Rules Imposed on New Players

I didn't see this idea mentioned yet so I wanted to. Everyone who spends time in the Frontier knows that griefing is a problem and at least a good deal of the time it's done by brand new players. My idea would help with that. I say that we impose a time limit on new players before they're allowed to do anything in the Frontier besides walk around/visit. New players can do all the regular stuff in town and the Wastelands but they have to wait a week (or some other agreed upon time) to do any actions in the Frontier. This will prevent players who come on for the sole purpose of looking for stuff to grief because they're bored.

The other positive thing this will provide is giving all of us players a chance to make a positive impression on new players in the hopes that may help in preventing future griefing as well.

EDIT: I thought of this after I posted but maybe there could also be a field when a player signs up that has a referred player or have some way to have established players "sponsor" a new player so they could have this time limit lifted for them in case we have players who live in the Frontier who want to bring their friends on to play with them.

Good idea!

That is a great idea! No idea how to implement it though. This suggestion needs a vote section.

Um... no, just no. Please no. And did I say no?

Many people like playing in the wild and not necessarily the town/economy feel of EMC. To many new players, not being able to build is a giant punch in the face and a no to EMC.

- What happens if a player falls down a ravine? They'll try to dig out - oh wait... they can't.

- Is a creeper running at someone and they're low on health? They can't hide themselves now - better hope they have some food to sprint away.

I'm not too sure on that, a lot of new players don't want to build in town or want to go to wild, but need to find and get their own material, so they immediately go into the frontier or wastelands ....

That might be good to 'make sure' they know the difference in the wild and wastelands ....

To be honest, you don't even need to set foot in the wastelands nor frontier to build and get money... plant trees, plant farms, make stone gens, sell a little bit, use money to buy higher tools, then venture in nether, get supplies then sell...

Read what I edited in afterwards:

EDIT: I thought of this after I posted but maybe there could also be a field when a player signs up that has a referred player or have some way to have established players "sponsor" a new player so they could have this time limit lifted for them in case we have players who live in the Frontier who want to bring their friends on to play with them.

I'm sorry but helping preventing griefing outweighs the importance of a new, unknown player, who may or may not want to go and build in the wild

That doesn't sound fair. We can't just prejudice all new players just because some new players are caught doing that. If that was how it worked, why not just ban everyone from the Frontier?

New players aren't the only ones that grief ... you have supporters, or people with grudges go and just tear down people's builds, just because they think they can or because they want to.

If you implement a questionnaire system before people join, it will become too complicated and may detour them from wanting to play.

Sorry but your analogy doesn't make any sense.

Instead of everyone reading this and instantly trying to make up some argument against it, just let it sink in a bit and then come with a well thought out comment so we can debate this.

This is true, but I don't know any way to prevent that from happening but my idea was specific to preventing brand new players from griefing. I'm sure the staff have some stats on griefing. I have seen that most often when I've had to report someone or caught someone griefing it's been someone who was doing this on their first day after joining and it hasn't been a player that anyone else seemed to know.

But you can't just prevent individuals from wanting to go make an outpost ... some people don't even 'want' to play in town... this is an economy 'optional' server, you can be completely vanilla if you want... but if we stop people from building where he/she wants (world wise) ... we might lose so many people from wanting to play on here, because they can't play how they want and where they want.

There is even a message when you join frontier that says 'Don't grief or you're banned' ...no reason to implement a block detector on every manually placed block to detect things, that will lag the server so much that it may become an irritant.

This is exactly what I was saying, though. It's more likely that there are fewer new players griefing than older players, since the newer players have a harder time getting away with it most of the time.

Every type of player has been caught griefing in the past, and to only hold it against the newer players for it is entirely unfair.

I'm opposed to this idea simply because when I joined, I did barely anything in town (I claimed a res and made a dirt house on it...) until about 3 months after I joined. If I wasn't able to do anything in the wild, I would have left within an hour of signing up.

And this doesn't soften the blow whatsoever. When I joined EMC, the person who referred me here hadn't been signed up that long ago. I think there was a gap of about 6-8 days between us. With your time limit imposed, they probably wouldn't have been signed up long enough to warrant a 'sponsor'.

Well this may not be necessary once we can protect our areas in the Frontier. It just doesn't do much good if a player who griefed is banned if we then have to go manually fix everything they griefed. It gets frustrating after awhile.

Normally I walk away from ideas I don't like but considering the place this is in....

First and foremost: no offense. Its newyears eve, or something, I had some drinks (orange juice )

I visited an awesome (uh, oh; spam): community farm on smp4 (I intend to help them (typo) improve too!). And that was the first time I entered the frontier. I already added a few changes (honestly; I love this kind of stuff). I was a newbie mind you; never entered the frontier before. So pardon me but; waiting one week?

Serious players might want to get into the action ASAP. Heck, unrelated but I know I did when it came to these awesome forums.

If there is a problem then I don't think its a good idea to limit potentially good players. Instead; how about taking action against the offenders instead?

When someone did wrong they should be held accounted for. INSTEAD of treating new players as if they might be griefer-want-to-be's.

If there is a serious problem I say more staff could be required. But please do not go for the cheap way out.... ("lets disallow players from doing stuff in case they might abuse it..").

Honest apologies if this sounds too harsh. wkramer: you earned quite some respect from me for your community builds, and nothing can change that. I know that this may sound harsh or too negative. I have my opinions but for and foremost these are not to be taken personally.

Figured I'd add a disclaimer because I am not too sober at the time of writing (but care too much not to respond)

This wouldn't reduce griefing much, or even at all. When you see behind the scenes and stuff, its a surprise who griefers tend to be.

Just think of it from this viewpoint: I'm a new player, I join EMC and I want to go to the Frontier. I try to go through the portal, type the command, and use the Empire Assistant, but I can't just because I was temporarily banned from the Frontier just for something somebody else did. How do you think that would make me feel in that situation?

Then don't build important things 'close' to spawn. If a player wants to grief, they usually won't travel more than a few thousand blocks. I have a wilderness outpost that is almost 2 years old, and it has some pretty large and impressive-looking structures in it. It went a year without anyone visiting it and when I came back to it in August of this year, all of the buildings were intact. It's on the very edge of the map. It's not even that hard to travel to (around 10-15 minutes if you find the correct route, I think.).

Griefers need a place close by so they don't waste their time, and they need something that can be destroyed easily so they have enough time to do their business and see how much destruction they've caused before they get banned. Waiting a week would, yes, turn the griefers away. But it would turn new players away as well - and EMC needs those people. Some people could just wait the week out after griefing on other servers and come back here when the time limit is up, too.

I think the dragon stones is one solution. if the work the same as the spawn area. you cannot break any block there, except the owner. Bigger problem is that the stations get heavy grieved. and the are still important part in wild for transport of materials and yourself.

A much better solution would be to have some structures at the spawn which automatically ban players who grief them until a staff can review what happened.