Discussion on Issues With /fly

[Daypath (OP)]

Hi all, in senate we've been considering different kinds of legislation to fix problems with /fly. However, since this interferes with internal staff rules, legislation can only pass through parliament. So, I hope that we can raise discussion surrounding these issues and people can give their own opinions, solutions, and details they'd like to see in a parliament bill.

So far there have been two ideas on how to resolve two different issues - staff favouritism/discrimination concerning /fly access, and their own hypocrisy by using fly for personal builds but not allowing it to players.

The first idea is to solve staff favouritism and discrimination against players by regulating the conditions in which a player can reasonably be given fly. This means that fly will be given out to any builds that needs it, and optionally: fly could no longer be given out for simple builds. This proposal is given so that staff cannot deny players fly in a reasonable request because of personal feelings, but they also may not be able to show favouritism by giving players fly when they don't need it. Obviously, if a player 'misuses' fly, they can be cut off from it.

The second idea is to remove staff advantages and hypocrisy concerning their own access to /fly (and possibly creative) for when they use it for their personal builds, but do not give it to players.

Since staff are likely to have a biased view upon changes to these issues, because it limits their power/decision-making, I would hope that their input and approval would not be based on personal preference but on practicality. Hopefully staff will maintain an impartial outlook based only on feasibility, the wellbeing of the server, and public support.

I welcome any disagreements, agreements, and new ideas.

[Daypath (OP)]

My personal opinion on this to bring to the discussion,

I believe that we should be encouraging players to build complex/aerial designs on the server by endorsing their access to /fly for specific builds that need it - it is deeply unfair that only staff have been able to reserve it for themselves and their friends. Although I believe the second solution would bring equality, we could have a system for players to make amazing builds without any negative effects.

Non-builders and staff members are likely to not agree with giving builders fly because they haven't struggled without it - however many builders have struggled for hours with scaffolding and have given up on aerial builds because it's incredibly hard to constantly shift angles from all sides while building. There is no reason to not to allow builders fly for specific situations, if they even manage to find a way to misuse fly in a way that can negatively impact others, fly can be taken away from them or they can face any consequences.

Most staff have argued against the first idea of creating fair, regulated fly to players because it's "not in the nature of a survival server", however, each staff member uses fly/creative for personal builds, if they truly believed this, why would they use it?  Outrageous, I agree.

Furthermore, /fly is given to "legacy staff" (staff who have left the team or are otherwise inactive) as well, obviously they believe that it is needed or greatly valuable to building. An ex-staff member should be equal to any other player, it's disturbing that they believe this should only granted to them for building. Evidently, staff do believe that people should be able to play in this manner, even if it is only for themselves.

[TinyTinaJoon]

This sounds like a great idea fly is soo necessary for complex builds and enjoyment on the server! it can be so difficult to get fly sometimes when it feels so vital for overall server enjoyment when we are all rich enough to basically live in creative mode

[Cbddallas]

Talking point:  In a world in which elytra exist, is fly really useful for anything other than building? Is it OP?

Discuss!

[Noket]

Personally I'm all for what Day's suggesting.

Fly shouldn't be something doled out as a token of favor or friendship - it encourages cliquey behavior.

I think it should normalized like many of the other non-vanilla processes (region protection, mob protect, etc), and people who want to use fly should go through an application where they state their intent of how and where it will be used.

A permit of 3 days, 7 days, or 14 days may be granted (there are just examples, not hard set numbers) upon approval. In terms of implementation, this could be a security group or permission that people are granted - there's probably other ways that Luis might settle on but it shouldn't be too tough to implement.

Finally - and I know this has come up time and time again - "this is a survival server!!1 fly is bad". Sure - but there's a lot of other things on this server that are far from vanilla. AFAIC - somebody in fly isn't in God mode, they can still be hunted with bow/arrow and would have to survive by running away - if they use the fly to retaliate/pvp, then they lose the permit.

We can also make the permits fairly expensive (maybe in the ballpark of 50-150k), again to appease the people who might argue it's too against the values of a survival server.

That said - in the situation that this passes, I hereby grant staff permission to debit my bank account to fund fly permits for build projects that a player couldn't otherwise afford, as long as it doesn't put my balance below $1M. I'll modify this permission if I change my mind at a future date - if unmodified, it may be assumed that I still grant this permission (even years into the future). Please don't ask me if I give permission - the answer is yes.

[FroggyBee]

Not only do I agree, but I would also like to add that I don't enjoy the fact that staff can use fly to build their farms. Whether that is supposedly allowed or not, I have seen it happen and I don't feel like that is fair to the average player. It can just be used whenever for staff and there is no real regulation that I can see as a regular player. Staff favoritism is real and doesn't mix well with the trust system.

Same goes for creative mode, which can be given out freely and expensive blocks can be used for personal staff builds. I just personally find that unfair, but if I'm wrong or off about anything please let me know :-)

[fluffupenguin]

As someone who lives in a tree and builds tree houses and such things, I urge for a flying perm for builders who can prove they can use it responsibly. Even with Eleytra and megatons of scaffolding, building still takes 2 times more slowly than with flying. (I fall off many times).

[Noket]

A shower thought I had - can fly be applied to the region, instead of the player? Or perhaps there's a way to configure it so that both the player and the region must have the perm for the player to fly - that way, the concern about using fly for pvp or unintended projects will be alleviated. Fly will be stripped from the player if they exit the region.

[Noket]

Answering my own question - it looks like worldguard-extra-flags has a flag "fly" where fly would be enabled on entry into the region, and it could be done so it is applied only to members.

Ie:
/region flag (region-name) fly -g members allow

This way, staff would manage the membership (maybe via a parent region) - that way the player can't add their friends. Doing a parent-child system to track existing fly zones would improve accounting.

Regardless of how it may be implemented - it's possible to do it per region, restricted to specific players.

[Akomine]

If we go down this route, region-restricted fly could work well since it's harder to abuse. worth testing.

[MysteriousKing]

Considering the current system that we have, I do not believe that allowing fly in any capacity for regular players is a good idea without any proper regulations on what fly would be used for.

Keeping in mind, that fly serves as an extremely efficient transportation method; thereby reducing time of whatever activity one is engaging in.

Examining the following cases purposed here, assuming best case scenario (no resource cost):

1) Fly allowed for every player:
As mentioned, this would create a huge problem when pvping; and would also encourage extremely rapid growth in exploration and expansion of the current world. Considering places like the End, fly is a huge game changer as players do not need to invest anything to explore difficult terrains; Or the Nether, when one misstep drops you into lava, is easily solved by just using fly. With a strong enough economy, any player would be basically playing in creative mode. And as I have always said, once you reach 1 mil on VC, you are basically playing on semi creative.

2) Fly based on cost:
Basically same benefit for allowing every player fly, but for rich people

3) Fly based on region:
Although it seemed like a good idea, this system could very easily be abused. Consider this: First building a village, buying permit for fly, convert village to farm. Which for all intensive purposes, it is not a bad thing to have a farm when they are designed appropriately; however that also means that it is relatively easy to prop up multiple different farms in a relatively quick succession.

4) Fly based on permits:
Out of all of the suggestions, I do believe that this is perhaps the best option, as we could regulate a) what players build, b) establish reputation for players and give a guideline for any staff members to handout permits. Albeit, this would be an additional admin work for the staff team to manage. Additionally this is lining up more towards how fly is given today, but formally.

And to address some of the points made in this post,

I do not believe that fly is given based off staff favourtism/discrimination is true, but rather it is based off the specific use cases and reputation. Based on those conditions it is hard to proof definitively that staff favourtism exists.
For my case, if you want fly - just ask, as long as it is reasonable (ie, you are not exploring, you are not pvping, you are not building farm + other conditions) , the most ill ask you to do is something relatively easy and stupid.

As for allowing fly for based off the "difficulty" of builds, I do not believe that would be effective, as it leaves room for interpretation, and you would actually allow "staff favourtism" to play a role.

And also to address the fact of being unfair for building personal builds. I'd like to remind everyone that the creative world exist, and world edit does so too. Whether or not it is a huge burden to the staff team, is another question

[Cbddallas]

I agree with most of what Myst has said; however I have seen instances that I as a player might perceive as staff "favoritism" in giving out /fly.  If a player doesn't feel comfortable asking for /fly or know that they are allowed to ask for it, seeing other players in /fly mode could then look a lot like favoritism. 

I also don't think region-specific fly is a good solution, not only because of the abuse potential that Myst pointed out, but also in that it relies on staff to know which villages have it and to monitor its use on an ongoing basis.  A per-player perm is much more easily tracked and managed. 

I'm not against either or both of the following:  1) more structure for giving out /fly to players - something like a permit - tell us what you want it for, and how long you think you need it; and 2) more regulation against staff using /fly for their personal builds.  I already don't think staff should use /fly for building farms. 

I'm also not against removing /fly and /gamemode creative from inactive or former staff.

Dallas

[Akomine]

In defense of region-based fly:

This could still be a per-player permission, but it would be limited to a specific region. We could include a rule that absolutely forbids use of fly for the construction of any sort of industrial auto-farm or spawner device. We should probably make that a rule regardless honestly.

Now, about how we go about granting fly in the first place, I don't know, but however we do it we should probably keep a public log of it.

[Daypath (OP)]

I think that allowing players /fly whenever they want with a "permit" or allowing them to have fly whenever they're in a village can be misused easily. Although players may be punished for using this during PvP there are also other issues as Myst mentioned such as exploring areas with fly - this would be hard to keep track of.

What I initially proposed is not much different than what we have now, but I wanted to create more "guidelines" as to when players & staff should be using fly.
Ex: Not using fly for farms, using fly for builds in the air, etc.

[Akomine]

I think that allowing players /fly whenever they want with a "permit" or allowing them to have fly whenever they're in a village can be misused easily. Although players may be punished for using this during PvP there are also other issues as Myst mentioned such as exploring areas with fly - this would be hard to keep track of.

What I initially proposed is not much different than what we have now, but I wanted to create more "guidelines" as to when players & staff should be using fly.
Ex: Not using fly for farms, using fly for builds in the air, etc.

I'm spitballin:

If we go thru with this, I more or less think that someone granted fly should need to specifically agree to some standardized wording that says they will not build any industrialized autofarm/spawner device, not engage in pvp, and understand that their fly ability is intended as a building tool in their agreed upon region for their build.

The Staff member(s) granting this should then be required to log it; "Gave Daypath /fly for village build in Skystar-McMansion region".

I also wonder if we should be offering this tool to Villages of a certain tier or not? That way it could already be established, there's proof of concept, and thus the Staff member goes "yeah, I see what you got goin here, this build would def be helped with a lil /fly"

[Noket]

I agree with most of what Myst has said; however I have seen instances that I as a player might perceive as staff "favoritism" in giving out /fly.  If a player doesn't feel comfortable asking for /fly or know that they are allowed to ask for it, seeing other players in /fly mode could then look a lot like favoritism. 

I also don't think region-specific fly is a good solution, not only because of the abuse potential that Myst pointed out, but also in that it relies on staff to know which villages have it and to monitor its use on an ongoing basis.  A per-player perm is much more easily tracked and managed. 

I'm not against either or both of the following:  1) more structure for giving out /fly to players - something like a permit - tell us what you want it for, and how long you think you need it; and 2) more regulation against staff using /fly for their personal builds.  I already don't think staff should use /fly for building farms. 

I'm also not against removing /fly and /gamemode creative from inactive or former staff.

Dallas

I should probably clarify - what I had in mind, and had proposed (or at least was implying) - was that a traceable system would be where new regions are created and deleted which define the regions where fly can be used (independent of a village region).

Ie: a player wants to build a statue at xyz coords? Great. Here's a region that only allows fly around xyz coords (not their entire village)

this would nullify myst's point - no way to build a farm if the fly region is narrowly coordinate restricted solely to the confines of that build project.

and for traceability - all that would need to happen is for the fly region to be a child of any abstract parent region .. it could literally be named "fly-parent", and all the regions that grant fly would be children of that parent.

alls I'm saying is, region based perms is a good idea and can work while minimize staff supervision.

that said - my ideas are getting shit on lately, so fuck it.

[TheLegend12369]

I just saw this thread and wanted to give my opinion as one of the people that wrote the permissions list for legacy staff and as a member of legacy staff.

The intention of legacy staff, from my point of view, was to encourage staff members to leave staff if they were no longer active. In my experience, there were many staff members that were either no longer passionate about helping develop or improve the server or were too busy with life to continue to be an effective staff member. These staff members were sticking around on staff because they had grown accustomed to building with fly and creative. I wanted to give an avenue for staff members to leave that were only staying on for those quality of life things. The intention was to create more room on staff for people that were passionate and able to serve the players.

I understand the frustration seeing staff build with creative and fly. That was part of the reason why I tried to get the creative world (which I apparently did not set up in a way that is conducive to building or aesthetics) up and running. I wanted to let people build and play around there in an area where it was harder to abuse these permissions.

I personally gave out fly pretty liberally to almost anyone who asked when I was staff, to the point that I was scolded many times. I understand the benefits of fly and it certainly does make building easier. While I would love for players to more frequently have access to fly, there are a few reasons this is hard to accomplish in an effective way.

1. Players, unlike staff, are not accustomed to enforcing server rules and are more likely to abuse fly. This is a bit of an assumption on my part, but previous staff members that are in legacy staff have been staff and have been tasked with enforcing rules. Yes, we can still have cases of abuse within staff, but in general it's much less likely that staff or ex-staff exploit or abuse permissions.

2. I feel that it would be hard to monitor. When I give out fly to someone, I know who I'm giving it out to and how long I've given it out for. It's something that has to be done manually, by a staff member, and thus it creates accountability for that staff member. If a player abuses their fly that a staffer gave them, staff can hold that player and the staff member accountable and ensure that fly is only given to trustworthy players that will be less likely to abuse it. If players just had access, there is nothing stopping them from abusing it in PVP, the end, or any other host of problems that it could create.

3. I am unsure whether it would be clear in the logs, should we need to review them, if a player was abusing fly. To my knowledge, the only log that is created when using fly is the initial command to turn it on. There are many ways that players could do shady things with fly that would be hard to track, and staff might have a hard time ensuring players aren't abusing fly.

I think a good solution, should we choose to change how fly is given out, would be to create an application of sorts to receive fly in a given region for a given amount of time. Personally, this seems easy enough to track and enforce; just make a Google form like we do with moderation logs where staff need to track who has been given a fly region and for how long they are receiving it. Make them review a set of rules that staff could write and agree to them, and if they break any of the rules, punish them accordingly.

I personally have no issue extending fly to players more frequently. I also love the idea of standardizing rules, as it eliminates a lot of this sentiment that staff are playing favorites or are being unfair with who they give perms to.

I am against giving creative to players in most cases. It is very easy to abuse, both as staff and as a player. It concerns me that staff are selling ex-staff and current staff villages that were clearly built with creative, because as pointed out in the above discussion, many expensive blocks can be used when building in creative that would otherwise be more difficult to obtain. I'm not sure what the solution is here, but I think it's quite a bad idea to give unsupervised players creative. If the masses want to change the way creative is used by staff, I'd love to hear suggestions and solutions to the perceived unfairness.

Tldr: my recommendation is more or less in line with what Ako said, but region based instead of player based.

[Akomine]

Tldr: my recommendation is more or less in line with what Ako said, but region based instead of player based.

not both at once?

[FroggyBee]

I think that allowing players /fly whenever they want with a "permit" or allowing them to have fly whenever they're in a village can be misused easily. Although players may be punished for using this during PvP there are also other issues as Myst mentioned such as exploring areas with fly - this would be hard to keep track of.

What I initially proposed is not much different than what we have now, but I wanted to create more "guidelines" as to when players & staff should be using fly.
Ex: Not using fly for farms, using fly for builds in the air, etc.

I'm spitballin:

If we go thru with this, I more or less think that someone granted fly should need to specifically agree to some standardized wording that says they will not build any industrialized autofarm/spawner device, not engage in pvp, and understand that their fly ability is intended as a building tool in their agreed upon region for their build.

The Staff member(s) granting this should then be required to log it; "Gave Daypath /fly for village build in Skystar-McMansion region".

I also wonder if we should be offering this tool to Villages of a certain tier or not? That way it could already be established, there's proof of concept, and thus the Staff member goes "yeah, I see what you got goin here, this build would def be helped with a lil /fly"

I think that having some guidelines is a great idea, as well as requiring staff to log it each time. But that is also a system based on trust and every staff member (even the more inactive ones) would have to acknowledge and apply any time they are asked. I can see favoritism happening in these instances as well.

I think that having those guidelines in place would make a great gateway to regulating /fly if it was able to be auto logged. It feel like (to me) the biggest issue is how hard it is to keep track of it's use.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but would we be able to have log block show whether or not something was built with/without fly or whatever gamemode the player is in? Or at least something in that ballpark, like automatically logging the time frame each player uses it. Again, don't know how all of that works so I'm also just spitballing.