Region sizes.

[Boredeth]

This has been a recent annoyance of mine, especially since the introduction of worldedit.

 

Region sizes seem to stretch what used to be unimaginable, even with little or no development.

 

It's not outrageous any more to find a 1000x500 block claims, or 700x700 block regions with development only in a 200x200 area or smaller.

 

I understand that worldedit allows much faster creation, but when a land area is empty and you want to build in it, it's stupefying to find out that it's at the corner of a 1000x1000 claim.

 

Is there any policy on a certain hard limit to how big a region claim can be? I understand that there is a 1-month-no-build-no-more-region policy, but is that really enough?

[Hollifer]

This is a good topic to bring up for discussion before we expand the map again, thank you for bringing your concerns to the forums to get more feedback from other players.

I myself want to address by first saying that the claims this revision are quite large, and in numbers i've never seen before.This will become tedious and complicated to reduce later on, and that's putting much more stress on players as well as staff. Also taking into account all of the moving of small builds we have to do because people do not see large borders awaiting approval can get messy.

There is no hard limit to claim sizes, however we do start to deny players claiming new regions if they develop habits of not building on their existing protections. C has a fairly small community and I can understand how large claims dominating the map could deter newer players, and i've always wanted to address that.

 

So, with all that said: Can you please share this thread with some players, so they may give their input here. Tell us if they'd like to see limits on regions sizes? If so, then how big is "too big"
We could make all these decisions ourselves, but it would be much more valuable to understand a collective of opinions on the subject by people who it will be affecting.

 

I know topics like this have been opened in the past and quickly denied any action regarding them, confirming that we do our best to reduce region sizes that are not removed.
Let's shine a new light on this, and hopefully it may produce some results. I'll be watching and replying to any commends made, all ears.

As for my personal suggestion: I think claims should be limited to 500x500. I know some who build cities would be affected by this, however I believe that it's better to have quality over quantity.
Another thing we could do is reduce the time we actively monitor claims, however this may negatively affect players who only get on every 2 weeks, but are otherwise productive builders.
But again, this is a very narrow view from someone who does not build cities, or roads.

I hope I can get more feedback from others as well. Again, thank you for bringing this into light again.
 

[Electifried]

In my opinion, I do think we should have some sort of upper limit to region sizes, but only for the initial claim. Once the initial claim gets filled up, I think the region owners should then be able to expand outwards, so long as nothing is in the way. I'm not sure what the exact limit should be, but Hollifer's suggestion of 500x500 seems like a good place to start and we can adjust it later if this turns out to be too big or too small. 

 

Also, should 500 still be the maximum length even if the width is very small, for something narrow like a road?

[Boredeth]

As for my personal suggestion: I think claims should be limited to 500x500. I know some who build cities would be affected by this, however I believe that it's better to have quality over quantity.

Another thing we could do is reduce the time we actively monitor claims, however this may negatively affect players who only get on every 2 weeks, but are otherwise productive builders.

But again, this is a very narrow view from someone who does not build cities, or roads.

I hope I can get more feedback from others as well. Again, thank you for bringing this into light again.

 

In my opinion, I do think we should have some sort of upper limit to region sizes, but only for the initial claim. Once the initial claim gets filled up, I think the region owners should then be able to expand outwards, so long as nothing is in the way. I'm not sure what the exact limit should be, but Hollifer's suggestion of 500x500 seems like a good place to start and we can adjust it later if this turns out to be too big or too small. 

 

I feel that a 300x300 claim is more than sufficient to start on the base of a town or a city. If a player wants to expand after that, by all means.

 

If a player wants to get a bigger initial claim area, i.e. 500x500 or larger, build a border around it. I feel that only 300x300 within that claim should be protected until there's enough proof of development/usage.

 

I understand that this might be harder to enforce, so perhaps there's another way?

 

Also, should 500 still be the maximum length even if the width is very small, for something narrow like a road?

 

A possible way to decide on this is in the block area it takes, so 3000x10 = 30,000 blocks of area; or 300x300 = 90,000 blocks of area. Again, slightly more troublesome to enforce, but there can be a slight leeway here and there.

 

Another thing to consider, though, is how the longer region may intersect other planned regions. However, I don't see this as too much of a problem; the height can be adjusted.

Edited August 11, 2016 by Boredeth

[tobylane]

How about a hard claim and a soft claim. You start off your mega build in a 300x300 but there's a 500x500 area that is reserved for you if you make considerable use of the 300x300 within two weeks? And these aren't permitted bordering spawn.

 

I'm not keen on entire landmasses belonging to one person, or someone who is known to possibly fill a 500x500 using most of it untouched and only a build in the centre. I prefer to permit them, but suggest that they aren't done.

[Heysofia]

The issue I have had since I started here is that if you claim a small amount of space, slowly build then in a few weeks you want to expand you can't because the areas around you have been claimed. I believe this is why people, including myself, claim a 'decent' amount of space to just use the whole rev. It also doesn't help that with world edit being introduced it has become faster for people to build a city so people claim more space because they can lay down roads and put up buildings faster.

 

300x300 for a land claim to me seems really tiny, that would frustrate me. I just think that the map needs to be bigger to accommodate the fast world edit city builders and the space people want. Also, people don't particularly like to have neighbours as well. Nothing worse than the diamond cake house being built next to your 18th century, Slovakian Gothic-style modern chateau with featured rose gardens ;)

[Guest]

I'll admit that I'm a bit of a culprit of this behavior (eg. claiming parcels of land to do testing builds on or failing to complete large parcels designated for cities), but this brings up a really good point: Land that isn't being developed consistently should not be protected in a way that prevents people from building anything near it. The introduction of World Edit has made it far easier to permanently claim land on the map as long as you make some substantial edits to a small portion of the parcel since you need the protection to actually use the land.

 

How about a hard claim and a soft claim. You start off your mega build in a 300x300 but there's a 500x500 area that is reserved for you if you make considerable use of the 300x300 within two weeks? And these aren't permitted bordering spawn.

 

I'm not keen on entire landmasses belonging to one person, or someone who is known to possibly fill a 500x500 using most of it untouched and only a build in the centre. I prefer to permit them, but suggest that they aren't done.

 

I like the proposal that tobylane has proposed above since it makes sure that land is "reserved" from being claimed or messed with, but it also makes it available for others to develop in the future so the entire parcel isn't permanently locked because they built a crappy quartz block out of World Edit and then vanished or if they are building a huge city extremely slowly but want the land to all be theirs since they like the landmasses surrounding it. I think the restrictions that toby presented are great examples of what should be used in order to prevent the unintentional misuse of the land claims that we're seeing here.

 

Given the small size of the community using this server, I'd think that it'd be easy enough to set up even a manual system that gives the admins (who are amazingly active, I should add) the ability to give reserved parcels away if they are not being used.

[lappy486]

How about a hard claim and a soft claim. You start off your mega build in a 300x300 but there's a 500x500 area that is reserved for you if you make considerable use of the 300x300 within two weeks? And these aren't permitted bordering spawn.

 

I'm not keen on entire landmasses belonging to one person, or someone who is known to possibly fill a 500x500 using most of it untouched and only a build in the centre. I prefer to permit them, but suggest that they aren't done.

 

 

This seems like a simple and easily workable solution to something that might be a little vague to a lot of players. Since we don't have an upper limit (and I've had this whilst working on builds with people), it's a little hard to judge the exact size a region can be without being a problem for others. Having an upper limit for initial claims would solve the problem of massive claims, and would also probably make the quality of a lot of builds better- if you're constricted to a 300x300 initial plot for building a city, for instance, you'll probably focus your efforts on making a handful of buildings look nice, rather than just building more and more average builds in a massive region.

[Hollifer]

Keep these replies coming, i'm reading them as I go and i'll address your replies specifically/discuss on saturday when I get back from a day trip.

[Abitcat]

what about areas that had already been claimed?

[Pilotbear]

So, I completely agree that some claims are unrealistic and often an annoyance to other people who would like spots near certain landforms and the like. So, there should be a limit. However, I have one or two large issues with this. How do we know that people are or aren't going to build on these huge claims? cutting off parts of people's claims seems a bit rude and forceful, and I know quite a few people on the server who have made a small temporary claim, and they know they will need more land to expand later once they get more districts of cities and the like done. This has lead to stressful and uncomfortable "fights" with people who start claiming near their zone.

       My largest issue is that I know that once the map expands, I will be making an absolutely huge spaceship. I mean 800+ blocks huge. How do we regulate the claims that are large that will be built on but disallow other large claims? There isn't really a good answer, which is probably why this is growing into an increasingly long thread...

 

This seems like a simple and easily workable solution to something that might be a little vague to a lot of players. Since we don't have an upper limit (and I've had this whilst working on builds with people), it's a little hard to judge the exact size a region can be without being a problem for others. Having an upper limit for initial claims would solve the problem of massive claims, and would also probably make the quality of a lot of builds better- if you're constricted to a 300x300 initial plot for building a city, for instance, you'll probably focus your efforts on making a handful of buildings look nice, rather than just building more and more average builds in a massive region.

       This is an example of some of the issues. A hard and soft claim would be fantastic for things like cities, but that fails to account for projects such as my proposed spacecraft.

 

The issue I have had since I started here is that if you claim a small amount of space, slowly build then in a few weeks you want to expand you can't because the areas around you have been claimed. I believe this is why people, including myself, claim a 'decent' amount of space to just use the whole rev. It also doesn't help that with world edit being introduced it has become faster for people to build a city so people claim more space because they can lay down roads and put up buildings faster.

 

300x300 for a land claim to me seems really tiny, that would frustrate me. I just think that the map needs to be bigger to accommodate the fast world edit city builders and the space people want. Also, people don't particularly like to have neighbours as well. Nothing worse than the diamond cake house being built next to your 18th century, Slovakian Gothic-style modern chateau with featured rose gardens ;)

I agree with a larger map. It would allow for other people to build bigger cities while still let people like me to build one huge structure. Also, a larger map would allow for more generated landmasses so people don't have to fight over cool geographic formations

I'm just posting to give a perspective on builds that people may not think of when they are talking about claim limits so that we can make the experience on the server better for anyone that wants to build anything. If you have another project that isn't mainstream like mine, please post about it so we can all take everything into account when planning for future revs. Also, please give feedback on what you think could be done to still allow some of these really cool ideas to be implemented while still keeping secure the builds of others. I probably didn't think of everything that is a possibility. Thank you. :D

Also: I posted an unfinished version in the thread and I can't figure out how to delete it... (I"m young but shitty with things that are intuitive :P) pls help haha

[trouble1234567]

I'd like to propose some rules

 

§1 No build can exceed 300x300*
         *can be extended to larger areas given evidence of quality and size of build
Comment: Protected areas are absurdly large and there shouldn't be any need for it apart from very particular builds, builds people should be able to explain to mods. Maybe have provisional larger borders around a 300x300 build and expand it if proves to be good enough/big enough, if not, remove provisional border. I can also foresee issues where you are building in a particular style and need areas to be big due to immersion. Nothing like a giant reddit alien next to your medieval island (not talking from experience at all, totally)

 

§2 During new revisions and border expansions no big mountains and or quality landscapes can be flatlanded for 2 (two) weeks. 

Comment: Letting people flatland is fine, but dramatic landscapes allow people to create spectacular builds and that should be priority over flatlanding which could realistically be done anywhere. 

 

§3 Undeveloped modreqs are removed after a month
Comment: this is already in place but i'd like it to be enforced more aggressively. If you built one hut in an area a month ago, that, to me, is not developing an area. This is less of an issue with smaller areas. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by trouble1234567

[Pilotbear]

I'd like to propose some rules

 

§1 No build can exceed 300x300*

         *can be extended to larger areas given evidence of quality and size of build

Comment: Protected areas are absurdly large and there shouldn't be any need for it apart from very particular builds, builds people should be able to explain to mods. Maybe have provisional larger borders around a 300x300 build and expand it if proves to be good enough/big enough, if not, remove provisional border. I can also foresee issues where you are building in a particular style and need areas to be big due to immersion. Nothing like a giant reddit alien next to your medieval island (not talking from experience at all, totally)

 

§2 During new revisions and border expansions no big mountains and or quality landscapes can be flatlanded for 2 (two) weeks. 

Comment: Letting people flatland is fine, but dramatic landscapes allow people to create spectacular builds and that should be priority over flatlanding which could realistically be done anywhere. 

 

§3 Undeveloped modreqs are removed after a month

Comment: this is already in place but i'd like it to be enforced more aggressively. If you built one hut in an area a month ago, that, to me, is not developing an area. This is less of an issue with smaller areas. 

        Those are some cool guidelines, I support them almost all the way. First off, I'd like to say that I'm more fighting for me than anyone else, because, just like everyone else, I want to see what I dream become a reality on this server. So when I make big builds, I generally start with a frame. obviously when I am planning to build a 1000 block spaceship or something ridiculous like that, a whole lot of WE is going to be involved. I don't think I'd be able to make one part look quality to convince mods that my region should be extended without having the rest of my basic frame because that would make it hard to mesh with what I've had to build. Then what if I want to make a change in the frame halfway through? It will be hard to do because I will have one finished little segment and then the rest of the frame to figure out around that, and I just don't think that's feasible. 

       I hope I've brought up some interesting points. However, if more people agree that this will be better for the server, I will gladly agree to these, because I can definitely still make this work and I'm sure everyone else will be able to as well. :D

[tobylane]

Some of these builds could be called terrain ignoring. I asked in chat earlier and it seems one of the main benefits to making terrain ignoring builds in terrain is to be overllooked by neighbours. We might as well have a flatland area/world for that and just build the hills ourselves where we want them. It'd free up the actual generated terrain to be used in terrain-relevant ways.

 

Is it possible to measure how much of the world has been claimed? I was flying around the eastern side of the world and I met very little unclaimed land (more so by /rg i than sight, but understandable at this point in the rev).

 

Render distance is a real limit. It seems absurd to build single things that can't be seen all at once except on the cartograph. I'm also not understanding the appeal of some identikit towns or huge cities with 100x100x100 buildings I've seen.

 

edit: Each to their own, no doubt about that. But I was meaning more preserving the one world/areas with generated terrain.

Edited August 13, 2016 by tobylane

[torteela]

It seems absurd to build single things that can't be seen all at once except on the cartograph. I'm also not understanding the appeal of some identikit towns or huge cities with 100x100x100 buildings I've seen.

 

because different people like to build different kinds of things. one build style is no less valid than any other

 

personally i think huge regions are fine as long as they're built in. if people don't build in them for a while we can reduce the size. if we run out of room we can expand the map. there's a very small number of people who make huge regions, and they usually build in them.

 

maybe we could look into some way of making it easier for big regions to get checked up on, like adding any region over a certain area to a list to make sure its checked for progress regularly and isn't forgotten. since people don't like nice terrain getting flattened... i don't like adding more rules so maybe we could just make more flat area and strongly discourage destroying neat things.

 

my $.02

[Guest Former Staff]

I understand that worldedit allows much faster creation, but when a land area is empty and you want to build in it, it's stupefying to find out that it's at the corner of a 1000x1000 claim.

 

One solution to help people realise they are entering a claim may be to have region greeting and farewell flags added to the default region flags when a region is created, taking the region name as the name to use in the message for something along the lines of 'You have entered [regionname]', 'You have left [regionname]'. That way the region flags would be an automatic process and could be modified further via a follow up modreq if needed.

 

I don't really have too much to add to anything else here, I think it's all been said from different perspectives. Some regions are excessively large and while a number of them are being used, there needs to be a fair limit to start with.

 

My final suggestion comes from seeing someone in the NW corner with a roughly 1500 x 500 region who appears to be flattening that entire area- I assume they do not care for worldpainted / natural terrain, maybe in future a flatworld map for some people might be a worthwhile multiverse?

[Boredeth]

One solution to help people realise they are entering a claim may be to have region greeting and farewell flags added to the default region flags when a region is created, taking the region name as the name to use in the message for something along the lines of 'You have entered [regionname]', 'You have left [regionname]'. That way the region flags would be an automatic process and could be modified further via a follow up modreq if needed.

 

It has the potential to be annoying, but I don't see it at a high risk of being so. It's much easier to identify when you're in a region, but this doesn't directly address the problems of overly huge claims.

 

I do like this idea. Maybe it could be used in conjunction with the build:allow flag.

 

And another suggestion... because players have the ability to use the WorldEdit wand, they are able to roughly estimate/guesstimate their region. I remember during my time as a mod, there is/was a /region-intersects command that shows regions that intersect your selection – supposed to be used for when creating regions. I think this would be a useful tool for more advanced players when they are planning on claiming a bigger area – just recently I was trying to build a 300x300 claim, but was cursed by the region gods. This command shouldn't be very troublesome to release to a wider player base, I hope?

 

My final suggestion comes from seeing someone in the NW corner with a roughly 1500 x 500 region who appears to be flattening that entire area- I assume they do not care for worldpainted / natural terrain, maybe in future a flatworld map for some people might be a worthwhile multiverse?

 

 

A flatland world does seem like a good idea. I believe the build is basically a big pixel art laid flat instead of vertically.

 

 

 

Another thing that has recently occurred to me is the circular map this revision, that is still 6k in... diameter, or 3k blocks out in each direction from spawn.

 

So just some math here...

Usually, we'd have a normal square 6k x 6k map. This gives us 36,000,000 blocks of space.

But with a circular 6k diameter map, we have pi x 3k x 3k = ~28,274,000 blocks of space.

Effectively we have about 25% less space than usual, which is further exacerbated by the fact that it's hard to build at corners of a circle.

So, worst case scenario is that we're working with ~60% (thereabouts) our usual space, best case is perfectly utilising space (which I doubt is happening).

//math

 

So I'd think a switch back to a square map would be good. Yes, I agree that the circular map looks dope, but in terms of functionality, not so – the only time you know the world is circular is when you load the cartography or the live map.

[Bardidley]

Boredeth, I can understand your disappointment  with not being able to find a desirable area to build on. Much of the desirable areas were claimed in the rev launch "Land Rush" but don't fret, the map is going to be expanded a few times - and the next expansion may happen soon. Large land claims are left to the cadmin discretion and we have granted some rather large ones to players who are known to have large scale builds. Also, we are monitoring these regions and will be downsizing them if we feel they have not been utilized. Revision 31 is less than 1 week old so you are going to see many empty claims. These discussions always get started in the first week of a new rev. I don't think its fair to put a limit cap on everyone, from past experience it just doesn't work.

 

If you cannot find any suitable land for your build, keep an eye open for the map expansion. We will notify everyone on the subreddit/forums when this happens. This map will be huge and has plenty of space for everyone! rather than limiting region sizes, perhaps we can do an early map expansion? even if it's by a radius of 500 blocks?

 

 

EDIT : We have decided to increase the map size from 3,000 to 4,000 radius. For those who weren't able to make a claim they desired, come and stake your claim!

[Hollifer]

How about a hard claim and a soft claim. You start off your mega build in a 300x300 but there's a 500x500 area that is reserved for you if you make considerable use of the 300x300 within two weeks? And these aren't permitted bordering spawn.

 

I'm not keen on entire landmasses belonging to one person, or someone who is known to possibly fill a 500x500 using most of it untouched and only a build in the centre. I prefer to permit them, but suggest that they aren't done.

Technically speaking, this is what we already do when protecting these large areas for players. We reserve whatever they claim, and then if significant progress is not made within a decent portion of their claim, the claim is reduced to what they have built. I take about 2 days about a month after the launch to do nothing but clean up oversized claims, fix terrain and take down borders. This is what we do, but the rev only just started, so you have not seem any of it just yet.

 

 

I like the proposal that tobylane has proposed above since it makes sure that land is "reserved" from being claimed or messed with, but it also makes it available for others to develop in the future so the entire parcel isn't permanently locked because they built a crappy quartz block out of World Edit and then vanished or if they are building a huge city extremely slowly but want the land to all be theirs since they like the landmasses surrounding it. I think the restrictions that toby presented are great examples of what should be used in order to prevent the unintentional misuse of the land claims that we're seeing here.

 

Given the small size of the community using this server, I'd think that it'd be easy enough to set up even a manual system that gives the admins (who are amazingly active, I should add) the ability to give reserved parcels away if they are not being used.

 

This sounds very complicated to accomplish exactly what we already do. We check to make sure there are reasonable edits to the area you've claimed. For example: if you claim 1500x500, and after a month you've only build just 100x100 of it up, it's most likely going to be reduced straight to 100x100. It's not going to stay just because there were some edits. I tell people who claim a lot we're looking for "reasonable" progress, and in my opinion 100x100 in a 1500x500 claim is not by any means reasonable progress. There's also taking into consideration the amount of claims players have. If a player claimed a 900x500 claim, and that being their only claim, only managed to build up 1/4th of it after a month. It may be ok to say that's a bit more reasonable than a player who claims many 200x200 areas and never builds. As you said, we're on quite a bit, and we actively monitor this kind of stuff.

The issue I have had since I started here is that if you claim a small amount of space, slowly build then in a few weeks you want to expand you can't because the areas around you have been claimed. I believe this is why people, including myself, claim a 'decent' amount of space to just use the whole rev. It also doesn't help that with world edit being introduced it has become faster for people to build a city so people claim more space because they can lay down roads and put up buildings faster.

 

300x300 for a land claim to me seems really tiny, that would frustrate me. I just think that the map needs to be bigger to accommodate the fast world edit city builders and the space people want. Also, people don't particularly like to have neighbours as well. Nothing worse than the diamond cake house being built next to your 18th century, Slovakian Gothic-style modern chateau with featured rose gardens ;)

300x300 can be very tiny for some players who build very rapidly. But being overly greedy or picky about neighbors is something I feel should be taken out your consideration for claiming, and a reason I believe players over-claim to begin with. "buffer space" is already provided when claiming a region, 10 blocks minimum, and generally speaking it's usually 15-20. When all is said and done, the player's planned buffer space within that claim can make it even larger and contribute to the confusion of being between regions/builds and not actually being free.

 

 

       My largest issue is that I know that once the map expands, I will be making an absolutely huge spaceship. I mean 800+ blocks huge. How do we regulate the claims that are large that will be built on but disallow other large claims? There isn't really a good answer, which is probably why this is growing into an increasingly long thread...

 

       This is an example of some of the issues. A hard and soft claim would be fantastic for things like cities, but that fails to account for projects such as my proposed spacecraft.

 

I agree with a larger map. It would allow for other people to build bigger cities while still let people like me to build one huge structure. Also, a larger map would allow for more generated landmasses so people don't have to fight over cool geographic formations

 

As we're seeing, and as action has been taken-- expanding to a greater map size at the very start seems to be a good solution for a lot of the early rev claiming issues.

 

Some of these builds could be called terrain ignoring. I asked in chat earlier and it seems one of the main benefits to making terrain ignoring builds in terrain is to be overllooked by neighbours. We might as well have a flatland area/world for that and just build the hills ourselves where we want them. It'd free up the actual generated terrain to be used in terrain-relevant ways.

I dislike seeing the c.nerd.nu server going in the direction of having a flatworld, and we would love to point out that during our making of the map, we even took into consideration that players liked flat land. Of the world painting we did 70% of it was flattening areas to address that unspoken demand. Along with plenty of ocean, we were astonished to see someone mow down a world painted mountain this revision, as we only have just a few.

 

because different people like to build different kinds of things. one build style is no less valid than any other

 

personally i think huge regions are fine as long as they're built in. if people don't build in them for a while we can reduce the size. if we run out of room we can expand the map. there's a very small number of people who make huge regions, and they usually build in them.

 

maybe we could look into some way of making it easier for big regions to get checked up on, like adding any region over a certain area to a list to make sure its checked for progress regularly and isn't forgotten. since people don't like nice terrain getting flattened... i don't like adding more rules so maybe we could just make more flat area and strongly discourage destroying neat things.

 

my $.02

Last revision we actually did keep track of large claims on our trello board, making dates to check up and reduce large regions that we reported protecting. It seemed to work very well, but perhaps we may make an easier way to accomplish this. After all we still have the map to give us a general guide.

So after reading all this, I can conclude that it is probably best to make sure the map be expanded more earlier on. This will solve a lot of the claiming issues people face earlier on, and has already seemed to be decided on! Also one last question to all of you: Do you think that any claim with more than 1000 meters wide or long should be our upper limit? After reading those who support the idea of adding an upper limit, and also taking into consideration those who would have trouble with a limit such as 300x300, it makes sense we would still create a limit that can extinguish all possibilities of overly-massive claims we've been seeing as of late (that nobody appears to agree with). Also I forgot to quote Barlimore's reply: This would be a great idea for at least clearing up some confusion whether or not you're on soon-to-be developed land. I'll start adding those on the current standing massive regions so confusion is minimized.

[ROCKONN]

I recall often bringing up the issues with large claims in passing to players/staff when I was in more regular attendance, usually in a bit of a cocky tone. Adding my two cents back in, I still believe the old system for land claims worked best, in that a player would have to make meaningful progress on an area before being allowed protection for a build. This method wholeheartedly prevented mass-claims and encouraged integrated meshes of builds, as well as encouraged players to work together to bring an idea to life. Now granted, times have certainly changed. With the addition of WorldEdit, this system was wholeheartedly abandoned for a "quick to claim, quick to WE, quick to build" thought process, most likely to encourage new players joining C to stick around (a sort of bribe, in my opinion).

 

While many builds nowadays (or at least their builders) require the use of WorldEdit, I am personally under the impression that a large amount of communal interaction has been lost. Take for instance the Dome projects of old- server events essentially created themselves with these megabuilds, announcements for aid were broadcast over every server, people flocked together to assist in something bigger. Now with a single command, what would've taken days, tens of players, and a genuinely good time takes instead a moment & a spot of lag. Soul has been stripped from the pre-building process in general. Sure, players certainly make speedier progress with their builds, I know that I sure have, but do they all stick with their projects? Has WorldEdit helped us in the long run, or has it fostered complacency?

The addition of WorldEdit was the cause of the original shift in policy on Land Claims, and it was a radical one at that. My roundabout & non-tangent point is that WorldEdit is not a necessity for builds, nor has it ever been. Having an enormous land claim with the soul purpose of using worldedit to flatten it (as an example) is simply ridiculous. A land claim should be marked out, as it is currently required. This should not, however, necessitate the creation of a region for the use of WorldEdit. Players should be able to respect a visible land claim on their own, and be trusted to take proper action when approaching the visible bounds of someone's proposed area. Builders should start from scratch, build on their own, to ensure their dedication to the task at hand. When sufficient progress on a build has been made (upon the discretion of an attending experienced staff member), a protection could be made to permanently establish a build's dominion over an area. At THAT point, WorldEdit functionality should come into play.

 

A player or group of players should show they are committed to the task at hand before asking for any excessive claim for a build. If you're building a mountain, start building a pile of blocks, etch your detail yourself. If you're digging a pit, call your fellow players for assistance, make a game out of the game. If you want to make a large area flat, start frantically clicking that mouse. Preserve the world, build & destroy only in the space you specifically need, rather than another 33% of space that you'll never use, but will always bear the mark of a WorldEdit.

 

A side note- Expansions should come as FINAL resorts, say when a map is 75% filled or more. Looking back over past revision cartographs, large sections of forests and lakes/oceans are often left abandoned. This is usable space, even if a player is forced to erect an island from the sea floor themselves. When your glass is half-full, dont fill it up immediately; finish your drink, then decide if you need another.

[thedonvito17]

Now the party is started. I have never been good at keeping up with the subreddit and forum. I'm on lunch break but using my phone so I will add more to the discussion this weekend. I am open to any suggestions made by the community, if it is in the best interest of the community, as this thread pertains to my case. I would again ask though, to wait until I can add further details about my project and activity level before coming to a decision. If it is necessary to make a separate thread, I will try to do so. If you would like specifics, pm me, or /mail me in game.

 

Sincerely,

Vito

Edited August 17, 2016 by thedonvito17

[thedonvito17]

The project I am working on is a recreation of the Los Angeles County of Modern Art (LACMA). In conjunction with the George Page Museum and La Brea tarpits the grounds take up an entire block on Wilshire Blvd, sometimes referred to as the Miracle Mile. The reason why it takes up so much land is because I want to build it in a foot:minecraftblock scale. Last revision I tried this but later encountered other builds in the way ultimately giving up on the project http://imgur.com/a/jei0J.  When the new rev started, I headed out to the edge of the map and using a schematica overlay of the first image in the album above, began setting the border. Here is an overview of what it would look like: http://puu.sh/qJU2E/2ac1869c0b.jpg I had no idea at the time that there would be a mountain in the way, as the live map was mostly black. Since it bothers people, I will ask for the admins to rollback the mountain, and look for a way to remove it from my protection.  I'd rather not let the threats of being punched in the face, and similar remarks, come to fruition. I am also willing to change the scale to meter:minecraftblock, which would effectively reduce it 27 times its current size. Here is an example of how much the change of scale would be: http://puu.sh/qJUnQ/2b6c9d705d.jpg. However, I really wish to keep it at the current scale, and open it up to a community build. I have tried in the past rev to recruit people to help me...and only 1 truly did, marting11. It is hard for me to communicate what I need done with people. If anyone is good at making recruiting post please help me. In terms of schedule, my job does not allow me the time to work on this during the weekdays. It is also the summer, so on the weekends I get caught up with doing summer things like: family outings, catching up with friends in town etc. It would be difficult to start off with a smaller space and continuous expansions than to do it all at once, and not have to worry about it. 

 

tl;dr Need help from community else am willing to 1. roll back the mountain. 2. reduce the scale. Not worth it to ruin our playerbase' experience on this new revision. 

Edited August 22, 2016 by thedonvito17

[Guest Former Staff]

Since it bothers people, I will ask for the admins to rollback the mountain, and look for a way to remove it from my protection.  I'd rather not let the threats of being punched in the face, and similar remarks, come to fruition.

Despite me thinking that the claim is ridiculously large and has resulted in the flattening of terrain which took time to paint in, I think that you should continue as planned. By no means is your claim the only significant one but it is the largest and unfortunately the easiest to use as an example.

 

I'd just like to see some guidelines that everyone can fairly adhere to across the board with such region sizes but they probably won't be able to be enforced until the next clean slate in revision 32.

[tobylane]

One recommendation I remember from pre worldedit times was that big flat builds (eg pixel art before we had a region for that) were best done over ocean. Donvito you appear to have built 80% over land, how did you choose that location? A quick scan of the pre expanded world map suggests that there was nowhere where you'd be entirely over water but many places where you'd be partially.

[thedonvito17]

 

One recommendation I remember from pre worldedit times was that big flat builds (eg pixel art before we had a region for that) were best done over ocean. Donvito you appear to have built 80% over land, how did you choose that location? A quick scan of the pre expanded world map suggests that there was nowhere where you'd be entirely over water but many places where you'd be partially.

 

 

 

When the new rev started, I headed out to the edge of the map... I had no idea at the time that there would be a mountain in the way, as the live map was mostly black. 

 

I hope this answers your question

Edited August 22, 2016 by thedonvito17