"Night skipping"

[Dale]

I see almost everyone doing this on my server. How can I prevent this without outright making it a rule to not do this? Also in your opinion is this "cheating"? Any thoughts are welcome..

[Sarudak]

What means are they using to skip the night?

EDIT: If this is vanilla you have a means available. Just switch to BTW. :D

[Shinxy]

I thinks he means where a player will immediately disconnect from a server if it's night-time, then wait a few minutes until it's nice and sunny out. The only way I could think of preventing it, outside of a rule, would be to somehow make your server all-night all the time. Could be funny, but a little extreme.

As for whether it's cheating... well, in SSP, if you close MC while you're in an open field while it's day time, it's still day when you sign back on. No guarantees for a server. On the other hand, they could've made the effort to always disconnect in a safe area, so it wouldn't matter if it's night or not when they relog. So, I'm on the fence of maybe.

[Foxy Boxes]

What means are they using to skip the night?

EDIT: If this is vanilla you have a means available. Just switch to BTW. :D

I'm guessing they're just logging out for the duration.

[FlowerChild]

I'd go ahead and make it a server rule man, as those kind of exploits are really outside the spirit of BTW in general.

And yeah, I'd definitely consider it cheating. You're using a metagame technique to avoid in-game challenges, which is pretty much the definition IMO :)

[Dale]

It is common practice to skip night to avoid animals getting killed off on my server. Obviously not talking about vanilla here.. And I assume this is the reason they are logging off every time it gets dark.. I just find it VERY distasteful when I see "Well you know the drill, night-skipping!" every ten minutes.

[Rob]

There is no way to stop them without enforcing a rule by banning players, or other means, for doing it. People will take the path of least resistance.

[Dale]

I'd go ahead and make it a server rule man, as those kind of exploits are really outside the spirit of BTW in general.

And yeah, I'd definitely consider it cheating. You're using a metagame technique to avoid in-game challenges, which is pretty much the definition IMO :)

Just the person I'd hoped would chime in. People aren't going to like it but I think you are right about just making it a rule. To be honest i understand it is hard to get started, especially on my server as its a large biome jungle spawn ;) which is very unbalanced for BTW to begin with. BUT it is doable. I am already hunting a blaze rod myself and haven't logged off for night once.

[FlowerChild]

It is common practice to skip night to avoid animals getting killed off on my server. Obviously not talking about vanilla here.. And I assume this is the reason they are logging off every time it gets dark.. I just find it VERY distasteful when I see "Well you know the drill, night-skipping!" every ten minutes.

Yeah, definitely cheating there then.

I've considered implementing systems on several occasions that leave players active in the world for a period after logging off, or prevent rejoining for a specific period, but ultimately, that kind of thing winds up hurting legit players under the worst circumstances as well (like losing your connection and dying because of it).

One of the worst cases of these kinds of abuses you run into is players disconnecting right before dying or whatever to prevent it, which was largely why I was contemplating the above.

At a certain point, it comes down to players being responsible about their own experience, and server admins being willing to enforce rules to prevent that kind of thing. Sorry I don't have a better answer for you, as yes, this kind of stuff bugs the shit out of me too.

[Dale]

It is common practice to skip night to avoid animals getting killed off on my server. Obviously not talking about vanilla here.. And I assume this is the reason they are logging off every time it gets dark.. I just find it VERY distasteful when I see "Well you know the drill, night-skipping!" every ten minutes.

Yeah, definitely cheating there then.

I've considered implementing systems on several occasions that leave players active in the world for a period after logging off, or prevent rejoining for a specific period, but ultimately, that kind of thing winds up hurting legit players under the worst circumstances as well (like losing your connection and dying because of it).

One of the worst cases of these kinds of abuses you run into is players disconnecting right before dying or whatever to prevent it, which was largely why I was contemplating the above.

At a certain point, it comes down to players being responsible about their own experience, and server admins being willing to enforce rules to prevent that kind of thing. Sorry I don't have a better answer for you, as yes, this kind of stuff bugs the shit out of me too.

Its done, I agree with you here and made it a rule. Surprisingly no one rejected this whos on right now. Maybe because they know its cheaty. Just maybe.

[FlowerChild]

Well, I think BTW players tend to be particularly mature about such things, otherwise they'd likely be playing something else :P

Sometimes it just doesn't occur to people that what they're doing really qualifies as cheating when it comes down to it.

[Daisjun]

One of the worst cases of these kinds of abuses you run into is players disconnecting right before dying or whatever to prevent it, which was largely why I was contemplating the above.

I hate to admit that I'm guilty of this from time to time, particularly when it comes to hats or endermen aggro. DCing unfortunately acts as sort of a panic button. It's extremely hard to monitor, other than to find players who are honest and aren't tempted to do it.

[DaveYanakov]

The all night all the time option is actually viable. We used to play around with variable day lengths and the two months we spent with a 25 minute day followed by 35 of darkness seemed to fit the best. Particularly if you wait fifteen minutes before opening up the server. The ruleset that gave us ten seconds of daylight every 30 minutes was a lot of fun but may not be conducive to survival under the new survival game.

[erikdk321]

I just think you should make it a rule, but i dont see how logging off would save you from dying though, i know you get a little invinsibility when rejoining but i dont see how it would save you from an enderman or a herd of pigmen :)

[Dale]

The all night all the time option is actually viable. We used to play around with variable day lengths and the two months we spent with a 25 minute day followed by 35 of darkness seemed to fit the best. Particularly if you wait fifteen minutes before opening up the server. The ruleset that gave us ten seconds of daylight every 30 minutes was a lot of fun but may not be conducive to survival under the new survival game.

That is amazing, sad I missed out on that. As I have no clue how to make it alwasy night or change the lengths of days.. and nights.

[DiamondArms]

As a server OP, you can get and set command blocks to change the time of day. hooking up a command block to a lens/DB daylight detector and setting the command to "/timeset night" should work. It'll trigger whenever dawn breaks and the light becomes bright enough for the lens to shine.

Shorter daylight is slightly trickier, since you need to know the numbers for time of day. This one you can figure out for yourself, as the amount of daylight you want for each day is up to you.

A server I used to play on had OPs that did eternal night sessions to hunt mobs. It's quite interesting, but has a tendency to break builds that are day cycle dependent, or just reliant on daylight sensors in general, like long timers or animal feeders.

[magikeh]

Just to remember that its gonna take a hellova lot longer for that bit of hemp to grow first thing if the server is allways night.. that is if you have not figured out some way to create a light block.

[Dale]

I wont be going for the all night theme, and the problem with command blocks they have to be in loaded chunks. But all good ideas of course. Just not right for this server. The players have already adjusted and it is like Flower said, generally BTW players actually are mature. Go figure he was right.

[weldaSB]

You can put command blocks at spawn(big bedrock box in space) because spawn is always loaded.

[DaveYanakov]

Warr made a wrapper to allow the use of nether portals in SMP back before the great SSP/SMP integration. The control over the sun was one of the feature that he built in. If someone would be interested in updating it for 1.5 the code is open source.

[johnt]

I wonder if you just set the server to drain hunger faster during the daylight or something like that, if it would encourage people to hang around at night to do hunger-draining stuff like mining.

[erikdk321]

Well, althought that might be a solution, im not sure if it's the right one. It might be a little much if you just spawned.
I think a rule will do the trick, after we made that rule people are not doing it anymore.