[PMC] Creative Revision 25

[Guest]

This is a overdue so I apologise that you have not been kept in the loop thus far. A number of you have had suggestions for improving creative which have all been relevant. However now more than ever, you need to know more about Creative Revision 25 so that your feedback can be more targeted. For future revisions, we'll move the discussion into Mod Chat Private sooner.

 

Contents

• Information on Revision 25
• Progress so far / How you can help

• And Beyond

 

Information on Revision 25

 

-map

 

With the map, we're world painting based upon how people have utilized the available biomes as shown on cartographs and in-game from the current and past few revisions. Additionally we're taking a lot of feedback on-board from the biome poll & thread which is proving very helpful. The map will vary in elevation, however the most popular biomes and features will be prominent, including surfaces for all elevations that you can build with. When it comes to water, there is more focus on lakes, in particular one lake which will have room to host a number of islands. The map will start at 4000x4000 and expand by 500 blocks in each direction every few weeks or based upon demand until we reach 6000x6000.

 

-spawn

 

Regarding spawn, we have been gathering specific feedback in a separate topic, disguised as a nostalgia thread. The aim for spawn is for it to be dynamic. We want a combination of the freebuild, which allows a spawn to grow and the other side of the field, having a controlled spawn, to allow for a higher quality of builds.

 

Spawn will be surrounded by a city of builds from any creative revision before 24 (the current). These builds will be divided into three tiers by region protections. Once the chosen builds have been moved to create this city, we'll be making the builds looked tired and decrepit (by hand). These builds will be treated as generated terrain so people will have to build before we grant them protection at spawn as with any other build.

 

With the 'past-revision-builds', we're aiming to give older and newer players an interesting look at the past and from there, they can choose to replace, repair or upgrade these with their own versions of these builds, or their own builds entirely. As the outer tier of the city becomes more completed, the central protection tier will unlock for people to build there too.

 

The inner-most tier of spawn will be restricted to contest winners from revision 24 & 25 contests.

 

-warps

 

So far we have plans for 8bit & Bigtown to return with staff helping to run these warps. Most pixelart / statues will be moved to these respective warps in order to keep the rest of the map tidier. A redstone warp is in discussion.

 

-community builds

 

We want more staff involvement in community builds alongside the community. From this current revision, CTA failed due to the owner going inactive and not having anyone else to pick this up. On the other hand, directing attention to Magnyus' build has snowballed progress and proven very successful when staff are involved.

 

-tutorial builds

 

Given that we have a number of people who are less familiar with our server and hopefully will increase our numbers with new people, we feel that additional builds around spawn as tutorials will help.

 

-policy

 

We're going to bring back /modreq Warp request. You will be the front line decision for these requests, rather than reverting to an admin immediately. If you feel that a build is not ready for a warp, decline the request and give the owner constructive feedback. However if you feel the build is warp worthy, please /elevate. Cyotie, Dumbo and I will have the final say here but we trust your decision making.

 

The reason for this change is that when warp requests were open, the admins were flooded with the requests, when warp requests were closed, getting people involved with warping their builds was very difficult. There are a number of builds we approved warps on that the owners never responded to us upon. This is the healthy medium we're looking for, to quote the 52nd iteration of a famous flying elephant.

 

Progress So Far / How You Can Help

 

The map is currently being world painted, we're following a plan based on the popular biomes and features but have areas of the map blank where we're awaiting further feedback on the biome poll & thread.

 

There are a few final discussions happening between Cyotie, Dumbo and myself, mainly regarding spawn as we've focused more on the map and policy first to progress with the world painting.

 

In future, date unplanned, we'd like a staff-only meeting to further discuss creative 25. When we have this date set, we're aiming to have the map & terrain complete, including the past-revision-builds moved to spawn so that you can see a glimpse and we'll accept any help at this point with converting those builds into ruined / decrepit builds.

 

Advertising the new revision here prior to launch, including at least two promotional videos, one focused on terrain and the other on spawn, without giving too much away.

 

I'll be starting a weekly blog on the subreddit and forums once the revision is launched so that builds can be recognised that may not be warps, and so that more positive attention will be drawn to creative.

 

And Beyond

 

With all of this in mind, we're hoping that there is a solid foundation for an amazing revision of creative. If we have this in place, it will help us to keep people playing as we advertise more and attract new people to the server.

 

P.S. Please keep these details within the confines of staff chat.

[Dumbo52]

This gets a thumbs-up from me to move to MCP. After Cyotie comments here, fire when ready.

[Cyotie911]

Looks good.. I'll go ahead and move it.

[ROCKONN]

On the subject of the next spawn being more dynamic, mixing in freebuild areas, it would make sense to style the spawn as a transportation hub, much like a shipyard or a railyard. This also gives us the excuse to make rail stations etc.

 

A few features I hope you'll consider when painting:

People love hills. People love mountains. But what would really make this map unique are the following features:
A spawn bridging at least two terrains, preferably mountains/ocean.

Valleys. Not talking spaces between hills, I'm talking sheer-faced, 50 block drop ravines. And/Or, really tall mountains. And lots of them.

No nether biome. That was just weird.

Clear northern & southern areas. Perhaps dual snow biomes on the top & bottom of the map, with mountain ranges.

Larger/Deeper/More-shaped bodies of water, across differing elevations, if possible.

[MasterCommaThe]

On the subject of the next spawn being more dynamic, mixing in freebuild areas, it would make sense to style the spawn as a transportation hub, much like a shipyard or a railyard. This also gives us the excuse to make rail stations etc.

 

A few features I hope you'll consider when painting:

People love hills. People love mountains. But what would really make this map unique are the following features:

A spawn bridging at least two terrains, preferably mountains/ocean.

Valleys. Not talking spaces between hills, I'm talking sheer-faced, 50 block drop ravines. And/Or, really tall mountains. And lots of them.

No nether biome. That was just weird.

Clear northern & southern areas. Perhaps dual snow biomes on the top & bottom of the map, with mountain ranges.

Larger/Deeper/More-shaped bodies of water, across differing elevations, if possible.

 

 

I love the idea of a shipyard spawn. I can imagine a busted container with creeper heads (read: "Tribbles") spilling out.

 

I personally really liked the huge lava lake in the nether area. I didn't really care about the nether itself, so maybe we should turn a few regular lakes in the next revision into lava lakes...or, make a couple of mountains volcanos with those lakes inside!

 

Now my big question for the admins. As a mod, how do we police the degraded free build area? From the sound of it, these free build areas seem like they will be especially vulnerable to greif. Will this be a small "chaos" area, or have I missed a part where we will only give perms for that area to players we find are trusted not to be greifers? I can see a player completely wiping one of these structures off the map, and claiming to have "improved" it. Is that grief? How do we choose who's modifications should get protected, if any? I'm sure this has all been considered, so do you have any suggestions on how we should police that area?

 

 

Lastly, I like bringing back old builds for players to improve, but don't understand the purpose of degradation. I think players will feel free to modify them without the extra effort on our part. In addition, degradation will reduce the appeal of build quality around spawn. (Though Laputa degraded would only look better!)  

[buzzinbee]

I had an idea of creating several locations around the map that would be suited for cities, each with a different theme. We could have plots lade out so the city could take off straight away, the idea behind this is that it would give players a community to start in immediately very similar to how pve has cities that people can join at the start. The hope is that it would also encourage friendly competition as each city could build a spleef arena or a Mork arena or other such games, and they would compete against each other like they do in pve and hopefully build a better sense of community. This idea could also bring back the CTA as we could link all the cities up by rail. The reason I thought about cities is that in the past revisions what I noticed is that it was more organised partly because flying wasn't there so roads had to be built but there was a large number of cities. I'm not even sure if we had warps, so most players stuck around their one area and made it as nice as possible for themselves. I'd hope that having cities encouraged more in the next revision would hopefully increase the quality of build as well, as it's reached the point where pve has better builds than creative.

 

Focusing on terrain, I think it would be nice to have extravagant overhanging cliffs and waterfalls, these could make way for really nice villages with beautiful scenery. I'm not so keen on the nether and end idea, I personally think it looks a bit out of place, I do like the idea of making volcanoes and other such features but the nether wasn't really used that much and it came with a few problems.

 

This is just my input it would be nice to hear some feedback on it though :)  

[Guest Former Staff]

First off, thank you for the feedback so far. It's much appreciated.

 

 

On the subject of the next spawn being more dynamic, mixing in freebuild areas, it would make sense to style the spawn as a transportation hub, much like a shipyard or a railyard. This also gives us the excuse to make rail stations etc.

 

A few features I hope you'll consider when painting:

People love hills. People love mountains. But what would really make this map unique are the following features:
A spawn bridging at least two terrains, preferably mountains/ocean.

Valleys. Not talking spaces between hills, I'm talking sheer-faced, 50 block drop ravines. And/Or, really tall mountains. And lots of them.

No nether biome. That was just weird.

Clear northern & southern areas. Perhaps dual snow biomes on the top & bottom of the map, with mountain ranges.

Larger/Deeper/More-shaped bodies of water, across differing elevations, if possible.

 

Spawn is probably the most malleable of all the things that need to be completed in terms of the layout. I really like the idea of a transport integration with spawn, if this goes ahead, I would like to see a community & staff run project for this. The spawn location itself will start off as a crater, surrounded by this city of builds but we'd like this to evolve over time too.

 

With regards to your terrain suggestions, I'm not going to rule anything out completely, however the map so far is divided more by valleys containing rivers, rivers themselves and lakes. I'll look into dual mountain ranges for the North / South, however I want to limit snow as not too many people use these areas.

 

 

I love the idea of a shipyard spawn. I can imagine a busted container with creeper heads (read: "Tribbles") spilling out.

 

I personally really liked the huge lava lake in the nether area. I didn't really care about the nether itself, so maybe we should turn a few regular lakes in the next revision into lava lakes...or, make a couple of mountains volcanos with those lakes inside!

 

Now my big question for the admins. As a mod, how do we police the degraded free build area? From the sound of it, these free build areas seem like they will be especially vulnerable to greif. Will this be a small "chaos" area, or have I missed a part where we will only give perms for that area to players we find are trusted not to be greifers? I can see a player completely wiping one of these structures off the map, and claiming to have "improved" it. Is that grief? How do we choose who's modifications should get protected, if any? I'm sure this has all been considered, so do you have any suggestions on how we should police that area?

 

 

Lastly, I like bringing back old builds for players to improve, but don't understand the purpose of degradation. I think players will feel free to modify them without the extra effort on our part. In addition, degradation will reduce the appeal of build quality around spawn. (Though Laputa degraded would only look better!)  

 

We're looking into a volcano with an easy-to-build-upon area surrounding it. I've been considering protecting the volcanic crater and subsequent lava, then raising the lava limit over time until it spills down the volcano, simulating an eruption, until the lava recedes. Any thoughts on this?

 

With regards to the builds at spawn,there will be three tiers of protection. Think outermost, central and innermost. At first, the outermost protection will be removed, so builds that were in this area can be completely destroyed if a person wishes. Treat these blocks as generated blocks. We will only protect builds here where a player has taken the time to place their own blocks / significantly modify an area.

 

In some cases, builds will be too big to move to spawn, so only a part of that build will become a part of it. Having a degraded look will hopefully inspire people to want to improve it. Just as a note, we're not aiming for a griefed look.

 

 

I had an idea of creating several locations around the map that would be suited for cities, each with a different theme. We could have plots lade out so the city could take off straight away, the idea behind this is that it would give players a community to start in immediately very similar to how pve has cities that people can join at the start. The hope is that it would also encourage friendly competition as each city could build a spleef arena or a Mork arena or other such games, and they would compete against each other like they do in pve and hopefully build a better sense of community. This idea could also bring back the CTA as we could link all the cities up by rail. The reason I thought about cities is that in the past revisions what I noticed is that it was more organised partly because flying wasn't there so roads had to be built but there was a large number of cities. I'm not even sure if we had warps, so most players stuck around their one area and made it as nice as possible for themselves. I'd hope that having cities encouraged more in the next revision would hopefully increase the quality of build as well, as it's reached the point where pve has better builds than creative.

 

Focusing on terrain, I think it would be nice to have extravagant overhanging cliffs and waterfalls, these could make way for really nice villages with beautiful scenery. I'm not so keen on the nether and end idea, I personally think it looks a bit out of place, I do like the idea of making volcanoes and other such features but the nether wasn't really used that much and it came with a few problems.

 

This is just my input it would be nice to hear some feedback on it though :)  

 

With these cities, I'd like to see pre-planning prior to the revision (as we begin to share information with the playerbase) so that they can be a joint venture between staff and players. The idea sounds good.

 

Waterfalls have been very popular in the biome voting thread so we're looking into adding a selection. I've had some inspiration from real world waterfalls too [1,2].

[ROCKONN]

Is there any kind of rough plan for the map made, like a pencil drawing or anything? Would be interesting to see.

[MasterCommaThe]

We're looking into a volcano with an easy-to-build-upon area surrounding it. I've been considering protecting the volcanic crater and subsequent lava, then raising the lava limit over time until it spills down the volcano, simulating an eruption, until the lava recedes. Any thoughts on this?

The progressive volcano is a fantastic idea. I'm not sure whether players will appreciate the lava flows coming into their builds, so I recommend a moat around the mountain, in fact, for aesthetics this volcano should be in the middle of the lake with all the islands. That way it is surrounded by frequently visited builds. I suggest that we make a small temple at the top of the volcano, with "native shamans" and sacrificed mod heads on pikes around the opening. :3

[Guest Former Staff]

P.S. Please keep these details within the confines of staff chat.

 

Just a friendly reminder to keep the details of Revision 25 amongst staff please. I understand that some details have been shared beyond this bubble already. I understand the excitement to share, I'm in the same boat but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

[thedonvito17]

So is the spawn already built?

[Guest Former Staff]

Yes and no. It hasn't been placed yet.

[Guest Former Staff]

I'm closing this discussion as we're moving this back to admin-only chat as some of our main ideas have been shared with players without asking us first.

 

We have other plans that we will proceed with. Despite this move, I would recommend keeping the ideas discussed here in staff-only chat as not only will you look stupid revealing things that won't happen but I'll be speaking with you privately.