Vote for the best update of 2016 => #emcdevappreciation!

Hi gang!

UPDATE: This part of the event ended, see my last post for more details.

So last year I tried to start something:

... but unfortunately it never finished. This was mainly because of my Internet provider acting up and disconnecting me for 6 whole weeks leaving me with nothing but my mobile phone and an invitation from my girlfriend to come over and use her connection when needed. And to add insult to injury I got to wait for yet another few weeks after they had initially sorted out all the problems, because during that time they also upgraded my connection from IPv4 to IPv6 but unfortunately forgot to upgrade my router as well, which didn't support all that yet...

Around this time last year I was pretty much disconnected, and that didn't help at all

But... "If at first you don't succeed...."

#emcdevappreciation 2017 - Lets show our appreciation!

Fact: Aikar and the developer team are constantly busy to try and get us the best Minecraft gaming experience. Thanks to their efforts we got big new features such as the Anti grief system, we got features which you might not know about yet but which might become invaluable (a good example could be the /trade system), and there are updates where the dev. team had to put in effort for things which you and I might not even consider to be all that special. For example: I know for a fact that the ability to put a llama in your /stable didn't come easy and even gave the dev. team a few surprises.

Problem: What can you give someone who already owns the server? It would be a little bit silly to give them in-game items because... yeah, they made those available to us in the first place. But there's one thing which they can't fabricate themselves and that's our appreciation. Or better put: a token of our appreciation.

How does this work?

I went through all the updates of 2016 and made a list which you can see below. Check out the update and please vote for the update which you think was the best in 2016. You can follow the links below or simply base yourself on the brief explanation.

Warning: as you might see the votes will become public. That's done for a reason.

After we have a winning update I will put together a book with a few words of appreciation and which will refer to the update which we, the Empire Minecraft community, thought was the best of 2016.

I'll then contact all the "winning" voters and ask them to add their signature and some text to the book as well. After that has happened everyone else can add a little something if they want to and when we're all done I'll sign the book and we present this to the developers team somehow. That's the part which never happened last year so I have no idea how we're going to do that, but I'm sure we'll be able to work something out!

About the book

Last year I held a short event to decide the name of the book. And we had a few winners.

Because the name was never used I decided that we're not going to do this part again but instead save that for next year. So, the book will be named "Don't hate; appreciate!" which was thought up by our own Pterojackdyl last year.

And here are the updates of 2016

Note: I only included updates which actually added new features, so if an update only provided bug fixes or a mere change of an already existing feature then that update got skipped. I also grouped some updates together in the poll because otherwise I would have run out of room.

I also didn't include all the forum updates because some don't directly affect our gameplay. So, the vote page rehaul isn't included while the appeal system update is (I know that indirectly affects gameplay, but still...).

Quality of life update - 6th of January 2016 *

Brief summary: Respawn closest (if you die and an outpost is closer to your deathpoint than your bed then you'll respawn on the outpost), overhaul to the chest interface (icons!); see /res pset, option to change a residence owner.

Quality of life update Part II - 17th of January 2016 *

Brief summary: Ability to lock beds, /newplayers command, compass automatically points you to an outpost, /invnear command.

Forum mobile view - 23rd of January 2016 *2

Brief summary: Forum is now easier / better viewable using our mobile devices.

Misc March updates - 28th of March 2016

Brief summary: Added some residence flags, made usage of chest interface easier (/res set will react just like /res pset).

Appeal system upgrade - 3rd of May 2016 *2 / *3

Brief summary: "Good news! You're banned!" Sorry, but I still need to grin about Corq's post.

Minecraft 1.9.4 'Combat' update - 31st of May 2016 *4

Brief summary: EMC goes 1.9, I think this speaks for itself.

Independence day update - 4th of July 2016

Brief summary: Not only did we get the awesome liberty swords, but CHOOSE signs became a thing (replaced the old SLOT signs).

Group teleportation! - 25th of July 2016

Brief summary: We're able to use /gtp to teleport to other players within your group.

Anti griefing update - 15th of August 2016

Brief summary: This is the big one which many of us had been waiting for, speaks for itself.

Halloween 'trading' update - 30th of October 2016

Brief summary: The /trade command got added.

2-factor authentication on forums - 15th November 2016 *2

Brief summary: Better forum security for the staff (mandatory) and all players who chose to use this as well.

Minecraft 1.11.2 'Exploration' update - 29th of December 2016 *4

Brief summary: EMC goes 1.11.2, this should speak for itself as well.

--- footnotes
* To save room in the poll I grouped both updates together as "Quality of Life".

*2: To save room in the poll I grouped all three updates together as "Forum updates".

*3: I know JackBiggin did most of the work here, we'll sort that out later.

*4: To save room in the poll I grouped all two updates together as "Minecraft upgrades".

Polls for the win!!!!

Would love it if it was multiple choice.

First: vault pages easy move (Trade update)
Second: Mobile Forums(although I still dislake scrolling all the way down fo find my rupee balance
Third: Anti Grief

Honorable mention 1.11 update(just cause I made 2 mill in the first week of its release, lol)

ಠ_ಠ

Halloween Trading. Best event of the entire year

I have considered doing that but eventually decided against it so that it will hopefully be easier to get a winner.

Just to be sure: keep in mind that the trading itself was the event, the update was the /trade command.

Anything b4 the afk XP farm nerf.

Dragon Tombs! Oh wait...

Games Server?

Empires

1.11 and shulker boxes

I'll go for the group teleportation command, it's really usefull for a lot of things, but I mainly use it for building and moving Items around. second would come the anti grief update, since, well, It's great, but I haven't used jet becuase I'm never in the wild...

The voting page overhaul is my favourite: Jack did an amazing job on that, in my opinion.
And hey, you didn't include it? I don't care, I can still choose "Forum updates" to show my support.

Minecraft upgrades cuz firework elytra and llamas > life

Anti-Griefing was best by far.

i really like anti-grief but i like llamas & shulker boxes a bit better b/c i use those all the time ^.^

Going to have to roll with forum updates. The only other update I have experience with here is the anti-griefing update, and I'm one of the (apparent) few who vehemently despise it.

y

Pretty much for everything listed in this thread.

I've always been involved in the wild in big communities - and they got old. Players left. Big communities with lots of MIA players and the anti-grief update do not mesh well at all; there's things left behind that might need to be gotten rid of, but nobody can touch/break it.

This bugs me not just because of the massive amount of effort now needed for changing minuscule things, but also because I've haven't seen a massive griefing on EMC in years. From what I can recall, it was somebody preparing to set the LLO into flames and they were laying traps all over the place to hide their little outposts (they were caught before they did anything because when a trap was found and their suspicious movements on the live map were watched, it didn't take long to ban them). The griefers have all moved on. So then why does this update have to cause such huge problems with buildings established by missing players for what is, to me, an almost entirely non-existent threat.

If it was 2012 and we were still waking up to our six month old pieces of work out in the wild completely razed to the ground, I'd 120% excuse the problems caused by this update. But we're not living back then anymore. For me, the cons far outweigh the pros.

The update is designed for going solo and smaller, more active, younger communities.

And I get this update is supposed to be a temporary thing to put at least some protection on our buildings out in the wilderness, and I'd understand this more if it was. But... it's not. I know how long it takes EMC to work on things, and that's a ridiculously long time. There's things I've seen promised to be delivered here for five years that never showed up. Empires has been being bounced around for two or three, and I can see it being bounced around for another two or three more - maybe even longer. I don't know. You can never tell at this point. I could have long packed my things and left before it ever sees the break of dawn.

Until I see any sign of Empires ever coming out (I do suspect we have another Dragon Tombs on our hands), I am of the angle that the wild is being geared more towards individuals rather than the community aspect it once had. That's not what the wild is to me, and so I'm going to dislike anything that I perceive to be propelling it towards that - the anti-grief update is doing that very thing to me (or at least downsizing that aspect a lot more).

(I've been awake for like 20 hours, I apologise if this doesn't make sense lol)

Last big griefing was about 4 months back all over smp8 spawn and PWU with cobble monsters