YA Call for EMC with less stalking, stealing and grieving

I don't like the /hide feature of EMC, I think it renders the live map of the wild boring. I'm not a supporter, so I can't use it, but I think even if were I would not use it, I like been visible on the map.

I agree that the /hide command is not an adequate way to prevent grieffing, since that alone don't protect from building on the wild, if you want to be safe you have to build underground and within the generated chunks, otherwise is posible to find wild bases even if the players are hidden.

I love the livemap, and I like seeing people wondering on it. I would like the /hide feature to be there for those who (for whatever reason) want their privacy, but not as a main defence against grieffing.

This is irking me because the way it comes across is you saying:
EMC IS AN EVIL BUSINESS ONLY OUT TO GET MONEY AND THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THEIR MEMBERS! THEY DON'T TREAT EVERYONE WITH RESPECT, THEY TREAT US WORSE THAN ANIMALS!

• Nobody is being harmed by EMC.
• EMC is not taking money and using it for personal gain.
• Nobody is being treated unfairly.
• EMC does respect their players and many other players respect each other and so on.

1. The only people being harmed are those who are griefed. They are griefed usually due to NOT going out far enough, posting public images on the forum, people blabbing and making things known that shouldn't be blabbed, building MASSIVE pretty obvious things that can be seen. There are only a few who are supporter who ever get griefed because someone just by chance happens to find their base or whatever.
2. The "earnings/profit" go towards keeping the server up. They're not sitting there pocketing the money and blowing it on Taco Bell, the latest game system, some $50 pants, a new house, car, trip to the Virgin Islands.
3. Nobody is being treated unfairly. Everyone has the ability to buy supporter and use the perks. EMC doesn't limit who can buy supporter. The restrictions for Supporter are usually A. Paypal doesn't have their country listed in their list of countries they do service with. B. Mom and dad don't want to pay money for me to play the game. C. Something unexpected pops up.
4. EMC does respect their players just as most of our members respect each other. The staff didn't just wake up one day, make the server and decide that they could just spawn everything in and not care about everyone else. They have played the game, been in survival, liked the game and created the server, had staff apply to become staff. They have experienced everything we have. If they didn't respect us, they wouldn't add anything new, wouldn't listen to feedback, bug reports, ban appeals, player reports, tell us about new features, talk to us like we're all human, hold events like drop parties, mob arena, valentines day parties, give us rupees, update shop systems and shops, log items that get griefed, track people to catch griefers, ban rule breakers, reset res plots, world edit out dirt for a fee etc. Aikar even lets people onto his private server to test some things so that people don't complain and whine that people get to test stuff on stage. They also wouldn't sit in mumble, teamspeak or anything like that or even town and talk to you and become friends like they do.

As I stated last night, I'm not particularly interested in discussing the subject anymore, but I do want to apologize for mentioning those. If you want I can edit it out, but it may be too late. I'm really sorry, I didn't think about that / say it with negative intentions

Really, I've never thought about EMC in that way. That mafia and world domination jokes are - well - just jokes.
If I would think that EMC is really dirty business with dirty intentions, than I would not be here.
It is quite visible that the intentions behind EMC are basically good and positive.

The fact is, that Justin, Jeremy and EMC staff do carry a more or less contoured world-view and more or less contoured view of the part of human race that is present here - Minecraft / EMC players.
This "world-view" and "player-view" has many aspects, many facets.
It is not really recognizable when you read the basic EMC rules, but is coming out "drop by drop" through how they deal with people and issues here.

This is also not a one-way road, but very interactive process. The ideas of EMC staff about the people here and the community determine the rules and how the rules are implemented, that world-view influences the members, the community. And the response from the community - naturally - corrects and influences the EMC staff.

There are many facets of that world-view that I share, and there are some facets I do not share.
I've addressed several issues during past half year - mostly around EMC economy, communication style, punishments and human relations.

What I am criticizing here, is the willingness of EMC staff and apparently the majority of the community, to accept griefing that happens through forced exposure on the live map in order to have a perk that is apparently a good motivation to support EMC.

Here, I am criticizing the justifications of that perk that say "it's business," "it's their right to do it," "it's legal," "EMC needs money," "it's not a big deal," "the non-supporters can protect themselves in other ways," "it's their fault if they don't go far enough out or don't lock their chests" etc.

I'm asking if EMC really does need that perk, if we really need to accept the problems and the griefings that come with it?

That does not mean that there are evil intentions. It is not at all a wonder that we have many different world-views here on EMC. Our life paths and experiences are so different, that one would actually expect much more differences.

"That most people don't view it this way."
Well, that is what I am questioning and criticizing. That view of EMC and the people here. I guess this is the core question.

I'm criticizing that explanation / justification. I hope it is obvious enough why, if I ask:
Does having this perk justifies the caused problems and caused grief?
Wouldn't it be better to protect everyone from griefing by making /map hide available for everyone?
Can we come up with a better solution for all?

I think the topic's unnecessary as well and I wasn't going to comment. I felt I needed to say something about my experience and how I felt about it since my name was being tossed around so much. I doubt if any harm will come of your comment and it actually drives home the point that crippling the Live Map or eliminating it isn't an answer in itself.

That's alot of text.
I've never been a good writer or reader.
I heard something like "Map hide is inefficient"
It's not.
?

Alright, lets just give everyone and their aunt sally map hide so they can hide and go out and grief to their heart's content and not be seen.

That renders this pretty unusable: http://emc-investigator.pagodabox.com/. Players use this to narrow down the people unhidden there and tell staff, who then look at the logs and can see hidden and shown people and find out who did what.

Giving everyone maphide then means staff have more work to track and narrow down who was hidden and there and at what time the griefed stuff was taken. I don't know what all they log but if I build a wooden house and it's griefed by an axe and that's not logged, there's no way of knowing who it was.

If they logged every single block that was broken all the time, the logs would be flooded with:

Code:

pandaseatramen broke oak plank at coords -44 64 2333
pandaseatramen broke oak plank at coords -44 64 2334
pandaseatramen broke oak plank at coords -44 64 2335
pandaseatramen broke oak plank at coords -44 64 2336
crazy1800 broke obsidian block at coords -33 64 1111
crazy1800 broke obsidian block at coords -33 64 1112
crazy1800 broke obsidian block at coords -33 64 1113

when you have like 20 people on each server, that's a lot of block logs. It puts strains on the servers.

*Grabs popcorn* let read this!

If I understand correctly, you saying that forcibly exposing non-supporters on the live map actually reduces griefing, because the most griefers are non-supporters and because they possibly fear that someone can see them on the live map.
That's for sure a valid argument - if it is really true.

(The EMC investigator does not function as deterrent, because they don't know about it.)

You are also saying that because the EMC investigator would not work, the EMC staff would have more work to track the griefers. I don't think that holds - I don't think the staff uses / needs the EMC Investigator at all. Unfortunately, it is also not very reliable, as there are too many gaps in the data. If the staff would need something like the Investigator, Aikar could make a reliable version of it that would contain data of all players easily.

Staff do use the Investigator as well as logs the server logs. I have been in mumble with Dwight, GameKribJim and OrigamiJoe. Joe can look at the investigator, get the coords, tell them and they will check both the investigator and the server logs. I've given Dwight the coordinates and he's looked into them etc.

i liked the idea yesterday in that thread of an /optout command that would be hourly/daily and expensive i think one of the coders said it would be hard but it seemed agreeable to me.

premise: you log into the map and issue the command from there which sends a redstone signal (lel) to your rupees account for payment disabling you from using the map as well as being seen on it

I support 100% on what M4nic_M1ner said. We get about 30 bans every month on griefing, and 30 X 12 months is 360. Griefing MAY not be a huge problem of EMC, but people still do it. I believe that /map hide should be allowed for EVERYONE. Iron Supporter could get a new perk. To protect the safety and grieving's of empire, it would be most helpful if we had the feature. Yes, Iron Supporter just cost $5, but why would you PAY to prevent grieving's? I remember walking into smp1 seeing buildings corrupted and destroyed, even about 10k out of the spawn area. Like I said before, it makes 0 sense why there is a tool for Supporters to have the prevention to pay money. I have went to an outpost before, and a lot of buildings were corrupted and destroyed. I for one, believe that M4nic's idea is a PERFECT idea, that should not be argued with. M4nic has made amazing ideas before, such as the Quartz Express and the Wastelands Experience. Think about it everyone. Will you let griefers win, or pay 5$ to prevent it. That is like forcing people just to get a prevention. I believe Iron Supporter can get another perk. And why lock the thread for a good idea?

If stew had no livemap before he got rei's minimap, hed have been screwed multiple times. Now i just remain hidden and use reis

The thing that's not being taken into account with your numbers though is that most of the grefings likely didn't need the live map hide feature either way. A number of those reports come from players who already use it.

While I'm not 100% AGAINST the idea of eventually giving /hide to everyone, I'd like to come up with an equally good/better perk for iron to replace it first AND have the community vote on that idea before we'd make such a change as it's one of the main perks that supporters tell us they like the most AND it's really not as big a deal as manic is making it seem....not by a long shot. He can come up with all the crazy scenarios he wants, but the facts are with what we actually see happening, and the live map rarely if ever comes up as a tool from a greifer's point of view.

Im AmusedStew and I support this message.
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Also I do like the idea of getting the other perk to replace livemap, this will cause a war though. Think about it all of us supporters (well, most of us), support to support EMC but we all love the map hide feature. Most Iron supporters, support for the perk and to help EMC, this will cause alot of controversy over wheater or not this will happen.

Because people are arguing and starting flame wars.

Right. Exactly. This is why I'd want to bring it up to the supporter community before we do anything drastic. They wouldn't be "losing" anything as they'd still get to use /map hide of course, since it'd be for everyone...but I'd want to be sure they had something else JUST as cool or maybe even more than map hide was.

My input on this- if we give everyone /map hide, there we might as well it even have a live map because nearly everyone would be hidden.

map hide does not prevent griefings, most of the stuff thats griefed is able to be seen clearly from a zoomed out livemap.