PvE general poll for future revisions

[jattell]

Just had a crazy thought(so normal by my standards).

A difficulty when dealing with portals is that they tend to discourage infrastructure. What if not all portals were active at any given time? They could rotate once every <insert time span>, making them only use able every now and then. The pattern would be easily predictable to make event planning easier, but general purpose map traveling would be more difficult.

I'm just throwing that idea out there to chew on, since I haven't heard it mentioned before.

I.. I like this!

Might be super annoying. Could also be really awesome. 

[Mrloud15]

What about something like making a no build buffer around each portal of 25-50 blocks and setting up a rule that says no person or group may claim more than 2 sides of any given portal. This would stop a single city from claiming a portal and encourage people to share it.

 

Another idea would be to eliminate the fast travel aspect of portals by making the overworld and nether have a 1:1 ratio instead of the 1:8 it is by default. This would encourage more overworld rails and roads and would remove most, if not all, of the issues people have with portals and the drama it brings.

 

For portal placement, I think something simple like 1 in each corner of the map plus 1 at spawn for the start of the rev (5 portals total) and then add 4 more along each axis later if the rev (bringing the total to 9 portals) preferably with a map expansion which would give people who join in the middle of the rev fresh unexploded land to build on.

[Guest]

What about something like making a no build buffer around each portal of 25-50 blocks and setting up a rule that says no person or group may claim more than 2 sides of any given portal. This would stop a single city from claiming a portal and encourage people to share it.

 

This was pretty much what I meant with wild portals. Could be worth a shot and see how it would work.

 

 

 

Another idea would be to eliminate the fast travel aspect of portals by making the overworld and nether have a 1:1 ratio instead of the 1:8 it is by default. This would encourage more overworld rail and roads and would remove most, if not all, of the issues people have with portals and the drama it brings.

 

I do like this idea as well. More space in the nether this way as well and it would promote proper rail- and roadnetworks on both sides. If we're going to the smaller map size, this could be a neat way to do it. 

[I_c_e_]

With this post i know my firework making rear better get to working because it seems the end is on the horizon- as for ideas and suggestions everyone's seems to have some merit and I can see the validity in most of them, tic will tell you my ideas are usually far outside the norm , I've never colored inside the lines but here is a few of mine.

 

I do hate that after the initial rush people seem to just disappear until the the end of rev is posted, i know everyone hits the ground running with portals and end dragons dancing in their heads and I am right there with them- id hate to lose that rush but an idea that i had that may encourage not only a good restart but continual play through out is to have all events, spleef, pvp, build/ design tournaments etc have a merit system and portals will be awarded at the end of a rev based on this to Cities/Towns.  The winning cities are granted  the portals to find and claim and no switching Portals if you claim it.  Once claimed a portal must remain to that city.  If points are earned until the end this may encourage more involvement. Everyone likes to be rewarded and lets all admit we all have a healthy competitive streak so i say play on that. Encourage/Reward ( I do miss the admin events, and Holiday events with mob drops , I'll never forget riding on a bat or being attacked by 5 charged creepers  ! ) I do think that's whats missing,  our working and playing together, the events that had us checking to see if we got a brick in our inventory when we heard the wither  these shenanigans gave us a sense of community and was just plain fun.  Thats what Mine craft should always be Fun. It doesn't matter if your 10 or 100 we play this game we all love because it's challenging and fun , it doesn't matter that my boss's grandson said to me recently  " What?! You are to old to play minecraft ! "  That little brat -I'll  never be to old ! and if he'd meet me in a pvp arena I'd take his head :)

Edited August 2, 2015 by I_c_e_

[DerpHerpington]

Speaking from Ambrosia - there is literally nothing anyone is doing right now in the city. Production of everything has stopped, there are no new builds in development, etc. 

 

I think the general consensus is that revisions shouldn't be too long or else everybody would lose interest.

[totemo]

A difficulty when dealing with portals is that they tend to discourage infrastructure. What if not all portals were active at any given time? They could rotate once every <insert time span>, making them only use able every now and then. The pattern would be easily predictable to make event planning easier, but general purpose map traveling would be more difficult.

 

They could be rationed out gradually.  In an earlier comment, I suggested allowing them to be bought by gathering materials.  @saberfysh suggested competitions (events, admin hunts).  Mrloud15 has suggested a starting set of four portals, with four more available later in the rev by some unidentified mechanism.  He also suggested de-emphasising the importance of portals by making the Nether 1:1 scale rather than 1:8, which has some merit, though I realise it is controversial because of the inconvenience.

 

It does remind me though that Survival had a very cool custom generated Nether during one rev, which I have said before would be more in keeping with the "vs Environment" aspect of PvE.  That further brings to mind the fact that the last time we asked PvE about the map, they had the option of nominating terrain type.  That option is conspicuously absent in the above poll.

 

If we are going to fully explore the topic we could also potentially discard Mojang's portal mechanic.  With a custom plugin, portals could instead be explicitly connected together such that we could remove the limits on portal placement and let players make their own.  Now I'm thinking with portals, the plugin could even require that users mark both sides of the portal using red and blue stained glass with custom lore, thus necessitating that they travel to the Nether side destination via some pre-existing portal.

 

Edited August 3, 2015 by totemo

[TheRandomnatrix]

If we're going to talk more specifically about portals, it's worth mentioning this thread: https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/1584-thoughts-on-portals-and-the-nether/

It's from like a year and a half ago, but it's still pretty relevant. It touches up on a lot of different problems and suggested solutions.

I consider portals to have massive influence over map infrastructure, and it's a very careful balance between making enough to satisfy basic travel needs, but making too many devalues building infrastructure(roads, rails, canals, etc) that both give people something to do, as well as showing off the industrial might this server has. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this problem, as a player and now a padmin.

A primary concern with benchmark based portals is that Minecraft is a sandbox game and resources are essentially limitless. Were it something like basic town infrastructure (farms, houses, whatever), that can lead to too many places getting portals, as well as opening up potential accusations of bias. It's a big can of worms and can lead to a lot of drama and paperwork. The reason current portals have announce signs is because it cut portal drama down to basically zero.

Both event based portals and nether ratio(actually suggested this to the last batch of padmins. Stole it from loud) are something that can definitely be toyed with. The events would have to be considered fair, and the ratio can be implemented with a plugin. I would not co sided something as extreme as 1:1 though. Something in between 1 and 8 is reasonable. These would need to be discussed with the other padmins though(which is kinda what the thread is for I suppose :p)

A custom nether is also not out of the question currently.

[TheNightsKing]

I like totemo's idea of dropping Mojang's portal mechanic, and have been taking the next step in my head. If the two ends of a set of portals could be placed and connected manually, could this be done arbitrarily? So for example a portal at 0,1000 in the overworld normally goes to 0,125 in the nether, but let's say it gets pointed to 50,-60 instead. The HP Lovecraft fan in me likes non-Euclidian space, and it would add to the challenge of navigating around the world most efficiently. Think of the London Underground map - the shortest route may not look the shortest. Part of the fun of the first few weeks is the collaborative mapmaking, and this would put one more wrinkle into there. Combining with a reduced nether ratio would encourage the building of infrastructure in the nether AND the overworld, as the shortest way from A to B may be via Y and Z.

 

This would also help with adding portals later on in the rev: an admin could pick a random untouched spot in the nether, and connect the portal there for reduced drama. Potentially mark out a large number of possible locations in the nether with some sort of custom structure that is protected against builds. Perhaps anyone who gets the right to light a portal through finding an announce sign, or an event, would have to also find and claim one of these inside-nether portal locations to match. But this is just thinking as I type.

 

Another, more important, portal request I have is that the one at spawn should be made animal safe, as I don't enjoy dragging animals down there only for them to drown!

 

On a separate note, I'd prefer smaller biomes, but more than one of each. The Jungle From Hell is handy when you want to grab a jungle tree, especially compared to last rev, but it would be nice if it wasn't all in the north east. Likewise stained clay all being in the south west is also limiting.

[Trooprm32]

Another, more important, portal request I have is that the one at spawn should be made animal safe, as I don't enjoy dragging animals down there only for them to drown!

 

 

I love the spawn portals location this rev, it just fits so thematically well. But I understand the problems that it had, and don't worry, next rev it should be pet friendly!

[Wozdaka]

One thing I think that was very cool in Rev 15 was the Nether Spawn. You had all the roads/tunnels merging into 1 spot and that build was done very well and seems to be the work of the community.

 

What about making the overworld portals similar projects? Like have them found but then the 30x30 or 40x40 area around it made into a community project. Nearby towns can all help build roads to that portal or the design

around the portal. Also again the path in the nether could be done with co-operation.

 

I think this seems to fit the co-operative nature of P and I think we could see the same success we saw at the nether portal for every nether portal.

[JazzyMonkey53]

I'm of the philosophy that smaller maps and shorter rev times makes maintaining interest easier.

This is definitely true for me. I spend hours playing at the begining of a rev, but lose insterest after 2-3 months once I've built all my stuff and the cities are all done. The game becomes too easy and you just hord a bunch of stuff you don't need. This rev is so long and I haven't logged in for a long while.

[Vykoden]

Every community of more than 4 regularly-active players should be able to build its own nether portal. 

[Forever_A_Steve]

Avalon here. All building has ceased and the town hasn't seen progress in a month. Not having a neither portal doesn't help either.

 

 

People just begin the server by portal hunting and thats it. And then the town building happens when people give up on it and/or settle near a portal.

The portal system needs to be overhauled or have something that accommodates the growth for new portals.