Could we protect villagers from griefers?

[BigArge]

Currently if a villager is griefed, the best we can do is replace it with a new villager. While this works very well with farm animals, I don't think this is sufficient for villagers. Villagers require you to unlock their trades, and a fully unlocked villager represents TONS of trading, time, and resources. None of that can be rolled back atm.

 

Also it is possible to "brick" a villager so that their trades are permanently locked, rendering them useless (See https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-749).  This way it is possible to grief villagers in such a way that we are unable to determine who the griefer was.

 

Ideally we would back up a villagers trade list, and be able to create a new villager with that trade list in the event of grief. Is this something that we could do? Or would we need to make villagers a private resource (like farm animals in rev9) in order to protect against grief?

[WickedCoolSteve]

As far as I know, nothing like logging villager trading capabilities is possible, though a tech admin would have to weigh in to confirm. 

 

For now your best bet is to put valuable trades in restricted areas where only trusted people have access. 

[Herbrin3]

As far as I know, nothing like logging villager trading capabilities is possible, though a tech admin would have to weigh in to confirm. 

 

For now your best bet is to put valuable trades in restricted areas where only trusted people have access. 

 

I didn't think that it was permissable to restrict access to an area?

 

Otherwise, we could have private grinders too?

[Weazol]

I didn't think that it was permissable to restrict access to an area?

 

Otherwise, we could have private grinders too?

 

From the Rules

Unless specific permission is given, killing or stealing mobs that are "owned" by other players is considered griefing. Mobs are considered owned if they are in clearly marked, enclosed areas, which are inaccessible without region permissions

You can have animal farms blocked off to the public and I am pretty sure villagers fall into this catagory as well.

 

As for the private grinders, to my understanding they are frowned upon.

[BigArge]

Hm, my gut it telling me that the "owned" definition used in the rules is outdated. It's probably from before rev10 when we didn't have a way of tracking mob kills. Back then you DID need to region-protect mobs if you wanted them to be rolled back (usually by placing a redstone torch by an iron door protecting them). I very much doubt that one could go around killing farm animals that are not hidden behind an iron door and claim that you were not technically griefing.

 

Villagers definitely seem like something which should be open to the public. It wouldn't make sense to require individuals to require their own villagers if they would like to trade. I'm hoping we could come up with some sort of grief protection apart from "you can't trade with these villagers, get your own"

[Herbrin3]

From the Rules

You can have animal farms blocked off to the public and I am pretty sure villagers fall into this catagory as well.

 

As for the private grinders, to my understanding they are frowned upon.

That's killing or stealing though; not trading.

 

Re grinders, I am unclear; for example, there are several iron-grinders which have very limited access to the public and take part of their output for the 'owners' - for example, the huge thing in Seneca. So that is presumably acceptable? But it's not acceptable to make a different type of grinder and restrict access?

[gdavison]

That's killing or stealing though; not trading.

 

Re grinders, I am unclear; for example, there are several iron-grinders which have very limited access to the public and take part of their output for the 'owners' - for example, the huge thing in Seneca. So that is presumably acceptable? But it's not acceptable to make a different type of grinder and restrict access?

 

I'd just lke to state for the record that Seneca's iron grinder is 75% public output. We're not hoarding the iron. :)

 

I agree that auto-collecting grinders shouldn't be private, especially ones that use like an iron grinder does.

[Herbrin3]

I'd just lke to state for the record that Seneca's iron grinder is 75% public output. We're not hoarding the iron. :)

 

I agree that auto-collecting grinders shouldn't be private, especially ones that use like an iron grinder does.

 

I understand, and I'm not necessarily saying it is a bad thing. But I think it needs clarification. Either it is, or is not, acceptable to have private facilities.

 

75% public is still 25% private; the percentage doesn't really affect whether it is "OK" - would it be any less OK if it were 90%/10% or 10%/90%?

 

I am not criticizing your concept of making it partly private; I'm just asking what is acceptable. If it is acceptable, I'd be tempted to make a grinder (or some other public facility) that is kinda "member's only", to avoid idiots who abuse things. If it's not OK, I can't. The rules are not clear on that.

[Weazol]

That's killing or stealing though; not trading.

 

I wasn't referring to that part. I was referring to "Mobs are considered owned if they are in clearly marked, enclosed areas, which are inaccessible without region permissions"

 

@BigArge If the rules are outdated they should be updated. One can't expect players to know what are old and new rules. We can only follow the rules that have been given to us (which are at spawn and on the rules page)

Edited May 17, 2013 by Weazol

[cab417]

Hm, my gut it telling me that the "owned" definition used in the rules is outdated. It's probably from before rev10 when we didn't have a way of tracking mob kills."

If you have a suggestion for the admins on a different word choice for a rule, feel free to talk with one of them about it. If a rule is unclear or written awhile ago, it may need to be changed in order to better cover a topic.

[BigArge]

Sorry things got a little off-topic.

 

So as I understand it now, we have to (and should) put our villagers behind locked doors if we want to protect them from grief/bricking?

[Herbrin3]

Sorry things got a little off-topic.

 

So as I understand it now, we have to (and should) put our villagers behind locked doors if we want to protect them from grief/bricking?

 

So, is it OK to put our grinders behind locked doors?   Sorry if you think it's off-topic, but I think it is same-same?

[BigArge]

If putting them behind doors is meant to be for grief protection, then they are very different.

Right now any attempt to grief an iron grinder is logged and can be rolled back. With villagers, it is possible to grief them in a way that is NOT logged (via exploiting that Mojang bug I mentioned earlier), and even if the grief were logged (e.g. killing the villager) there is currently no way to undo the grief.

If you wanted to lock an iron grinder just to make it private so nobody but you could use it, that might warrant its own thread.

[Herbrin3]

If putting them behind doors is meant to be for grief protection, then they are very different.

Right now any attempt to grief an iron grinder is logged and can be rolled back. With villagers, it is possible to grief them in a way that is NOT logged (via exploiting that Mojang bug I mentioned earlier), and even if the grief were logged (e.g. killing the villager) there is currently no way to undo the grief.

If you wanted to lock an iron grinder just to make it private so nobody but you could use it, that might warrant its own thread.

 

I understand that you think it is different - I don't necessarily agree, but I'll shut up about locked grinders! (Maybe I'll start a separate thread at a later date).

 

WRT villagers, the more I think about it, the more complex it becomes;

 

There's rules, and then there's enforcement.

 

We could make a rule saying "Do not trade with villagers unless they are in a clearly designated trading area", or something. And perhaps villagers in the wild, too (if there are any left; unlikely). I can see a few problems with that; "instruction creep", ie the more rules, the less chance there are of people knowing and understanding them (of course, not knowing a rule is no excuse, but it's worth consideration). I could imagine people thinking that, if they found a villager offering trades, they'd assume there was no reason they couldn't make use of it - per vanilla.

 

And then of course there is the problem of enforcement - not being able to 'roll them back', and so forth.

 

Re locked areas to prevent the possibility - as I understand things, most (all?) methods are not fool-proof, ie it's often possible to get into them, e.g. enderballing through a small opening or block, and so on. Thus far, I have assumed that there is no rule preventing such "trespass", unless the player actually does something that is against other rules - is that correct? That's why I question the concept of 'private areas' in general.

 

I can see that locking your villagers in a hard-to-access location could help prevent problems, and maybe to the extent that it isn't worth worrying about.

 

I don' know if t there can be a technical solution to prevent anyone else trading with your villagers, and even if it were possible it would cause problems from those who wish to set up 'trading stations'. Have a 'flag' that prevents trades in a certain area? Allow us to do the equivalent of '/cprivate' on our villagers, and perhaps have that happen automatically for newly-bred ones? It sounds complicated, and I'm always nervous about moving further from vanilla; also, it is quite likely villager-trading (especially 'bricking') will change in a fairly-near future version.

 

Probably best to lock them up as best we can, and hope for common sense?

 

(Again, apologies for any thread-drift re grinders)

[totemo]

Ideally we would back up a villagers trade list, and be able to create a new villager with that trade list in the event of grief.

 

That's not currently possible using the Bukkit API.

 

https://bukkit.atlassian.net/browse/BUKKIT-2138

 

It might be possible to block attacks by players, however.

[Amaranth]

Also it is possible to "brick" a villager so that their trades are permanently locked, rendering them useless (See https://mojang.atlassian.net/browse/MC-749).  This way it is possible to grief villagers in such a way that we are unable to determine who the griefer was.

 

This is only actually a problem if they only have one trade which means you haven't put much time in to them. If they have more than one trade doing one of the others a few times will unlock the locked ones.

[BigArge]

This is only actually a problem if they only have one trade which means you haven't put much time in to them. If they have more than one trade doing one of the others a few times will unlock the locked ones.

 

This is not true. You can only unlock trades by using the last trade in their trade list. So if the last trade in their list is broken via that bug (e.g., the first Seneca farmer villager), then you cannot ever unlock any other locked trades and all the effort put into unlocking that villager is wasted.