Hello, everyone! Most of you probably don't know me, since I'm a rather new addition to the ranks here in the Empire. I am Mobioid. I am a mobius strip. And I am made of bacon. It's infinite deliciousness! But that's not what I'm here about! I am here to raise awareness about an issue that I have seen not only here, but also on many other servers as well, especially servers that have been around as long as EMC has. Take a look at these pictures: Half-destroyed structures. Griefed and impossible-to-navigate land. Abandoned buildings and shacks. These and other hideous deformations mar the land around nearly every Frontier Outpost. Unfortunately, due to the way that the rules are written, it is impossible for players who truly care for the server and its maintanence to clean up and repair the damage that has been done. This is why I am calling for the staff to consider ammending the rules for the Frontier lands! I propose two options. Either would work, but both together would be the most effective. 1: Ammend the rules of the server to allow concerned users such as myself to clean and maintain the region directly surrounding spawn, removing any structures that are Clearly Abandoned and repairing the damage that has been done to the grounds adjacent to spawn, as far out as 250 blocks away from the current 100-block protected region. This would allow users to use their spare resources for the good of the community, repairing the damage and even opening up areas that are currently too damage to settle in for repopulation. Perhaps a system could even be implemented to track how much users help to "repair" the area and reward them for it, but that wouldn't be necessary right away. 2: Implement a "Cleanup Team". This team would be dedicated to the cleaning and maintanence of the Frontier worlds on the server that they play on most. Users could volunteer their time to serve the Empire in this way. Rewards would, again, be a nice bonus, but optional. I know that for myself, I don't really care about getting perks for doing something like this, I just want to see the job get done. I am open to other suggestions, but to me these two seem to be the most easily implemented and most feasable ways to get the job done without too much hassle on the part of the Senior Staff/Admins.
I hope that some of the staff see this; I think we would all need staff approval before this project could even get off of the ground. But I am very glad to see people who would be willing to help out in this! I would volunteer to lead the project, but I'm thinking that a staff member more experienced on EMC would be better suited to the job then I.
Goof idea. Only, the staff are extremely busy these days. They can hire players to be part of this "Repair Team" but they MUST be trusted and actually devoted to this job. Offering suggestions to help EMC are always welcome, but don't resent if we reject it. Just make sure that your suggestions are reasonable. This idea would also keep the Frontier/Wild beautiful like EMC would like. Also, just know that you can't stop the griefing happening.
Great Idea! I guess they should add "Clean Up the Frontier" as one of the things Contributer Team does. That could help. Or I dont know lol.
Well, if you don't know already, this game has mods such as world edit, with these mods the staff can quickly replace the damage and would not need the help and time of others, but all in all, this is a pretty good idea!
@BlitzAttack, I do realize that the staff has WE, but they don't have the time or the persistance to continually be cleaning up after new players who really just don't care about how the world looks. That's why I would rather get players involved.
The suggestion is a good one, really, but please be aware that suggestions like these (not exactly like this, but with the same intent) have been made numerous of times before, I can come up with 6 right now. And these suggestions will probably be made for many times as well. First and foremost I'm against changing the rules. In my opinion they work just fine and even allow for clean up events when needed. I think Perry's post is a good example of this. And now that I mentioned one post; as said I'm against changing the rules but I could see how a cleanup event might work, provided it is staff or a veteran player who calls the shots and makes the difficult decisions. The problem here is simple, I quote: "removing any structures that are Clearly Abandoned". What makes an abandoned structure? A build which looks damaged beyond repair? (mock example): Just so you know; my friends and me play war games in those areas around times when hardly anyone is on; we shoot each other with snowballs and try to trick the other to fall into lava traps. So we keep the area looking damaged to prevent anyone from taking interest and walking in on accident. As said; it is a mock example, but can you make that difference? Another problem: as soon as you give people a pardon to remove buildings you can be sure that griefers are going to try and exploit that. Lets not only focus on us players who want to get things done, lets keep our staff members in mind as well. How are the staff going to make that distinction between a griefer and someone cleaning up? And believe it or not: there are plenty of players who are actually happy with the destroyed looks. Griefers spot that area and chances are high that they'll stay around there as well. Keeping other structures further outside the spawn area relatively safe. (I know it sounds crazy, but I have seen a player making a damaged looking build just because of that reason). Cleaning things up might also influence that. This is an issue which, in my opinion anyway, isn't that easy to regulate. In the end it all boils down to players who don't like the scenery (and want it repaired) vs. players who do like it (or see a purpose for it). I suppose what would help is if regular players (or such a clean up team if you will) would be able to check block history so that the original builder(s) can be traced. Then it could become a different issue; when it turns out that all builder(s) have gone derelict for example then I could imagine that removing such a structure also wouldn't be a bad idea. Even so; counter question: what exactly is stopping you from making small repairs right now?
I must agree with Shelluser. I'm one of those who cleans up and makes repairs but any time any type of structure not occurring naturally is involved I always go through staff. In other words.. I ask staff about whether or not I can do it. I have received 'yes! please do', 'nope not this area' or maybe 'that player is still active talk with them first and then with staff again if there's a go ahead from that person'. I know of a lot of players out there that will do repairs to their neighbors place.. some of which they have never met. Sorry to be so long winded. I do love the idea of cleaning up all those stripped out places and I do believe krysyyjane post a thread about doing just that a little while back. It just takes time and the staff is very busy. Oh! Mobioid, may you should apply to be part of said staff and help out that way. ... just a thought. =]
@ShelLuser, I definitely appreciate your reply. I wish I had seen some of those other posts before, but I've been having a hard time sorting through the forums(possibly because I use a weird and obscure browser...maybe Firefox would work better). The idea I provided for having a "Cleanup Team" would be something headed up by staff, if possible. I wish I could say that having a cleanup event would be a good solution, but I just don't forsee having enough players willing to devote both their time and their blocks to cleaning up the area very thoroughly. I had figured that this would likely be a major source of contention, which is why I limited the area that the allowed cleanup would be in to only 250 blocks from spawn. Actually, even 250 might be a bit much, because really all I'm focused on is the area directly adjacent to spawn. Also, I'm mostly referring to the "nerdpoles", half-exploded shacks and floating structures that not only do not but literally cannot serve any purpose, because they are already at least partially destroyed. Would limiting it to only 150 blocks perhaps be a better solution? Actually, that would be an excellent idea, and something that I probably should have included in the OP under the ideas for the Cleanup Team. I happen to know that there are plugins such as Prism, CoreProtect, BlockLog and others that allow staff members to check who placed certain blocks and such. The only problem I saw with that was whether or not the staff would entrust such permissions to regular users, but I suppose if this became its own form of "staff", then it would be a non-issue. Really, the only thing prevented me from helping already was the fact that I wasn't sure whether it was against the rules(or could be misconstrued as being against the rules) for me to clean up like this. Since cleaning up in this regard would likely include removing broken portals, random torch spam, blocking up old mineshafts, etc. I wanted to make sure that it would not be considered tampering with other players' builds. I suppose the only way to make sure is just to ask the next staff member I see on Mumble. Also, @crystaldragon13, I would love to become staff at some point, but considering I've only been playing on EMC for a short while, I figured I should at least wait until I have some more experience under my belt before asking for such priviliges!
