Vanilla: Shall we try that again?

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Keldt, Aug 1, 2014.

  1. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    Greetings!
    What's this then?
    This is a thread I've created in an attempt to diagnose the problems we've had with previous attempts at Vanilla servers and to propose solutions to those problems and try to get people involved in resurrecting the Vanilla community.

    My thoughts (Basic):
    • ShadeCrest needs a Vanilla server. It was fun.
    • Maybe the server shouldn't be FULLY Vanilla, but should instead have a few basic plugins that help us with the problems we've been having
    • We'd definitely need more than one active admin to run things..
    • Since I know very little about plugins, I need others to suggest and discuss plugins that would be helpful (Discuss below or in a new thread or whatever. I don't care)
    My thoughts (Detailed):

    I had a lot of fun with this attempt we made at having a good vanilla server. A lot of cool stuff happened. Cool people were met, cool stories were born, some drama was had (We even went to war). Z's stream was born from this, and it drew quite a lot of attention to the server and ShadeCrest in general (it's still going, but Z doesn't play on ShadeCrest servers anymore).
    Then one thief came on and ruined everything while I was inactive T_T
    So I think it'd be awesome to bring this stuff back (again), but we need to do things differently this time, so we don't fail again.

    Firstly, I think we should scrap the current world and start over. This is mainly because the world we have currently won't work if we go back to 1.7.x in order to use necessary plugins. The new stone variant blocks (andesite, etc.) would be incompatible and probably crash things.

    Now some proposed solutions to various problems:

    Snapshot: I know it's really cool to have a server running the snapshot version, but I feel in this case that it's not worth it. The most interesting gimmick of the server still seemed to be that it had amplified terrain, which was and is not a feature confined to the snapshot we were using. The feature exists in 1.7 already. I really enjoyed the terrain and think it kept things much more interesting than they would have been on default terrain. However, we may want to wait and see what we can do with the new terrain customization options that exist in the snapshots. Of course, if we do this, I think we should wait until 1.8 officially releases and whatever plugins we may be using have had time to update.​

    Stealing: I think we could use one of those locked chests plugins. We'd need the ability to lock or unlock chests without having to pay any sort of online currency (like Rupies from Survival). The goal is to remain as vanilla as possible while also being able to keep up a "no stealing" rule. We don't want to have to deal with a currency of any kind (I'd consider that to be straying too far from vanilla) but we do need a way to keep chests safe. Since team-play was a big deal with this past vanilla server, the ability to allow other specific people to access chests that you locked (similar to adding someone to a creative plot) would be helpful. I think the locked chests plugins that I've seen usually have this option.. I may be wrong though.

    Griefing: This seems to be a bit of a harder problem to solve.. I don't know of many plugins that help with this that aren't game-changing to an awkward extent. We could get one of the plugins that faction servers use that allows you to claim land as your own.. But I'd consider this to be too game-changing. Perhaps we could try the grief-detection plugin that creative uses (it used to be Hawkeye, but now it's Prism). We could allow the admins to have access to this plugin so it doesn't take as long to find out who is griefing and ban them. THEdeadRETURNED also suggested we use modreq. This could be very helpful for both stealing and griefing, so victims can report things while mods are offline.

    Whitelist: I remember having to apply to get on ShadeCrest's survival server when I joined as KFamilys a long time ago (couple years by now). One of the questions that was asked of all applicants was whether they'd been banned before from another server, and if so what they were banned for and if they had anything to say in their defense. I believe this was then double-checked with some kind of ban tracker tool. I feel like this could be extremely useful for any future whitelist we create for any future vanilla server we do, given what we've been through with this one, and what I heard about the one that was tried before this one. Obviously it would help a lot if we had a few more admins to help keep up with the whitelist.

    Other new problems: ezeiger has brought up some interesting problems that require some discussion, so I'm going to put them here.

    I'm not sure if the first problem should be considered much of a problem. Basically, we may want or need to come up with more things to make us different from the other ShadeCrest servers. I'd consider "having fewer plugins" and "using custom terrain generation" to be different enough, but having more differentiating gameplay features could be a smart thing. Keep in mind though that we're still trying to have a vanilla server here, so any suggestions should be sure to consider vanilla gameplay and try not to change it so much so that we can't call the server "Vanilla" anymore.
    I've started a survey on Surveymonkey to help clear up some of the questions we need answered. This should help clear up whether this is actually a problem or not.
    The second problem is that the Survival staff started playing vanilla too much in our last attempt and forgot their responsibilities on the Survival server, causing them to be understaffed. It seems like splitting the general playerbase among more of our own servers isn't such a bad thing, and hopefully another server will help introduce more people to the ShadeCrest community, filling in whatever players Vanilla absorbs from the other servers. As for Survival staff, inactivity from the server they moderate/administrate should probably be met with the threat of demotion, whether they quit survival for their own reasons or the decide to play vanilla full-time. If any Survival admins decide to quit Survival, we may want to look at giving them admin powers on Vanilla, since they will have already had a lot of experience from their time with Survival. It would also be a good idea to promote more admins in general so we don't end up understaffed on any of our servers.
    Survey:

    I created a survey using SurveyMonkey. If anyone who has read the thread to this point could take a few seconds to complete it, that would be most helpful.

    As of 8/7/14 the survey isn't as much of a focus anymore. It'd still be good to get more responses, and the results will be updated, but I don't expect to get much more out of it.

    21 people filled out the survey.

    Here are the details:

    Q1:
    For those of you that played on the Vanilla server, which of these features was most important to you?

    A1: The server running a snapshot
    Chosen 5 times (23.81%)
    A2: The server's use of amplified terrain
    Chosen 3 times (14.29%)
    A3: Enforcement of rules such as "No stealing/griefing"
    Chosen 10 times (47.62%)
    A4: I didn't play on the Vanilla server
    Chosen 3 times (14.29%)

    Q2:
    For those interested in resurrecting the Vanilla server, which applies to you?

    A1: The server needs to be running the snapshot and be able to keep up with the newer snapshot versions to be interesting
    Chosen 4 times (20.00%)
    A2: The server needs to be able to enforce its "No griefing/stealing" rule. I'm willing to give up snapshots and replace them with custom terrain generation and the plugins in the list below in order to have a Vanilla server that lasts
    Chosen 10 times (50.00%)
    A3: I'm willing to give up the snapshot for plugins, but I think we should have more unique gameplay features to make us more different from the other servers
    Chosen 3 times (15.00%)
    A4: I don't think we should use snapshots, plugins, or custom terrain. I just want to play vanilla Minecraft with the latest official release
    Chosen 1 time (5.00%)
    A5: I don't think we should resurrect the Vanilla server
    Chosen 2 times (10.00%)
    Skipped this question:
    1 lazy person

    Survey here.

    Prospective plugin list:
    • LWC for protection from stealing
    • Prism for griefing detection
    • ModReq for helping with reports of griefing/stealing while mods are offline
    • Suggestions welcome. Suggested plugins should be helpful and should not change gameplay much

    Update after survey (8/7/14):
    The idea of resurrecting the Vanilla server seems more and more plausible as discussion continues. The results of the survey help to prove that people would like to bring the Vanilla server back, and that they like the idea of adding in plugins to help things. It seems like most people who will be playing won't miss the snapshot features badly enough to be turned away. I hope those that chose the first option for either question will still be interested enough to at least give the prospective server a try, if and when it does go online.

    At this point, I'd like the discussion to move from deciding whether or not this is going to happen. Of course, if there's a problem with any of my basic ideas that nobody has pointed out or discussed, still feel free to post about it. I'd appreciate it, though, if all those that have taken part in discussion thus far would begin talking about other things, like:

    • What will the community do on the prospective Vanilla server? I assume we all want to make a spawn town, but we could discuss more specific things, like what we want in the town. Preferably, we could brainstorm other community/building projects that we want. There's a lot of opportunity in a brand new Vanilla server.
    • What kind of terrain do we want? People may want to mess around with the custom generator feature in the snapshots. We could vote on the cooler presets.
    • On more of a logistics side of things, we need to figure out how the server will be administered. Do we want Moderators as well as Admins? Who should be admin? Should we open up admin applications? We may need admin/authority input for this.
    • We also need to figure out how to actually make any of this happen. I don't really know how to get things started, or who to talk to. I don't really have any power over things like this myself, so obviously I/we will need some help xP

    This seems like a whole lot of new stuff to discuss, so it may be wise to let discussion spill over into a new thread, focused more plans and ideas, rather than discussing whether or not this will work. If people agree or it gets to a point where we need more organization to our discussion, I'll create a new thread.

    Thanks for the support so far people! I've not ever taken this kind of leadership role on something like this before, and this is actually my first forum thread ever, so it's nice to get so much feedback and discussion. I'm glad to see that the Vanilla community itself is not dead after all.

    That is everything I've thought of so far, though I'll be updating this post as more ideas or problems to discuss come in. I'm somewhat new to posting threads on forums in general, and I'm kinda guessing at some things in this post, especially when it comes to plugins. I know nothing about those. I'd love to hear some thoughts on this as I'm sure there are some things I didn't think all the way through. If anyone knows of any other plugins that should be used to solve the problems listed above, or if anyone can think of any other problem that needs solving, please reply below. :p

    Thanks for reading.​
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2014
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  2. ezeiger92

    ezeiger92 Well-Known Member Lead Admin Survival Admin

    Not sure if I'm missing something here. You are describing our survival server with the old application process and fewer plugins. Why should we compete with ourselves?
     
  3. Navarog

    Navarog Well-Known Member

    Survival has Towny, this prospective vanilla does not. That is a huge difference from what I can tell. None of the plugins that _Keldt_ is proposing change the game nearly as much as Survival is changed. We already had a Vanilla server up and the players on Vanilla were not usually ones that would be playing on Survival otherwise.
     
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  4. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    Nav explained, but as for "competing with ourselves," if the servers are as different as a near-vanilla vs. a towny server with skills, currency, etc. it'd be more likely to bring more traffic to both servers, since the people who are drawn to the near-vanilla one may also like the idea of the survival server, and vice versa. Or do you think we'd lose all our regular survival players to "our survival server with the old application process and fewer plugins?" :p
     
  5. THEdeadRETURNED

    THEdeadRETURNED Active Member VIP

    just having LWC and prism for admins, and maybe modreq would be VERY close to vanilla. I feel like this could be a good long-term server if we manage this right.
     
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  6. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    Oh good, LWC has a password option.

    And yes, modreq would probably be an excellent thing to have as well. Thanks, I didn't think of that.

    Top post updated.
     
  7. ndvenckus1

    ndvenckus1 Well-Known Member VIP

    If I'm not mistaken, one of the main pull factors for vanilla was the fact that we were running on a snapshot. I would have loved to have had a couple of simple plugins like Prism (or their vanilla minecraft mod equivalents) on the server to keep things in order, but Forge and MCP versions aren't made for snapshots since they change so spontaneously and it's not worth the effort. 1.8 should be rolling around fairly soon, and I think what makes the most sense is to get a concrete plan laid down for the vanilla server, so that right when 1.8 is released (along with the plugins that we'll have already decided on), we're ready to roll. I think LWC, prism, and reportRTS all make sense.
     
  8. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    It seems like once 1.8 comes we will be able to stick with that for a while. The problem is that once we become a server that uses plugins we will never be able to bring back that appeal of running a snapshot. I wonder, though, if a similar appeal can be gained if we make a really cool preset with the upcoming custom world generation (Which you, with all your technical prowess could probably master) and then advertise it. Instead of advertising that "We're running on the latest snapshot!" we'd be able to advertise that "We're using special custom terrain generation!"

    I looked up reportRTS, wondering if I should add it to the prospective plugin list, but I can't quite tell what it does.. It looks rather similar to ModReq, which I'm much more familiar with.

    Anyway, thanks for the support, ndv :p
     
  9. ezeiger92

    ezeiger92 Well-Known Member Lead Admin Survival Admin

    So, I had 5 minutes on my break to post my comment, and my point was missed. This suggested server:
    1. Is whitelisted to deter greifers
    2. Has a way to notify staff when your build is griefed
    3. Has a way to undo the griefs
    4. Has chest protection via locks (unlocked chests are presumably fair game)
    5. Runs the current version of MineCraft (via Spigot/Bukkit)
    6. Is a survival server
    7. Has PvP enabled
    A player can get that experience from the PvP map in our survival server. All of the extra features we have put on survival have been optional, you don't have to use towns, warps, homes, mcMMO, or CraftBook.

    Our other servers have many features that make gameplay very different. FTB is packed with mods that add tons and tons of features, but is not on the current version of MineCraft. Survival has minimal changes to make the server easier to moderate and more fun to play while being mostly vanilla. Creative has unlimited resources, flying, no mobs, and no death.

    As a snapshot server, 'vanilla' added new gameplay when compared to our other servers. It was running the latest (stable-ish) version of MineCraft, showing off changes and features that will become part of the game. As the proposed server, vanilla would not add new gameplay, just exploration changes due to amplified terrain.

    Though I admire the work you put into this thread, Keldt, I think you are pushing in the wrong direction. Vanilla was already fighting with survival, and these changes would not make things better. I suspect both servers would do better if 'vanilla' was a snapshot server, one that would actually be updated with each snapshot to add the new features (backups in case things break, of course).

    And now to specific posts:

    Navarog Using towny isn't a requirement to play on survival. I've only really touched it to test permissions for players that choose to use it. The only other major differences are warps (you aren't forced to use them after you get to pvp/peaceful) and mcMMO (/mcability to disable right-click abilities, I always do this). The players not from survival joined because it was a relatively open snapshot server.

    THEdeadRETURNED Yes, it could survive for over 3 years. Kinda like survival. Because this is like survival.

    ndvenckus1 We could plan to open vanilla exactly when 1.8 is released (well, bukkit/spigot 1.8), or we can do the exact same thing for survival. It needs to be updated quickly as well, so that we can continue to gain players. Remember the difference between 1.7.4 and 1.7.9? The 1.8 update will be much worse for us if we do not update.
     
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  10. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    True, but every single other player on the survival server will be using these features. A near-vanilla server would give absolutely no choice. I played for a while on survival, and never knew you could turn off the skills earned by mining, fighting, etc. Or the special power you get for right-clicking with a tool or weapon. A scoreboard pops up every time you level something up. None of this would happen on the proposed server. Nobody else would even have the option to use these features.

    I'm only going to be replying to what you said about survival here-

    The proposed server's plugins would not bring gameplay anywhere near the experience survival offers. If a prospective player gets on survival hoping for a "minimally changed" server, I feel they'll be disappointed by the currency system, the shops, the warps, and the towns. They may be able to toggle some options, but they can be sure that next to no one else will. With everyone else on the server warping, buying things, taking part in the lottery, using the mail system, and taking part in town events or even just town chat, it gets pretty difficult to call the server "optionally vanilla."


    The whole idea of a vanilla server is to strip away all the added gameplay elements and just play some simple survival Minecraft. I realize that the snapshot was a great advertising feature, but in reality it only added a few new blocks and yet another glitchy useless mob. It's true that the slime block was an oft-sought item on the vanilla server, but when we realized a bug (a snapshot-related bug) was severely cutting down on slime spawn rates, nobody logged off the server. Most people just talked about the amplified terrain. I know that when people would join Z's stream, which had the snapshot version in the title in parentheses, Z always mentioned to the newcomers that the server was running a snapshot, and it used amplified terrain. Most of them would immediately become interested at the amplified terrain and ask to see the top of his base and the terrain around it.

    Even though this is something I personally experienced, I wondered about whether losing the snapshot feature would hurt the server, and decided it could be considered something of significance. The significance is lessened by the fact that, were this proposed server to be created, we would wait until 1.8 is fully released, and Mojang tends to work on bugfixes for a while after releasing a major update. However, this does not change the fact that from this point on the server would be stuck on the latest official release, rather than having the ability to use a snapshot.

    As a sort of half-solution, I suggested we look at the custom generation options. You can make some pretty unique and amazing worlds with these options. There are lots of threads on the MCForums where users share presets they'd discovered. If we made our own preset, we could have a very unique world (the background that all gameplay takes place on) that draws in a lot more people than Mojang's amplified terrain, because it's something we took the time to look at and make ourselves.

    Now, aside from this talk of new and unique gameplay features, I'm not sure how wise it would have been to keep updating the Vanilla server to the newer snapshots as significant ones came out. One of the main problems with snapshots is that they can corrupt worlds, and if the server ran into this problem on a regular basis and had to keep loading saves because the snapshots messed them up, that would have been inconvenient to say the least.

    Firstly, I played on Vanilla quite often, and was acutely aware of the number of players Z's stream was bringing in. These were people who had never heard of ShadeCrest before, and wanted only to play on a Vanilla server. As far as I knew, the Vanilla server was largely comprised of players completely new to ShadeCrest, who would have never joined Survival, and didn't when the Vanilla server died. These people were mixed in with the few people who decided to try out Vanilla that came from other servers.

    Secondly, I think it's quite obvious that it wasn't better for both servers that Vanilla was a snapshot server.. Vanilla died and Survival was largely unaffected as far as I am aware. I'm almost certain that if you go to the homepage of this website and check the section of the page that shows how many people are logged into which server, you will find that nobody is on Vanilla at any given time. Z, the main active admin of the Vanilla server, doesn't even list the server as one of the games he plays in his stream anymore.

    Updating the server for every new snapshot would be a weekly hassle, and would probably end up breaking things enough times to annoy players significantly.

    Your list at the top of your post is one that lists very rudimentary aspects that I'm sure most survival servers share, whether they consider themselves to be Vanilla or not.


    The main point I'm trying to get across in my reply is that the proposed server is exactly like the dead Vanilla server, except that it has a current list of 3 plugins to help it not die, and as such is incompatible with snapshots. To combat this lack of a few extra gimmicky features, I suggest we use a unique terrain generation (basically a bigger gimmicky feature), since most people were more blown away by insane mountains and crazy base designs due to the insane terrain than they were by a new set of decorative blocks that don't do anything for survival, an unattainable but cool new redstone mechanic, and a glitchy purple slug. Our planned server-wide projects were building projects that had nothing to do with snapshot features except that they may have used the decorative blocks. These projects were exciting because they were to be built on a terrain feature that you don't see commonly in server communities. The way I see it, a thriving community of players who didn't want to turn off options all other players had left on, who also wanted to explore interesting and truly unique terrain but didn't want to be griefed or stolen from is much better than a community demolished by server thieves, griefers, and other problems.
    Now one last reply:

    Why not both? I, for one, am willing to allow the Vanilla server to be secondary to the survival server, and therefore to open and update later than the survival server updates. I'm not asking all the survival people to stop what they're doing and make way for vanilla. I'm asking anyone who is interested what they think about retrying this thing we can't get quite right. We did pretty well for a while on a single admin. I don't think we'll need too much more manpower than what we had last try.

    Thanks for the constructive criticism, ezeiger, and don't be afraid to keep it up if you still don't agree with the things I've said so far in reply to your posts. It's good to have to think things like this through.
     
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  11. ezeiger92

    ezeiger92 Well-Known Member Lead Admin Survival Admin

    Keldt Jesus, not quoting that.
    For the survival vs. pseudo-vanilla:
    The group that would play on one of these servers, for nearly all cases, would play on the other. They compete for players. It is not smart to split a server's population while we are trying to accelerate growth.
    How many players do you think avoid our server because it has plugin X(s)? That is a large section of the pool of players pseudo-vanilla will be picking from.

    On snapshot servers:
    Update the server 2 days after the snapshot has been released, and most game-breaking (crash, corruption) bugs are gone. Backups are used to fix massive issues, and small ones can be patched with an NBT editor.
    The way we had it running (sitting on one snapshot) was a terrible idea. It defeats the purpose of having a snapshot server. We only had endermites and slime blocks. Current snapshots also have guardians, bunnies, ocean monuments, obtainable mob heads, coarse dirt (craftable). Water is able to push tnt again, sponge is obtainable and has a use, mob ai has been threaded, and performance has improved dramatically. Snapshot severs either keep up with development versions or they die.

    Survival players on vanilla:
    We took a hit. Most of our active staff were playing vanilla instead of taking care of survival. You may not have noticed it because you played on vanilla primarily, but it really sucked. We effectively became understaffed, and were getting burned out dealing with players. This is probably how Z_Millla felt when his staff began returning to survival and creative. On that note...

    Z_Millla's streaming:
    Z_Millla quit ShadeCrest. He won't do any streaming about any of our servers. This is not related to the happenings of vanilla, it was caused by an entirely separate issue.

    I was not implying that we could only updated one, or that one would have to happen before the other. It seemed like ndvenckus1 thought updating the pseudo-vanilla server would be faster than updating survival. Probably just me being tired and bitchy.

    Probably should proofread this more, but probably should sleep. Bed wins.
     
  12. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    To cut down on comment length, I'll stop quoting paragraphs xP

    Survival vs. Pseudo-vanilla:
    I don't believe it's fair to say that most people who played vanilla would also play Survival. I could list at least 4 of the Vanilla regulars who didn't like Survival (myself inlcuded). I'm sure I would have found more if I'd talked to more people, or if more people had been familiar with SC.
    As for your last two sentences, I don't see why this is a problem, unless you're referring specifically to the plugins the proposed server would be using as being plugin X(s). If a lot of people don't play on Survival because it has plugin(s) X, and they instead find a happy home on the Vanilla server, then the ShadeCrest community has grown overall, right? The goal of Vanilla is to have the lowest number of plugins possible.

    Snapshot server:
    That's still an update just about every week. And while I understand that snapshots can add some really cool features that people want to test out, I feel like (and the death of the most recent Vanilla server can confirm this) the lack of basic plugins allowing people to steal/grief, etc. far outweighs any fun that manages to be had before some one takes advantage of it all. I can't see myself ever getting into ShadeCrest's survival server. I understand the appeal, but I can't deal with all the plugins everyone is using. If we don't find some way to bring back vanilla, I'll probably never get to play survival with anyone from ShadeCrest. This disappoints me. I feel like there is a group of people exactly like me that the proposed server would cater to perfectly. I feel like "Minecraft without so many plugins" doesn't need the added "in-development" features to be different enough and interesting enough to offer a different kind of fun from the Survival server.

    Survival people on Vanilla:
    I had no idea we were taking so many staff members xD
    They probably liked the idea of a new server where they can take all they've learned from Survival and blaze a fresh trail on it.
    But anyway, it was probably a bad idea to try to start a new server and hope it could be staffed by staff from other servers. I wonder if opening up applications for more admins would help this, or if there's some other solution.. I also wonder how many of Survival's staff would play on yet another resurrected Vanilla server if they'd heard it came back, after seeing what had happened to the last one. I wonder how many would come back to Survival if they were threatened with demotion for being inactive.. And why people can't manage to play on two servers without keeping up with their responsibilities on the first one.. That's a lot of things I wonder. I'm tired.
    Were you losing lots of people that weren't staff members?

    I guess I'll update the original post to see if anyone can come up with solutions for staffing and us stealing your members

    Millla quitting SC:
    I realize he quit (found out earlier today). Part of the reason I keep bringing his stream up is just because it was part of the Vanilla server at the time, and the other part is because I'm tired and forgot he quit, and didn't just stop streaming Vanilla because it died. :|

    I'm ridiculously tired now and should not be typing. Bedtime.


    --Main post updated--
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2014
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  13. Slebert

    Slebert Active Member VIP

    Survival vs Sudo-Vanilla:
    Vanilla definitely attracted different types of players, that those that play on/join because of survival but even those people have sub-sets differed by the reason they liked the vanilla server. Some people joined vanilla because they like/missed modless minecraft, others joined for the snapshot, others for the amplified terrain. There are even people who join simply because they were looking for somthing new to do.
    Catering to all these people is hard to do at once. You can't have a sustainable world while constantly updating to the newest snapshot. You can't keep the modless people happy without greifing and steal being a problem. I think what we need to do is cater to one audience, and give that audience a good product.
    In my opinion I thought the point of the vanilla server was simply to be able to play on the snapshots. I didn't play vanilla so I could be wrong.
    Erik is see what you are saying in that making another modded server seems pointless since we have survival. We are not going to be able to have a snapshot version with prevention for stealing/greifing. Some, possibly most of the community would rather have a server which is not the newest thing, but is accually playable. I think we need to figure out what a majority of the vanilla players are really there for. If it's anything other than the newest snapshot, such as amped terrain, or a lack of mods this server could do well. A survey for those people who played on vanilla or a looking to play on vanilla could really help determine what the main focus of the server is.

    I think we need to rethink the vanilla server for sure, and figure out exactly what our community is looking for, and if we make it, others from outside of the community that a reasonable looking for the same thing will come.

    Staffing:
    The staffing problem, is an issue. I know it would seem kind of mean to say to they can't play on vanilla too much because they have obligations on the other server, but it is true. If a mod/admin becomes inactive, they are usually demoted, so why not for being inactive from a certain game/server. We are growing as a community and we need to have people to moderate each of the things we do, whether it be in survival/vanilla, or even space engineers we are going to need mods that play that game a lot. We may need to higher more staff to deal with the widening of our community, but saying no to somthing simply because of my understaffing just stops ShadeCrest from growing as a Community. I know it's hard to just higher more staff as it is a hard process to weed out the immature.

    All in all, we need our servers to have a stated point, including survival, since it is still kind of all over the place.

    Hopefully this added somthing/helped. I see where you are both coming from and this was what I thought should be done.

    Sorry if my spelling is odd, im on my phone and auto correct can be a pain.

    Sent from Sleberts phone
     
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  14. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    Thanks, Slebert, for joining in. We need more people to give opinions.


    It seems to me like most of the people who thought that the snapshot was the main thing keeping the Vanilla server interesting were people who didn't play on vanilla.

    Still, I was wondering whether I should start a poll on this thread or not. After reading this, I think I should.

    It seems like the main points we're discussing at this point are:
    whether the server should be running on the snapshot somehow
    how we can keep people from griefing/stealing
    whether amplified terrain was a big deal or not

    I'm thinking that two questions should be asked, so we get the opinions of both people who played on Vanilla and people who didn't but are interested.

    So here's my idea for the poll. I'd like some feedback before I put it up:

    For those that played on the Vanilla server, which of these features was most important to you?

    1: The server running a snapshot
    2: The server's use of amplified terrain
    3: Enforcement of rules such as "No griefing/stealing"
    4: I didn't play on the Vanilla server

    For those interested in resurrecting the Vanilla server, which applies to you?

    1: The server needs to be running the latest snapshot and be able to keep up with newer snapshot versions to be interesting
    2: The server needs to be able to enforce its "No griefing/stealing" rule. I'm willing to give up snapshots and replace them with custom terrain generation and the plugins in the list below in order to have a Vanilla server that lasts
    3: I'm willing to give up the snapshot for plugins, but I think we should have more unique gameplay features to make us more different from the other servers
    4: I don't think we should use snapshots, plugins, or custom terrain. I just want to play vanilla Minecraft with the latest official release
    5: I don't think we should resurrect the Vanilla server

    EDIT: I can't seem to find the option to add a poll to the thread in all the edit options. Is it even possible?
     
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  15. GingerSwan

    GingerSwan Active Member VIP


    lololol sharqman
     
  16. Slebert

    Slebert Active Member VIP

    I think you will need to make a new Thread to add a poll, but I agree with the polls you proposed.
     
  17. Navarog

    Navarog Well-Known Member

    Did Survival have a big drop in numbers when vanilla was more popular? Did Survival have a large boost in players when Vanilla was dying? To me, it didn't seem to. Having talked to a lot of the people who were on Vanilla, they played there for the community and for the amplified terrain. Having it as a snapshot was kinda cool, but really broke the game more than anything else. I don't think many (or any) players joined for the snapshot. They played for the Vanilla.

    I personally joined the server because it had been reset, so I had a chance to not be horribly outdone by people who had been playing on the server for years more than myself, like Survival is. I also did not want to deal and learn all the mods of our Survival server. I liked the amplified terrain and it being a snapshot was kinda coolish, but annoyed me because of all the bugs and poor optimization than anything else. I'm not sure how many other people felt this same way, but these are the reasons why I joined.

    The majority of players on Vanilla did not quit Survival to play it. Skinnedrat, Z_Millla, Bobbylou4, and myself played on the server the most right before it died, Bobby was the closest to quitting Survival to play Vanilla, but he quit for entirely different reasons. Vanilla occasionally had more members online than Survival, but this was before Survival had been updated.

    What is wrong with splitting our playerbase (displacing maybe 10 people) across two servers...? It may make Survival a little less popular to some newer people (if anyone plays Survival for the chat and the amount of people online), but a Vanilla server attracts an entirely different kind of player, especially if it is whitelisted and Survival is not.

    Just because there are many plugins you don't have to participate in on the Survival server, they are still there and many other players will use them. To get the most out of the server you should use the plugins. You have to go out of your way to not use some of the plugins, and you absolutely must use some others. If you want to PvP you basically have to use shops (or so it seemed to me when I played for a short time) and the money system. Events attracts many, many players and can make the server annoying for anyone not participating on Sundays.

    If someone wants to play a mostly Vanilla Minecraft, I think they're going to go to a server called a Vanilla server, not join a Towny server with many, many plugins and plan to just not utilize the plugins. If people quit to play Vanilla, then don't you think that maybe it'd be better if we had a server for them to play on? If they want to play Vanilla, they will play Vanilla. Would we rather people play on an entirely different community? This is a stretch, but if someone wants to build in Minecraft, do you think they would join a Towny server to do so, or do you think that they would instead go to a Creative server? If we got rid of our Creative server, would everyone just go play Survival because you can build there if you just work for a much longer amount of time? You totally could build on a Towny server, just like you could totally play Vanilla on Towny server.
     
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  18. oiShocKWavesv

    oiShocKWavesv Well-Known Member VIP

    Survival had a significant drop in players when Vanilla was at its peak.
     
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  19. Slebert

    Slebert Active Member VIP

    ShadeCrest is a community, people are going to play other games, and we should not see it as a bad thing. People who play more than one game together are usually closer. We can deal with people playing on one of our own servers. We need to focus on Shadecrest as more than just a couple of minecraft servers. We have moved on from that at this point. We now have Space Engineers, and lots of other games that the people of ShadeCrest play together, TS3 has been booming with close to 20 people on every day. People are going to shift from game to game it's part of being a gaming community. Though we need to keep the servers staffed, in which case we may just need more.

    Sent from Sleberts phone
     
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  20. Keldt

    Keldt Member

    Great points well worded by Nava and Slebert regarding playbase splitting.

    I don't think we should consider the split of the general playerbase to be a problem anymore, but perhaps we should promote more people to admin with the sole intent of keeping Survival staffed after Vanilla starts back up.

    I'll update the post with the general thoughts on playerbase and staffing after I finish this comment, and in a little while, when I have more free time, I'll start another thread with just the poll on it so we can get that going.

    It seems like Vanilla is something a lot of people on ShadeCrest would want to take part in, and it seems to me like people think losing the snapshot feature won't be too bad. Still, the poll will help make things more concrete, and should be pretty helpful.

    If anyone can come up with any other minor plugins that might be helpful, or explain to me what the heck ReportRTS does that ModReq doesn't, I'll update the plugin list with the good ones.

    If anyone wants to tentatively suggest plugins that they're not sure everyone would like to add to the proposed server, I could theoretically create a poll for the more controversial plugins as well.


    EDIT: I just tried making a new thread for a poll, and realized how awkward polls are on the forums here. I can only have one question per poll.. So I know ask the question.. Should I try to fit both questions into one poll awkardly or should I create two new topics instead of one? I'm leaning towards starting two new topics, since, in order to keep it to one poll but have two questions, I'd have to allow people to choose more than one response on the entire poll, and that could give us less accurate responses if people decide to choose more than one answer to one of the questions.


    --Main post updated--
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2014
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