[Zz] Pre-agenda 13/02/2021

[OGBen]

Post any topics/apologies here!

Zedkin Members:
Mellorian
SneakySkeleton
Dogzack123
Darthduck84
Jasmyn01
OGBen_

[LousyMiner]

No apologies, as I don't have to!

However, a question for discussion, and it may well be that nothing more need be done. Following the recent incidents of trolling by malignant malicious malcontents, does [the server] need to do anything more than have the "15 hours to Zedling" and banning for griefing? I managed to graduate from that simple system but let's say I've got a few years on them and have learned how to behave in polite company.

At the technical level, banning by IP or login can be relatively easily circumvented. I don't know what other options there are. Maybe confining new joiners to a specific area, with a starting chest of resources, during which some competence and attitude needs to be proven before they're released into the wild? A kind of sanitised kindergarten where little harm can be done. However, if that had been imposed upon me, I don't know if I'd stuck around or not.

For what it's worth, I wish to doff my cap to Zedwick, LadyBountiful, OGBenjamin, Mellorian, jelmer8090 and others who displayed a master class in troll-baiting, constraint and fair application of server rules. Kudos to you all.

[the server] denotes an acknowledgement that I don't really know what I'm talking about and that restrictions appear to be imposed by server plugins, actions by Guardians and the daily governence of the server by Zedkins.

[Mellorian]

I'm sure Zed/Lady can answer and expand on any questions, and they're certainly far more knowledgeable than myself on such things, for obvious reasons. However, from a fellow player's perspective:

From what I've seen, it's very, very rare for a malicious player to get out of spawn without prior knowledge of the server, and even then Zed and Lady are crazily good at reverting anything a griefer might do in what seems like a matter of moments.
In terms of IPs and Logins, I obviously don't know the back end of it, but I do know from various ban appeals that Zed has trounced a few attempts at subverting such in the past.

In terms of further limiting new players, I feel that may be a bad idea. It's definitely striking a balance between slowing down griefers and the like, to not negatively affecting the experience of genuine new players and driving them away. We already see on LVS that friends of older players are sometimes accidentally banned for breaking blocks their more established friends have placed. This is something we avoid with our claims plugin, and I think it's good to be wary any likeminded happenings that harsher restrictions could cause.

Despite all that, I think it definitely doesn't hurt to discuss these sorts of things, and I'm sure the Guardians would be open to it. It's certainly great to get a fresh player's perspective on it!

Edit: I should add that the players that were on last night were a rare case of Zed and Lady enjoying a bag of popcorn. Usually such players are gone after their first words, and not kept around for our amusement, however briefly.

[LousyMiner]

Thanks Mell, again we appear to be on the same page. I'm certainly not advocating change for the sake of it, but "But we've always done it that way" is an excuse oft used. I detected an element of popcorn consumption last night, which made it all the more entertaining. I await the outcome of the Zedkin discussion in due course.

[Zedwick]

I definitely prefer to avoid deterring good, honest players from playing with us. This is why we don't have any barriers to entry, and the spawn area is relatively small to ensure players can get out into an area they can harvest materials and get started building quickly.

We've employed some other automated systems to catch and restrict thieves and potential griefers in the past, but those were unfortunately lost in past MC updates, Bringing them back has been relatively low priority as we don't currently appear to need them. It's rare to see any significant damage, and we Guardians can revert any damage done in seconds with the help of our detailed logging.

There are some automated chat monitoring which will soft mute the worst of the new players who stop by to troll. You will not see their messages at all once they've triggered this.

In terms of patient trollers, there's very little you can do to catch and stop them before they lash out. It's extremely rare we will see a Zedling play for 15 hours just to get themselves banned. I think it's actually been more common to see a Zedling who has played a few hundred hours lash out after they decide to leave the server (which I would say occurs at an average of 0.3 per year thus far). Patient trolls generally play about 3 hours to gather materials they might need, like a good stock of tnt. I believe we've had one play for nearly 10 hours, but that's because they were stockpiling for a griefing community who planned to later join as a group armed with a few stacks of tnt each within their first few minutes of playing. (This particular example was on LVS, where they were banned immediately when they attempted to place the tnt. We'd already been monitoring their stockpiler.)

We've had players returning with dozens or hundreds of accounts after their initial ban. They're easy to ban again. Accounts are cheap, much like IPs. However it's (usually) not difficult to spot a related login from a player with a low budget. I believe Lady and I have collectively manually banned 140 accounts in a single day.

The only change I can think of which would be worth considering would be to prevent new players from using the region posts until they're a Zedling, but that would also be a bit unfortunate as region posts are one of our selling points.

[Mellorian]

Preventing them from using region posts would also limit players joining and visiting their friends regions straight away. Though I suppose Lvs has a similar thing with their nether hub requiring Zedling rank.

[LousyMiner]

It's deeply heartening to be able to read some of the detail and effort that our Guardians put into running this community, so please accept my personal thanks to you both, Zedwick and LadyBountiful, for all that you do. I can guess that gratitude is a commodity in short supply except perhaps from those who've invested time to achieve Zedling status and, in doing so, have engaged with the community and become friendly if not friends.

It was interesting to read the precautions that you have in place, particularly the ability to monitor the resource acquistion patterns of new players. The automated chat monitor and suppression was quite a revelation too. I wasn't aware that either precaution was even possible. I had wondered how two people achieve so much on three (or more) active servers, and automation is obviously the key. Thank you for responding so openly, frankly and clearly. I think it's useful for people to have some sight of what goes on behind the scenes to keep them safe and enable their continued and interactive enjoyment of their favourite game.

If LVS requires Zedling status to use the Nether Hub and that's the primary means of rapid long distance travel, then perhaps Zurvival should follow suit? Spawn is moved periodically to allow new players access to resources that would otherwise be depleted, so it's entirely possible to establish a starter base and gather basic resources, thereby potentially showing your hand to the monitoring measures, before becoming a Zedling and being able to move further afield. Claims work immediately on placement of a chest, albeit a limited area but this can be expanded as server game hours are accrued.

Maybe then, and I'm throwing this in solely and deliberately to fuel continued discussion, Zedling status isn't automatically granted at 15 hours play but (instead/as well) on achieval of some basic milestones? Something like:

• first claim
• Sweet Dreams
• either What A Deal or chest trade
• Acquire Diamonds
• Enchanter
• plus any two from Parrots & Bats, Seedy Place, Best Friends and Fishy Business.

The specifics are open to debate but what I'm suggesting is a list of existing in-game achievements which can be automatically monitored, many of which have prerequisite lesser achievements, that any reasonable player should IMHO gain in the course of play if their goal was in the spirit of playing SMP Minecraft rather than something more nefarious. Most are vanilla game Achievements, suitably capitalised as proper nouns, but two are simple interactions with server plug-ins.

However, all that said, I cannot deliver any of this and it's (currently) above my pay grade to decide, much less enforce, so it's merely a suggestion. Except of course the gratitude which endures.

[Mellorian]

The milestones suggestion is interesting and I can see the merits to it, however I think overall it doesn't suit the purposes that Zedling currently is for.

Well informed or skilful players can knock out a list of advancements in less than an hour, as shown by one of our Zestygames - Advancement Hunters, in which I believe we've beaten the Ender Dragon within the hour time limit quite a few times now. Of course, things would be different in a world that isn't freshly generated, but that doesn't solve the disparity between said skilled players and those more casual who will take much longer to do the tasks. I feel it would be stepping toward a dangerous line of gating/prompting the community toward skilled players in some manner, which I don't think we want at all.
I also wouldn't want to dictate how anyone has to play the game.

I do like the idea of drawing away from pure hours played - we see a heavy focus on such even hundreds or thousands of hours after becoming a Zedling. I feel it's not a good idea to judge people's contribution to the community on raw hours played, though I'm by no means saying that high hours is not something to be proud of. That being said, I don't think the current model is an issue at all, though as we've perpetuated, discussion is always nice.

So big wall of thoughts aside, I think the core values of the Zedling rank are:

• Takes the same effort and/or time for anyone to get.
• Is available to anyone, no matter how they play.

And to reiterated my prior post:

Preventing them from using region posts would also limit players joining and visiting their friends regions straight away. Though I suppose Lvs has a similar thing with their nether hub requiring Zedling rank.

I think limiting use altogether isn't the solution. We have had player made regions similar to spawn in the past, where players have invited new players to join them (perhaps after a bit of friendly interrogation).
Perhaps a solution is that region post usage could be monitored for non-Zedlings, or require some further kind of invite/Zedling presence? We of course have a /invite already, which works very handily.

[LousyMiner]

It's such a shame there isn't a Like button!

Above all else, any agreed change should not involve more tasks or responsibilities for Guardians, Zedkins or Zriends that results in them playing the game less often.

[Zedwick]

Maybe then, and I'm throwing this in solely and deliberately to fuel continued discussion, Zedling status isn't automatically granted at 15 hours play but (instead/as well) on achieval of some basic milestones? Something like:

• first claim
• Sweet Dreams
• either What A Deal or chest trade
• Acquire Diamonds
• Enchanter
• plus any two from Parrots & Bats, Seedy Place, Best Friends and Fishy Business.

Besides Mell's points, I think it's also worth considering that 15 hours of play time also gives new players time to integrate into the community. By the time a player has earned their Zedling status they should be aware of the rules both written and unwritten, so they know what is expected of them. I hope other Zedlings will be a little more forgiving of social missteps from the newcomers who are still learning what the Zurvival community expects of their behaviour.