[SUGGESTION] Change an EMC Mechanic

I also support this. I have quit using endertopia because it is useless. In the meantime stew, if you have a gold farm, you might modify that to get xp. If I have a friend or an alt at mine to keep pigmen spawning, I can get 39 levels in under 25 minutes. Not great, but the best I've came across so far.

butt

There's just one major problem IMO; moderate use of the whole thing. The moment a few people come together and start setting up mega-farms then I fear we could head right back to the cause as to why that rule was put into effect in the first place. It's already hinted by the staff a few times that especially some mega farms can pose a source of lag (it isn't always happening of course, it depends on the build).

And quite frankly, considering that mega farms will always be a thing I can't help think that if this rule would get reversed it'll be only a matter of time before the server runs into (more) lag issues again.

Just to back up my argument: Spigot lag types and how to fix them. One of the solutions for server-sided lag, apart from increasing your hardware specifications, is to use plugins such as ClearLag. And what is one of the prime features which is being mentioned on their homepage regarding lag reduction?

The problem I'm worried about: only last month did Aikar announce that the server cap got raised again so that more players could enjoy EMC. Even though this is at the risk of introducing more lag. If more lag would occur then perhaps the server cap might need to be reduced.

Personally I think we're better of with higher server caps and more players instead of allowing us to stop entities from despawning with the added risk of causing more lag issues.

Just my 2 cents here of course.

I understand what you mean.

According to MCProHosting (Minecraft server hosting company), clearlag shows how many entities are on your server. For a small server 500 entities can become a problem, we have a large server. I would say for EMC... 10k entities (I have no idea)?

Minecraft is divided into worlds (Overworld, Nether, and End). Each world acts a certain way to the server?

According to this site:
"Fundamentally, the problem is that of “too many items” with “each item taking 10 nanoseconds too long.” You have two approaches:

Reduce the number of entities and blocks loaded at any time.
Optimize the code for each block or entity to do more in less time."

I suppose Aikar could make a code for this if it hasnt been done already.
Accodring to this site as well-
"We’ve been tackling the problem of performance on a micro level — looking into internals and what not — but let’s step back and see what else you can do.

Throw more money at the hardware.
Configure your operating system accordingly to reduce overhead.
Multi-thread the game logic loop so it can be split among several processors or cores.
Run several servers and link them together."
I suppose we already run several servers to help, we spend alot on hardware, but... has Aikar multi-threaded the game logic loop?
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I found a link (not sure who's it is or if it is another server so wont post it, but it leads to Aikar's site so...)

It shows the ticks of mobs and everything in MC. According to it- chickens and cows are the biggest tick issue on the server.
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As a summary of this post,

Make sure you are running on good hardware (esp. for shared systems).
Ensure you have a dual-core (or processor) or better CPU available, with the fastest (and reliable) clock speed that you can get your hands on.
Make sure you have enough RAM so that Minecraft isn’t swapped to disk.
Make sure that your hard disk throughput is high enough, or consider using a RAM disk.
Consider tweaking your operating system to reduce overhead.
Make sure to identify and remove transient problems. If your server starts lagging, look for the transient problems first and foremost.
Are people building things that drop too many items?
Is there some giant collection of 300 sheep somewhere on the server?
Did someone sent off a ton of TNT?
Is there some massive flow of water or lava somewhere?
For a modded server, are people building poorly-designed pipe systems? Frame borers?
The next step is to tackle ongoing problems, and to repeat the bolded entries from above:
Install Spigot if possible.
Add in an auto-restarter if you do not have something to unload chunks automatically.
Reduce the view-distance setting in server.properties.
Design your gameplay to incentivize people to build less demanding things.
Disable random “re-lighting” of chunks if possible (with Spigot, possibly).
Use Bukkit if you aren’t already for multi-threaded chunk loading
Pre-generate chunks if necessary, and/or set a world border.
Go through mods and plugins to see if one of them is spending more time than you can handle at the moment. Contact their developers and see what options they can provide you (and be nice! writing fast code is not as easy as it might sound sometimes.)
When in doubt, use JVisualVM (or another profiler, of several available, but JVisualVM is free) to find out the exact cause. In fact, you should use a profiler whenever possible.
If you just can’t squeeze enough performance out, consider making several servers.

I still have yet to see any iffifutable evidence or claims that state nametagging one entity in a world (say 20 end farms are made using this, your loading 20 entities consistently on each server... I dont see an issue with this.) will screw up performance.

Nametagging entities to keep them from despawning has been in the game since name tags were introduced. This bug is even listed on the Mojang site, which states that they were trying to fix those mobs who despawn even if a name tag is used. They would have removed this feature long ago if it was a real issue.

[Apparently anyone can submit a bug, but if it wasnt intentional I still think they would have removed it by now.]

bump

If the naming of mobs have nothing to do with server performance, why is it disallowed?

In the mean time I dug some more into the past (I love doing that from time to time anyway) and noticed that this suggestion has been made a few times before. Most have one thing in common: either people reference the wiki or ask if staff could give a reason, but so far I haven't found any official comments.

Samsim suggested to add renaming a wither as senior staff service in July 2014. One thing is for sure; Krysyy noticed the suggestion.

Fishmeal suggested the allowance for renaming hostile mobs in August 2014. Although no staff member responded I know it got noticed as well because Krysyy mentioned that.

There was also a question raised by Hasorko about named mobs despawning. This time in town and not the wild. Aikar also commented there and suggested that the no despawn behavior (once again: this is in town) applies to tamed mobs and not so much named mobs. Now, one has to be very careful with "reading between the lines" because you easily risk drawing the wrong conclusions. But after reading that I couldn't help wonder if this could also imply that renaming a hostile mob on EMC simply won't protect it from despawning. Specific EMC behavior perhaps?

That could imply (once again: I need to stress out that this is pure speculation) that this rule was added to help us prevent losing money over nothing.

Digging a bit deeper also showed me why nether hounds behave differently. If nether hounds are classified as animals you can most likely eggify and name them as well. Never tried this myself though.

In November 2013 adondrabkin suggested a wither cobble stone farm. A thread where the name tag approach was also brought up and samsim confirmed that you can't rename hostile mobs. The reason I mention this is we now know that this setting goes back to 2013.

This is all I could find so far.

EDIT:

After reading all this (and forgetting about the mob deactivation in my earlier comment) I now wonder if this limitation doesn't also have something to do with the prevention of "Momentus farms". You know: you nametag Momentus to avoid it from despawning and you'll have a steady and seemingless endless supply of easily found enraged mobs.

I think you could be right... but, I think it is more logical to prevent nametag use on momentous then on all things...

bumperooni?

I'm pretty sure it's an anti-AFK farm mechanic.

Nametags on mobs! Then, I could name my skelly. What if we had mobs in town that didn't hurt/destroy you or your land...

You... are...