[PvE] I've had a vision and I can't shake it: the MegaCity

[gdavison]

I was thinking about the PvE experience recently, especially after the creeper spawner was found.  Hordes of would-be grinder builders descended on the area, eager to help.  There was far more people there than were actually useful, but still people hung out there.  People gravitated to the activity.

 

What if a lot of cities decided to build next to each other?  Instead of a 'city' it would be a neighbourhood in a city.  Cities would lose a little independence, in terms of their location and biome, but the draw would be building in an area that always has people walking around and projects going down.  It would be giving up the small-town perfection feel for the active, chaotic vibe of a big city.  If one district went dead (and you know that's going to happen), then the survivors wouldn't be out of luck.  No one would be 'selling out their city' by working with others since we'd all be citizens of MegaCity (name to be decided!)

There are some big downsides to this though.  We'd need a LOT of land.  What if one district ran out of space against a mountain?  What if we started encountering other small builds as we expanded out?  And of course there's the inevitable drama that comes with land disputes -- the districts would have to work at being good neighbours.  Whatever the hurdles, I think it would be a worthwhile experiment.  And it's going to happen at some level anyway, with Seneca, Shady Oaks, and possibly Endor and Argoth joining forces.  Of course the point of some towns is the idyllic small town setting, so I wouldn't expect everyone to join.

 

I'd love to hear everyone's reaction, including staff, who would have to deal with any BS generated by this.
 

Edited August 1, 2013 by gdavison

[nolanater5711]

While a good idea in text, much of PvE is built around it's infrastructure (i.e. Nether Portals, Rail Lines etc.) I think having all cities grouped up together, PvE would suffer the same consequences as creative is now. People would walk 200 blocks and make a house, and not explore further. While I understand not everyone would stay with the city, it cuts down on the opportunities to explore. For me and my 1st time on P, traveling down the roads from city to city was quite an adventure, especially now with the amazing maps created, you never know what you might find :)

[tobylane]

This was sort of done in the past and it didn't go well as I understand. It needs so much municipal planning, as things like farms and underground development can cause issues.

Bräunecador (Bräum and Seneca twinned, with Endor as a Seneca district) would be a good test of that. Bromgoth had one single farm in the middle, and rail was left to each half.

[TheRandomnatrix]

While a good idea in text, much of PvE is built around it's infrastructure (i.e. Nether Portals, Rail Lines etc.) I think having all cities grouped up together, PvE would suffer the same consequences as creative is now. People would walk 200 blocks and make a house, and not explore further. While I understand not everyone would stay with the city, it cuts down on the opportunities to explore. For me and my 1st time on P, traveling down the roads from city to city was quite an adventure, especially now with the amazing maps created, you never know what you might find :)

 

If anything, wouldn't more towns rise up to claim portals and grow large if this were the case? It's not like those are going to disappear. With so many in one massive town, something would always be happening, at least in chat. This was the case for Seneca this rev due to the high number of people.

There are some big downsides to this though.  We'd need a LOT of land.  What if one district ran out of space against a mountain?  What if we started encountering other small builds as we expanded out?  And of course there's the inevitable drama that comes with land disputes -- the districts would have to work at being good neighbours.  Whatever the hurdles, I think it would be a worthwhile experiment.  And it's going to happen at some level anyway, with Seneca, Shady Oaks, and possibly Endor and Argoth joining forces. 

 

I'd love to hear everyone's reaction, including staff, who would have to deal with any BS generated by this.

 I think that a good deal of communication would be necessary to run such a city, but I don't think it'd be impossible. With an added number of people, land claiming and developing could happen very quickly to ensure that enough is provided for building purposes.

 

Overall, I'm pretty welcoming of it. It in of itself would be a continuing project full of struggles that could really push PvE to new heights.

[zifnab06]

"The New Holy Broman Empire". I like it!

[CROCKODUCK]

:/ meh, I think I mentioned this before, but I feel this is in a way, loosing ourselves.  I don't mind joining forces with other players, but this is something like remaking the city entirely. 

[countfizix]

 

There are some big downsides to this though.  We'd need a LOT of land.  What if one district ran out of space against a mountain?  What if we started encountering other small builds as we expanded out?  And of course there's the inevitable drama that comes with land disputes -- the districts would have to work at being good neighbours.  Whatever the hurdles, I think it would be a worthwhile experiment.  And it's going to happen at some level anyway, with Seneca, Shady Oaks, and possibly Endor and Argoth joining forces.  Of course the point of some towns is the idyllic small town setting, so I wouldn't expect everyone to join.

 

I'd love to hear everyone's reaction, including staff, who would have to deal with any BS generated by this.

 

 

Building up before out can be used to save space.

 

copied from the reddits:

 

I want a 3D city of some sort. Like huge multipurpose skyscrapers with lots of walkways between them. We could start by building buildings with 1-4 'plots' on each floor (10-20 vertical blocks a floor) that people can use to make apartments, landing pads, farms, or what not.

 

So the way I see it, the first step would be to come up with a basic material theme for each tower. This can be done on creative or a planning server.

When the rev starts we would make 'plots' - Basically just build the skeleton of the tower with some stairs/water elevator in the center - this wouldn't be all that much different than terraforming out plots.

 

Not sure if there would be 'rules' about what is built on the plots, but ideally builds would use all their y axis and use materials that look reasonable with the frame materials (stone or sandstone most likely at first - netherbrick and wool later)

 

Whenever we need more plots we could just add a layer to an existing tower or build on bridges between towers.

 

As far as infrastructure goes, there would be pretty intricate mass transit system - imagine going from the spleef stadium on say building 4 floor 7, to the farms in building 1 basement.

Edited August 1, 2013 by countfizix

[JohnAdams1735]

Building up before out can be used to save space.

 

copied from the reddits:

 

I want a 3D city of some sort. Like huge multipurpose skyscrapers with lots of walkways between them. We could start by building buildings with 1-4 'plots' on each floor (10-20 vertical blocks a floor) that people can use to make apartments, landing pads, farms, or what not.

 

So the way I see it, the first step would be to come up with a basic material theme for each tower. This can be done on creative or a planning server.

When the rev starts we would make 'plots' - Basically just build the skeleton of the tower with some stairs/water elevator in the center - this wouldn't be all that much different than terraforming out plots.

 

Not sure if there would be 'rules' about what is built on the plots, but ideally builds would use all their y axis and use materials that look reasonable with the frame materials (stone or sandstone most likely at first - netherbrick and wool later)

 

Whenever we need more plots we could just add a layer to an existing tower or build on bridges between towers.

 

As far as infrastructure goes, there would be pretty intricate mass transit system - imagine going from the spleef stadium on say building 4 floor 7, to the farms in building 1 basement.

 

I love the idea of skycrapers with hugh sky bridges linking them (preferable over surface roads). I've always wanted to do a city that looks and feels like a real city (lots and lots of black wool for the roads D:). I was toying with the idea for Creative, but I'd make it work on PvE - I've never let the daunting task of materials gathering stop me before and I won't now!

 

That being said I've "promised" myself to Seneca for Rev's start and a plot, but as is often the case, I finish a project and just need more. I'll be keeping my eyes and ears open for projects like this! :)

[countfizix]

From what I have been gathering there is a thought of combining argoth with seneca, endor, shady oaks to do some sort of layered city so the two may turn out not to be mutually exclusive.

[Naveed123]

especially after the creeper spawner was found.

 

[gdavison]

:/ meh, I think I mentioned this before, but I feel this is in a way, loosing ourselves.  I don't mind joining forces with other players, but this is something like remaking the city entirely. 

 

Yeah, I've been getting a lot of pushback on the idea.  There was a lot of planning for Seneca's core done already -- I think it was thefigg88 who has designed a 300m diameter circular centre, with the districts sprouting off of it on all sides.

 

It looks like Seneca will just go ahead with the original plan, which is to create Seneca r12, and see how it goes at the beginning of the rev.  I would like to see a massive urban area on the map, but I don't think it's going to happen next revision.

 

This was sort of done in the past and it didn't go well as I understand. It needs so much municipal planning, as things like farms and underground development can cause issues.

Bräunecador (Bräum and Seneca twinned, with Endor as a Seneca district) would be a good test of that. Bromgoth had one single farm in the middle, and rail was left to each half.

 

I guess my thought was that we'd accept the "not going well" part as a trade-off for having lots of people around, to see, talk to, and for new players to meet.  I love active areas and I love the idea of a lot of people playing in one area of the map.  I find that location on the map does mean something -- it's easier to say hi to someone when you see their avatar in-game than it is to just say hi in chat.

 

 

Building up before out can be used to save space.

 

copied from the reddits:

 

I want a 3D city of some sort. Like huge multipurpose skyscrapers with lots of walkways between them. We could start by building buildings with 1-4 'plots' on each floor (10-20 vertical blocks a floor) that people can use to make apartments, landing pads, farms, or what not.

 

So the way I see it, the first step would be to come up with a basic material theme for each tower. This can be done on creative or a planning server.

When the rev starts we would make 'plots' - Basically just build the skeleton of the tower with some stairs/water elevator in the center - this wouldn't be all that much different than terraforming out plots.

 

Not sure if there would be 'rules' about what is built on the plots, but ideally builds would use all their y axis and use materials that look reasonable with the frame materials (stone or sandstone most likely at first - netherbrick and wool later)

 

Whenever we need more plots we could just add a layer to an existing tower or build on bridges between towers.

 

As far as infrastructure goes, there would be pretty intricate mass transit system - imagine going from the spleef stadium on say building 4 floor 7, to the farms in building 1 basement.

 

I love the idea of skycrapers with hugh sky bridges linking them (preferable over surface roads). I've always wanted to do a city that looks and feels like a real city (lots and lots of black wool for the roads D:). I was toying with the idea for Creative, but I'd make it work on PvE - I've never let the daunting task of materials gathering stop me before and I won't now!

 

That being said I've "promised" myself to Seneca for Rev's start and a plot, but as is often the case, I finish a project and just need more. I'll be keeping my eyes and ears open for projects like this! :)

 

These are all great ideas, and I'd love to see places on the map like this!  I'm not a big builder but having buildings that were used for residential with cool suspended walkways between them would be awesome.  I'd help out as much as I could.

 

g.

[WKONEDERFUL]

GREAT idea. I've always been a fan of building more modern style buildings and structures in Minecraft than the more traditional "suburban house". I like a lot of stone with glass panes and glowstone blocks.

 

The ultimate awesome would be a 5th Element-style city with skyscrapers climbing to dizzying heights above the mountains, with the aforementioned skyways connecting everything.

 

With regard to the problems mentioned before, farming can be done within each skyscraper structure, as long as enough water is brought in.

Edited August 16, 2013 by WKONEDERFUL

[CROCKODUCK]

I love the idea of skycrapers with hugh sky bridges linking them (preferable over surface roads). I've always wanted to do a city that looks and feels like a real city (lots and lots of black wool for the roads D:). I was toying with the idea for Creative, but I'd make it work on PvE - I've never let the daunting task of materials gathering stop me before and I won't now!

 

That being said I've "promised" myself to Seneca for Rev's start and a plot, but as is often the case, I finish a project and just need more. I'll be keeping my eyes and ears open for projects like this! :)

Oh boy johns building in seneca! I shall save you a plot in our medieval district! :)