Whelp

[Towelie]

Turns out the EULA is even more strict and that we aren't even allowed to offer non-cosmetic vote rewards

https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/eula-info-nugget-allowed-disallowed-perks.159648/

Offending servers will be permanently blacklisted. Which means get ready for no vote rewards (or cosmetic vote rewards which I have no idea what that even is).
Oh and we're not even allowed to offer non-cosmetic contest prizes any more.

And the emp /autoshops may be gone too:
Examples of things that may only be offered for soft currency (a currency that can only be earned in-game):
-A non-cosmetic item or perk that is dropped in an area accessible by everyone, whether other players are notified of the drop or not.

Other notable things:
- All disguises into things that can originally fly are gone. Even if they can no longer fly now (eg bat, chicken, wither, blaze)
- Riding pets is not allowed any more
-"Vote tokens" are not considered soft currency, meaning that the same restrictions apply as for hard currency (real money). (aka offerning non-cosmetic eula vote rewards is no longer allowed)

And so on.

[CallOfTheElements]

This is bad news, but we just need to keep jetting around with our siphons puffing out the water of the past and taking in new bouts of amazingness that is the future! we will make it through this!

[iLaxrv10]

Well, this isn't exactly the first thing I wanted to see after landing in Italy... Anyways, were a very strong community and I know well get though this! 

[calfrokrill]

Oh my goodness, this is NOT what I expected.

Everything will go well, I can assure you!

(You suck, EULA, destroying servers like ours.)

[Loasty]

This is getting stupid as fuck and in reality, i suspect at the next minecon there is gonna probably be a HUGE group of people who own servers and such that will end up causing a frenzy, Thats just my opinion.  They are ruining the damn game and it isnt fair to anyone, cant do anything fun anymore and its forcing people into realms that NOBODY wants

[Towelie]

This is getting stupid as fuck and in reality, i suspect at the next minecon there is gonna probably be a HUGE group of people who own servers and such that will end up causing a frenzy, Thats just my opinion.  They are ruining the damn game and it isnt fair to anyone, cant do anything fun anymore and its forcing people into realms that NOBODY wants

Actually the public response seems to be something along the lines of "Thank you for saving us from our evil server overlords who had the nerve to try and pay their server bills by allowing us to buy stuff and enjoy ourselves."

[Fractalion]

Are we allowed to offer non-minecraft related rewards in exchange for votes?

For example, a vote for one of our minecraft servers = something on ARK?

Also, what is defined as a soft currency? What if we replace EmpBucks with diamonds, for example? (Is it still considered a soft currency if you can turn diamonds into said currency, and turn said currency back into diamonds without any fee, essentially just being a way of storing your diamonds and sending them between players with greater ease)

If we can do that, then maybe the emp/autoshops can be saved. (and even if we can't do something exactly like that, we can still switch to some sort of system that is similar. A Gold block/ingot/nugget system, perhaps?)

Either way this is frustrating.

[Towelie]

Are we allowed to offer non-minecraft related rewards in exchange for votes?

For example, a vote for one of our minecraft servers = something on ARK?

Also, what is defined as a soft currency? What if we replace EmpBucks with diamonds, for example? (Is it still considered a soft currency if you can turn diamonds into said currency, and turn said currency back into diamonds without any fee, essentially just being a way of storing your diamonds and sending them between players with greater ease)

If we can do that, then maybe the emp/autoshops can be saved. (and even if we can't do something exactly like that, we can still switch to some sort of system that is similar. A Gold block/ingot/nugget system, perhaps?)

Either way this is frustrating.

I honestly don't know if a soft currency is just a virtual currency or an item currency as well.
That still leaves us with the  vote rewards system against the eula and if we stop offering rewards our votes will probably drop by 90% meaning it's a sure way to die.

[ochoaj]

This is getting stupid as fuck and in reality, i suspect at the next minecon there is gonna probably be a HUGE group of people who own servers and such that will end up causing a frenzy, Thats just my opinion.  They are ruining the damn game and it isnt fair to anyone, can't do anything fun anymore and its forcing people into realms that NOBODY wants.

I agree. The EULA regulations are pathetic. I don't think they understand that servers need money to operate. If people don't agree with our prices on the server, then they can go find another one.

I really do hope that people protest these shitty rules crumble and fail. It's time we stand up for what we think is right, even though they may think it's just a game. But it's not just a game, it also serves as a platform for the creation of a strong community, the ability for friends to be made, and to incorporate other cultures into your own.

If they want to create a set of rules that we want to follow, then we must all approve of it. This is absolutely fucking ridiculous. 

[Fractalion]

Back when they did that first round of blacklisting I looked at the things they were going to start enforcing through the EULA, and I thought to myself "Yeah, alright, their demands are fair. They're a bit annoying, and they're going to hurt a lot of communities, but they're fair." I looked at it and said "Yeah, we can continue forward as a Minecraft-centric community. It'll be a bit harder, but we can still make it."

I don't really feel that way anymore.

I figured the new servers we're hosting would be less of a new focus for the community, and more of an additional bonus type of deal, but I'm now starting to see that the new servers are going to have to be the things that keep us going.

At this rate, Mojang will have everything but pure vanilla gameplay banned by this time next year. (or they will have removed the ability to connect to non-realms servers entirely)

I can't say that Rust, LiF, or ARK interest me at all, but since it seems like Minecraft won't be a viable game to host for much longer, I suppose I'll start looking for a game that we can host that does interest me.

[Dpa1991]

This is bad news, but we just need to keep jetting around with our siphons puffing out the water of the past and taking in new bouts of amazingness that is the future! we will make it through this!

And then mojang will tell us we cant do that either. They gave the seal of approval for rank missions, only to wait until servers had it developed to give them a month to remove it. Mojang only has one goal, and that's to shut us down to promote their new minecraft "addons"

[Fractalion]

This is bad news, but we just need to keep jetting around with our siphons puffing out the water of the past and taking in new bouts of amazingness that is the future! we will make it through this!

And then mojang will tell us we cant do that either. They gave the seal of approval for rank missions, only to wait until servers had it developed to give them a month to remove it. Mojang only has one goal, and that's to shut us down to promote their new minecraft "addons"

I hadn't even heard about their add-ons thing yet, which tells me the community isn't that excited about it.

This just reinforces my belief that they aren't going to stop banning random bits of what made the Minecraft community great until we're eventually left with nothing but the base game, and stuff that is made through their add-on system. It's a shame that they're slowing driving their game into the ground.

[Dpa1991]

This is bad news, but we just need to keep jetting around with our siphons puffing out the water of the past and taking in new bouts of amazingness that is the future! we will make it through this!

And then mojang will tell us we cant do that either. They gave the seal of approval for rank missions, only to wait until servers had it developed to give them a month to remove it. Mojang only has one goal, and that's to shut us down to promote their new minecraft "addons"

I hadn't even heard about their add-ons thing yet, which tells me the community isn't that excited about it.

This just reinforces my belief that they aren't going to stop banning random bits of what made the Minecraft community great until we're eventually left with nothing but the base game, and stuff that is made through their add-on system. It's a shame that they're slowing driving their game into the ground.

https://youtu.be/3Dc8JrTyC2I here's the video of you're interested. So why doesn't ark interest you?

[Fractalion]

-snip-

https://youtu.be/3Dc8JrTyC2I here's the video of you're interested. So why doesn't ark interest you?

I certainly hope their add-on thing offers more than just tweaking the AI, models, and textures of mobs.

As for ARK, I've looked at it several times but I feel like the creative aspect of the game just doesn't appeal to me. I know you can paint basically everything however you want, but the options for building seem far too restrictive to me. I've never really been a fan of any games of its type.

The only types of multiplayer games that really interest me all that much anymore are the ones where I can produce some sort of creative work, or ones that offer a bunch of unique experiences with each play session. Since the creative side of ARK doesn't impress me all that much, it basically just becomes a game of "collect the dinos until you're out of dinos to collect, and then get bored and don't bother with it anymore". I could go through the process of collecting them all, but at the end of that process I'd probably just end up feeling like I've wasted a lot of time.

What I like about games like Minecraft is that even though I am very aware that it's essentially a waste of time, while I am building stuff I'm expressing my creative side, which'll help me with future creative works. It doesn't even need to be an artsy creative work. Things like redstone are great because I'm basically teaching myself how to solve a logic based problem more efficiently in the process.

On the other hand, games that offer unique experiences with every play session interest me because of the social aspect of it. Minecraft doesn't fit this one as well, but some of our events offer that sort of thing. You know, those experiences where you and a small handful of other people will look back and say "Hey, you remember that time when ..."

I'm sure ARK is fun for you and the others who play it for a variety of reasons, but it just doesn't interest me all that much.

Also: PVP just generally doesn't interest me at all unless there is some form of roleplay involved, and I find it even less appealing when the PVP has a period of building up resources involved. I can get behind some PVP, like in GTA Online for example, where the PVP is fast and has little consequence for failure, but in games like ARK where you it may have taken you an hour to prepare for an encounter and you have the risk of losing everything you've worked for, I think failure is just soul crushing and not at all appealing.

I know you're going to be opening a PVE ARK server, but I just wanted to throw it out there that that's another reason it doesn't interest me. There's a reason I ended up on a non-PVP Minecraft server, after all. xd

[Doctor_Thanos]

If you ask for my opinion this is just the continuous attempts of Mojang to shut down servers and force players to play together on Realms. This is absolutely bloody ridiculous!

I personally believe we can make it. We are a strong community. Along with the votes for events there are still people who actually care and will vote for SFT. 

[Dpa1991]

If you ask for my opinion this is just the continuous attempts of Mojang to shut down servers and force players to play together on Realms. This is absolutely bloody ridiculous!

I personally believe we can make it. We are a strong community. Along with the votes for events there are still people who actually care and will vote for SFT. 

There will be no more vote parties or events for votes.

[Pookalton]

I hate to be a pessimist, but by the sounds of it, EULA seems to just want vanilla minecraft servers, and at this rate we won't be allowed anything but Vanilla minecraft... *sigh* I hope we can pull through this.

[Towelie]

EULA seems to just want vanilla minecraft servers

I believe they want realms not vanilla servers. And they want servers to be like a thing 4 friends play on, not dedicated servers as they are today

[Stariieyed]

-snip-

https://youtu.be/3Dc8JrTyC2I here's the video of you're interested. So why doesn't ark interest you?

I certainly hope their add-on thing offers more than just tweaking the AI, models, and textures of mobs.

As for ARK, I've looked at it several times but I feel like the creative aspect of the game just doesn't appeal to me. I know you can paint basically everything however you want, but the options for building seem far too restrictive to me. I've never really been a fan of any games of its type.

The only types of multiplayer games that really interest me all that much anymore are the ones where I can produce some sort of creative work, or ones that offer a bunch of unique experiences with each play session. Since the creative side of ARK doesn't impress me all that much, it basically just becomes a game of "collect the dinos until you're out of dinos to collect, and then get bored and don't bother with it anymore". I could go through the process of collecting them all, but at the end of that process I'd probably just end up feeling like I've wasted a lot of time.

What I like about games like Minecraft is that even though I am very aware that it's essentially a waste of time, while I am building stuff I'm expressing my creative side, which'll help me with future creative works. It doesn't even need to be an artsy creative work. Things like redstone are great because I'm basically teaching myself how to solve a logic based problem more efficiently in the process.

On the other hand, games that offer unique experiences with every play session interest me because of the social aspect of it. Minecraft doesn't fit this one as well, but some of our events offer that sort of thing. You know, those experiences where you and a small handful of other people will look back and say "Hey, you remember that time when ..."

I'm sure ARK is fun for you and the others who play it for a variety of reasons, but it just doesn't interest me all that much.

Also: PVP just generally doesn't interest me at all unless there is some form of roleplay involved, and I find it even less appealing when the PVP has a period of building up resources involved. I can get behind some PVP, like in GTA Online for example, where the PVP is fast and has little consequence for failure, but in games like ARK where you it may have taken you an hour to prepare for an encounter and you have the risk of losing everything you've worked for, I think failure is just soul crushing and not at all appealing.

I know you're going to be opening a PVE ARK server, but I just wanted to throw it out there that that's another reason it doesn't interest me. There's a reason I ended up on a non-PVP Minecraft server, after all. xd

I know what you mean, I like games where I can express my creativity as well. Ark could improve on building for sure. It can get to be frustrating to build a basic base even. As for how you like PVP, Survival of the Fittest might be more your style. Which is essentially Ark but hunger game style and completely free. Maybe SFT could host a match between players sometime...I'll keep an eye out for games that fit the whole creative while you're playing thing too, it'd be cool to find something like that for SFT to have a server on.

[TheStarNomad✯]

So by cosmetic vote rewards, does that mean we can offer, for example, access to pets or the vanity pack (if those are cosmetic) for a limited amount of time?
You never said anything about the reaction potion effects that you get when you win, perhaps you can add that to vote rewards too?

[Dpa1991]

-snip-

https://youtu.be/3Dc8JrTyC2I here's the video of you're interested. So why doesn't ark interest you?

I certainly hope their add-on thing offers more than just tweaking the AI, models, and textures of mobs.

As for ARK, I've looked at it several times but I feel like the creative aspect of the game just doesn't appeal to me. I know you can paint basically everything however you want, but the options for building seem far too restrictive to me. I've never really been a fan of any games of its type.

The only types of multiplayer games that really interest me all that much anymore are the ones where I can produce some sort of creative work, or ones that offer a bunch of unique experiences with each play session. Since the creative side of ARK doesn't impress me all that much, it basically just becomes a game of "collect the dinos until you're out of dinos to collect, and then get bored and don't bother with it anymore". I could go through the process of collecting them all, but at the end of that process I'd probably just end up feeling like I've wasted a lot of time.

What I like about games like Minecraft is that even though I am very aware that it's essentially a waste of time, while I am building stuff I'm expressing my creative side, which'll help me with future creative works. It doesn't even need to be an artsy creative work. Things like redstone are great because I'm basically teaching myself how to solve a logic based problem more efficiently in the process.

On the other hand, games that offer unique experiences with every play session interest me because of the social aspect of it. Minecraft doesn't fit this one as well, but some of our events offer that sort of thing. You know, those experiences where you and a small handful of other people will look back and say "Hey, you remember that time when ..."

I'm sure ARK is fun for you and the others who play it for a variety of reasons, but it just doesn't interest me all that much.

Also: PVP just generally doesn't interest me at all unless there is some form of roleplay involved, and I find it even less appealing when the PVP has a period of building up resources involved. I can get behind some PVP, like in GTA Online for example, where the PVP is fast and has little consequence for failure, but in games like ARK where you it may have taken you an hour to prepare for an encounter and you have the risk of losing everything you've worked for, I think failure is just soul crushing and not at all appealing.

I know you're going to be opening a PVE ARK server, but I just wanted to throw it out there that that's another reason it doesn't interest me. There's a reason I ended up on a non-PVP Minecraft server, after all. xd

I know what you mean, I like games where I can express my creativity as well. Ark could improve on building for sure. It can get to be frustrating to build a basic base even. As for how you like PVP, Survival of the Fittest might be more your style. Which is essentially Ark but hunger game style and completely free. Maybe SFT could host a match between players sometime...I'll keep an eye out for games that fit the whole creative while you're playing thing too, it'd be cool to find something like that for SFT to have a server on.

I wouldnt mind hosting a Ark SOTF server/event. Maybe we can even figure out a way to include prizes like a special forum badge or something (Like a signature)

[Dpa1991]

So by cosmetic vote rewards, does that mean we can offer, for example, access to pets or the vanity pack (if those are cosmetic) for a limited amount of time?
You never said anything about the reaction potion effects that you get when you win, perhaps you can add that to vote rewards too?

There are so few cosmetic perks that we would give away everything we have left to sell. At that point, why donate when you can just vote?

Only way I see this working is if we can give timed rewards as votes, but that wouldnt work because of limitations.

[Towelie]

Whelp http://www.minetest.net/

[Pookalton]

Whelp http://www.minetest.net/

Yup.

[Izzdaer]

Whelp http://www.minetest.net/

How can they et away wth that? Looks so similar I'm just sat here with a cup of tea toasting my marshmallows waiting for the legal battle to commence.