Rules Imposed on New Players

This is a great idea. I never go out to the Frontier simply because new players don't know the difference between the Wastelands and Frontier, other than that one place already looks like it's been griefed (Wastelands). And anyways, they should know how to do things in Town with your res and chestshops and things like that before they venture off to a wilderness world anyways, here's why this scenario comes up with at least 50% of the new players I come across:
-A guy joins the server and all he knows is that he's got a residence and that the Wastelands is where you get stuff. He goes there and sees that it's all torn up, goes to Frontier and sees that it's a nice new fresh world that he can do things in. So he either griefs buildings thinking that it's ok and gets banned within a couple hours after joining, or he goes out really far, thinking that it will be no big deal getting back. Until he realizes that there were all of these things that he could have done in Town before he did anything outside of it, and that the Frontier was never meant to be torn up. He also can't teleport back and doesn't know about the live map, so he gives up entirely and griefs the first thing he sees, trying to stay alive in the Frontier.

Sorry to say that, but I guarantee that someone is going through this process right now. Which is why new players should be constrained from the Frontier for say...5 days to a week? There are limitless possibilities to what you can do in every world on EMC, but they aren't aware of that, so they rush things too quickly.

That is basically saying "Hey, want to come to a carnival? Well, you cannot ride anything, only look." It is a mean thing to do. I would rather get rid of the people who want to grief in the beginning of the career rather than just delay the inevitable.
Also, many players join the Empire to just hang out in the wild; they do not care about the economy or the town plots. They want to survive and thrive!

All in all, I think that this would just be more of a mean thing to do rather than a beneficial thing to do.

Who says that those do not currently exist?

The simple answer is no. (Note this is my own and not EMC's answer but um, no.)

We added the portal to the /frontier from the /tutorial for a good reason. Many new players do not want a town type play experience and want to play survival as MC was meant to be played. It is a small fraction of new players that grief. Players of all age (time on server) have been found to be griefing and, quite honestly, I am still surprised by some of the griefer's I and other staff have caught.

Griefing sucks. Plain and simple. No one likes being griefed and no one (outside of the griefer's themselves) want griefing to happen on our servers. That being said-griefing is a fact of MC life. We on the staff do our best to catch griefing early and we use a bunch of tools to help us but it is you that can help even more. As suggested already it is wise to lock your chests. A brand new player having received rupees from the /tutorial, /registering for the forums and then signing in can lock 8 - 10 chests right out of the gate. So the lock fee for established players shouldn't be a burden. The second thing you should do is get away from spawn. With exception of well established bases with lots of players going to and fro we tend not to see major griefing out beyond 15k. Nothing is guaranteed but most griefer's tend to not waste time looking for far off bases.

The third thing you can do is to politely offer any new player seen in the /waste or /wild a friendly reminder that griefing and stealing is not allowed. That friendly reminder for a polite player will do more to stop griefing than a 1000 signs that warn of a ban for doing it.

The forth thing to do. Let a Moderator know of anyone that you may think is griefing or acting suspiciously. I will state right here that just because you report it to us doesn't mean we are going to drop the ban hammer. In fact, we may not appear to react at all! Let's face it. Once the green named player joins the server or pops in the area any 'wrong' doing comes to a stop. We will look into any claim and if we find solid evidence of wrong doing we will take appropriate action.

Let's-as a community-welcome the new players and not restrict them.

So, griefer traps?

As owner of a community farm, I get griefed about once a week now. 4+ people live there and another 4+ in the area use it regularly that I know of. Most griefers mess up Iron Golem farm, and log off, extremely happy with themselves for some reason. They stop right there, about 40 blocks from protected area. I'm grateful that they are extremely lazy. I'm also grateful for all the mods that come out and ban or address these griefers, very quickly.

It's not just griefers that are troublesome, noobs and senior players alike will make a mess of an area and not clean it up. They'll also help themselves to any items they can grab from a chest, unless you specifically tell them not to. I can't imagine me walking into their room in real life and just picking up a hand full of video games and walking out, thinking it's cool...

The things I'd like to see to help would be:

• The ability to roll back an area to pre-grief. I'm sure theres some tech issue why they won't do this.
• The ability to replace stolen items. They won't do this now
• Protected Town/residence functionality in Established Outposts. I hear this is coming, until it's here, I'll always be sleeping with 1 eye open. Sure, I can afford to lock a chest, then when I want to add a new member, I need to destroy old lock, add a new one, or keep adding multiple locked chest. The more people you have with you, the harder it is to share items. I'm also real worried about what I decorate with, that it's not too expensive. I've heard some awful horror stories.
• I also REALLY wish they warned about the 150 block distance from protected zone for locking a chest. It sucked to build a place, finally figure out how to lock a chest, then not be able to.

I started the game, and other than making a tree farm, I hated my place in town. I researched, and then went to the wilderness. All the messages were pretty clear that you shouldn't grief. I don't know of a way to vet people before going to the wilderness that would help at all. They'd still just spend a week adding pillars to their plot that spell "poop" and once time was up they'd go do anything they could get away with. People like me would be thrown off by not being able to get out there right away.

For right now, I've got my griefer trap (Community Iron Golem Farm) all setup and it catches one or two per week right now and usually gets them banned

Hmm, seperate wilderness tutorial ?
Just discovered 2 broken glass in my lava column, but soemtime slazy and its fine so just repaired it.

I use my residence mainly as storage and mining home from waste to wilderness.
on residence you dont need locked chests. and i have plenty.

FWIW: As a new player, I would have never come back to EMC had I needed to wait a week to build in the frontier.
I'd like to think I'm starting to get a neat collection of structures going in my patch of the wilderness. I've even been donating materials to new neighbors to help grow the area.

Ooo... I like it Azoundria! Could be done with a well placed Command Block?

Congrats on listening to this thread, your input would be important here.
But do you think other new players are as aware of the rules as you are? If you have doubt about that, then there's a problem regarding new players actually knowing that they aren't allowed to grief or mine there.

Sorry if I'm too off-topic here, but have you guys ever thought of giving the Staff a joining SMP's vanished command? It would for sure keep your secrecy to better ensure you catch the wrong-doers
Ex. "/vsmp1"

EMC offers a choice to players right up front: Enjoy the town life with protected plots and all the perks of an economy server, or venture out into the Frontier for your Survival Mode. It's all laid out right up front in the tutorial. Entering the server and then being told "Nope, sorry you don't get that choice yet," is an immediate turn-off, will discourage many players who came for the survival experience, and leads to a lot of complaints - as well as those popular (if misguided) accusations of "false advertising."

I understand where you're coming from with this suggestion, but it is a very poor one. Other players have explained it as well as I would, but the bottom line is, there's only so much that can be done to prevent griefing. As painful as it is, dealing with griefing is largely a reactive problem and must be handled case-by-case. Taking away or restricting player abilities is never a good idea and should only be considered when there is literally no other option.

ok let's all just let this go. i've requested the thread be closed. i will never understand why players feel the need to come parrot what others have already said. let it go unless you have something new to offer the discussion, which is doubtful will happen so everyone stop responding.

And isn't holding new members back a couple days a good way to prevent griefing? At least it definitely looks like it's a solid method. It may appear different to someone who doesn't work with new players, I just find myself around them a lot on smp2, and I help answer their questions, the answers to which they didn't learn properly from the tutorial (I'm not harping on the tutorial, it's simply the player's experience level that determines whether they actually know what they're doing or not).

I myself find that there is so much more opportunity inside Town than in the Frontier, though I'm into economy and logical stuff rather than building outposts, it's whatever floats your boat. But they should get a very good reminder early on that Town is: Where you are safe, where you build, and where you shop. Not anywhere else. By keeping them there a couple days they'll know what they're doing, and they'll decide whether it's even worth griefing (if they are intentional), or if they misheard something and should stay in Town longer before they venture off somewhere.

This thread was closed at the request of the OP.