Org Minecraft Server

[Ishmael]

I'm opposed to it, personally, largely working off the principle of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Building projects on the server seems to work quite well for everybody, with a decent balance between difficulty in collecting resources and the ability to make impressive structures (earlier difficulties in acquiring sand aside). Having the ability to trade between resources opens up the possibility of exploitation of the system through grinders, farms, block generators and the like, which would in turn cheapen the value of rarer blocks. Sure, you could probably fine-tune the system to prevent this, but it seems like that would be a never-ending process.

Not to mention, as you say, that the sense of community on this server reduces the need for such a system to a large extent. If I need lots of a block for a project I'm building people are usually willing to share some of their surplus, and in turn I'll help them out later if they need anything. I can see the need for a formal trading system on large servers, where most people don't know each other, but that's not really the case for us.

With regards to EnderHome, I don't really have any strong opinions. If people think it's a bit too 'cheap' then I can live without it - I tend to get my active bed mixed up anyway, and end up halfway across the world from where I wanted to go . Of course, it is a very handy feature to have. I don't suppose it's possible to change the item requirement from ender pearls to something else?

EDIT: By the way, I like the idea of that city layout Sigurd. I like the idea of a 'townhouse' like Nigel is building, but I'd feel a bit conspicuous if it were just me building in that area.

[TinCow]

It's possible to change the item used by EnderHome within the plugin, and I've considered changing it to a Ghast Tear. That said, the plugin itself is still problematic regardless of the item used. If necessary, we can live with it, but I'd prefer to find another option if possible.

The general block economy stuff pointed out by Ishmael is what I'm most concerned about. There are tons of servers out there that run these things so presumably there are systems that are balanced, and I believe there are supply/demand systems that adjust prices dynamically. That said, it's an issue.

We could avoid that by simply using the economy for access to console commands and nothing more. If real in-game currency wasn't desirable, we could simply use virtual currency that accumulates for each player. I could probably figure out a way to simply set it up so that each player gets X credits per Y period of time, and those credits can then be spent on a variety of commands, including home. A system like that would essentially boil down to a frequency use limits on special console commands like /home. If you spend all your credits on commands, just wait longer to get more and use your feet to get around until then.

Again, I want to emphasize that moving to this kind of system also increases options for all of you because it allows me to give you access to other commands that you don't have right now. These could include:

/back - returns you to the place of your death or the last place you teleported from, whichever is more recent

/sethome - allows you to mark your 'home' location at someplace other than your bed.

/tp - teleport directly to a specific player

/setwarp - create a 'warp' which is a pre-defined teleport location for the entire server

/warp - teleport to an existing warp

I might even be able to allow you to purchase /fly for limited periods of time, say 60 seconds per use.

[Ishmael]

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We could avoid that by simply using the economy for access to console commands and nothing more. If real in-game currency wasn't desirable, we could simply use virtual currency that accumulates for each player. I could probably figure out a way to simply set it up so that each player gets X credits per Y period of time, and those credits can then be spent on a variety of commands, including home. A system like that would essentially boil down to a frequency use limits on special console commands like /home. If you spend all your credits on commands, just wait longer to get more and use your feet to get around until then.

Again, I want to emphasize that moving to this kind of system also increases options for all of you because it allows me to give you access to other commands that you don't have right now. These could include:

/back - returns you to the place of your death or the last place you teleported from, whichever is more recent

/sethome - allows you to mark your 'home' location at someplace other than your bed.

/tp - teleport directly to a specific player

/setwarp - create a 'warp' which is a pre-defined teleport location for the entire server

/warp - teleport to an existing warp

I might even be able to allow you to purchase /fly for limited periods of time, say 60 seconds per use.

If it's possible, I definitely like the sound of this. It neatly solves the issue of EnderHome being rather devalued, but doesn't drastically change anything.

[Csargo]

We could avoid that by simply using the economy for access to console commands and nothing more. If real in-game currency wasn't desirable, we could simply use virtual currency that accumulates for each player. I could probably figure out a way to simply set it up so that each player gets X credits per Y period of time, and those credits can then be spent on a variety of commands, including home. A system like that would essentially boil down to a frequency use limits on special console commands like /home. If you spend all your credits on commands, just wait longer to get more and use your feet to get around until then.

Again, I want to emphasize that moving to this kind of system also increases options for all of you because it allows me to give you access to other commands that you don't have right now. These could include:

/back - returns you to the place of your death or the last place you teleported from, whichever is more recent

/sethome - allows you to mark your 'home' location at someplace other than your bed.

/tp - teleport directly to a specific player

/setwarp - create a 'warp' which is a pre-defined teleport location for the entire server

/warp - teleport to an existing warp

I might even be able to allow you to purchase /fly for limited periods of time, say 60 seconds per use.

I think this would be just fine for our little server. I don't think we need an actual way to buy certain items, since we'll usually trade it someone needs anything. I'm not sure, but could we use experience to purchase these commands? Or would that be too cheap?

[TinCow]

FYI, for those who are using my smelter, you need to start bringing your own fuel. My coal stock has dropped by a full double chest and I'd prefer for it not to go much lower.

I'm not sure, but could we use experience to purchase these commands? Or would that be too cheap?

I think so, but you can get 30 levels in about a minute or two in the ender farm, so xp isn't too valuable either.

[Vladimir]

FYI, for those who are using my smelter, you need to start bringing your own fuel. My coal stock has dropped by a full double chest and I'd prefer for it not to go much lower.

That's me, I've been taking from the bottom chest but just noticed the top one is cleared out. I'll start bringing my own. I hoped the quartz shipments would at least partially offset the cost since you made a comment earlier about having a lot of coal. Maybe I'll try using lava buckets.

[Sigurd]

The City layout is just a suggestion. If you don't agree I would challenge you to come up with alternatives.

It seems you guys are more into medieval type cities with no structured streets, which is fine.
Success in street planning is the american squared grid system (think New York). This structure is for the main roads and you can add more, smaller and not so straight roads within the grid squares.
And yes... these roads can go uphill or down - that would just make it more interesting. But some terraforming might be in order where land is missing or large ravines interrupts.

Maybe to protect the capitol building more, there could be extra wide streets along the sides of it.
I would also advice that any city building plot should incorporate gardens (grass + trees / leaves placed on the ground for small hedges).

Here are some ideas I would like to implement into the city:
The city shops should be multifloor buildings with the shop at ground level:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Green areas can easily be beautified with a little imagination:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(Yeah, I have plans for my front lawn)

[TinCow]

I do think laying out streets before construction is a good idea. However, I do agree that a bit more randomness in design would be more attractive, and would also make for more interesting building designs in oddly shaped plots. Maybe we could do street layouts now, but not plan them out too precisely on the map and add in curves and angles in whichever way suits the builder.

That said, we should standardize the road design. I would like to suggest that we create two road sizes, large and small. Large would tend to be for main avenues and should be straight. Small would be for local roads and can take whatever irregular designs we want. I would suggest that the large roads be the same size as the existing road between the Arena and the Town Hall, which I think has a width of 9. Small roads could then be something like 4. I would also like to suggest that any roads that are put down leave a buffer of at least two squares between the edge of the road and any existing building. We should standardize the building materials as well. I would suggest stone brick for all roads as that's what's already down there and it's also cheap to produce for everyone in large quantities. Lighting should probably be done by torches simply due to the expense of glowstone and the fact that jack-o-lanterns look a bit odd when placed everywhere. We might want to design standard street lights though, at least for the large roads, such as a block of something on top of two nether brick fences, with torches on each side of the block.

Another area for city construction can be around the Arena. I specifically built the ring road around that thing to link in future city roads to it. With the presence of the Ender Farm and my turbo XP farm, I don't think there's any need to keep the old skeleton xp farm around anymore so I'd propose knocking that down to make room for more attractive buildings. We can also erase the Arena light sensor as it can now be replaced with the single-block light sensor that's been added to the game. Removing both of those would restore a lot of valuable central real estate. We can also completely rework the existing roads/bridges around the starting area to make them fit better into a more organic layout. A more attractive main spawn point might help as well. We could either rebuild the spawn island, or simply remove it and place the starting spawn location anywhere we want, such as in the noob hotel or perhaps in a newly built custom location.

If a large number of us are going to start working on this, it might also be smart to establish a central workshop for mass storage of materials and crafting/smelting. While we could build a new one, we could also use the workshop I used for the Town Hall, which still exists. It's actually a really old early construction from the server that got buried when I built the place. It's located under the Town Hall and is accessed through a ladder (labeled Boiler Room) in the bottom floor of the Town Hall. I think there are still some resources down there and we could expand it further if needed.