Server ideas and concepts

I would like to share some ideas with you all, ranging from travelling system, to economy, progression and leadership structure.
One of the reasons I want to make this topic now, rather than later, is because certain plugins will be needed for certain features, and getting a stable server up and running is the first order of business.

I am not claiming to be an expert on the subject, mostly because individual opinions on most of it can differ.
I'll share a bit of my background with you all, since most of you don't know me too well.

I have experience with keeping people together and getting along (having been guild leader in various guilds/games for almost 10 years now)

I also got a good idea of how leadership structure should work, along with resolving most kinds of issues. (I was an assistant game master in the mmorpg, Anarchy Online)

And finally, I've played way too many mmo's, so I got a fairly good idea what people in general likes to do




Leadership:

The staff (owner(s), admins) should have shared responsibilities on most tasks and duties, because having to manage something alone can cause tremendous stress to a person if things aren't going the right way.

There should also be helpers to help reduce the workload. (example would be a helper with access to kick and building, but no access to worldedit or ban)

Staff should at all times act neutral in resolving any kind of issue between players.

There should be a ticket system that should be used for resolving any issue that requires a helper or above.

The staff should have equal colored names to other players, and other players should never be sending tells to staff regarding issues.


To elaborate a bit on the suggestions here. The staff should be acting neutral to avoid conflicts and drama later on due to actions they have to take.
The ticket system, along with normal colored names will help give the staff the same peace and privacy other players have. It's no fun being in the middle of a RP when suddenly some guy starts nagging you in tells to help him cause he thinks his house was griefed.
Whenever someone asks in chat 'is there an admin on?' there should be someone informing them how to use the ticket system to get the help they need. This should also be explained on the signs at spawn.


Decision making:

Planning and shaping the server and the world involves many decisions that will determine what kind of experience the server will provide. On most servers the staff makes these decisions, perhaps involving friends in it to some extent.
However, allowing the players of the server, the community, to contribute and help decide and improve the server, will take the server from being perhaps and average one, to an awesome one that people would love to stay on.


Travelling system:

Sitting on a Minecart for 10 minutes to get to your destination can be fun the first time you do it.
After that it's just gonna be annoying, alot due to how laggy Minecraft can be at times during those rides.

The idea would be to build a station and train like the one seen in the show, and have a teleportation sign inside the train that would deduct xx bits and teleport you to the destination, inside an identical train with your character facing the same way, in the same spot, so the teleportation would be barely noticable.


Economy:

It is human nature (or pony nature in this case? ) that anything you do should have a meaning.
Having a working economy with bits will add more meaning to what you do along with making it more mlp like.

There needs to be a way to earn bits from the server to inflate the economy.
But there also needs to be a way to spend bits that will 'go back to' the server to deflate the economy to keep it stable.

Along with your bit balance, emeralds could be one of the items sold to a sign to increase your balance. This would allow for player made dungeons with a chest reward at the end with emeralds, and possibly other items.

Things like cobblestone and wood should have a very low value at a sign, if any at all, to discourage mindless farming to gain bits.

Class specific items like wheat and potions should also be sellable to signs at a reduced value compared to selling it to another player, just so noone finds themselves in the situation of not having anything to do to earn bits if noone wants to buy their goods.


Things to buy from signs could be anything found exclusively in the nether (and not have a nether) and perhaps diamonds. It could also perhaps be possible to charge an upkeep cost to house owners, wich would also add more meaning to owning a house.


Progression:

Currency alone is likely not good enough to have a decent sense of progression. Housing could cost quite a bit to buy though, so being a house owner would be a point of progression for your character.
I really liked mcmmo on Ponycraft, and I think it is a good idea to have it, because it allows you to advance your character.


The world:

Having a freebuild world is important, because we are playing Minecraft after all, and people's expectations will never be identical, so the goal should be to meet as many expectations as possible. The freebuild world should have shared inventory with Equestria, it could even be on the same map, but I assume it would be easier to manage restrictions by having a different map for it. (though class restrictions should apply in freebuild aswell, think of it as a new settlement at the edge of Equestria)
It is also possible a separate mining world would be an idea to allow regeneration, so the freebuild world wouldn't end up hollow.

There could be established settlements in the freebuild world too, with worldguard to protect from griefers.
The settlements could be divided into lots for sale, that would cost a symbolic amount of bits, so those that couldn't afford a house in an Equestrian town would still have a home.


Along with all this the focus would still be on RP. The world should be laid out so it would seem like you are in Equestria at all times, even when going to freebuild it should feel like an outer area of Equestria (thats where the established settlements come in).


I guess that's enough to write for now, I hope you like some of my ideas.
Please feel free to share your own ideas, and give feedback on the ones I've written here.

We need to lock up some villagers with diffierent buy/sell values inside shops to simulate real life economy and a constant buyer/sellers so players can still trade if no others are avaliable to trade.

williamcll wrote:We need to lock up some villagers with diffierent buy/sell values inside shops to simulate real life economy and a constant buyer/sellers so players can still trade if no others are avaliable to trade.

That definitely seems worth looking into, would be alot more 'realistic' than signs.

I really like the train idea. Much better than old ponycraft's minecart system.

Another concept: (and I did say this before)
With titles and other things: as he said, we need to be mostly neutral, so how about instead of giving colored names to specific players, we have a similar ticket system for requesting colored names?
That way, instead of titles we can have our names be special to us, and it will help see pony from pony in chat as well.
Even ponies without a 'special' color to their name, they'll still be easier to see because of all the names that are.

This might seem a minor concern, but I think it may help cheer up some players as well as help in RP (where responding to the wrong player can cause lack of immersion)

Lumina wrote:Another concept: (and I did say this before)
With titles and other things: as he said, we need to be mostly neutral, so how about instead of giving colored names to specific players, we have a similar ticket system for requesting colored names?
That way, instead of titles we can have our names be special to us, and it will help see pony from pony in chat as well.
Even ponies without a 'special' color to their name, they'll still be easier to see because of all the names that are.

This might seem a minor concern, but I think it may help cheer up some players as well as help in RP (where responding to the wrong player can cause lack of immersion)

This is a cool idea, and I see many ways it could be implemented.

If there is a working economy, perhaps it would cost some bits, and an admin would do the nick change for you to add the colors through a submitted ticket. This would leave you stuck with the same nick though, but perhaps that isn't a bad idea, certainly something that would require a vote or atleast multiple opinions on.

Another way could be to simply purchase the rights with bits to add colors to your name yourself, but with certain rules, to prevent chat getting too colorful. Breaking the coloring rules would in that case revoke your rights to add colors, and you would have to repurchase that at a later time.

Maybe it is even possible to directly implement so it would be detected that you added colors upon doing /nick and it could deduct bits when doing it. I don't know bukkit and the plugins well enough to know if this is doable

If people don't like the idea of it costing bits, perhaps it could just be based on how long you've been on the server, so after let's say 1 or 2 weeks you would be granted a colored name or the ability to change it yourself.

The reason I am nagging about bits is because a working game economy always has ways to deflate the economy.
I was only on Ponycraft for around a month and I was already at 5000 bits, and food was the only thing I needed bits for. It kinda made bits pointless, and was mostly a limitation for new foals, mainly pegasi.


I'm also gonna throw in some plugin suggestions here:

Plugin that retains the food bar value when dieing, this would add more value to food.

Plugin that prevents items from being dropped on death.
This one is a bit controversial, as I know some feel loosing your gear is a part of Minecraft.
Depending on how the server is made, perhaps it could only be active in Equestria and not where you go to mine or freebuild. It is atleast something worth considering, but as I saw some of the plugins doing this can be buggy.

There should be a job position for rail construction/management as well, I know a lot of servers (including G1 ponycraft) suffered from rail damage and loss of public minecarts, with some tracks never completed or malfunctioning.

Gentlemen: do you know all those people posting about " oh ponycraft must rest leave it like that" ? it might be true! but what matters isnt the name, its the community! so i think we need a new banner and a new name. What matters is to stay together and dont forget or loose contact with our pony friends. What do you think?

SnowThunder wrote:Gentlemen: do you know all those people posting about " oh ponycraft must rest leave it like that" ? it might be true! but what matters isnt the name, its the community! so i think we need a new banner and a new name. What matters is to stay together and dont forget or loose contact with our pony friends. What do you think?

NO

I do like the idea of a mining world for EQ, it would provide a way for us to get stuff like gold and lapis to sell to others. I think that you should only be able to sell cobblestone and emeralds to the server, that would prevent people from destroying the lumber mills for bits as well as most of the other valuables getting sold to a sign to earn bits quickly. That way it would be more beneficial to sell everything to others to make money which would also increase the amount of RP. As far as the Nether goes, I think EQ should have one. It would make getting items only found in the Nether easier. The old server had a mining world, a wilds, a Mining world Nether, the wilds Nether and EQ. To reduce the amount of worlds on the server I propose we have 4 worlds that share an inventory. EQ, Wilds, Mining World, and Mining World Nether. And both EQ and the wilds have no Nether and both the Mining world and Mining world Nether Reset weekly or daily. This would allow both EQ and the wilds to have a place to gather resources without tearing up those worlds, it would also reduce the number of worlds on the server which would reduce lag.

Twilight_Guardian wrote:I do like the idea of a mining world for EQ, it would provide a way for us to get stuff like gold and lapis to sell to others. I think that you should only be able to sell cobblestone and emeralds to the server, that would prevent people from destroying the lumber mills for bits as well as most of the other valuables getting sold to a sign to earn bits quickly. That way it would be more beneficial to sell everything to others to make money which would also increase the amount of RP. As far as the Nether goes, I think EQ should have one. It would make getting items only found in the Nether easier. The old server had a mining world, a wilds, a Mining world Nether, the wilds Nether and EQ. To reduce the amount of worlds on the server I propose we have 4 worlds that share an inventory. EQ, Wilds, Mining World, and Mining World Nether. And both EQ and the wilds have no Nether and both the Mining world and Mining world Nether Reset weekly or daily. This would allow both EQ and the wilds to have a place to gather resources without tearing up those worlds, it would also reduce the number of worlds on the server which would reduce lag.

For once I agree, the prices of rare jewels are much cheaper in equestria than in the modern world, and so is to rare metals.

One idea for the RP World (Equestria) is that perhaps there should be no gathering at all (excluding food and netherwart) AND there would be no currency system. Not for RP or buying things from other players at least. That way, all transactions could be handled through RP instead. After all, you probably don't want to be worrying about how many bits you have while you are RPing or have to deal with resource grinding to earn bits. You just need to keep in mind how rich your pony may or may not be and RP appropriately (nopony is going to drop 1000 bits on a cake for example unless they're Canterlot Elite or Mr. Filthy Rich and even then that'd be pushing it).

Instead, what money would be used for is either building a house (materials budget) or customizing your house (materials budget again) [depends which road we go with, likely the latter]. The only place you'd get money from is your initial starting amount, and the only place you could spend it would be a store that'd be set up.

There would also probably be a props shop to make available things that are more useful as props. That'd deal with things like armor and tools and such and wouldn't cost money. Also food and netherwart farming would still exist.

But this is only one potential idea.

Twilight_Guardian wrote:I do like the idea of a mining world for EQ, it would provide a way for us to get stuff like gold and lapis to sell to others. I think that you should only be able to sell cobblestone and emeralds to the server, that would prevent people from destroying the lumber mills for bits as well as most of the other valuables getting sold to a sign to earn bits quickly. That way it would be more beneficial to sell everything to others to make money which would also increase the amount of RP. As far as the Nether goes, I think EQ should have one. It would make getting items only found in the Nether easier. The old server had a mining world, a wilds, a Mining world Nether, the wilds Nether and EQ. To reduce the amount of worlds on the server I propose we have 4 worlds that share an inventory. EQ, Wilds, Mining World, and Mining World Nether. And both EQ and the wilds have no Nether and both the Mining world and Mining world Nether Reset weekly or daily. This would allow both EQ and the wilds to have a place to gather resources without tearing up those worlds, it would also reduce the number of worlds on the server which would reduce lag.

This is certainly a good idea if the server is gonna have a freebuild map, the only drawback I see is that it makes you less dependent on other players since you can get everything on your own that way.

However, class specific limitations could be put in to encourage interaction with other players, like earth ponies being the only ones that can harvest food, even in freebuild.

Hard part will be finding the balance so you don't end up with a server where everyone is out doing their own business, leaving the towns deserted.

Stormfront wrote:One idea for the RP World (Equestria) is that perhaps there should be no gathering at all (excluding food and netherwart) AND there would be no currency system. Not for RP or buying things from other players at least. That way, all transactions could be handled through RP instead. After all, you probably don't want to be worrying about how many bits you have while you are RPing or have to deal with resource grinding to earn bits. You just need to keep in mind how rich your pony may or may not be and RP appropriately (nopony is going to drop 1000 bits on a cake for example unless they're Canterlot Elite or Mr. Filthy Rich and even then that'd be pushing it).

Instead, what money would be used for is either building a house (materials budget) or customizing your house (materials budget again) [depends which road we go with, likely the latter]. The only place you'd get money from is your initial starting amount, and the only place you could spend it would be a store that'd be set up.

There would also probably be a props shop to make available things that are more useful as props. That'd deal with things like armor and tools and such and wouldn't cost money. Also food and netherwart farming would still exist.

But this is only one potential idea.

This idea is actually quite similar to one of the ideas I had, where the server would have main focus on RP.
The idea was to have only one single map (Equestria), no mining at all, player made dungeons for adventures, and all the known Equestrian towns, plus a 'newfoal settlement' where newer players could aquire a house lot to begin with on the server.

When I was discussing this with others, it was pointed out that it seemed rather restricted, and some didn't like the idea at all, so I shifted my ideas towards more of a Minecraft style of gameplay integrated into an economy and MLP.

Perhaps the place to begin is to ask some basic questions. How it is decided what the right answer is for the server will ultimately be up to the owner. (should it be the community, staff, a single person?)

So, starting with perhaps with the most important question, since all other answers will affect this one.

What kind of people do you want to have on the server?
RP'ers, gamers, kids, teens, adults, or pretty much any MLP fan?

What should the server offer?
The previous question somewhat answers this one, since the server has to offer something interesting for someone to stay.

Once those questions are answered, ideas can be put together and agreed upon to form what will be the new server.

for one, I believe there are only a few (and notable) people less than 14 of age (e.g. oshawottlover), the rest is range between 16 to <30.

Almost everyone here are newbie roleplayers, gamers and a G4 MLPFiM fan.

Freebuild and roleplay at least, plus a limited creative world for experimenting buildings, just like previously. The current map can be kept as freebuild.

I like the previous structure of helper-moderator-admin. The first generation administration was messy as tartarus.

For mining, I think there should be a dedicated open mining area like in the show with a higher concentration of ore.

Lumina wrote:Another concept: (and I did say this before)
With titles and other things: as he said, we need to be mostly neutral, so how about instead of giving colored names to specific players, we have a similar ticket system for requesting colored names?
That way, instead of titles we can have our names be special to us, and it will help see pony from pony in chat as well.
Even ponies without a 'special' color to their name, they'll still be easier to see because of all the names that are.

This might seem a minor concern, but I think it may help cheer up some players as well as help in RP (where responding to the wrong player can cause lack of immersion)

This, this, this, and this. I cannot tell you how many times I've been mistaken for Lunar Knight; or someone else with "Lunar" in their name. So yeah. This right here.

Rey Hooves wrote:
Plugin that prevents items from being dropped on death.
This one is a bit controversial, as I know some feel loosing your gear is a part of Minecraft.
Depending on how the server is made, perhaps it could only be active in Equestria and not where you go to mine or freebuild. It is atleast something worth considering, but as I saw some of the plugins doing this can be buggy.

This is actually already implemented in vanilla minecraft XD
/gamerule
lists the gamerules as an admin, and then you write "false" or "true" after /gamerule (InsertGameruleNameHere) to set wether it's on or not ^-^

Also, I am finding myself in favor of all these ideas about currency :3

Lumina wrote:

Rey Hooves wrote:
Plugin that prevents items from being dropped on death.
This one is a bit controversial, as I know some feel loosing your gear is a part of Minecraft.
Depending on how the server is made, perhaps it could only be active in Equestria and not where you go to mine or freebuild. It is atleast something worth considering, but as I saw some of the plugins doing this can be buggy.

This is actually already implemented in vanilla minecraft XD
/gamerule
lists the gamerules as an admin, and then you write "false" or "true" after /gamerule (InsertGameruleNameHere) to set wether it's on or not ^-^

Also, I am finding myself in favor of all these ideas about currency :3

I noticed this too after checking out plugins and general stuff with Minecraft I didn't know about.

It doesn't just keep the inventory though, it eliminates any penalty from dieing.
With it on, dieing means getting food bar restored, and a teleport to your spawn point.

It probably wouldn't be too hard to set it up so dieing would have a different kind of penalty, like lets say loosing 5 levels, and respawning with almost empty food bar. That way you would still want to avoid dieing, and death would have a cost penalty since you would have to consume food, wich is purchased with bits.

In my opinion it would be a more suitable death penalty, than loosing most of your levels and possibly all carried items.
I know some will argue it is part of minecraft the risk of loosing your items, but take into consideration bugs, lag or glitches that can occur and get you killed like logging in and finding yourself inside a wall, or falling out of the world, or running into lava during lag. In none of those cases, can the gear be recovered, and all of it is out of the player's control, and it will just cause frustration.

On the topic of currency, I came across a bukkit plugin that lets you set up villagers with custom trades. (plugin is called Shopkeepers)
Admin made villagers will have an unlimited supply of what they sell.
Player made villagers will sell items from a chest.

Atleast it seems more immersive than having signs to click and sell, but it might also be more buggy.

So now with orebuarfcator installed, I think some roleplay worlds should not have this plugin running, since we know that in show, ore highlighting spells exists.

williamcll wrote:So now with orebuarfcator installed, I think some roleplay worlds should not have this plugin running, since we know that in show, ore highlighting spells exists.

True, though a server-side locating spell for Unicorns would be better than just letting everyone have x-ray ^-^''