Escapecraft

This is an official complaint, my first ._. , i was informed tonight that vet status will be dulled down to only 15 hours of playtime. I find this an outrage, 35 hours was a great amount of time for a person to become trusted here, if they want to play our server they should prove themselves. I certainly had to wait 2 weeks when i joined the server all those months ago and look at me now im still here. If it goes down to 15 hours there will be a spike in greifing and alll those special anti greif tools only work so well. IF you must lower the standards of veteran status dont go as low as 15 thats just too low, keep it at like 25. If someone wants to be able to build better stuff then they should prove they want to play.
thx
rbk95
aka
arbykayninetyfive

In terms of your claim of 'A spike in griefing' I'm pretty sure no griefer would stay for 15 hours, grief, and then just get banned. It would be a complete waste of their time. They would just rather join, and grief without lava/TNT.

And even if there is a spike in griefing, it just involves more work us to do. The most your would need to worry about is reporting the grief.

I dunno, 15 hours is still a long time to have to wait just to grief something.
It still seems like a reasonable deterent. If you just make griefing inconvenient, the vast majority of opportunists will simply leave and try someplace else. 15 hours accomplishes that just as well as 35 and I don't see the point of witholding useful items from new players any longer than is necessary.

theres always a good sized group of greifers who would stay for the 15 but 95% of them would leave at 35. im not saying we would have to keep at 35 but i mean come on 15 is too low, 20-25 would make a difference

What are you basing that on?

It would be interesting to see the stats on banned players. How long the average griefer stays on the server before they actually start griefing.

Even if 15 hours is too low, and we see a significant increase in TNT/Lava griefing, the benefits might still outweigh the drawbacks. More people making it to vet is likely to mean more people becoming active in the community. The griefers will end up getting banned either way.

This decision was not one that was made lightly.

We had people complain from when we moved from "Sign on the forums, respond on why you deserve vet, wait for a response saying yay or nay and then wait for person in game to make that promotion."

15hrs is still a detriment for griefers yet does not stray into the holy balls this is to long.

Jake55778 wrote:Even if 15 hours is too low, and we see a significant increase in TNT/Lava griefing, the benefits might still outweigh the drawbacks. More people making it to vet is likely to mean more people becoming active in the community. The griefers will end up getting banned either way.

This pretty much hits the nail on the head, and is one of the primary reasons for the decision.

We want people to stick around for as long as possible and become recognised faces in the community. If they grief, we'll get them. Keeping your stuff safe is still our first concern.

Well the thing is, I think I see what RBK is saying here, I think that 15 hours is too small to "Examine" The newbies and see how they act/perform ETC 15 IMHO is just a tad short, 25 hours would work.

Wasnt there a bunch of people one time who actually played out the 35 hours so they could lava grief a town in early V3?
At 35 hours we get almost no vet status griefers. At 15 hours i can see its potential to attract the patient and organised griefers to stay and wait. Those 15 hours can also easily be lost in simply exploring our large server, and finding good landmarks to target. 35 hours stops people from bothering to wait, cutting the time to more than half wont have the same level of effect. If i was some douchebag griefer on a large server, 15 hours wouldnt really stop me. Dont forget, to hit 15 hours is simply 3 hours a day for 5 days. 35 hours is 3 hours a day for at least around 2 weeks.
As MichaelD said, its also not enough time to 'examine' the new players. 3 hour periods with only 5 chances isnt alot. With the constant growth of this server and the recant influx of new players 24/7, it wont be easy to properly monitor every potential griefer who joins us, especially when we still have minor holes in the moderating time-zone coverage. If they do get banned for a minor grief what will stop them from achieving an appeal, when we usually give everyone a second chance, and continuing to play through the week so they can get there vengeance.
Having to wait 35 hours to get revenge isnt worth anyones time. 15 however is.
I fully understand and agree on making the waiting time shorter, to attract more people to stay but 15 hours is just to short in my opinion and will cause problems. If you do want to change it, 24 hours is a decant happy medium, a full day.
(also dont see it as that fair that older vets had to wait 35 hours to start building awesome things while new people only now have to wait less than half the time at 15 hours to get a vet status. (maybe a new 'original vet' status can be given out?))

-Dan. Generally concerned about a 'smart' griefer influx. (yes, they exist)

Random980, about that last paragraph in parenthesis, that argument just doesn't work, if people buy a game full price and then the next day it gets 90% off, you can't go back to the store for that 90% back. This isn't the first time the way to get veteran status was changed.

And just going to throw it in here as a mentor: 15 hours gets people out of the new players chat a LOT faster than 35 hours. It was -really- full yesterday, I was seeing probably 15 gray names at a time in /who. If we can thin out the completely new people from the "I've played for a few days a few hours a day" people, it will really help cut down on the "oh my god my screen is covered only with new players chat".

The OP+ team thought long and hard about the risks and benefits of this change, so this is now in effect. If in time it proves to be more troublesome than useful it may be re-evaluated. I'm going to make the assumption of quoting Wokka before he's said anything and say this isn't up for discussion.

Aenir_bEPU wrote:Random980, about that last paragraph in parenthesis, that argument just doesn't work, if people buy a game full price and then the next day it gets 90% off, you can't go back to the store for that 90% back. This isn't the first time the way to get veteran status was changed.

And just going to throw it in here as a mentor: 15 hours gets people out of the new players chat a LOT faster than 35 hours. It was -really- full yesterday, I was seeing probably 15 gray names at a time in /who. If we can thin out the completely new people from the "I've played for a few days a few hours a day" people, it will really help cut down on the "oh my god my screen is covered only with new players chat".

But my scenario is about time, not money. Very different. Arnt we meant to encourage the white named people out of the new player chat to join the wider community anyway?

Lathania wrote:The OP+ team thought long and hard about the risks and benefits of this change, so this is now in effect. If in time it proves to be more troublesome than useful it may be re-evaluated. I'm going to make the assumption of quoting Wokka before he's said anything and say this isn't up for discussion.

As long as our opinions were heard and everyone has already weighed the risks and benefits, im good.

We don't want the people just jumping out of new players chat, that would defeat its very purpose, we want to make sure that if they want to go into global that they are well-aware it can get very busy (although right now new players chat is a lot busier). The point of new players chat isn't exclusively for the gray "I have not completed the tutorial" people, its to help the non-vets find where to build, learn how the server works, and other general info.

Hmmm... to be honest, I'm not that happy about lowering to 15 hours. I'm not saying that a griefer would stay for 15 hours, but a lot of griefings aren't caused by people purposefully griefing, just players that are inexperienced and aren't completely familiar with the rules. For players like that, I don't think that 15 hours is long enough.

Just to be awkward, I would suggest 24 hours. It makes sense, a day on the server to get used to it.

There will always be people who don't agree with a decsision, and that's fine. Your concern isn't just ignored, but this change has been decided upon through much deliberation. In short, this descision won't be gone back on.

I think the only way to know for sure (well, nearly for sure) is to compare how many vet griefers who waited 35 hours there were to how many who wait 15 hours there are. Maybe look at the averages of the month before the 15-hour implementation and the month after.

As far as I can remember, there were three. And they didn't even plan to do it, it just happened.

XDelphi wrote:As far as I can remember, there were three. And they didn't even plan to do it, it just happened.

Yeah, I can only think of those three as well.

I think we ought to wait and see how it plays out. As has been pointed out, the only instance we really ever had of people waiting 35 hours to grief was when those three guys "went out with style." If the reduced time creates problems with griefers, I'm certain the mod team will up the time to 24 hours or something. Even if we start getting, say, one waiting griefer per week, it's not a huge amount of effort (as I understand it) to rollback chunks. I'm sure that everything will be fine.

Us moderators are underworked anyway, we need more griefers! Just kidding! We're fine!

The benefits here far outweigh any potential drawbacks, rbk. I think we're going to stick to our position.

This was my reasoning for the lowering:

In a little over a week we are going to begin having in influx of new players on the server. The reason behind this is that our first video will be airing on the Escapist and will be viewed, on average, 200,000-400,000 people. Exciting times. I think the next major concern should be focusing in on the core group of dedicated players and what we can do to maximize them. Lord and I discussed this briefly the other day and seeing how I will be missing the next staff meeting, I thought I would bring this up now.

I think it might be wise to lower the Veteran achievement down to 24 hours.

When I originally set the number to 35, I thought it was a fair tradeoff. Now at the prospect of many new players, we should do all that we can in order to retain them. I think lowering this number will make a difference in player retention. We should aim to keep as many of the newbies as much as possible

I still think we will get players who will join the server, realize they cannot use some of the more fun blocks and then promptly leave. That’s fine. My concern is for the group who is okay with the waiting process but burns out over the amount of hours. Lowering the number will be easier for newer players to swallow while also making the waiting period more bearable. A small change can make a world of difference.


I have toyed with the idea of lowering the requirement even further like in the realm of 6 hours, but that is perhaps way too much. Maybe 12 would be a better number. My concern is that we could be scaring away great community members due to a number and if that’s the case, we should make adjustments.

Regarding the fear of further griefing.

It's possible. It happens. But unlike the past, we have better tools to handle it. In the last year, EC has instituted plug-ins that revoke the ability to grief and give the means for mods to deal with griefers and fix griefs more effectively and efficiently.

Fire spread is gone. Some blocks are now protected by their owners on placement. Chests automatically lock; objects are lockable by users. Cuboids were instituted, and now they protect all types of structures, big or small. Mods are informed - as it is happening - if certain types of griefing occurs. Our warning and banning system is more clear and smooth to use. We have the ability to check logs (literally!) and to rollback any incidents that occur (no matter how big or by whom). We have dozens of mods. And foremost, we have a strong community that is against griefing that calls up mods on any incident of griefing that they discover. I generally believe that the way this server handles griefing is a good way of handling it.

Prior to becoming a mod, I was a target of many types of griefing. But the nice thing is this. I wont deny that I was upset to see someone so rudely disrupt my works of art, but I was secure in knowing that they would be dealt with and that the grief was fixable. It was reassuring. We're never gonna be grief proof. It's entirely plausible that 15 hour vet may lead to more griefing - I just don't know, it's an assumption. But I believe now more than ever it's less problematic than it ever was before. We have the technology.

Yes people may be able to lock stuff but if another Big flush, or something happens to server causing all chests to unlock, the players who dont know and dont get to their chests are pretty much punished, they dont get their items back and they have to get everything all over again, which took some people weeks to get.

The consequences of the Big Flush were known by the server administrators, and players were warned well in advance of the event. Items stolen from chests can now be identified and were returned as effectively as possible in the immediately succeeding days.

arbykaynintyfive if anything i think it should go down to like ten hours i dont agree with you

rbk95 wrote:Yes people may be able to lock stuff but if another Big flush, or something happens to server causing all chests to unlock, the players who dont know and dont get to their chests are pretty much punished, they dont get their items back and they have to get everything all over again, which took some people weeks to get.

But that's a completely seperate issue. People can steal from unlocked chests regardless of veteran status.

To reinforce what has already been said, I've had quite a few new members leave shortly after being told they couldn't use Creative until they'd played for 35 hours.

Im not keen on the lowering of the time needed to get the "vet" status although I see that it is necessary. Maybe there could be a compromise? I dont know. I do however think that it is important to not be able to catch a greifer after they have greifed but rather to avoid the whole thing, this is a matter of trust of course and that comes with loyalty to the server. just some more stuff to think about...

Bob

thought i'd give a little opinion of my own~

Personally, i think 15hours is a little too low, i am perfectly fine with the 24hours that sneaky suggested, but 15 is way to easy. I can see the staff team's concern about having new players leaving, but its not that hard to get 15hours, especially if the person is a little smarter and knows about "the cheat"(ehmm, sorry about that) to bypass the auto kick. Besides, if the new players cant stand just waiting 24hours of playtime just to play, im pretty sure they are going to leave eventually anyways, 15hours would mean less dedicated players...

Lastly, i would like to address rbk's concern about if another big flush were to happen. Jake, how many people will risk getting banned after spending a long 35hours wait just to become vet? now guess would the number increase or decrease if the wait is only 15hours?(almost 1/3 of the original!)

Overall, i see both sides of the debate and understands both of their concern, its just that if a team of griefer oneday decides to set off some TNT in a town.... then idk, we will have to see what happens in the upcoming month

I don't have any exact stats to go on, but judging from what we've heard from the mods in this thread it seems that the number of people who have griefed after achieving vet is pretty darn low. I don't see the reduction changing this much, if at all.

Griefers are opportunists, 15 hours is still way longer than most people would wait just to get their hands on TNT. If thier only goal is to cause mayhem then it's far easier for them to just to break things with a pick or cover them in dirt, niether of which requires vet. Or they could simply visit another server where TNT is more readily available. If somebody griefs after reaching vet it's more likely to be because they "burned out" on Minecraft in general, and wanted to leave with a bang.

All this arguing is moot anyway. We won't know anything for sure until the new wave of players start hitting vet.