Hey guys, your favorite admin here. :)

I decided to ask some public opinions on how the 1.9 Server is being ran. I encourage you guys to be open, honest and importantly, discuss. My goal with this topic is to understand frustrations and surprises and how to best plan for the next server refresh. Now, such a thing isn't being planned but I'm merely collecting opinions now that most of us have settled in. I acknowledge the rocky start and frustrations and would love to know your thoughts now that we're about 4 months into the server.

Some points I'd like to know about:

• How has the lack of widespread teleportation affected your travels on the server?
  • Do you stay close to home? Do you take less chances?
• How has the lack of widespread teleportation affected your experience on the server?
  • Have you built pathways you are excited to travel across everyday?
  • Do you find yourself more familiar with the cardinal map directions and map landmarks?
  
  
  
• How has the lack of a farmable currency altered the game for you? Do you think it's a fairer system or more difficult? Any suggestions for improvements or changes?
  
  
• How has grey-listing affected your experience? Do you think this is a great way to vette out uninterested players or do you think it's negatively impacting player count and interest?

During the discussion phase for 1.9, many ideas were tossed around. I'd appreciate if you guys read through those topics and give your opinion on how our decisions panned out, for better or worse. For example, I suggested a plugin where players can take on jobs which would allow players to earn money without needing to find Lapis Ore. Do you think such a plugin would have been beneficial or do you think it would have been detrimental?

So please take sometime to reread those topics and give some feedback about the server so we can make the next one even better![/list]

I think I do stay at home more now that teleportation (particularly tpa) isn't a thing. It may be a good thing however, as I've invested more time into my home.


I've participated in building some rail infrastructure, especially near (and through!) my mountain, and think the community-built rail system is a great thing. The old creative-built rail felt a bit too, impersonal(?)
Once there are more rails to peoples houses and structures, I can really see myself using it more.


Absolutely. On the old server, I barely knew what was between my house and spawn, but now with the forced travel, it really encourages exploration and getting to know your surroundings. It's been great to see buildings and structures pop up around the north of spawn, where I live.


I really like the non-farmable currency. Lapis ore seems to strike the perfect balance between too common and too rare. While I'm nowhere near the richest on the server, I certainly feel like I have a good ammount of cash, while not having to slave to death mining, and not having afk'ed in front of a farm not working at all.


I think grey-listing the server was a great idea. It prevents grievers who just want to join to destroy stuff, while still allowing potential players to get a good feel of the map. It's nice to not have to worry about securing my stuff, knowing that every player capable of messing with stuff has been vetted.

My only gripe with the server is the lack of the End and consequently Elytra. I think that Elytra were one of the best features added in 1.9, and not being able to experience them on my favorite server is a shame. I think I heard that they were going to be used as prizes, and I hope that those contests are soon

Great job to everyone who works hard keeping the server alive, players and admins alike. It's only the fact that other people are active and talkative on the server that keeps me coming back for more. There's no way I would pour this much time into a single player world, and having a friendly server with people I know (mostly) is an awesome thing. Keep up the great work

*cough cough* https://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12871 <-- Topic about the End!

Thanks for the link, posted!

Awww, I missed the vote.

Did we in fact have a rocky start? Am I blocking some unpleasantness out of my memory?

• How has the lack of widespread teleportation affected your travels on the server?
  • Do you stay close to home? Do you take less chances? -> Now that I have a town, I can both /home and /town spawn, which is really great for teleportation. Even before that, I found that the lack of teleportation made the game more fun, if anything. It made me have to think more carefully about where I was setting home, because if I moved it away from my base, I had to be aware of how to rail or boat back home.
• How has the lack of widespread teleportation affected your experience on the server? -> See above.
  • Have you built pathways you are excited to travel across everyday? -> Definitely! And the more the rails grow, the happier I am.
  • Do you find yourself more familiar with the cardinal map directions and map landmarks? -> About the same, but as the one who copy-pasted most of the rails on the old server, I think I was more familiar with the map than most. It's worth mentioning that I think keeping the map a bit smaller has especially helped it be more familiar and more fun.
  
  
  
• How has the lack of a farmable currency altered the game for you? Do you think it's a fairer system or more difficult? Any suggestions for improvements or changes? -> Strictly better. Iron farming seems to be the only "problem" we have left, and there's not much to be done about that.
  
  
• How has grey-listing affected your experience? Do you think this is a great way to vet out uninterested players or do you think it's negatively impacting player count and interest? -> I don't think we've missed any active users by having graylisting, and I think the playerbase we do have is higher-quality. Which is not to say that I think we have a good number of active users; I think we need more for the amount of resources and time we've put into both making the server/map and to keeping it running. I'm disappointed that our videos don't seem to have helped, which has discouraged Elemental, tifreak8x, and I from making videos lately, as far as I can tell.

I think that all of the decisions we made, on economy, travel, plugins, and gameplay mechanics, have made it a better server. I think the jobs plugin wouldn't have really improved anything; people seem perfectly comfortable hiring other people for money/resources if they need help with something. My main complaint is that PvP was disabled in the main world; I hope that will be fixed soon.

I tend to try and stay close to my main builds because it can take some time to get back to them, but unless I was mining on the last map, I stayed close as well. Where the big issue has come up is going to another person's place to see their builds, or have them come to ours. It was nothing to pop over to another town in the last map to look around, but some on this server don't have either rails or nether paths to them making travel to look at other builds a bit harder.

The biggest thing I made sure was a path in the Nether to get between my place and spawn quickly if needed. Same when the Speedway was setup was to get a Nether Portal up as fast as possible and a pathway up so that people can come and go, and I could move materials between base and the Speedway. The biggest impact I had is that if I wanted to do a large mining/caving trip before, I could have my 2nd account port over, pick up the materials and put them in the sorter, now I have to stop when the inventory is full. Minor issue really as I don't spend a ton of time mining except to gather certain materials typically.


It does encourage people to find currency more. The barrier to entry I think to start making money effectively is a lot lower now than it used to be. However, unexpected issues could allow the old system to overload the server (say, a town being accidentally deleted and control structures failing spectacularly).

That being said, barrier of entry to setting up an official town is quite a bit higher, but the lack of an open PVP system makes it less useful than on the last map when open PVP and looting was encouraged at the begging. Overall, the system is working out. However, I did like the extra sign shops in the last map to obtain materials not easily obtained in the map. Before, I could just farm the gold at the farm, and they buy what I needed. Now, I have to mine to gather materials, and even with additional sign shops, mining would still be a big part.


The grey-list this time around is a lot better than the grey-list we had on the map 2 generations ago. The only person who could allow people on that I believe last time was Kerm, which means if he was away for anything, people would not be able to build. Having 2 admins and 2 moderators means that generally we have people online that can move people to the grey-list. I think it has helped keep some of the rifraff out that we don't want on the server, and I highly doubt it has driven anyone away we want.

I do stay close to home more often, spending more time looking for spawners for my needs. On the last map I was very widespread, in Arcadia and in the far East as well.


I haven't really built any pathways, aside from expanding the Eastern one from spawn to my base and Villager Marketplace. I do find myself more familiar with the map because of much easier it is to travel, and because there is more of a community-type feel, encouraging exploration. The Treasure Hunt also helped a tone with that.

Indeed, the non-farmable currency is pretty great. It is relativly easy to get lapis, every mining trip in the abba world has yielded 20 or more lapis. At first because I didn't have silk touch it was hard, but once you get diamonds, everyone is more then willing to help get you a silk touch book. It is more difficult, but it gives more of the poorer people who don't bother to work hard on farms better prices.

I think the grey-list has helped with moderating the server because of Mods being able to look at past experiences and decide whether to allow players or not. I feel that I can not worry myself with my stuff being stolen, because of this moderation.

If you guys are open to suggestion, could we have a topic on the forum for advertising our services on the server? It would be a locked topic only posted in by the admins, to prevent off-topic posts.

Overall, I think you guys have done a great job with everything, I have not had any problems, aside from the fact that Nether Portal placement hasn't exactly been cooperative, hence not having a Portal at my place. That isn't a big deal, but it could have been nice if we had organized that.

Do you think there should be an incentive for users to build these paths?



I'm confused as to what this topic would be for. Would it just be a topic that we can point to new users so they can have a more thorough understanding? We do have a brief introduction over at https://www.cemetech.net/play/

The point wouldn't be to advertise the server, but advertising things like the brazier and other creations the community has made. It would be a way for players to learn where to go for help and certain other things.

[quote="Alex"]

Do you think there should be an incentive for users to build these paths?

I don't think on the Nether paths there should be any real incentive only because they can be fairly simple to make. A lot of them are not much more than some patchwork cobblestone laid out. If someone needed a hand to get the portal in the right spot to link up like it needs to, all they need to do is ask.

As for rails, I don't know if we need to heavily incentivize people to make the paths, but maybe make it easier to obtain the necessary materials that are being used to help people take the time to build them. Of course, there is still the time commitment issue of building them once the materials are gathered (I speak from experience, though more from the Speedway Project). If there is major terrarforming to do, maybe an awesome admin can once again clear some area out. :p