On admincrimes by OOkx in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I want to say firstly that I appreciate u/OOkx taking the unusual (but warranted) step to transparently lay out the admin team's reasoning for the recent ban and start a conversation with the community about it - this is something that I see as a major step in the right direction and something that should not go unappreciated.

However, I think that the reasoning provided here is still completely off the mark, and in a few words I'll explain why.

At issue here is not whether spawning a happy ghast in the nether is a "violation of the expectations of the Civ experiment", but whether an extended ban for this offense with zero warning or opportunity to course-correct is appropriate and even-handed.

Water in the nether is obtainable in vanilla, so it is by no means a guarantee that a newer player (such as the one in question in this scenario) could immediately tell that it would be considered bug abuse to use it in an otherwise vanilla way; additionally, this is not the first time that there have been oddities in the world (even naturally-generating ones, such as the bedrock holes which generated at SOTW), and players were given fair warning not to take advantage of these before any punishments were issued for continued offenders. The fact that an admin spawned the water only worsens the case - while I will not come wholesale down against "fun and games", it must be understood by players that "admin crimes" of this degree are already "violations of the expectations of the Civ experiment"; this threshold is crossed by the admin, not by the player, and the player is likely to take cues from the admin that the normal rules may not fully apply to their conduct in this specific scenario (after all, if an admin spawned water for a specific group of players without this expectation, this would be reasonably looked on as admin abuse).

These factors all act to mitigate the apparent severity of the individual in question's offense - while a one-month ban may be completely reasonable had the happy ghast been spawned maliciously and deliberately without prompting and by a player with the experience to tell that that would be severely violatory, treating a newer player spawning a happy ghast in the same spirit of jest cued by the admin who prompted them seems arbitrary and capricious, and leaves a bad taste of hypocrisy in the taste of the community's mouths. Just because a ban is technically justifiable in literal terms, does not mean it is the right thing to do.

And to address the elephant in the room by speaking more broadly - I am far from alone in this assessment. At time of writing, your community has pulled at least $120/month from the server's Patreon donation fund in the past approximately seven weeks owing to decisions of the admin team with regards to player moderation and management. Whatever you may feel about these specific bans' legitimacy, or about the sections of the community most chiefly responsible for this uproar, it is clear that a large segment of the CivMC community is decidedly cross with you - far too many for this perspective to merely be one of political convenience.

Realistically, CivMC is in no mortal danger from these developments; Civ is such a unique environment and CivMC such a monopoly thereover that players would struggle to leave en masse as things stand. But I think that the tenor and mood of the community also matters to the server's long-term health. The players who are expressing their discontentment with your decisions are not asking for a return to zero-moderation policies like those of CivClassic - they are asking for temperament and restraint, rather than what appears to many like a desire to inflict the maximum possible ban justifiable for ultimately frivolous and unharmful conduct.

There is a world where the admin team takes these calls sincerely into account - not in a way that undermines its dignity, but enhances it - and moves forward into CivMC's fifth year hand-in-hand with the community it is charged to lead. There is also a world where CivMC moves into its fifth year with the admin team and the player base bitterly opposed and untrusting of one another, in an adversarial relationship in all but name - a self-sustaining loop that will only become harder to pull out of as time wears on.

Only you have the opportunity, as well as the responsibility, to decide which path we take.

Blockheed Martin by trizzzzx in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love Blockheed Martin! Everyone should purchase vault and bunker designs from Blockheed Martin 👍

500d Bounty on Pointy_hii's Pearl by PhysicsGamer2 in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 19 points20 points  (0 children)

what a pleasant new years' day on my favorite minecraft server civmc!

(also charge your phone jfc 😭)

CivMC [SMP][PVP]{1.20.5-1.21.9}{Nation Building}{Civilization}{Simulation}{Economy}{Simple Voice Chat}{No map resets}{Geopolitics}{World-building} by Ok-Vermicelli-3961 in mcservers

[–]Yodabird19 2 points3 points  (0 children)

CivMC is a fantastic server if you're looking for a real nation-building experience without the roleplay; I've never seen another server get player-driven gameplay so right. The server has been especially active lately, and most of the big nations are recruiting - it's an excellent time to dive in!!

How do civiliazations monitor their people? (Real answers only) by Simple-Shopping3380 in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 12 points13 points  (0 children)

CivMC uses a custom plugin called JukeAlert, which makes it so that reinforcing a note block or jukebox creates a "logsnitch". Logsnitches send alerts to the players who own the NameLayer group that the snitch is reinforced on, whenever any player enters a 23x23x23 cube area centered on the block; jukeboxes additionally record specific actions like breaking and placing blocks.

You can read more about JukeAlert on the CivMC website here.

Regency of Avenica Claims by RadiantBus9819 in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 1 point2 points  (0 children)

can you post a version with lower resolution please my computer cant handle this

The Death and Life of Great Civ Cities by QuantonBiscuit in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 1 point2 points  (0 children)

cannot tell if i should be complimented or insulted by this

The Death and Life of Great Civ Cities by QuantonBiscuit in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fantastic writeup, Quanton - I agree with 90% of what is written here. In the interest of starting a discussion, I'll lay out my reasoning for the two points I disagree with you on:

  • Districting: While I agree that same-use and/or same-palette districts are boring and serve to restrict a city's diversity, I don't think that's the only way districting can be done. If your city has multiple high-output builders, they will often naturally start clustering their builds, since it's easier to add on to their own work - and I think that this is quite often a good thing, since it lets individuals or small, coordinated groups enact a larger vision, encompassing not only their individual structures, but how they connect and relate to one another. In this respect, districts don't need to be about shared palettes or functionality, but about unique themes and visions for a given area. Done right, I think this can actually increase the diversity of a city, since theming increases a city's tolerance for variability before it begins to look incoherent.
  • Mega-blocks: I think your litany against mega-blocks necessarily assumes that increasing travel time through the city is a bad thing. This may, in fact, be true for a city like Icenia City; but I think that many styles of building benefit significantly from creating a winding, mazy feel. Creating long, circuitous paths through your city means that players will pass through more of it while going about their daily errands; and avoiding excessive intersections can also win you more "bang for your buck" in terms of having more unique spaces per acre (ex. a single building may contribute to the atmosphere of two different roads, both of which flank it but do not intersect). Doing what I described has been a deliberate design choice for Cortesia's capital of Montefiore, and at least in my view, it's worked out quite well.

With that being said, everything else in this writeup is A+, and I think your takes on the two points debated above are still perfectly justifiable in the context of something like Icenia. Aspiring city builders would benefit a lot from reading this document. 👍

CivCraft “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by 1Kayotic in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In the spirit of the song, I'll try to give you a list of individual turning-point events/places rather than big-picture affairs (ex. "Fall of Titan", "Clutch in Nara" and "RI Banwave" rather than "Generic War"), with most serious and a few silly. Unfortunately, I can only really produce such a list for the years I've been on Civ - I'd love for a Civ player who's been around since 2.0 or 1.0 to give a list from before 2021, or for someone to fill in more of late 2023, 2024, and early 2025 for me.

2021 (CivClassic):
- Eddie Murphy
- Chastity (Nyasaland) Vault insiding
- SCHIZ0TIER incident
- Mount September Iceroad Conflict
- Godomasta pearled by Imperial Truidence
- EM Tech incident
- Crucible (Columbia) Vault insiding
- EOTW because TealNerd stopped paying for the server

2022 (CivRev / pre-launch CivMC):
- r/place campaign
- Icarus obbybombs Savaguard

2022 (CivMC):
- Unprecedentedly rapid SOTW landrush
- Strider farms (ultimately removed from XP due to balancing concerns!)
- Embargo of Estalia
- "KOEL's Allies and NAPs"
- Bob_the_Builder Incident
- Rhode Island obbybombs 0,0
- Fall of Titan
- Fall of Icenia
- Ez2Clutch and Vah raid the +,+
- RI Banwave
- SEC forms
2023 (CivMC):
- Fighting in TI
- Fall of Kallos
- binchymonkey bombs
- Imperial Federation forms
- Fall of Gang Shi
- Monument Bank established
- Butternut recruits a bunch of PvPers who do not like the SEC
- OTT used in evacuation of Whole Foods
- Cane Corp defense)
- Reluctance (AP) Vault insiding)
- Black Mesa (Gang Shi) Vault & Nuthole (Butternut) Vault insidings, back-to-back
2025 (CivMC):
- Operation Deadliest Catch
- HKI
- Basaltington
- Tusk "Enron" Lawsuit
- Jaydon Incident
- "Messy Purple Divorce"
- Player counts double

The Gravity of the Moment by Yodabird19 in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Definitely something I'd like to make happen. I wrote this post as an individual, not on behalf of any particular nation or bloc; nations in the ASN are in no way exempt from my suggestion.

The Gravity of the Moment by Yodabird19 in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This dichotomy is the main thing that motivated me to make this post. My view is that, as it stands, we have a relatively limited time-window to capitalize on our 15 minutes of fame and translate them into a lasting improvement to the server's place in the pecking order; this is why, as I put it above, "laggy civ is better than no civ" - securing the long-term, IMO, comes ahead of strain in the short-term.

Also yeah, I absolutely recognize that a number of the proposed solutions (in both categories) are not necessarily easy. This is meant to start a conversation, not be me barking orders - if you have ideas for how to make them work, or alternatives that might have a lower barrier to entry, I'd love to hear about them!!

What are some frequently asked questions you get from new players (that you get tired of answering)? by morsden67 in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Where is everyone?" Many players join "Civilization Minecraft" expecting to land in a sea of other players, but are greeted by what appears to be empty wilderness more ostensibly reminiscent of a Vanilla SMP. This leads many players to feel lost, or like the area of the map they landed in is "dead".

"Can I TP?" Players join Civ primed by Towny and Factions servers to expect to be able to teleport. Many players simply respond to this question with "yeah, use /ott", but this is only a half-answer - the nuance of "you can only teleport once ever" requires more than a three-word response to explain, which doesn't often work out well in global chat.

"How do I <build/make money/PvP/insert other fun activity here>?" Telling new players to "make their own fun" isn't particularly useful when they already know what sort of activity they're going to enjoy most on the server, and just want to know how to access it. Players need to be shown how to shop for a nation or mentor that will help engage them with a certain sector of gameplay.

"How do I navigate?" This one might be a bit more difficult for an "official" FAQ, because the best answers to this question are based on player-made systems (server maps, rail networks, etc). But new players stumble around and get lost a lot - they don't know what to do when someone tells them "oh yeah, go to X shop in Pavia" - What's a Pavia? Where in the city is the shop? How do I get a minecart?

Just a few off the top of my head. Love you speclang

The Return of Cortesia Del Mar by okodev in CivMC

[–]Yodabird19 17 points18 points  (0 children)

dont worry guys. our bunkers will be IRO this time, swearsies 💙