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Creative or Survival?


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Poll: Creative or Survival? (18 member(s) have cast votes)

Creative or Survival?

  1. Creative (11 votes [61.11%])

    Percentage of vote: 61.11%

  2. Survival (7 votes [38.89%])

    Percentage of vote: 38.89%

Vote

#1 Ratty

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 09:19 AM

POLL CLOSED. We are creative now.


I just want to know what people think, now that we have some more people, and we've had time to see who we got.
Would you guys rather us be creative or survival? I don't mean "classic", I mean what people call playing in creative mode.

Survival: what we are now. This just means playing normally.

Creative: Everyone can have unlimited items, you just type a command and can get items.

I'll make arguments for both sides, since I can see both sides.

You might think, Creative, OMG YES! But consider this. It would mean we would never have any shops or economy. No items would have any value, so no more "does anyone have any iron?". There would be no point in crafting anything, or mining any ore. No more thrill in finding things. Also, people tended to get bored faster when in creative mode.

However, with Creative, the creations look a whole lot nicer! But when you're done, you move on to the next thing. The focus was on just making things.

I and most of the admins are actually in favor of Creative, but I wanted to make sure that anyone that votes knows the consequences. Creative, to me at least, was more fun, but it didn't last as long. I'm starting to lean towards just switching us to it, but I wanted to see what you all thought first.

#2 Orshcmann

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 12:24 PM

For anyone on the fence about this issue, I'd like to add my two cents to help people decide. I'll try to keep this brief.

Let us consider which mode would benefit our server with its general goal of recreating Equestria*. As it stands now, the server is in a sort of Survival Lite mode, in which we are forced to gather materials, but need not worry about fighting or hiding from mobs. Additionally, we have a flying mod that let's us get around quicker, thus making it even easier to collect what we need. So our process of building something goes like this: Plan -> Collect -> Build

Were we to switch to creative mode, the process would simply be: Plan -> Build

Now, when deciding on which mode to vote for, ask yourself this, "How much does the collecting phase add to my experience?" And remember to think about the question only in relation this specific server with its own specific goal.


*Obviously, this is my own, broad interpretation of the server's goal. Your miles may vary.

#3 rokugin

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 12:50 PM

I love creative and survival. Creative allows me to really get things done, and as long as World Edit isn't enabled for just anyone, it's still a reasonable process to just build things, as long as I'm not throwing together lame things, which is one of the daunting things about survival. While I do find joy in knowing that my creations are worth even more from all my hard work, some projects are just so massive I would never do them if I had to do them in survival.

I voted creative because I would like to spend more time building and planning large products than feeling as if I'd never collect the materials necessary to bother with a large project.

#4 FFWoodycooks

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 04:29 PM

I support survival because it adds value to the resources we gather. Shops would be meaningless since everyone would have easy access to everything they would want and it kind of takes away from the experience of being proud that you found enough iron ore to make a trainline or enough dye to make the rainbow colored roof on your house. Think of it as building Equestria, not making it appear.

*Just my two cents :/

#5 Blackdutchie

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 05:05 PM

I support survival because it adds value to the resources we gather. Shops would be meaningless since everyone would have easy access to everything they would want and it kind of takes away from the experience of being proud that you found enough iron ore to make a trainline or enough dye to make the rainbow colored roof on your house. Think of it as building Equestria, not making it appear.

*Just my two cents :/



Pretty much this. Added value from the manhours put into it are worth the extra effort.
Imagine being able to say that you helped recreate Equestria without using cheap tricks!

#6 Orshcmann

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 05:26 PM

Despite my advocacy for Creative, I'm really in favor of either one. However, if we decide to continue being a Survival server, will we continue using mod powers to create the larger projects? Because if we do, then we aren't building Equestria, per se. Rather, we'll be building the backdrops of Equestria (e.g. random Ponyville houses), with all of the recognizable landmarks (Everfree Forest, Twilight's house) simply "appearing", to use Ned's terms.

I understand the reasoning behind using mod powers to build some of the bigger things (trust me, I don't want to have to collect all that wool for the town hall, and using WorldEdit to terraform is obviously necessary), but this method makes the situation more like the admin/mods are placing us (the non-mods) into a pre-built Equestria, and we are simply filling it up with scenery.

I'm fine with this style of play, but if we decide that we don't want to do it this way, we're left with either "true" survival (everything takes forever to build due to the gathering of materials, but collecting may result in added value) or "true" creative (buildings are easier and faster to make, and everyone can contribute to large projects, not just mods).

Again, people may see the situation differently than I. These are just my two derpies.

#7 Ratty

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 07:28 PM

The poll looks pretty close, if its really close I'll just go creative. I really want to for my own selfish reasons, but I'd hate to think a week after people would really hate it to the point of not staying.

Regarding building landmarks with worldedit, I agree we shouldn't do that if we're survival, except maybe drawing the circle for the base, but do the rest by hand. I do support using it for terraforming, because that's kind of like changing how the world was before anyone got there.

When we started, we didn't have enough people to really fill a server, and I wanted some decent screenshots to show off for advertising, so we cheated like crazy. It helped fill the server, but I think it made us miss out on a collaborative building project. We wouldn't do that again if I started over.

#8 Ratty

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 08:05 PM

Some more stuff to consider..

With Creative, people didn't spread out because they had to, and people built things together more.
And the creations were really stunning, so from an observer point of view, it was more impressive to see what people did on a creative server.

#9 Neolucha347

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 08:57 PM

I like the survival mode because it takes a longer time to build stuff meaning the server occupying more of my time, and also the whole pride thing after it was so difficult to find all the materials (known from first hand experience(you see that all wool house in da sky?!Sheeps like never spawn!)) so i enjoy the server as it is

#10 Orshcmann

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 09:26 PM

I'd say you guys were justified in using WE to build the initial structures for screenshot/advertising purposes. Those screenshots of Ponyville are definitely what got me to join the server.

One of my main reasons for supporting creative is the issue of wool. Since Equestria is a pretty vibrant place full of many different colors, the normal building materials of wood and stone are mostly inadequate for our purposes. Thus, we're left with wool as our main building material. Now, I may be alone here, but I'm really tired of a) flying around trying to find ingredients for dyes, and :D flying around trying to find sheep. It's taken me three days to build my farm house on Sweet Apple Acres, and that's mainly due to the tedium of collecting the aforementioned items.

Obviously, there are solutions for this in survival mode, such as people setting up shops for dyes and wool, but then we have to rely on people using iConomy, and as much as I like that mod, many people seem frustrated by it. There's also problems with keeping a steady economy, but let's not get into that if we don't have to.

TL;DR I'm a big baby and hate collecting wool, thus I want Creative.

#11 Ratty

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 09:34 PM

I'm really leaning towards creative now. Let me ask this, would anyone leave if we switched to creative?

#12 Neolucha347

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 09:35 PM

i wouldn't leave but i'd would come in less often :/ seeing as there's not much to do besides build

#13 Natimus_Primehoof

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 10:01 PM

In switching to creative mode, the only real downside is that there's no real reason to explore. Hunting for stuff in mines isn't really useful if you can just summon diamonds.

But, I'd say the positives really outweigh the negatives. People can still explore if they want to, and as long as we only use WorldEdit for basic terraforming (such as leveling ground for towns, or putting up clouds for Cloudsdale) and not for building structures, I don't really see a problem. If nothing else, building things still takes planning and effort, and things will look much more like they should. And if people decide that they don't want to stick around after they've finished thier project? They'll just be missing out on the fun stuff other people are putting together.

Edit to add:
I don't know if this is possible or not (maybe a plugin?) but what if we restricted the 'creative' summoning to just cloth (in any color), wood, glass, and tools? You'd be able to get a bucket or a diamond pickaxe, but you'd have to go mine iron for minecart tracks, or to get enough diamond for a block, or to find redstone for a circuit. It'd leave some value on harder to find materials and a sense of accomplishment for finding certain things, but still allow people to build cool houses and such with ease.

#14 Orshcmann

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Posted 25 April 2011 - 11:41 PM

I don't know if this is possible or not (maybe a plugin?) but what if we restricted the 'creative' summoning to just cloth (in any color), wood, glass, and tools? You'd be able to get a bucket or a diamond pickaxe, but you'd have to go mine iron for minecart tracks, or to get enough diamond for a block, or to find redstone for a circuit. It'd leave some value on harder to find materials and a sense of accomplishment for finding certain things, but still allow people to build cool houses and such with ease.


I was thinking that if we did continue with survival, we could alleviate some of the annoyance of gathering rare or semi-rare materials by having admin/moderator-run shops, or maybe just one shop that sells everything (a mega-shop, if you will). So let's say Mega-Shop sells wood, stone, and wool. Orsh spends all of his derpies buying lots and lots of wool, and to make his money back, he collects stone or wood to sell back to the shop. This would give people a reason to continue collecting resources, while simultaneously allowing everyone access to all the materials they need.

However, I'm pretty sure people aren't interested in collecting materials just so they can trade them for other materials. Plus, after a very short time, a shop like this would end up with a whole bunch of common resources in its inventory and no rare resources. It also relies on iConomy not breaking or anything, and relying on plugins isn't also great. So, this system has its obvious downsides (assuming this is even something we could implement).

Edit: Oh, and having a mega-shop or admin-run shop would (probably) prevent other people from having any reason to open up a shop. Really, it'd just be like creative mode, except every thirty minutes you'd have to go chop down a bunch of trees to trade for more wool. It'd probably just make the system more convoluted than it needs to be.

#15 Fazareza

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Posted 26 April 2011 - 03:52 AM

So in the end it's basically just an argument between:
Get everything made show accurate and quickly
And
Having a community and being a part of our creations
Yeah, I could see where that would be a difficult decision
It's kinda strange that we can't have both.

#16 OrangeL

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Posted 26 April 2011 - 04:33 AM

Well now I wonder, what if we set up public mines where the bottom 25 layers regenerate say, every week. There would be 2-3 mines per region, and public areas (aka ponyville/cities) would have a bedrock layer 10 or so blocks under them to discourage mining but allow for basements.

Can you limit what is summoned, Ratty? Because if that's true, why not only allow wool to be summoned, but no minerals/ores.

#17 Ratty

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Posted 26 April 2011 - 04:44 AM

It is possible to limit what is summoned, it is already necessary to limit that so people don't summon tnt, bedrock, monster spawners and everything else that causes problems.
I'm not really keen on this hybrid idea, giving unlimited cloth is like sending a message that we want to see massive sprites going up everywhere.
I'm pretty much decided on switching to creative, the poll is pretty much even. We could reset the world later when people get bored and try survival then, though honestly I'd probably try a different theme, like Fallout.

#18 Ratty

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Posted 26 April 2011 - 07:25 PM

Alright, the deed is done.

Now we are all unicorn ponies, let me show you some of your new spells!

/item wool
- gives you 1 block of wool
/item wool:red
- gives you 1 block of red wool
/item dirt 50
- gives you 50 blocks of dirt
/kit starter
- gives you a starter kit of all the tools, a stick for rightclicking on stuff with and feather for flying
/clear
- clears your inventory. do /clear -a to clear your quickbar too.

Admins will have access to worldedit and some seriously powerful stuff, so I can't just trust everyone with that.

I have also enabled the compass tool for everyone, so give yourself a compass and click on a block far away and it will warp you to the next air block above what you clicked on. Rightclick with the compass to do "thru" mode which is handy for underground.

#19 Ratty

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Posted 27 April 2011 - 08:45 AM

Oh and for those who dont know what worldedit is, its like this

http://www.thatvideo... ... ld_builder

#20 Silver_Aura

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Posted 29 April 2011 - 06:36 PM

I didn't get to vote, My vote woulda been for survival if i coulda voted

#21 Ratty

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Posted 29 April 2011 - 07:02 PM

It was close enough to even where I had to just make the call. Even if it was 8 to 7 with survival winning or even 8 to 6, that was still a tie to me. I would have only cared if the vote came out with one side way outnumbering the other.


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