Creative Creative Feedback Thread: What do you want to see in Rev 28?

[Magnyus]

Seriously though, can we please not build edge of the world tracks anymore? The last good one was rev 24 because I fixed it with a bit of help and it actually went all the way around the map. But it looks stupid as all hell when people build them at every expansion.

[jchance]

Its been my experience on C that there are 5 people that really like the CTA and the rest of the players that think its a complete pain in the ass (myself included).

 

There are 2 CTA lines running through Chanceville and I've seen grand total of 3 people using it the entire rev.  They're both attractive, and the builder worked with me to work them in to the city design, but they've gone largely unused since you can fly or ride a horse faster.

 

Just my two cents.

[XXX]

There are 2 CTA lines running through Chanceville and I've seen grand total of 3 people using it the entire rev.  They're both attractive, and the builder worked with me to work them in to the city design, but they've gone largely unused since you can fly or ride a horse faster.

Which I completely agree with, and I've praised the CTA designs twice so far in my messages.

-----

I apologize if my previous statements were harsh and unclear (which have since been edited for clarity), possibly leading one to believe that I wanted the CTA abolished, but I'm simply looking for some sort of negotiations that would make both groups of players satisfied.

Perhaps the CTA lines could be kept underground until they hit a small span of water, and then be allowed to surface and form a bridge over said water, but only if it doesn't landlock the body of water? From what I could tell, bridges and stations were the only deviations in the CTA lines, which had different designs for each one, so maybe these two types of structures could be allowed to be visible, while the lines themselves have to be kept hidden underground? This would come with the stipulation of only being allowed if the rail lines purposefully connected established areas that also have consent from the owners; no more arbitrary rail lines. I would personally prefer everything to be kept underground, aside from the stations, but this compromise is better than nothing. The people who work on the CTA would still get to choose how they design bridges and stations, just like they do now.

Regardless of the outcome from this discussion, I believe there needs to be clarification as to who is allowed to construct rail lines, what kind of protocol needs to be followed when building the rail lines, and the options available to normal players who want to contest and/or alter the rail lines near them.

Edited December 21, 2014 by Sir_Walmsley

[EeHee2000]

Would it be possible to set up two different worlds? A flat, build testing world, and the actual world? That way if players come to test builds, it's easy an accessible.

Answer please, staff?

[LetsBFehr]

I think we do need a rail line policy.  I am a big supporter that this is an open and free server, and if you want to build a rail line or highway, you are allowed to, but I understand there are places and times that these transportation lines heavily interfere with people's builds.  

 

Answer please, staff?

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "two worlds".  The current plan is to have the End Region expanded and have larger plots for planning.  Once your build is two weeks old it will be removed unless you modreq for it to have an extension because you aren't done.  

 

I want to give you all a current update of where the cadmins are in the planning process.  Right now we are going through seeds looking for a map.  We did decide that a seed map would be better as some people like the terrain. We will be heavily worldpainting the map to ensure there is plenty of flat land, and fewer extreme biomes and mountain ranges that people usually don't use.  We will have 4 cardinal roads from spawn going out to the edge of the map.  These will be pretty small (6 blocks width).  There will be no "official" spawn city.  Right outside of spawn will be open land.  If players want to build and manage their own spawn city that is fine.  For pre-made warps, we will have a bigtown, a pixel art, a planning area, and a PVP arena.  Spawn has been built in a top secret location on C.  Going forward our next steps are to get the map finished and start constructing the next revision.  I'll try to update you guys with any milestones/decisions we make along the way.  None the above is final by the way, so as always let us know your thoughts.

[SkrapssparkS]

Sorry, not sure this has been up not read through all the comments but I'd like to have a spleef arena warp at the start of the revision same goes for a pvp arena, they would be temporary until someone builds a better one but then you can instantly start things like spleef tournaments and pvp tournaments. Same goes for 10 minute build contest arenas.

[SirTacoface]

Hey Skraps, we do intend to have a /warp pvparena at the start of the next rev. We even posted a pvp arena building contest for C. Winner gets featured as the /warp pvparena for people to battle it out on!

[kittypuppet]

Sorry, not sure this has been up not read through all the comments but I'd like to have a spleef arena warp at the start of the revision

 

Nevastop is usually the one who builds spleef on C

[Magnyus]

Sorry, not sure this has been up not read through all the comments but I'd like to have a spleef arena warp at the start of the revision same goes for a pvp arena, they would be temporary until someone builds a better one but then you can instantly start things like spleef tournaments and pvp tournaments. Same goes for 10 minute build contest arenas.

 

Every single C revision that Nevastop has been here for, has had a fully fleshed out, incredibly detailed Spleef arena and none of them are ever used. And the recent ones have taken so long due to the lack of help when building it.

[SkrapssparkS]

Every single C revision that Nevastop has been here for, has had a fully fleshed out, incredibly detailed Spleef arena and none of them are ever used. And the recent ones have taken so long due to the lack of help when building it.

Yes, Nevastop's spleef arenas are amazing, but they do take a long time to create, I was suggesting that we had a basic /warp spleef arena, from go. Once Neva had built his spleef arena it's replace the basic one we started with.

[XXX]

May I please receive an update as to what is going on regarding the CTA issue? The responses from the three C administrators have all been mixed, with no apparent verdict.

- Diamond_Lover123's response did not seem to pertain to the topic being discussed; prohibiting something completely and prohibiting a form of something are two different things.

- LetsBFehr's response appears to be on the fence.

- SirTacoface's response was to pick my brain for a solution, but has now stopped communicating with me, and has gone so far as to delete one of his messages.

[SirTacoface]

Yes, I apologize deeply about that Sir_Walmsley, I shouldn't have deleted my message, I just had second thoughts on what I was saying and couldn't figure out how to properly reply. I too am on the fence, I don't think we should stop anyone from not building it, some people come on this server just to build CTA, it's all they do, I don't want to take that away from them. Although, I agree with the fact that they tend to protrude into peoples' builds. My personal thought was, what if we just made CTA its standard 4 directions that run parallel against the roads. Then perhaps later, the people who like building CTA, can add stations and/or take requests to connect their lines to cities or other builds. With that plan, they can construct a path carefully and be completely aware of their surroundings. If that fails, of course, the player who has a problem, can /modreq and staff will handle the situation.

[kittypuppet]

My personal thought was, what if we just made CTA its standard 4 directions that run parallel against the roads. Then perhaps later, the people who like building CTA, can add stations and/or take requests to connect their lines to cities or other builds. With that plan, they can construct a path carefully and be completely aware of their surroundings. If that fails, of course, the player who has a problem, can /modreq and staff will handle the situation.

That's actually not bad of an idea

[XXX]

My personal thought was, what if we just made CTA its standard 4 directions that run parallel against the roads. Then perhaps later, the people who like building CTA, can add stations and/or take requests to connect their lines to cities or other builds. With that plan, they can construct a path carefully and be completely aware of their surroundings. If that fails, of course, the player who has a problem, can /modreq and staff will handle the situation.

If I'm understanding you correctly, then this seems similar to what I've already suggested (aside from the restriction of being underground). So long as the arbitrary rail lines are done away with, then I'm satisfied.

If the outcome is to be any different from our current situation, though, then there needs to be emphasis placed on enlightening the community about what options are available to them when they are bothered by not only the CTA, but any other project going on around them. Like I keep repeating, not everyone is aware that they can submit a moderator request for such a thing; I see no specific mention of this at Spawn or in the rulebook.

[cdmrtbeok]

I don't think there should be any cardinal CTA lines it is a waste of time.

 

My favorite CTA revision was on the map with Cracktown. Maybe because I helped build and plan it but it came late in the revision and was designed to go around builds and into certain others.

 

There was only one line that went out from a HQ, across huge expanses of derp and some cool things, into a creepy cracktown cemetary, through verinicrons and kedemels aztec and it was really cool. The ride was curated, the tunnels were all decorated, every place over ground was part of a build or styled as such.

 

I think we should encourage that kind of project but only once there is something to see.

[Bawkses]

CTA lead here (Mattthedude handle). Sure. I think the WE update will make it easier. Apologies for the derpy overland lines - they were the most convenient way to actually build them, unlike the incomplete ones of the previous rev. Most of the "derpier" rail lines were personal pet projects; I built the black wool or GNR line as an arbitrary construction - mainly because of interesting tunnel and bridge designs, or originally, a prototype track switch system which is hidden under the bridge between the yellow and black lines - the neighbouring. Most of the lines were conceived in the early days of the rev, whereas a lot of the larger urban developments out of the spawn city were developed later). I can confirm that the line structure will be a bit more organised next rev (this was a big project I inherited, from the nice (and small) idea of building a spawn city station).

 

In terms of the complaints about land use or whatever, contact a mod, and they'll prompt one of us to rectify the problem. AFAIK all lines are built in public territory or those expressly consenting to its construction. The CTA line is protected to allow for WorldEdit atm (which IMHO produces ghastly flying tracks - I mean SUPPORTS ARE NICE), though I may request that regions have their protections removed or limited to a given set of coordinates surrounding the tunnel.

 

Plus: is the current tunnel design acceptable? I built it because it was fast to reproduce. The emphasis on this rev's track layout was to actually be completed, unlike the previous rev, so overland sections were preferable to continuous tunnel (and continuous tunnel without stops would be pretty much useless anyway).

 

Apologies and Merry Christmas :)

MattTheDude

 

TL;DR: Speedy completed network chosen instead of impossible to finish art deco project.

[XXX]

In terms of the complaints about land use or whatever, contact a mod, and they'll prompt one of us to rectify the problem.

I was originally hoping to remove as much of this burden as possible from normal players by relocating the CTA lines underground, given how vague this option appears to be; I didn't learn about it until I saw people in chat mentioning it. Yes, I could've complained about the lines that were only affecting me and avoided this whole discussion, but I was trying to look out for those who are less informed and also being affected. I thought that many of the CTA lines were placed inconsiderately and/or arbitrarily, and wanted to 'tidy up' the server. I realize that it's an impossible feat to 'tidy up' the whole server, and that there are many potential slippery slopes involved when determining what to remove, prohibit, or restrict, but I felt that the CTA was different, given that I think it's the biggest offender by a landslide, a recurring problem, and something that can be controlled more easily than other projects.

I admit that it was probably selfish of me to go about this by seeking alterations to the CTA itself, instead of simply requesting that knowledge regarding disturbances be more readily available. I guess I'm just afraid of it being more likely that people will leave out of frustration, rather than them being aware of their options, taking action, and staying. My desperate attempts to accommodate players and retain them might just be a bit 'too' desperate.

-----

In a similar vein, I would appreciate it if the 'random location' command and links to the live map and cartograph were more prominently displayed; if it isn't already, maybe turn it into a server message. Finding a suitable location is probably one of the most important decisions when building, especially for those with large projects in mind, and I would like to make it as easy as possible for people to find a spot. I see people complain about being unable to find a suitable location quite often, and this issue only worsens as the map ages and fills.

[XkinOEC]

Nickeox here, Long time builder and at some point or another leader of the CTA, I'd like to bring to point the general reason I had the CTA under such strict guidelines in the previous revision where I was accused of being such a hold-back on the project. If you recall spawncity was one of the major issues, I couldn't go over it, and I couldn't actually go under it without asking permissions of upwards of 20 users for a single line. However the CTA was strictly underground because despite everyone desire for an above ground CTA to show stuff off, I was here for the wide variety of CTA's that have existed in the past, and I was well aware of how people massively disliked CTA's that were above ground. If the complaints weren't "its too dark below the tracks" then they were, "it takes up too much space, and is quite an eye-sore" I myself can attest to disliking many of the past revisions with above ground or at-ground-level CTA's. This is why I always aimed to create a mostly underground experience. Further applying to the fact that we simply don't use minecart tracks the same as we did in the early days of nerd.nu. The CTA isn't used for its function anymore. Underground gives us the ability to make a very unified tunnel design, and create very intricate stations everywhere. Keeping up with the creative and appealing looking methods of building on c.nerd.nu. Perhaps whoever is leading it in the 28th revision of creative will take into consideration what I have said.

[MasterCommaThe]

My suggestions:

 

1. Spawn's static location means that it is surrounded by the oldest builds throughout the entire rev, and not necessarily good ones. I propose that we should make spawn a mobile structure, such as a train, ship, flying aircraft carrier, Cloud City (Bespin), or Howl's Moving Castle. Periodically throughout the revision, spawn should be moved, either to a new "dock" or "station".
2. Get rid of CTA. 
3. Allow some form of the //generate command so we can form complex shapes.
4. Put a limit on the "copy" command.

 

[Guest]

1. Put a limit on the "copy" command.

 

Yes, please. I would really like the ability to use other people's buildings in my builds. I think that there should be some sort of restriction to prevent abuse (eg: you can't copy an entire mountain and then paste it in on a 1x1 region), but this would be a good addition in my mind, and would also let us build large cities easier if we could simply copy someone else' buildings.

[XkinOEC]

eg: you can't copy an entire mountain and then paste it in on a 1x1 region

Avada, you can't do that as it is, region restrictions will cut-off anything that doesn't fit within the region, if its 1x1x1 and you're pasting an entire mountain range, it will only fill a 1x1x1. 

 

Also, if we were to put a limit on it like he said, that would only further decrease you're ability to use it within your own build, let alone other peoples builds.

[kittypuppet]

Can we have another like, "world" specifically for city builds (this would include "floating" cities)? 

 

I don't like that cities take up majority of the map - it makes it look a little messy, and I feel like having a separate area for cities would make the cities look more unified in a way (community projects anyone?). Plus I wouldn't have to worry about my build interfering with someone's city expansion, as I'm never sure how far out would be okay for me to build. On top of this, there's so many small builds everywhere so it's hard to find a decent area away from people's builds to do a large scale building.

 

If not, at least, take this into consideration.

As of now - I've spent the past hour or so looking around the map for an area reasonably distanced from people's builds to do another large scale building and so far I've no dice. I personally would like to see how doing something like this would affect how the map looks as well, even if you only do it for 1 revision to see how it works out.

 

I'm not sure how else I would go about this.

Edited January 14, 2015 by kittypuppet

[ZhenWan]

Would really like to see more 'soft engineering' builds on Creative, sounds quite weird, but I get quite grouchy when I see too many builds that are built on completely flat (w.e. like) terrian, where mountains are carved unnaturally through. Less 'floating' builds too (e.g. cities, houses, rails etc.) in just random, unnecessary places. It just personally ruins the 'environment' of the map, or just a plain, bad eye sore.

 

Ta.

Edited January 25, 2015 by ZhenWan

[tobylane]

I think cities only became a noticeable problem after worldedit came in, before then it seemed balanced to me.

 

edit: Was only thinking about ground-based, finished cities.

Edited January 14, 2015 by tobylane

[jchance]

Can we have another like, "world" specifically for city builds (this would include "floating" cities)? 

 

I don't like that cities take up majority of the map - it makes it look a little messy, and I feel like having a separate area for cities would make the cities look more unified in a way (community projects anyone?). Plus I wouldn't have to worry about my build interfering with someone's city expansion, as I'm never sure how far out would be okay for me to build. On top of this, there's so many small builds everywhere so it's hard to find a decent area away from people's builds to do a large scale building.

 

If not, at least, take this into consideration.

As of now - I've spent the past hour or so looking around the map for an area reasonably distanced from people's builds to do another large scale building and so far I've no dice. I personally would like to see how doing something like this would affect how the map looks as well, even if you only do it for 1 revision to see how it works out.

 

I'm not sure how else I would go about this.

 

This is the price of playing on a public server that does not have builder ranks, etc.   Everyone can build, and they can build what they want.  The cadmins don't dictate what people build, and I don't think fragmenting such a small server population in to multiple themed servers is the right answer.

 

Would really like to see more 'soft engineering' builds on Creative, sounds quite weird, but I get quite grouchy when I see too many builds that are built on completely flat (w.e. like) terrian, where mountains are craved unnaturally through. Less 'floating' builds too (e.g. cities, houses, rails etc.) in just random, unnecessary places. It just personally ruins the 'environment' of the map, or just a plain, bad eye sore.

 

Ta.

 

I agree, but lets be honest- builds that work with terrain are harder.  There are less people at that skill level.  I don't see how this will ever really change on a public and open server.

 

I think cities only became a noticeable problem after worldedit came in, before then it seemed balanced to me.

 

No, and in fact this has really improved since worldedit.  Now that people can flatten land there are way less floating cities (because they can easily produce flat land on the ground instead of building a floating platform in the sky) and from what I have seen all over the server build quality has generally improved with less incomplete builds.