I've been watching this thread and have some thoughts you may want to consider. I have been involved in a lot of projects on EMC and Outposts all seem to have a common lifespan trajectory. A core group of people get together and start, others join in, the outpost grows, then eventually something happens: behavior problems like griefing, IRL scheduling changes, development disagreements, boredom, personality conflicts... Often an outpost is initially built around a core farm and EMC or Minecraft changes can kill the farm and the outpost with it. Sometimes interest is renewed by a new project or someone who was busy in real life returns, but eventually you always seem to have an abandoned project or parts of it being abandoned because those people who were driving it are no longer involved. Often the former members move on to other outposts and contribute. An outpost is sort of a living thing that is born, grows, reaches maturity, bears fruit, then dies, hopefully leaving seeds which blossom elsewhere. The LLO has been cited as somewhat of an exception. I think it has experienced the problems I've mentioned that limit an outpost's lifetime, but what has made it different is the momentum provided by a combination of the number of people involved, its open membership policy, its visibility through the forum, and its leaders. By having so many people involved, there have been newcomers with enthusiasm to join and continue working and playing there when others have left which provides a continuity of occupancy and interaction that is required to keep people involved. Someone might temporarily leave a smaller outpost because of school or work, then come back to find no one playing there and move on to something new because they perceive that there is no longer anyone to play with. I think the LLO has been large enough to overcome this problem more often by bridging those gaps where occupancy and involvement was low. What I would like to suggest is that in addition to selecting a server and building an outpost there that this group become truly global and get involved as a team in projects on all the servers. Rather than thinking of a "Global Outpost" as a place, I am suggesting that it is instead a group of people which in this case may be involved on all the servers in more than just outpost building. Of course, there would be a danger of fragmentation from being involved in too many things or through members having different interests. You already have some enthusiastic players involved on this thread, all of whom can contribute and watch for ways to combat this problem. I think that involvement in building one or more outposts, or getting involved in existing outposts; working on building, maintaining, or policing public farms; and participating in server events like Friday Night Miners by a group of people who are tied together through the forum could make an idea like this more resilient and enduring. The first three paragraphs of the initial post of this thread sort of encapsulate the details I wrote above, but as I have watched the thread, the idea seems to have been lost or overlooked. I would like to suggest that you re-read the original post and consider using it as a guide as you move forward together.
Yes. That's a very good point, and an important one, in my opinion. In fact, when I first read this thread, I was quite surprised to see the question to choose a server to build a single outpost on. That suddenly made it seem a lot less 'global'. However, I am definitely not against the outpost either, it could be good as one of the projects. I'm not sure how to bring the thoughts in your post into implementations, but I'll try keeping it in mind. Thanks for your input!
May I hop in here =D Having an outpost on every smp would be a cool idea but like 607 said you'd need to have a lot of players to keep the whole thing alive. So crazy idea here; you see which servers would be the LEAST inconvenient for players. For example 4 and 8 (just examples) are voted the two least inconvenient. Divide them into two groups; The players for whom 4 is inconvenient work on the 8 outpost, and the players for whom the 8 is inconvenient work on the 4 outpost. You could give both outposts good representatives who can publicly communicate efficiently on the needs and projects of their respective outpost, and then the whole community can cooperate to make decisions <- having specific representatives with communication skills would help decrease the potential "hecticness" of one outpost on more than one smp. This way you would keep the outpost *thick* (not thinned out over the 9 smps xd) and at the same time accessible for most if not all players. I just typed this down as I thought of it btw, so sorry if it doesn't make any sense lol
Some really good comments have come in and I figured I should address them. Growing into something beyond just an outpost is something I never really thought of but makes perfect sense. The cool thing about this project is that it is in the hands of everyone. My influence is just as much as any other member. If, as a community, we want to expand, we are fully capable of it. It all comes down to what EMC wants our outpost to be and represent. Initially asking for an SMP was simply a launch pad for things to come and to get conversations going. Where we go from here is entirely in the air. If a week is too long, someone can always create a vote to change the duration. The entire system is public so anyone can tally because everyone will come to the same conclusion.
Ah, just read through the entire thread. So you're already collecting data, but what's the plan on what to do with it? There's a vote ongoing for SMP9 it seems because it is so far the least active *according to the replies to this thread* I also found AyanamiKun already suggested two outposts on the two least active SMP, but my idea is to make two outposts on the most active SMPs. The concern that one outpost will become the leader and the other will be left behind will become invalid because both outposts will have every player who is not able to join the other one. So far according to your data 7, 2, 3, and 1 are the most inconvenient servers for the thus-so-far participating players. So if we build outposts on 7 and 2, the many players for whom 7 is inconvenient will flock to 2 and vice versa, and if handled correctly this will result in more or less equally powerful outposts. Also would like to point out that there are many players who might be interested in this project who do not use the forums, so say we do go ahead and build an outpost on smp9, interested players in smp9 may not be able to participate as much because they are active in town/other wild projects. If we build two outposts, the players already in SMP9 will be able to go to the other outpost. Also 4 and 8 are the most inconvenient for me, as I am a townie on 4 and I use the wild utilities on 8 =P
This is from the smp9 live map. Go to the east outpost and then to the worth east you will see it. The area inside the red outline is what we have now. Volt is the central part. Wrem is a very large. separate and mostly abandoned city. The owners (who are fairly inactive) are quite touchy about people building there so we'd probably have to keep away from it. Same goes for the Zeetopian Islands. Stoneguard is pretty cool with us, but it's got a very specific style that you wouldn't want to mess up if you went there. So pretty much, any expansion should be around Joule and to the west. (For those wondering, yes, these are the remains of the NR)
Ah, okay. I see what you mean. That's an interesting idea. Huh, then why are they the least inconvenient?
Im very confused about the whole thread but i want to get involved in the outpost and start creating the mono rail system for it =P where do we get started!
On Tuesday we will know if SMP9 will be our starting point. If it is, we can get a location and start building. Right now everything is still in its planning phases. Are there any restrictions on what we can do in and to the west of the circled area? Not saying this would happen, but in the extreme situation where we opt to tnt the entire place down to the bedrock, would anyone care as long as we don't touch the outposts to the north, east, or south?
Not much to the west. There's another outpost to the northwest of Wrem, but we can keep clear enough of that. The one concern is a massive snow biome to the southwest, which was at one point claimed by someone. I have no idea whether they're still active or not. But if you take a look on the smp9 live map, you'll see that pretty much all of the lend directly west is free, and that goes on like that for thousands of blocks. So really, there's not much we can do to the north or south, east is ocean, but directly west is fine for expansion.
Well, I have a proposition (is that the appropriate word?): Change the time for which a vote stays active from 7 to 5 days from when it was posted. I think too long of a waiting time slows down progress considerably. 5 days seems enough to me, as there's definitely enough time to think, and if somebody is busy with work or school, there will still always be a bit of weekend included in the 5 days (as long as you don't work from Monday - Saturday or something).
I vote yes. A week is a lot longer now that something is actually up for vote than I initially thought it was.
Looks like SMP9 is where we will be located now. With that out of the way, we can look at where. What do people think of using the remains of the NR as the location for the outpost?
I posted about this group in a pm earlier and was wondering what I should call it. I was going to refer to it as GO(Global Outpost) but thought I would ask here before I start spewing the name around.
