted portal placement everywhere). Even something as labor intensive as 5000 obsidian only takes ~4.5 hours to mine with E4 picks (ubiquitous by mid-revision). Rare items such as diamond blocks follow a similar pattern in favoring heavy miners over builders. It seems we must combine this expense with a cap (eg. the first 4 people to get to 5000 obsidian get a portal). Alternatively, portals can just be a rare grand prize for a major official competition.

Whose to say what is too many or too few?

Too few means not enough to use for transportation across the overworld map, imo (ie. at least 4 in +- orthogonal directions). Too many is when you have a glut of portals in the nether (which honestly can be a bit higher). At the extreme end of this is when portals are too tightly spaced to operate without interfering with one another.

 

On a side note, using activity as a metric is also difficult to put together. One would think that all you need to do is do a weighted sum of city population by member hours online, but you have to take into account region members who aren't permanent residents, residents of multiple cities, and arguments toward other metrics of "activity". This adds up to a ton of work for admins that can't really be automated or made objective, which would be ideal for a sensitive topic such as portal placement.

[theclefe]

What I'm saying is tweaking the formula is tricky when the only feedback on whether 1000 iron blocks or 10000 is a more appropriate value is through the rate of portals being built during the rev. Leaving it low or high will result in dozens of portals or one portal, respectively; changing the value during a map would only work if you start high and reduce, returning the difference in cost to whomever already bought a portal.

 

If we want to continue the important principle of population dispersion, portals have to be there at revision starts. Thus, we need to continue at minimum the current system of portal claims by clicking an announcment sign, to avoid conflict over portal claims. Adding a new portal in a location of choice would need to be very expensive, otherwise individuals could easily spam them wherever they please (and then we'd might as well allow the travesty of unrestricted portal placement everywhere). Even something as labor intensive as 5000 obsidian only takes ~4.5 hours to mine with E4 picks (ubiquitous by mid-revision). Rare items such as diamond blocks follow a similar pattern in favoring heavy miners over builders. It seems we must combine this expense with a cap (eg. the first 4 people to get to 5000 obsidian get a portal). Alternatively, portals can just be a rare grand prize for a major official competition.

Too few means not enough to use for transportation across the overworld map, imo (ie. at least 4 in +- orthogonal directions). Too many is when you have a glut of portals in the nether (which honestly can be a bit higher). At the extreme end of this is when portals are too tightly spaced to operate without interfering with one another.

 

On a side note, using activity as a metric is also difficult to put together. One would think that all you need to do is do a weighted sum of city population by member hours online, but you have to take into account region members who aren't permanent residents, residents of multiple cities, and arguments toward other metrics of "activity". This adds up to a ton of work for admins that can't really be automated or made objective, which would be ideal for a sensitive topic such as portal placement.

Yes, it all needs to be flushed out, but I think the concept of large towns being given the ability to acquire portals in combination with other portals available should be an option.  If the mods and admins set the requirements such that only 1 or 2 towns can accomplish it then that's fine.  As I said, we can tweak the formula so that it allows a town that is active and connected to be a regional hub.  I would be opposed to a cap or to making a requirement something that a late rev town couldn't accomplish.  Will it be difficult to set the standard?  Sure.  Like WickedCoolSteve said, there is no easy way to do portals in multiplayer.  If our overarching goal is to promote activity and transport infrastructure, this is a favorable alternative to what the current system is.

[TheRandomnatrix]

The other problem with these is that placing portals is a zero-sum game... am strongly opposed to a single portal at spawn; you negate essential elements of vanilla gameplay for the sole purpose of reducing conflict - effectively making things fair by denying something useful to everyone.

Part of the purpose of portals (and stargates in the past) on pve has been to facilitate the dispersion of population away from the center of the map, hence the placement of portals from the very beginning. Without this, you will assuredly see a clot of concentration around spawn with an accompanying spike in land disputes and complaints about not being able to find land.

What if other incentivizing was done to spread out towns, such as for example interesting or useful land gen? Also, when you consider that most towns would think that spawn might become a cluster of towns, they would probably move away from spawn to avoid it. I do recognize the point that it would be making things fair by removing what is considered a core element, though I can't argue just to how drastic the effects might be around spawn since the single portal idea hasn't been implemented. If transportation infrastructure was indeed improved by towns to compensate, then couldn't it be said that many new players could quickly get away from that though? The only benefit of building near spawn in this scenario would be to try to quickly attract new players, which is really no different than any other spawn towns before.

 

I'm personally against awarding portals through arbitrary benchmarks in item collection or playerbase, as I consider that highly unstable given minecraft's and mcpublic's constant change in item rarity.  It would also just force towns to grind for things, or treat people as a resource towards getting a portal through player activity, both of which I feel aren't productive. It's also extremely difficult and subjective to gauge activity levels in towns, going with scher's points on the matter.

 

It's a very interesting topic, and I'm glad all these ideas are being discussed.

[redwall_hp]

It would also just force towns to grind for things, or treat people as a resource towards getting a portal through player activity, both of which I feel aren't productive.

 

Bleh. I'm all too familiar with that. An MMO I used to play had a "guild level," which was required to be of a certain rank for the members to get certain perks, and it would decay over time unless players were active. This, of course, meant guild leaders would constantly kick players who weren't active enough to be contributing to the rank.

[Sapphric]

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.

But who decides that?

[ne0codex]

... or treat people as a resource towards getting a portal through player activity...

Isn't that what cities do anyway at the beginning of revs in the rush for portals?

-

 

There seems to be a lot of discussion that's revolving around "who gets to decide" and "is X building project" worth getting a portal. Maybe we don't need to re-invent the wheel...

 

Maybe the answer is a simple as how we treat spawn. People can build *to* spawn and around it, but can't build AT spawn.

 

Applying Spawn's rules to Nether Portals will:

 - prevent dead cities/projects from hoarding a main quadrant portal

 - prevent in-game disputes over portals

 - prevents cities treating players as resources towards getting a portal

 - prevent multiple players from the same city sending people to find all portals and thus giving them the ability to decide as to who gets the other portals.

 

It allow:

 - those cities/projects/builders who want nether portal access to build infrastructure to the portal

     - and thusly, expand infrastructure.

 

 

As far as portal placement goes.. let that be the mapmaker's decision.

Edited January 31, 2014 by ne0codex

[erdtzac_]

Like WickedCoolSteve said, there is no easy way to do portals in multiplayer.

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they work the same as in singleplayer? From my own tests I see it's the closest one to coords/8 or *8 that gets choosen 100% of the time.

Applying Spawn's rules to Nether Portals will:

...create ring-shaped protections immediately around portal regions, made of cities conflicting over who gets what part of the ring. Accessing one from the outside by building a road to it would become impossible due to these protections.

*I accidentally space

Edited January 31, 2014 by erdtzac_

[TheRandomnatrix]

For clarification, doesn't S use or used to have a plugin that forced portals to always align correctly with no overlap? Couldn't the same be applied to P?

[Difficult1]

What about not having the portals until later in the rev? Have only one portal at spawn. This allows people to get materials etc. Hold off on giving portals to towns because people would focus on their towns rather then the nether, as towns will become more and more developed. After a few weeks, take a pole or look at well developed citys and there locations. Find the most developed places in good areas and give them a portal. Developing a town is not an easy task, a well developed town shows that enough dedication and effort was put into this town and they deserve a portal.

[Pyr0mrcow]

What about putting the portals at 4 exact cardinal distances from spawn, so no part of the map is considered the 'favorite'; then, use those portals as rail stations? There can be roads and rails coming out from them, with a protection large enough that a town can't be built on top of the portal, but small enough that the walking time to civilization is reasonable.

Basically, treat the portals as spawn outposts, with the primary focus being rails.

[TheRandomnatrix]

Summing up the ideas thrown around in the thread so far. Many of these can be mixed and matched in various ways:

 

• No portals except for spawn
• Portals would be pre-placed, but protected with a buffer to prevent building on them
• Portals pre-placed at start to be found, but only activated after a certain time period
• Portals awarded to towns/builds after a certain benchmark is met(ex: player count, resource collection, having road/rail infrastructure).
• A poll on the forums to decide what towns get portals
• Everyone can make portals(silly redwall)
• Portals awarded to players through events or other means such as finding hidden "portal tickets"
• A few late-rev portals placed across the map to create activity
• Allowing towns custom portal sizes

[WondrLand]

• Allowing towns custom portal sizes

I feel like this point is separate from the others. Therefore I will say something about it.

 

This rev (and last?) cities were allowed to choose the blocks that would replace the 4 obsidian at the corners of their claimed portal. I see changing the size to something that the city (or whoever/whatever claims it at any point in the revision) would like it to be is no different. If there are technical reasons why this wouldn't work then that would be a good reason to not do it. Otherwise, why not? Portal customization is not new for PVE.

[SwitchViewz]

I feel like this point is separate from the others. Therefore I will say something about it.

 

This rev (and last?) cities were allowed to choose the blocks that would replace the 4 obsidian at the corners of their claimed portal. I see changing the size to something that the city (or whoever/whatever claims it at any point in the revision) would like it to be is no different. If there are technical reasons why this wouldn't work then that would be a good reason to not do it. Otherwise, why not? Portal customization is not new for PVE.

The 4 corners were a new thing this rev and if I recall correctly at the start of this rev they briefly mentioned that they would be visiting the topic of custom portal sizes for later revisions. I guess we will find out what they have planned for Rev 13 soon.

[WKONEDERFUL]

I say have one portal at spawn and 4 more, each set at the 4 corners of the map. We all know where they are, we all know where they'll be. Nether fast travel is maintained and the "mad dash" is curtailed somewhat.

[twilexis]

I don't think we should have portal towns. We should have 5 cardinal portals with a build restriction of say 50-100 blocks surrounding each portal (with the exception of a rail station to each portal).

 

If towns spring up around the limit so be it, but that way there will be no 'mad dash' or butthurt-ness and should inspire more of a server-wide ownership of the portals.

 

EDIT: a word

Edited February 16, 2014 by twilexis