The New Map and The roads and rails

Post by **Byroe** » 20 Dec 2013, 22:53

I've been talking to the mods about the new map, and i was saddened to learn that there would be pre-existing railways similar to Borjan and fyra. I do not think that this is a good idea, during Version 3 of Escapecraft, i had the most fun building railways and and roads with the community, this lead to many things such as town creation and exploration. In the new maps, these roads and railways will be pre-existing, thus removing the community building projects such as roadways to different towns and to different areas. Another reason i think pre-built railways are a bad idea, is the fact that people would not explore, people would rather zip by in a minecart rather than walk through player built pathways and cities. another reason is people would be able to leave their mark on the world. I've noticed over the years, that if a player helps with building the foundation of the server by helping with a main server project such as a road or city, they are more likely to stay and play, this is because they feel accomplished and feel as if they helped, for example if you helped to build a road from spawn to New Corinth, that people use every day, you will feel proud of your accomplishments, and the teamwork that was put into these structures will come out as server personality. All in all, i believe it is a better idea to let the majority of the server help with the roadways and the spawn instead of just the design team, as it is fun to build these things and it helps put a little personality into the server.

I would also like to know what everyone else thinks about this, and maybe if enough people want it, maybe the mods will let us build our own spawn.

random980 · Post by **random980** » 21 Dec 2013, 01:24

I completely agree! The pre-built rails (and dragon travel) are like a boring interstate highway, cutting right through the terrain and skipping all the charming rural towns and removing all sense of adventure (A great example of this is in the movie Cars). The rails are also cubeoided making any modifications or buildings near it impossible. "It saves time and keeps you safe!" And by doing so removes a huge aspect of playing Minecraft, the thrill and challenge of survival! Ironically that's also the name of the main game-type we host here. Someone remind me why we bothered making the game-world harder again?
Simply put, they remove a lot of surviving, challenge and exploration from survival.

PLEASE just make a small spawn area and leave it at that!

Post by **rygy9** » 21 Dec 2013, 01:54

I'm just going to leave this here. Try to pick out the parts about travel (dragon travel and whatnot) and ignore the rest, I went off on quite a tangent when I posted this...

Spoiler! :

motormaniac · Post by **motormaniac** » 21 Dec 2013, 01:59

rygy9 wrote:I'm just going to leave this here. Try to pick out the parts about travel (dragon travel and whatnot) and ignore the rest, I went off on quite a tangent when I posted this...

Spoiler! :
Firstly, and obviously, a wipe is a wipe; there should be no taking items into the new world/server/map.

Secondly, as I was around for much of Ver2 (and fondly remember it), some input on the central city area.
The spawn city was interesting. It was originally what drew me to the server instead of others. But there was one major problem, that matches the no-build area in Terra/Ver3: there was nothing to do there. After the first 20 people built houses there which were abandoned later, it became a ghost city that acted as a hub or a meeting place. If the mods/staff could find a way (plugins etc.) to add RPG elements such as MINOR shops (limited trading without iron --> diamond and such) and other useful services such as this, I would absolutely support a spawn city.

To address the issue with travel and finding land, I believe that the dragon travel stations were truly the most immersive. While I don't currently play it, I was once a huge fan and player of World of Warcraft. The travel system in WoW was, in my honest opinion, flawless. Having quick flight paths to almost every sub-area of the map made it easy to get places, yet there was still foot/mount travel in between. If we were to have the dragon travel stations, however, the number one most important condition would be to have PAYMENT.

Addressing the payment mentioned above, not everybody will be in favour of this. Who carries iron/gold or whatever payment we'll use around with them? An option we COULD consider would be bringing back in-game currency plugins, like we use to use. Currency could be automatically gained by killing mobs, mining rare gems, traded among players, and could be used to pay for dragon travel stations to get to places quickly. As well as this, the merchants in the central city could use the same currency, and services such as armour repair, weapon repair, enchanting services, etc. This would require both currency and NPC plugins, but this is just a suggestion.

I'd like to thank Tulonsae for putting the effort into asking us, the players, what we think of the situation. I think you're doing a great job, and I think I speak for most of us when I say that we really appreciate being able to put forward our thoughts.

P.S. With mentions to World of Warcraft, I remembered how useful mounts were, and being able to summon and dismiss them at will. With the addition of horses to Minecraft, we could consider something like that. I've tried out horses on the temporary server, but the problem is that you need to be too careful with them. With crashes losing them and them being so fragile, I find myself protecting it instead of riding it. This is purely a suggestion, and I don't even know if plugins like this exist, but I would truly love a feature to be able to summon and dismiss your horse by using an item/command. Don't focus on this suggestion too much, as the bulk of my message is more important, but this could help with solving the travel issue without having minecart tracks everywhere.

P.P.S
OH, and another quick thought regarding the dragon travel stations. To make it even more immersive, we could allow (with mod supervision of course) groups of players/factions to create towns around the travel stations, thus making it even more RPG-like. The mods could edit signs and such to have the main travel hub state the name of the town to travel to, helping towns actually grow and prosper. Instead of towns being created and used for a month, new players could simply travel there, check it out, and decide whether or not to live there.

P.P.P.S. (oh my god I can't stop)
Thinking back on the whole using currency to use dragon travel stations, there is the issue of new players without money being unable to find new land. Therefore we could have a set starting amount to help players get to somewhere they can build, with a helpful message board in the spawn that mods could edit with player suggestion to let new players know what towns are thriving and active. This could help both new players become interactive with the server AND prevent towns from dying in a matter of days or weeks.

P.P.P.P.S. (oh hell)
Since I dug a huge chunk of the Ver3 subway's myself. How do you think such things would work nowaday's with all the cuboids everywhere?

Hopefully players would be kind enough to accommodate players building rails under their cuboids? I understand they may not want to give people access to all their stuff, but in that case I definitely think it would be worth us helping out sort cuboid things for free.

(Quotes by Vallorn and SMWasder, I don't know how quotes work really)
Once again, I believe that the dragon travel system would 100% solve this, as there would be no need for rails, other than rails that people use for their own purposes, which they can cuboid themselves.

Thanks for reading my output, and I hope it can go to good use.
(I really wish I could type this easily for english essays, this stuff just flows from my mind. Jeeze.)

Without spoiling anything, the only thing I can tell you that you won't have to worry about is items. They (as far as I know) are not coming along. Because as you said, wipe is a wipe.

Post by **wokka1** » 21 Dec 2013, 03:10

Byroe, yes, we had a lot of fun building roads and rails, but if you remember, it was very disorganized and we never had a large working rail system in ver 3.

One of the biggest complaints we received about that map was new people couldn't find a place to build, and it took too long to walk somewhere to go find a place to build.

We are of course working on ways to resolve this, and we'll have some basic rails in place, but we have never covered the maps in rails/roads and the players are welcome to branch off and build roads, most of the time it happens.

Post by **Byroe** » 21 Dec 2013, 04:03

If there are rails in place, new players would just zip on past all the towns and start to build their own thing while feeling isolated in the server. When i first joined escapecraft, i loved the central city, but i loved even more when i reached the gates and was allowed to explore, with no roads showing me which way to go. i then walked around until i found a city called "Volstag" i then met the people living there and we started to build things together. If i would of zipped by on a minecart, i probably would not be here today. The main thing i'm going for here, is i want new players to get involved in server projects, and what's better than helping to build a road? its quick, easy, and gets them into the community while allowing them to make their own mark on the world that everyone can see.

random980 · Post by **random980** » 21 Dec 2013, 05:42

wokka1 wrote:Byroe, yes, we had a lot of fun building roads and rails, but if you remember, it was very disorganized and we never had a large working rail system in ver 3.

One of the biggest complaints we received about that map was new people couldn't find a place to build, and it took too long to walk somewhere to go find a place to build.

We are of course working on ways to resolve this, and we'll have some basic rails in place, but we have never covered the maps in rails/roads and the players are welcome to branch off and build roads, most of the time it happens.

Ver 3 rail system is a bad example IMO, a rail system built around an already full map that was already being phased out towards completion. With a brand new blank map, rails can be added far more efficiently and with greater ease and can have continues expansion outwards as more land is claimed inwards. Current players will help the new ones settle in and find their way, we always have.

Another solution would be to still have no pre-made rails, but add dragon travel to far off areas once most of the land within a reasonable travel distance has been claimed. Therefore only adding mod-made travel when it actually calls for it far later on. Seems pretty win-win to me.

EDIT: Another idea. Add new spawn points on the map as it keeps growing? As we remove the old survival worlds, turn the HUB into a compass, taking the north hallway will lead to being spawned far north, taking the south-east will spawn you in a small pre-made village to the far south-east, ect? Turn the second story of HUB into the portals for enigma, creative, pvp, ect.

RobipodSupreme · Post by **RobipodSupreme** » 21 Dec 2013, 06:21

This may have been said (tl;dr :p) but surely if it's solely player built rails journeying will be inconsistent, routes vague and uncoordinated, and generally a mess shall be made, with a mash of landclaims and eyesores (no offence rail builders). With the WEed rails they are straight, uniform, and cover a large area for people to choose how near they are to people.

Post by **Sti_Jo_Lew** » 21 Dec 2013, 12:28

Byroe wrote:If there are rails in place, new players would just zip on past all the towns and start to build their own thing while feeling isolated in the server. When i first joined escapecraft, i loved the central city, but i loved even more when i reached the gates and was allowed to explore, with no roads showing me which way to go. i then walked around until i found a city called "Volstag" i then met the people living there and we started to build things together. If i would of zipped by on a minecart, i probably would not be here today. The main thing i'm going for here, is i want new players to get involved in server projects, and what's better than helping to build a road? its quick, easy, and gets them into the community while allowing them to make their own mark on the world that everyone can see.

So you want to force players to conform to your playstyle, and live in a town? Not everyone wants to do that. There were still plenty of popular towns in Fyra, and that's the rail system we already have in the works. Just 4 rails, one in each direction. You can still build rails to your towns and whatnot, or connect towns together with other rails.

Not having any rail system at all will just alienate players who don't want to live smashed against some other player's cobble hut in a tiny town plot. People off on their own will be discouraged to go to spawn to trade, or to explore other player's builds because it takes a ton of time for them to get back, at least until they manage to build up the MASSIVE amount of resources it takes to make a decent sized rail to their home, at which point they'll probably have to deal with working around other claims.

Post by **derigin** » 21 Dec 2013, 18:26

I will speak up to this, as I'm the one who is responsible for designing the world.

To start out, the world will be 3000x3000. I've found a seed that features every biome, has a good land to water ratio, and will allow for good expansions. The plan is to expand the world as we need to expand it; perhaps first to 4000x4000, then to 5000x5000, and so on. The world will be huge, and in many respects will be our primary survival world.

The current plans with transportation is to keep it relatively simple. We've been trying to follow the KISS principle from the beginning, when we realized that some of the ideas we had for TNA wouldn't be sustainable. We want to learn from past mistakes, and that includes how we handled transport in previous worlds. Terra was a headache; as much as I personally like (and would love) to see the TNA spawn area grow to become a network of towns, we learned that if we provide no transportation players (especially new players) get really confused. They don't know where to go and find it difficult to follow roads that go in all sorts of directions. This is especially true for those players who really hate towns, and enjoy the wilderness. I valued the Terra experience, but realized it had its flaws. Fyra had a nice transport network, but with some serious flaws. The world was very small and the rails were very intrusive. Players were limited in being able to connect with the rails, and the rails acted as a physical barrier. Although the world was popular, the rails could have used some work. Borjan was an ambitious project; we wanted to make it as easy as possible for players to get around. We had rails go in every direction from a spawn that acted no better than a Potemkin village. Unlike Fyra, players were able to build up to the rails, and the rails were not intended to be intrusive. The only problem with Borjan was that the rails were everywhere, so everyone spread out as far as possible from one another. Lastly, there was Tolteca. We decided to limit the rails to a shorter distance. But the problem with Tolteca, IMO, wasn't so much the fact we had rails, but we didn't have enough. The terrain (jungle and extreme hills) is just not very forgiving to people who want to create community.

Keeping all this in mind, our current plan with the rails is just to have them extend in each compass direction (N, S, E, W). The world is huge, and will continue to grow to become huge, and in the grand scheme of things a simple railway wont take up much space and will leave lots of open space available for user-built networks. Unlike Borjan, though, we're not going to have rails all over the place; just going to keep it simple by having them go out in each direction. Beneath the rails would run a road. Players would be able to link up to the road and rails, and create their own roads and rails from that point. We'll accommodate you and work with you. I, personally, want to make sure that each and every player feels as though they've had the opportunity to shape the common areas of TNA, and this extends to the transportation.

Any transportation options that we have, whether they are basic rails, dragon transport, etc., are intended just to supplement user creations. We will absolutely encourage players to build their own transportation networks, but we want to make sure that players who don't want to use those networks, or walk for days to get anywhere, or who prefer to be as far away from spawn as possible have that alternative.

Regarding the spawn, it's best first to explain what the spawn is. First, and foremost, the idea for the spawn comes from Ver 2; we want to have a user created though staff managed place where players can interact with one another and work with eachother. This is a huge component to the spawn. Although we've themed parts of the spawn, and have staff created stuff in parts of them, the eventual hope is that perhaps it could grow to become a central hub of activity.

When you enter spawn you start off in a spire not unlike Isengard. Upstairs in the spire are some transportation options, but if you leave the spire to go outside you'll find yourself on a single island among a number of islands. Each island has a rough theme; one hosts the beginnings of a village (perhaps for users to have shops, build their homes, interact with potential NPCs, economy, etc.), another island hosts an arena and racetrack that very well could be functional; another island acts as a place to learn how things work; another is the entrance to the nether; another is home to the staff; and so on. If you, as a player, have ideas for the spawn and want to add to the spawn, we want you to be able to do that. If you want to set up shop near or at spawn, we want you to have that option. We want to leave open the option for the spawn to grow into something unique and community-driven. You have every opportunity to do whatever else you want in the world, but the spawn will also be there to be worked on. We don't want a boring dead spawn like we did in Terra or Borjan or Fyra or Tolteca. It'll be managed, that's for sure, but it will be yours. It's important to know that the spawn you first see on the first day of TNA is just the beginning of a spawn that will continually be worked on as the world grows and players show interest in contributing to it.

Post by **vallorn** » 22 Dec 2013, 03:28

As the man-god responsible for Tolteca's transport network (and associated opening "quest") I come down squarly in the middle of this. I purposefully designed the rail stations in that world to not reach the ends of the world so that players would HAVE to have some transport of their own for far away towns while still providing them with an easy way away from spawn. As well as this the network of DT stations allowed for a more spread out build approach and the fact that each of said stations are isolated means that to build in the near area requires transport from the DT station to the town. This mix of staff built networks to make new players lives easier and the slightly increased isolation over Borjan or even Fyra seems in my opinion to be the best go between for transport.

And this is from the person who dug a huge line of Ver3's subways by himself BY HAND.

(Also I support His High Deriginness and would like to say he has worked very hard to try to accommodate everyone with the new network... And yes Tolteca's spawn wasn't that interesting because a certain someone never finished the quest line he forced us to build a motherload of dungeons for in there for... #Neverforget...)

Post by **Invunarble** » 22 Dec 2013, 13:43

vallorn wrote:a certain someone never finished the quest line

Hey guys, do you know when the next Artifact post is coming out?

minnerthecat · Post by **minnerthecat** » 22 Dec 2013, 16:42

Invunarble wrote:
vallorn wrote:a certain someone never finished the quest line
Hey guys, do you know when the next Artifact post is coming out?

I'll let you know, I still check every day for it.

Post by **Invunarble** » 22 Dec 2013, 17:09

minnerthecat wrote:
Invunarble wrote:
vallorn wrote:a certain someone never finished the quest line
Hey guys, do you know when the next Artifact post is coming out?
I'll let you know, I still check every day for it.

After the events of the obviously recent last post, I am so obviously thrilled and excited to see what happens next in this quickly-updated series! I'm also obviously interested in finding out soon how this quickly-updated series ties in with the quickly-updated storyline our newest world has! Obviously!

Aenir_bEPU · Post by **Aenir_bEPU** » 26 Dec 2013, 00:43

I'd like for the roads and rails to be player-made. One of my favorite memories in Escapecraft was from wandering around Terra exploring all the old abandoned cities, towns, and tunnels. Walking along paths made by the players. You see so much less when you're on riding on a mine-cart going straight North or South or East or West.

Losarot · Post by **Losarot** » 27 Dec 2013, 16:43

Maybe we can have some kind of contractor system for setting up roads that become well established over time to be protected. But I concur with the roads being player made as we see fit it adds a HUGE amount of fun to the exploration of the game. Does this mean some roads might get broken down by players/mobs/nature . Yes, but just like real life you have to repair and maintain roads to keep them in good condition.
I didnt mind the mod placed rail to the far corners but I always found dragon travel a bit gimmicky and didnt use it too often, we should make the roads ourselves and as time goes by the roads that see the most use can be made protected later, smaller trails will just have to fight for survival but you know we can always call the mods in if things get to often griefed.
TL;DR.
Im all for players making the roads.

Post by **Josh349** » 25 Jan 2014, 05:31

Whoever builds them, players need to be able to break minecarts - having millions of them all clogging up the system is really annoying - my horse jumped in one and ran away, a sheep twice took my minecart when I got out of it for a moment, a skeleton jumped in a spare minecart and nearly killed me...the list is endless.
Here are some screenshots btw if you dont believe me:

Spoiler! :

MrWhales · Post by **MrWhales** » 25 Jan 2014, 19:31

Josh wrote:my horse jumped in one and ran away,

Trouble in paradise, eh?

motormaniac · Post by **motormaniac** » 26 Jan 2014, 21:29

Josh wrote:Whoever builds them, players need to be able to break minecarts

Yes. ;_;

The New Map and The roads and rails

Should players build rails? or the mods? Please read post first

The New Map and The roads and rails

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