Minimum standards for Portal cities on PvE?

[sansapants]

Perhaps a little discussion about becoming a "portal city?"

 

Nether portals are limited on P. There are normally 7: 1 at Spawn; 4 located generally symmetrical in each of the 4 quadrants (though they were a little less symmetrical in Rev11); and 2 "secret" portals, which are randomly placed a bit more difficult to find than the 4 quadrant portals.

 

Portals allow easy access to the nether, and so are useful for that purpose alone. But portals are also used as shortcuts for traveling, using the 8:1 travel between the nether and overworld. In my view, portals are limited but useful resources, to be shared by all, for the benefit of all.

 

In that vein, I'd like to propose minimum standards, if you will, that all portal cities should strive to achieve.

 

1. Overworld rail station (e.g. CARTS or CARBON), with direct line to Spawn, with slots for at least a minimum number of regional cities (4 or 5?).

 

2. Nether rail lines directly to 6 other portals.

 

3. Clear signage and/or easy transit between the portal and rail stations in the Overworld and the Nether.

 

4. Road system for others to link to portal in the overworld.

 

The purposes of these standards are three-fold. First, to ensure that portals are fully utilized for the benefit of all. Second, to put those desiring a portal on notice that they'll need to provide this infrastructure. Third, to provide objective(-ish) criteria to help admins resolve early-rev portal disputes (e.g. cities or groups of players who have in the past shown the ability to quickly meet the minimum standards of a portal city might be given preference over new groups, should a dispute arise).

 

For reference, this thread on the subreddit is discussing which cities desire portals: http://www.reddit.com/r/mcpublic/comments/1jjq75/rev_12_portals/

 

-sp

 

[Diznatch52]

How would you enforce this? If a city doesn't have these withing a month into the rev, what would you do? Worldedit out the city?

[sansapants]

>How would you enforce this?

 

Exactly. That's what this discussion is for. I never imagined such standards would be "enforced," as enforceable PvE rules are generally much less onerous. But they'd at least provide notice of the responsibilities that the community believes accompany a portal, to those who have not previously claimed one. And if a city claims a portal but fails to meet these standards, they could be discouraged from claiming one in the future.

 

Most likely, such standards would simply be advisory, and failure to follow them would lead to nothing more than loss of reputation among fellow carebears (e.g. "Hey, remember back in Rev12, when sansapants claimed a portal, then made a crap city with no rails that was dead after two weeks? What a wanker!"). But if standards help prevent a group from claiming a portal if they know the wouldn't be able to meet the standards, it could prevent a portal being underutilized.

 

Or maybe failure to meet standards, perhaps coupled with absentee region owners, could entice a padmin to add members to a region containing an underutilized portal (or even alter ownership of the region), so as to allow improvements to the infrastructure.

[gdavison]

>How would you enforce this?

 

Exactly. That's what this discussion is for. I never imagined such standards would be "enforced," as enforceable PvE rules are generally much less onerous. But they'd at least provide notice of the responsibilities that the community believes accompany a portal, to those who have not previously claimed one. And if a city claims a portal but fails to meet these standards, they could be discouraged from claiming one in the future.

 

Most likely, such standards would simply be advisory, and failure to follow them would lead to nothing more than loss of reputation among fellow carebears (e.g. "Hey, remember back in Rev12, when sansapants claimed a portal, then made a crap city with no rails that was dead after two weeks? What a wanker!"). But if standards help prevent a group from claiming a portal if they know the wouldn't be able to meet the standards, it could prevent a portal being underutilized.

 

Or maybe failure to meet standards, perhaps coupled with absentee region owners, could entice a padmin to add members to a region containing an underutilized portal (or even alter ownership of the region), so as to allow improvements to the infrastructure.

 

I think for the most part, the community does a good job of ensuring this anyway.  I can only really think of one portal city that that didn't do something close to this.  Nether rail doesn't have direct lines this rev but it does have CARBON which is pretty cool and comes pretty close.  I think any group that wants to create a portal city would pretty much want to build everything on this list.

 

g.