Paid Protection for City Roads

[AgentSnazz]

I'm more of the opinion that roads shouldn't be protected at all, but that's mostly because I'm lazy, so keep that in mind as I lay out my arguments against road protection.

First, and I thought this was in the written rules (it's not), I hope it's in the unwritten rules, maybe it's just in my head... but roads are in many ways a community owned structure. Linking to an established road isn't severe griefing. Adding signs to a road to say what's nearby won't earn you an instaban. If you come across an impassible section of skyroad while no staff are on, I don't really have a problem with you laying a dirt bridge to pass (be a pal and tell us later though). The idea that griefed roads are leaving players stranded seems a little absurd to me.

Second, protecting roads has the downside of expanding the perceived protection area. We don't want new players confused by protection layouts. If you protect too much, players are likely to assume that unprotected=breakable and protected=unbreakable.

Finally, roads are excellent grief traps! They don't protect anything, so you aren't risking any chests or loot, and they're super easy to spot, just fly down the road, the regularity of the road makes anything out of the ordinary stand out. I'd rather catch griefers long before they make it to your vaults.

EDIT: Also, has anyone mentioned who would have the rights to build on these protected roads? Staff only? What about trusted+?

[Odjit]

I know that they are regarded to a certain degree as community owned (allowing for hook-ups, signs, etc so as to promote infrastructure), but like I explained in TS (and shall repeat here for the benefit of those reading) that players are often too nervous to alter blocks that were not theirs for fear of being dubbed a griefer. They generally follow the 'If it isn't yours, don't alter it' rule and do not vary because that leads to bans. I know only a couple factions at most are aware that hooking up w/o permission is allowed- most do go and seek permission as it is the safe/polite thing to do. I think this is a matter of something not being clear or officially stated, but nevertheless, new players are likely not going to know it even if it does and so thus it would still be an issue.

Roads are excellent grief traps... they are also annoyingly long. They are generally long structures that take quite some time and many twists and turns to patrol the whole thing for griefs. Honestly, we only catch a few griefers while they are on the road- they often make it to the cities/homes anyway. (And usually its only roads with grief alert materials like lightstone or something)

It would be staff only, once completed, as elsewise abuse would be too easy. Plus the groups stuff I told you about~

[Riviak]

Just got home and noticed this...am I to understand that if the road is not protected then it will be legal to greif said road?

[Patriot]

Look staff, if you do this, this means less interruptions in the long term, which means that you can have more time to play league of legends.

Right now, what happens with the a lot of staff members is that they do loads of stuff as long as the playerbase stays active, the staff stays active. So after a couple of weeks they stop playing.

The griefing however, does not stop. So they continue to get annoyingly dragged out of their League of Legends even after the majority of the playerbase has ceased to be active. This is less interruptions in the long term, even if it isn't dropping that number of intteruptions by a huge margin, it still does drop those interruptions.

TL;DR: Protection on city roads in the short term = Less interruptions in the League of Legends that you play now and in the long term.

[james_power]

this is good idea yes da. Patriot #1 ideamaker

[Plohtato]

Active staff!?


Is this a new plugin?

[deathmongrel]

Ok, well unprotected roads would be as they are now, and the intent of the original idea, is for finished roads. No more editing. Some of the roads are very big, and expensive in terms of amounts of materials and time to lay down. Sometimes it would be nice, I thought, to not have to deal with them being griefed.

With the number of cities I've seen regularly since I joined in November it's on average, what, 3 or 4. These roads cross a large portion of the map, and as such, the roads are a bit unique. I know from my perspective when my stuff gets griefed, I prefer it didn't happen in the first place--but yeah, that's life in Minecraft. Given the home command, the question is, how often do people travel all the roads? This is where the road griefs don't get reported, and after too much time passes, can't be rolled back and the person banned. Just like the abandoned cities we have near hubs. Neither can we tell who griefed them, we also can't ban those who did it (again, my understanding of how long logs are kept).

As for perceived protection areas, we can have a sign saying city roads may be protected. If a person keeps asking why they can't build on a road, the situation should not be one where we are worried that they think there is too much protection on the server, it should be us asking, why do you keep trying to build on it then? Just like in spawn, when someone doesn't understand why they can't build in spawn, we simply tell them you have to go somewhere buildable. Tell them to build away from the road.

Yeah, we don't want to whitelist. There'd only be us now, and I think WL servers just tend to fade away as people go off and do RealLife. Gotta keep new people coming in.

If new people actually read the rules, there wouldn't be any issues for non-griefers because they wouldn't attempt to build on or change the road--they'd already know not to. If they're griefers yeah, they'll simply move along which they're going to do anyway, once they're done griefing the road--then they hit whatever. For some, there is no challenge in griefing a road, so they're gonna find houses or go xray, and catching them doing that won't be any different than it is now.

If new peeps aren't griefers but still didn't read the rules, perhaps it helps them avoid accidents, and when they pose the question they can get a response from the many helpful players (most of us I think) that will take a moment to explain where not to build. They can learn something without a ban or warning.

Everyone's points are valid. If you don't want it, don't buy it. Will it shift griefing? Perhaps for pro-griefers, yeah. Perhaps it will reduce accidental/newbie griefing. Will it cause more work for admins in one area, editing vs. griefing, perhaps. Of course as I said, the intent was for finished roads, so once the editing for a road is done, that's it.

If you need something off to the side, for chests (don't see much a purpose on a high up road--but that's me) it can be an unprotected shack or something right next to the road. If others want to build up to it they can build right up to the road and meet it. In terms of design, maybe create an intersection (or maybe just intersections don't get protected). In nearly every case, I think, there shouldn't be anything stopping anyone from being able to build another road right up to a protected road. I may be wrong, but I'm not looking for examples to negate the idea of offering protection, rather examples to say where a road shouldn't be protected, to allow changes.

With PVP, there's also the advantage that you can have a more fragile material road, with no worries of one side or the other accidentally breaking things. I know when I've accidentally swung my efficiency 4 pick, it does a lot more damage in a split second than I can avoid. Not everybody fights with swords and bows, especially when ganked.

I can't comment on difficulty dealing with house grief vs. road grief. To me it's all the same, someone broke a block they shouldn't, rollback, warning/ban. In many cases admins ask what the player thinks they're doing, do they know the rules, etc., etc. I don't see where a road vs. a building is any different, when asking,"why did you break it?" But I'm not and haven't been a mod or admin so I honestly don't know.

To summarize:

Yes it might mean more work for someone for a short period of time, and it might change the nature of pro-griefers, while I think it might reduce the accidental or uninformed griefing.

Will it cost something? I won't even go there, except to say I'll leave that to the community to decide. And of course it's an option, so if you have 20,000 coins and nothing to buy you can buy it if you want to. I would also suggest that if you have a city, you have 6 other people that should have money or be able to generate it. Shouldn't be one person footing the bill--unless of course you are a dictator. If you can't afford it, hold a bake sale or event or something if you really want it

Never would I suggest something like this be mandatory.

Finally, it's just a point of discussion, EVERYONE has had a valid opinion on the topic, which is all the more reason for it to be discussed. It might not be viable given constraints in the software, people's time, players' iconomy pocketbooks, and so on. I know that if I had a city (and if I find 3 more good neighbors, I might) I would at least like the option.

Best Regards,
dm

[Shadown92]

I agree with patriot.....more time for league but wait who's league time will be interrupted to protect said roads?
with the hub roads going to the edge of the world, if they are protected anyway do you really need/want your own roads protected? If there are hub roads, protection for your city roads can easily be set up as an extra and yes it will be expensive because someone has to make the regions to protect it. But that will keep everyone happy, you can protect it but it's not a requirement.

[Odjit]

Nope Riviak. The community owned aspect was just in regards to someone being able to hook up to a road, not that they can go and destroy someone elses' road.

[harryhousin]

Issues also arise if we continue to allow sky roads such as stock's sky road (to name one that I remember off the top of my head) to be considered official roads to cities, because they do not support a thorough infrastructure on the server, they get you from point A to point B and do not allow for anyone to add to that road or get off except at the end of the road, so if a new player sees a nice place to build while walking on that road their only option is to grief or walk back the thousand blocks to get off the road and walk the same thousand blocks back to get to where they wanted to build. With this it leads me to think that such roads may not be viable to be considered as city roads in the requirements for city status. These roads are as much for direct transportation from one of the hubs to the city in question as they are for dispersing new players on the server (or at least that is what I believe they should be). If perhaps a city wants to build such a sky road they could be obligated to have a certain number of exits from the road every 50 blocks (or however many we decide upon). In this case sky roads would be more difficult to protect as they tend to be quite long and would require a number of descents.

Overall I think that protecting roads would be a nice option to have for cities but I also believe it should come with a price. I also think that we should expand upon what the purpose of a city road is to include access to/from the road every 50-100 blocks or something along those lines.

[mahoutsukaii]

I also think that we should expand upon what the purpose of a city road is to include access to/from the road every 50-100 blocks or something along those lines.

What if we had a huge warning sign at the start of the road, that said something like this:

"WARNING: This road leads to Stock City, and nothing else; there are no exits. Travel along here only if you are allowed access into Stock City. If you have no idea what this means, do not travel along this road. "

[harryhousin]

That would be helpful to wary travelers who actually read, but as basically everyone should know, most new players NEVER! read, and it would still not make it beneficial to the infrastructure of the server in any real way so I think it shouldn't be a qualifier for city status in the future.

[Patriot]

Well, putting the sky/ground road argument aside, and putting myself back onto the more time for other games in the long term argument.

Protect Roads For Free Scenario
You wouldn't be playing League(Or any other game) in the short term because you would know that you've got to do some things. For instance, one of your friends would say "Hay staff membah, play some god damn League wiv meh." This person would be saying this near the beggining of the map schedule, of course. The staff member could then respond with "No bros, I have ta fakin protect the fakin roads, mate."

As it is now/ someone didn't buy it if it costs money Scenario
Someones road isn't protected, so there could have been any number of people who wanted to see a city that were stopped by the grief, so that faction is hurt. But back to the League dialogue, which is the most fun part. A player joins the teamspeak channel that the staff member is in and goes "Hey bros, I need a staff membah to fix mah fakin broken road." the staff member would then have to leave the League game, which I assume has penalties on your long term League standings, and I'm also sure that it hurts your team.

Revised TL;DR: Protect all of the roads free of charge in the short term and don't start games of League with your friends for a bit OR don't protect all of the roads free of charge in the short term, and get pulled out of your games right in the middle of it, hurting your long term records, which is what you people seem to care more for in the long term.

Onto the Sky Road argument, I think that if a sky road is to be made, perhaps it should be made like the 1.7 map roads that were made from the hubs. You would need to have paths down from each side of the road every x number of blocks, or something along that line.

But I disagree with one of Odjits earlier statements saying that sky roads are ugly, because people can make some pretty nice roads in the sky.

[james_power]

Patriot still #1 Idea maker yes da?

[Odjit]

Patriot, you can stop with the LoL stuff now. That is ridiculous, uneeded and rather trollish.

And James, are you looking for another forum ban for spam posting, not contributing to the topic at hand and trolling as well?


The problem is city roads are supposed to form an infrastructure for the server. Having the city road not do so is a negative for the server as whole. I agree with Harry that skyroads need off and on points every x blocks so as to reduce this issue and make it less of a pain. In that case they might even be of use to new players, as they can travel along the road, see some far off terrain better than they could on the ground, and possess the ability to get off the road and go there.

And yes Patriot, while some sky roads can be pretty, none currently are, and you don't even get the luxury of just hiding your view of it by planting trees. D:< (and fyi, no I am not saying sky roads should be removed because they are ugly, it is about the infrastructure problem. ;P .. but they are totes ugly.)