Hello everyone!

The purpose of this poll is to help us come to a decision regarding griefing and stealing on Agharta.

As it stands now, griefing and stealing are permitted without a ban in non-GP protected areas. This was done to ease management of the server and to take some of the weight off staff members' shoulders. However, it can also appear to be not very player friendly, especially if the player in question doesn't know how to use GP, despite instructions being available in that aspect.

So, its up to you, as loyal players of Minetown, to decide. If the majority of you decide to keep the policy as-is, nothing will change except perhaps a few tutorials on checking regions. If the majority decide to make any griefing or stealing a bannable offense on Agharta, the policy will be abolished and become more in-line with Classic's policy.

If you do vote to change the policy, and have suggestions on how it should work, please voice them in this thread, but keep it civil!

Thanks! The poll will end in 7 days.

Screenshot of results:

What really needs to be decided is what type of server is it?

Is greifing allowed or is it not.

The problem is the plugin used for protections. Many dont understand how to use the plugin and end up with no protection from griefers. Another problem I found was the block limit, because there is a limit to how big a protection you can make sometimes people run out of protection blocks, leaving half of their builds unprotected.

I understand this plugin and the griefing rules were put in place to reduce pressure on staff. But which do you want:

Happy players and hard working staff

Unhappy players and less preassure on staff

The fact is the server is advertised as a no griefing server. So why is it being allowed? If you wanted a pvp/grief server... There is the pvp server? If aghast a turns into a griefing server what is the point of the pvp server?

Basically, you get out what you put in. I know we don't see that staff work very hard behind the scenes, but if they put a bit more effort to support the no griefing rule the server would be a better place.

And realistically speaking. The population isn't massive, and so the amount of griefs is minimal so it isn't like a massive work load being added on.

So, in solution

The are probly afew options but I see these as the most viable:

1) get a new protection plugin that has not got a limit on the amount of blocks but is easy to use. A reasonable example is the old world guard. It's a decent plugin with a lot of tutorials on YouTube for it. One downside is that staff have to make it

2) increase the amount of blocks a player has/starts with hopefully making it so people have sufficient limits to protect their builds

3) keep everything the same but when a build is griefed roll back and ban the player who griefed

Yes, the staff have a heavy work load, but I don't see how any of those options would be a massive increase proportionally in their workload.

I'm trying not to be negative, but I have to say. The staff applied for a position which is clearly noted that it will drastically affect their play time. I know I am not staff, I don't see behind the scenes, I don't know what it is like to be staff on Minetown, but as a player I can still see staff not doing outstanding pe's or staff duties because they "Cba". What needs to be understood is that staff duties come before personal play time.

I know I will get a lot of abuse for that last paragraph but I think that's what the average player would be thinking...

In a conclusiony type thing:

Either bring back world guard or make the starting amount of protection blocks more. But either way staff should still deal with griefs and take necessary action against the offender.

If a staff member isn't willing to put the effort in to satisfy the player they should not be applying for staff (note, I personally have not seen this attitude in staff for a very long time, so don't think I'm having a go at staff)

Thanks for reading

~Barney626

There is something i don't get. Where is it stated that agharta is free for griefers and stealers?

We had this discussion in-game the other day and all the staff online, including mod+, thought that agharta followed classic no grief/no steal rules.

Actually some bans might have been already issued following that principle.

I'll paste here what rules say about main world (which according to every staff member i know is now agharta):

---

Main Server World

Griefing is not allowed

Stealing (taking from) chests that are not yours is not allowed

PVP is optional

---

So where is it stated, because i can't see it in the rules page or anywhere else.

Regards

There was miscommunication in staff, and it meant some players were unrightfully banned since it was allowed. The server managers had set it out as a rule for griefing and stealing outside protections to be allowed.

Also you forget that those rules havent been updated in a longgg time, what states as main rules are actually still just classic rules. If you are going by those, it would mean there is no rules for skyblock/prison/wildlands which we all know there is.

The policy I stated in the original post comes from the fact that there are self-service options available for protection (GP). If a player doesn't protect their stuff, the policy states its at their own risk.

Danni

I don't think that the fact the rules are obsolete is relevant because players do accept them in their member application.

This leads us to 2 situations

• 
  
• A player will think his stuff is protected even without GP and will be disappointed when he found it is not.
  
• A player that griefs or steals is breaking the rules he accepted or have not read. We never wanted this kind of behavior (not following rules) in minetown and i think we still don't.
  

Even though I've voted for classic rules, i don't mind to have free grief/steal on unprotected areas.

I just urge you to correct the above situation because i don't think it is good for minetown.

Most server's have a similar policy. If you didn't protect it, then they wont help you. As long as this rule is clearly stated, it will encourage player's to protect their build's. On classic i never got half my builds protected because I knew staff would always find and ban griever's. The way i see it, the rule should stay as it is. However barney does have a point, moderating the 10 players we have online is not much harder if staff have to do anti grief petition's I'm sure some player's still make them anyways, which means it takes staff time, even though they don't ban the griever.

Regarding the rules page here on the website, this is something already planned to start receiving updates today (related, if anything broke on the website in the last day, it might be a side affect of me fixing other things).

It is worth noting, when policy is taken to reduce staff workload, it is less a matter of not requiring staff to actually work, certainly annoyance would be understood for just that. Rather, the more time staff apply into managing anti-grief solutions, the less time they can invest into more "active" member support. Setting protections for members and investigating and running rollbacks on griefing are not always straightforward, especially if miscommunications between players or claims being resized/overlapped comes up.

In regards to the choice of using Grief Prevention...

WorldGuard is a great plugin, but it is not without "weaknesses" for the purposes of protections for everyone. There's been issues over time (admittedly more social than technical) relating to using WorldGuard exclusively for protections. Of additional note, even when staff were pretty much fulfilling any WG requests and very generously so, there were still a handful of people that wouldn't arrange for protections. Grief Prevention provides an alternative solution, that even if it has it own weaknesses, it does still offer comprehensive coverage (more so once the current dev builds reach BukkitDev) and still is highly stable compared to other protection plugins, for something directed at members instead of staff.

Regardless of the outcome of this poll, if you're willing to give specific suggestions on improving the Grief Prevention limits, certainly respectful discussion will get consideration. The key here being to stay on focus with judging the Grief Prevention configuration itself. Not be one of the people that take out frustrations on staff, who are as impacted by its limits as members. (Not directed at any specific person, but to emphasize the need for mutually respectful talk)

Disclaimer: I am providing this information more as clarification and general viewpoint, rather than supporting the protect-or-risk policy.

Regardless of the outcome of this poll, I suggest keeping grief prevention. its a great plugin and gives players like me a way to protect land with less haste. I feel that I don't have enough protection block's though. They don't build over time very quickly. My suggestion would be to make the blocks able to be bought at a 1:1 ratio instead of a 2:1 ratio.

Seems fine, Rules state you are resp to claim your blocks, if unclaimed it is unprotected.