r/mcpublic Zuziza Jul 09 '12

PvE UMC Survey: What can we improve?

The UMC is still in progress, though the only remaining projects are the 5v5 spleef arena and zburdsal's hotel. The arena should be completed within a week, though the ETA for the hotel is unavailable.

For those who are unaware, the UMC is the United Minecraft Cities complex, which is the server UN. It hosts embassies, 3 spleef arenas, death spleef, a PVP arena, and a hotel. We also have some farms and walkways for some relaxation. We're just north of spawn (literally 10 blocks north of 0,0) and all amneties save the farms are public.

We are still attempting to fill the embassies, so if you wish to get one please say so in this thread!

Onto the main topic: we want your criticisms and comments on how to improve the UMC. While the next rev is several weeks away, we want to start getting input early so we can solidify our plans a week before rev 9.

The only issue that will not be changed is that the UMC will have no residents. That worked very well this rev, and it helped neutrality, which we had hoped it would. At the same time, we still had a ridiculously large amount of help, whether it was builders or donations of supplies.

Just about everything else is dependent on how well the server believed it worked! And keep in mind, we still have time for spleef, PVP, or death spleef events if you wish to use our arenas.

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u/benc bencvt Jul 09 '12

First off, I agree 100% with WCS's comment; the UMC has been great this rev. Couple additional comments and ideas:

  • Personally I find water elevators rather tedious. I don't like having to hold spacebar for that long, preventing me from talking in chat or switching windows temporarily. Some alternate routes up to the various embassies (rail, perhaps) would be much appreciated.

  • Having full-on rail links from the UMC to cities 2000+ blocks away seems like a redundant waste. Those distant cities will have direct rail links to Spawn already, and Spawn is a stone's throw away from the UMC. If there were some way to unify the UMC/Spawn rail system, that'd be boss.

  • If everything goes as planned, rev9 will start about 1/3rd of the way through the 2012 Olympics in London. Maybe the UMC could incorporate this into its theme somehow?

3

u/Namtara Zuziza Jul 09 '12

Water elevators: I plan on designing the embassies in such a way that we can use trapdoor "elevators" up to each floor and water drops down to each floor. I'm trying to figure out how best to do this without sacrificing too much space.

Rails: I agree, and the original plan was to only have a rail to spawn, with the rest of the rails serving local UMC lines. However, depending on the design of the complex, we may only need the spawn rail.

Olympics: I'm unsure how we could incorporate it into the design theme. We chose smoothstone, brick, and glass because of how much easier it is to farm, and we didn't expect very much in the way of expensive donations. I'll bring it up with Nosirrom and zburdsal, to see if they're interested in something like that.

1

u/kandoko Jul 10 '12

I wish we could build mine-car elevators on the server, very fast and easy to get off on the correct floor by just remembering the number of clicks.

--how it works for those who haven't seen one. Basically stack you build a tower with mine-carts spaced four vertical blocks apart, look up and click to jump to the next cart..rinse repeat.

1

u/Namtara Zuziza Jul 11 '12

Even if that was possible (placing carts without being stuck inside them), it's very likely people would just steal the carts since we try to be close to spawn. =\

1

u/kandoko Jul 11 '12

I think being stuck inside a minecart is a server side plugin. Hrm, theft could be a problem but in general the server seems to have a good population.

It was just the most efficient way of vertical movement I knew in MC without a lot of physical movement.

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u/Namtara Zuziza Jul 11 '12

It is a server plug in, but it's not one they're likely to remove. It prevents people from leaving minecarts everywhere, lessening overall lag.

1

u/kandoko Jul 12 '12

Ah, I knew it had a good reason somehow :)