There's been talk about resetting the server with Minecraft 1.9. Do you guys support this? Why or why not?

Also, is there anything we should change: Adjusted rules? Map size? Number of accounts per person? Currency? Let's talk about it!

We should go back to the discouraged-PvP model of 1.5 and 1.6. We were much happier that way. The currency and resource purchasing should be kept though, since it makes acquiring building materials easier or simply possible. Start with a reasonably sized (say, 3500x3500) map to get the main biomes for resources, seed depending. We won't get everything, but the 1.8 server is missing a lot.

Now as to why I say go back to 1.6-style paradigm: although our most mature members are capable of keeping their opinions of users separate between the forums and Minecraft, the vast majority don't. PvP builds distrust, and a lot of actions players do are taken personally; ultimately, it oozes over to the forums whether it is plainly visible or not. A bunch of users have disappeared from the forums, either because of this or some other reason like the amount of time it takes to run a Minecraft town. Even though the most prominent members don't do this, it is acknowledged that the vast majority of users do, and that is not healthy for the forums.

I agree with CVSoft: discourage PvP, keep currency, and start with a smaller map, expanding it as updates come out. I also think we should not use a whitelist and keep using towny, so we can protect our builds from griefers and trolls that may join.

Here's the problem. On the one hand, I agree completely with you: PvP has led several people to become less active, first on the server, and later on the forum. I can think of at least one specific example of this. There have also been a lot of hurt feelings when players have taken things spoken outside the purview of the server (for example, in what was supposed to be a friendly Skype chat) and used those as weapons against players on the server. There are certainly acerbic rivalries on the server, between individual players, towns, and nations, and while that is the basis of active PvP, it definitely feels like it's gotten personal, to the point of nearly bullying.

On the other hand, that competition is a lot of what drives both the activity and the creativity on the server, including the creativity to bend the rules and exploit glitches to get past increasingly-complex town security. We've certainly seen a lot of creative builds that use redstone mechanisms to detect and protect against invaders, and we've also seen towns that just go the brute-force method of encasing their towns in a monolithic cobblestone box. I want to see us continuing to have creative builds and significant activity on the server, regardless of what direction we go in. What ways can you guys think of to maintain the uniqueness of Cemetech's Minecraft server, as driven by the mental prowess of our programming userbase, while making it a more mature and thoughtful server? Our goal with this incarnation has been to make it a welcoming place for mature, sportsmanlike individuals who enjoy proving their worth by creativity and ingenuity, and I think we've failed to meet that goal.

We don't necessarily need PvP to create good builds. Glitching has primarily driven the "cobblestone-box" design that has been adopted by a number of towns. Knowing that there is minimal risk of material theft encourages extravagant designs that would not be sensible in a PvP environment. We simply need to continue to encourage building, rather than force it with PvP.

Here's a weird idea: what if we allow player-on-player killing, but not stealing from chests? On the other hand, I feel that the vast majority of the PvP-related activity on the server is currently stealthy theft rather than full-on attacks.

That could work, but I feel like that would encourage new players to hide in their town all of the time and not venture out to other towns, but I guess that's what we have currently

Everyone relevant has armor too strong to bother with, so it's easier to steal and break things than to kill players. It'd be a bit weird to allow stealing from inventories but not from chests. On the other hand, Bosaik found a pickpocketing plugin, you should talk to him about that.

Speaking as a non-admin.

I'm all for getting players out of their abodes. Such as selecting a non-farmable currency and disallowing PvP outside of permitted areas. If we go with a server reset we should build an arena in spawn for structured PvP. I want to use Thalassius as an example, there were many wonderful PvP "matches" in the underwater dome. There was also a smaller arena outside that saw it's share of matches as well. I feel like our server is more PvE than it is PvP, but people like PvP when it's organized and fair.

And if we change currency to something that isn't so easily attainable and set the value accordingly, we can have a nice balance of design/luxury of towns and exploration. If it's PvE there won't be a need for luxurious vaults, padded bank accounts to buy the enchanted armor and weapons one desires. As such, if we let PvE feel a bit like an RPG where you actually have to work for your things, it'll actually feel rewarding and the PvP aspects will be fairer.

I agree with Comic, a structured PvP environment with on a freebuild server would enhance creativity far more then the current PvP server. It would allow those who wish to revel in the excitement and adrenaline fueled combat of PvP to do so, while at the same time allow those who wish to build beautiful towns and structures to do so as well without being worried about being killed and losing valuable materials. The current PvP atmosphere as extremely hampered creative builds as is obvious if you compare the museum map to the current cemetech PvP world. There are no huge colosseum arenas, no Pyramid towers that reach for the sky, no beautifully designed bridges that hop from one island to another, no warships, no Big ports and lighthouses, and all this is just in a small section of the old map. Instead all the beauty of cemetech is hidden underground or inside cobble boxes. More time is spent on worrying about if its worth building and losing materials then what the next improvement to your town should be. There are impressive builds in cemetech! Im not saying there aren't, Pandemonium is a great castle, Arcadia is a fortress, and Thalassius is a great place to explore. They are also some the least attacked towns, as well as a few of the oldest. They have time to slowly build up there towns and didn't have to worry as much about losing resources. Whenever a big battle happens in cemetech, building slows or stops, and instead war economies take over and the massive cobble wall and server breaking glitches begin.

I am not a PvP person, but I will tolerate it when it is fair. Everything has begun to feel personal, and I think it's because of the politics that have been put in place. Politics on a server turn things into an RPG if not kept under control. I don't know who thought things were boring and decided to amp up the politics, but whoever did took things way too far.
It's one thing to let your feelings drive you into doing your best in a game, but it's a whole other thing when your feelings tie into your actions in a game. Minecraft is meant to be a survival buildy kind of game. You build stuff to keep monsters away and you make things to combat said monsters. Those monsters run on AI; they don't plan, they don't scheme.
Adding people under the "monster" category (as in, they can attack/be attacked) makes it almost an entirely different game if the PvP is not controlled. Adding environments like towny, factions, etc. helps; but then you open the world up to real life feelings and agitations which can in turn destroy the entire aspect of the game. Making games multiplayer gives people a way to release their stresses of the day and talk to their friends about this stupid thing that happened or that stupid thing that happened which resulted in this and that, especially when they get to release their anger by killing things and other people.
Yeah, it's fun to kill people in a game. I love play-fighting with my friends; but when you have to sit through insults, lies, schemes coming out in the open...even if it's not against you, it still hurts, because that's your friend being spawn killed; that's your friend not being able to freely build what he wants to because he will just get shot off the top of his scaffolding; and why? Because he just exists.
This is uncontrolled PvP. This is not fun PvP. Even I have enough sense to not kill someone when they are AFK. And I play PvP minigames where the whole point is to get as many kills as possible. Watching your friends fight against each other is so painful. When you haven't had enough real friends in life, it gets really hard to distinguish between real life insults in a game and game insults in a game; especially when you've been bullied since 11 years old and you have to live with insults thrown at you every day from the most unlikely person you would think of. Games give me an out; and when that turns into basically my everyday life, it's a turn off.
This isn't about the currency. This isn't about getting a new map. This isn't about being able/not being able to build awesome looking buildings. Those are just symptoms of the real issue. Everything that's happened has happened because of politics going too far. If that gets fixed, everything else can be discussed in fairness. No one can pick a side for a reason to leverage themselves, and no one will be accused of doing such a thing and put down for it.
If you want lies, schemes, buildings to combat said schemes, and mass PvP, then don't call this server a towny server anymore because it isn't. The only proper name for this server is factions. It already is a factions server now, but just to make it official it should have the name "factions".
Well that won't happen if people are hiding in their bases awaiting their coming death and getting shot off the tops of their builds with loads of expensive materials on them. PvP has gotten so out of hand with all the politics and rumours going around. Once that stops, I don't see a reason why creative builds and significant activity would not continue.
I have been playing on a towny server (it's actually a hub server with factions, creative, towny, and a couple other things) for about a week now and I think Cemetech should at least model after it. It has mobs that get tougher to fight the farther you get away from spawn; jobs where you can earn money; towns for 5k where upkeep increases with the amount of people (but I think it's a flat rate until you get maybe 10 people or something I don't know for sure) and plot claiming is expensive, so money gathering is balanced; there's no PvP, but quite frankly that makes sense because of the tougher mobs; lockette to lock the chests; and no griefing/stealing/bad language. Everything is balanced there, at least money-wise and town-wise. Maybe make towns non-PvP zones and keep wilderness as a PvP zone?
I guess what I'm trying to say is when there's no fuel to add to the fire, it dies down and gives off a nice glow. When there isn't any insulting and unfair fighting, the server turns into something nice and calm. That's a helpful thing when you're trying to de-stress and stuff. Yeah, that might get boring after a while, but that's where the friendly fights and minigames come in. Survival servers are meant mainly for friends to get together and have fun, and I don't see how unfair PvP is fun. I don't see how bragging about having the most kills in a day is fun. I don't see how being proud of crushing someone else when they were AFK or stealing someone's bow when they weren't looking is fun. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

Should We Reset

I wholeheartedly agree with what Chauronslilsis said about "uncontrolled PVP," I might be able to speak for others when I say the server has been stressful lately, and would be happy to see a PvE experience, with Towny or not. As to what Kerm said, I agree there would be some reduced creativity, but what has that creativity led to? And I'm sure with peace among players we could go even farther!

Rules

Same as what we have I guess, but no griefing or PVP? I think it makes sense.

Map
CVSoft is right, we could use a different seed with a bigger map so there's a bit more variety in the terrain and so we have resources to thrive and also let the creative juices flow with more options. Perhaps we could do something like the current Mindcrack season and have an expanding world border that slowly reaches 3500x3500 like CVSoft said? Maybe that would create competition, but I think it would be cool.

Those are just my three cents, thanks for reading.

I'm all for a PvP pot at spawn!
Though maybe the server could be like a single town and then you have to do quests from the "headsman" (NPC) and once you do a certain number you get perks or something. For example,a kit and allowance to make your own town without quests in the world. Kind of like a prison server...
The quests would probably require custom plugins though

Map Reset
I am in favor of a server map reset for 1.9. I believe that it is approaching the time for a server reset soon apart from any other reason, but feel it would also alleviate and settle any long term tensions built up.

Map Dynamics: PvP vs. PvE
I really enjoy being creative, and at the same time being able to have mature drama through PvP. I understand that based off of what most people are saying, and based on the current standing of the general community, that it would seem that the current dynamic that is currently in place is not best suited for everyone. While I personally enjoy this PvP dynamic, I don't think this is the best choice for everyone for a couple of reasons. First, you have the group of people who enjoy just building and not having to worry about their resources and assets being jeopardized. Secondly, you have a group of people who might enjoy the dynamic, but fail to be mature and realize that you're not supposed to mix IRL and in-game material... it still happens even if people claim they're not doing that. Especially when you mix the two crowds together, it can get a bit chaotic.

Based on what I personally prefer, and balancing it with what everyone tends to prefer, I propose a middle ground that could make both parties happy if it's done right.
We don't necessarily have to move to an all out PvE, or full PvP dynamic, the examples being the 1.6 PvE map, versus the current PvP map we're playing in in 1.8. The idea sprouts from one attribute in Towny: PvP enabled/disabled. Let's say that I'm someone who wants to avoid the PvP altogether and wishes to opt out. I could simply say that I want my town to have PvP disabled. This would be cool because you'd be able to play in the dynamic you prefer without trampling on another's preference. We could do likewise for people who want to PvP-- they can enable PvP in their towns, but here's the kick to it. If you choose to opt out of PvP by toggling it to disabled in your town, that likewise means either by the bounds of rules, or by an in-game plugin, that you are not allowed to PvP against anyone else, even if their town has PvP on. It doesn't make much sense in fairness that you can cower from PvP and then go attack someone and not have them attack you. However, if you wish to be able to attack and raid PvP-enabled towns, then you yourself must allow PvP in your town. This would allow both parties to play in the style they wish... so if 2 parties mutually agree they would prefer to be able to PvP against other towns, then they may do so, while concurrently respecting another party's play style of non-PvP. This feature could become abusive though if people toggle between the two to immediately choose when they want to PvP and when they don't want to kind of like a Facebook status update... so I think if this were to be used, we'd need to have a mechanism or system that only allows you to toggle your PvP stance once every week/month of some sort at most. And all of this could build on top of the idea that wilderness is by default a PvP zone except for designated safe zones such as spawn.

I again, really look forward to both the creative building, and the PvP aspects, and would love to have the ability to still PvP against others who have the mutual opinion, while not completely hindering others who are against it. PvP is the dynamic that has brought me back to the server more beyond having the motivation to build something. When I lack the motivation to build something in a purely PvE environment, I'll head off because there's not much else to do besides build.

Map Dynamics: Nether vs. Teleportation?
Additionally, I would favor having the nether in any map dynamic as it would be cool to have, as well as perhaps a substitute for teleportation. Back in the 1.6 map, there was no teleportation, but we did have the nether that allowed for fast transportation.
I feel because of the teleportation in the current map, it has made ground transportation such as horses and even rail, semi-irrelevant. (Main purpose for horses sadly is glitching through walls)
The teleportation has also caused issues in PvP where people like to box themselves in and never interact with the outside world, and use teleportation to go in and out of an impenetrable box. Ridding the teleportation altogether I feel would encourage people to see no point to a box, and focus more on protecting only certain places, and creatively improving the aesthetics overall of their town for everywhere else. Of course, allowing the nether would balance the absence of teleportation if it were to be purged from the map dynamics, and makes flows better with how things would be done in vanilla minecraft. This would still be cool even apart from a PvP environment to encourage adventuring more, rather than running a ton of commands to flip back and forth between two or three places at will-- you might as well have the ability to fly if all you do is teleport between locations.

Rules
Most of the rules in place are pretty good, but we will need to generalize one of the rules to prohibit any form of taking advantage of a server-client discontinuity. If towny and PvP are to continue together in any form, you shouldn't be able to do anything on the server that Towny or any other plugin otherwise doesn't allow a way to do something. Specifically, this would mean stuff like clipping through blocks that are physically present and unbreakable serverside, should not be taken advantage of clientside.
I feel like the rules should be further discussed upon agreeing upon a map dynamic, as to how the server will function. There's not much indication as to which were we're going get, so further rules specific to the map dynamic are yet to be determined.

Economy
If the server is to continue with an economy, I am in favor of a currency that you can't AFK to get. There is no point of having a monetary system if all you need to do is let your computer sit to earn money. At that point, there might as well be no currency system and to let free trade amongst the community decide for itself how to exchange goods and services kind of like how a non-economy PvE server would function (Cemetech 1.6 map?).

Multiple Accounts
As far as multiple accounts goes, I understand that people pay money for extra accounts, but in all fairness, I wouldn't favor it. Even if I could buy another account for myself to use simultaneously, I wouldn't. In terms of server fairness in general (PvP or PvE), but especially in context of PvP, it's not exactly fair that one person can both AFK somewhere and do something else at the same time and play multiple people in one, while there are other people who can't use another minecraft account. I don't feel like you should be able to just spend more IRL money to earn yourself an advantage in-game.
I understand that people with multiple accounts might argue this possibly because, yes, they spent $30 on a 2nd minecraft account and don't want that to go to waste. However, that is beyond the whether or not it is actually fair to others. Having 2 or more accounts is similar to having the ability to duplicate items, which is looked down upon.

Physical Map Size
I agree with having a larger map to begin with, so that there is a very wide variety of places to explore and setup a town/home. I feel if it's more restricted at first, even if it expands with time... if you end up building a rather elaborate structure or town, then you wouldn't feel like ditching it later for newly uncovered terrain by the worldborder. I feel having a wide range of options from the beginning with a big map would be good, and perhaps a slow expansion rate thereafter would allow for exploring new terrain and getting more/new resources.

Additionally as mentioned in the map dynamics, having the nether would be great.

Also to mention is that in 1.8 there came a lot of options to customize the terain, so we could get smaller biome's (which are nice I think), changing the size of an specific ore vein or how many tries it does to spawn 1 in a chunk, dungeon count, sea level and a lot of other things.
So we could change maybe some of those to improve the gameplay like diamonds have bigger veins but only spawn at y=150+ in an amplified world.

More info on those custom settings: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Customized

PVP
I’m all for people being unable to shoot items out of picture frames and glitch through walls, I’m also in agreement that toggle-able PvP in towns is a good idea. Here is my suggestion, why not have PvP toggle able on a per player basis? I feel that just having PvP toggle-able in towns is going to cause people to just hold out in them and worry about being killed rather then explore the areas around them. This plugin http://www.spigotmc.org/resources/pvpmanager.845/
Will take care of the per-person PvP toggling and should be configurable to the servers liking.
Multiple Accounts
Having two accounts is not the same as being able to duplicate items. Just because one account allows players to run a farm while building does not mean that they magically get double of everything. It’s not even the same as having to separate players, because while one account is being used the other is nearly incapable of any actions. Now having said that, I actually agree with Charles. Two accounts kind of breaks the server in a different way. If PvP becomes per-player toggle-able as I have proposed, having a PvP and a non-PvP account would give players an unfair advantage. If the player ever dies they could just log in as there other account and rebuild everything without having to worry about being killed. On the other hand having paid for two accounts myself I don't like the idea of having wasted money. Maybe a rule could be made that would force a person with two account to enable PvP on both before they are allowed to PvP at all. If they don't and get caught it should count as a warning and then progress to a server ban.
Physical Map Size.
I like the current expanding border, I also like the idea of a large starting area. Both should be implemented to prevent a cramped start but also allow continued exploration and discovery on the server. We don't want people to start with nothing, but we also don't want the map to get old.
Teleportation Vs. Nether.
I like the nether and would love for it to be implemented. I also however like teleportation. Maybe teleporting could be forced to toggle with PvP. That way if a player joins the PvP combat they are no longer able to safely teleport inside of a quiet box and re-equip while also allow free build players the ability to quickly travel between spawn and their towns.
Farmable vs. Non Farmable currency.
The Minecraft economy is fun but not a natural part of Minecraft in any way. The reason we have an economy however is so that we can run Towny and to buy blocks not available in the current world. IF the server continues to run this way and IF only unavailable blocks are sold THEN we should make the currency farmable. Doing that allows people to expand their towns and acquire nice build materials that they are unable to mine by instead being AFK or in the vicinity of a farm as they build. IF however we start selling diamonds at spawn again or start using money as a means of trading for goods between players, it should be non-farmable. What I propose is this. Make currency non-exchangeable between players and have it used for the sole purpose of towns and items such as quarts or nether stars. For players a barter system should be used and coal, diamonds, and redstone should not be sold at spawn.

I agree with Chauronslilsis. The politics has gotten out of hand on the current world. I feel like we can either solve this by restricting the cause of these politics (pvp) or enforcing stricter rules. I think restricting the pvp would be the better option and I second charlessprinkle's idea on using the pvp toggle feature on towny. And maybe instead of having a cooldown between toggles to try to prevent the abuse of this, I think that having it auto-toggle pvp on if any resident is currently in a non-allied pvp town, and start the cooldown over, for maybe a week, so someone can't raid another town right before the cooldown is up and then switch the town to non-pvp afterwards. I also think that this will force mayors to keep an eye on their residents and add an interesting concept to the server. Also, if we decide to make this per player too, I think we should still have it auto-enable pvp do they can't abuse it.

I also agree that the nether should be enabled if there is a way to prevent portals from the nether forming portals in other's towns. Also, I think we should keep teleportation but either remove being able to "/town spawn" or restrict where we can set our homes. If we rid of town spawns, then a player would either be forced to set their home inside their town or travel to them somehow, or if we decide to restrict homes, it should be limited to only their town, an allied town, or the wilderness. Both of these I feel would be solutions to the current problem of homes being set in enemy towns for pvp and harassing people.

As for the currency, I think there should be a variety of things, with the farmable items worth less than the non-farmable items. Non-farmable items are pretty much limited to mining, and I know a large portion of the server (myself included) would rather be spending their time doing other things. If multiple things can be sold, then everyone can use their own approach to getting cash, and not everyone will have massive gold farms anymore.

PvP
We're too cliquey to have all-out killing each other. However, per-player PvP is too specific and should be somewhere along the lines of per-town or per-nation PvP; players could be used as vaults in this scenario. We are split on our opinions on PvP enough to have us seriously consider this solution. Most people (that I've asked) don't want it, but those who do strongly support it. But those who do want PvP are rudely imposing upon those who just want to build.
Multiple Accounts
It's only a problem if you make it a problem. From the political standpoint within the server, having two accounts is more than sensible. From a survival standpoint, especially where teleportation isn't available, two accounts is a major convenience. A third account, on the other hand, would be unreasonable. Limiting >2 account ownership should be present in the rules, be it a problem or not.
Physical map size
Regardless, what the PvP map started with was too small. Towns get very big very fast, and starting with a Towny setup would necessitate a larger initial map size. But again, this traces back to my "we need more biomes" argument.
Nether
This is a hairy situation. If gold remains the currency, then gold farming would be an entrance vector into a town. But for the non-PvP towns, if present, this would be a major inconvenience requiring a certain amount of planning to mitigate.
Currency
I strongly support a renewable currency. The problem we have now is that the currency can be farmed at absurd rates. We should probably switch to a material that is not difficult for a fresh user to acquire, but not farmable via killing spawned mobs.
I agree with Bosaik that currency should not be exchanged between players, but I feel it should be able to be exchanged between members of a town. That way, people in a town can contribute towards a common economic goal. Preventing exchanges between any and all two players would force a level of independence that would stifle collaborative projects.

At the risk of making a suggestion you guys might find too radical, there is an alternative to towny-type plugins. Block protection plugins like citadel solve the issue of griefing in a rather different way. One server that uses citadel has these settings. Rather than the all-or-nothing model towny goes for, it forces players to assess the time and energy cost of griefing. High value items like chests remain worth the cost to steal from while destroying entire structures becomes a rather difficult endeavor. The most important point of this is that it partially solves the primary conflict between builders and PvPers. It also establishes a more natural economy based on resources stored as physical assets (inside reinforced obsidian). [/url]

To address some points as an admin:

I'm all for a bigger map. I'm also inclined to follow Monkey's suggestion of customizing the map. Personally, I think it'd be awesome if we had high cliffs and oceans over most of the map and the denizens of the server created extravagant bridges. It'd make for an attractive server. How do we allow the players to build such things?

We insert quests which offer monetary reward like Chaurslilsis recommended. On top of player shops and a spawn trading post (stacks of dirt for money, etc) we could very easily replace gold as a currency. Also, organized fights in the arena could have a buy-in and winner takes all. Additionally, players who want to watch can pay for a seat which also contributes to the winners pot. This is something we can fine tune later.

To promote building, we disallow teleporting with the exception of /home and /spawn. It'll encourage the use of server provided transportation and roads. Perhaps our rail system is used but I feel like the whole server just teleports to another player. I've placed empty chests around spawn and I've heard of people finding them but if we're going to have a nice spawn and semi-creative (not that kind of creative) server, we should at least explore it. To continue about spawn, I feel like our current spawn is too compact for the amount of structures and exploration provided within. We either need to make protected spawn smaller or spread it out.

In lieu of teleportation we could enable the nether but it'd have to be smaller than the map (It's like 8 blocks in the overworld to 1 block in the nether right?) or we only allow a portal at spawn, which won't really help with "teleportation."

To address duplicate accounts. This is something I've been thinking of and would love to hear opinions. Kerm has expressed to me that we should go back to a whitelist if we reset the server. I disagreed and came up with a counter: Forum registration. There's other servers out there that do this and I feel like we can benefit as well. For one, it'll ensure all our players have a Cemetech account to participate in discussion. Secondly, the user just types in their Minecraft ID into a new field, aka verifying their account, and they are no longer a guest on the server - similarly, Freebuild requires a Cemetech account. I've been thinking of other ways to tie the forum with the game as well, such as requiring X amount of posts to start a town rather than charging currency.

I also like Qwerty's idea. I feel like that's something that would more benefit the rich as it sounds like it's a block to block conversion. If it was one diamond for a stack, that might be sensible.

Going back to making this a visually attractive server, we have to be able to keep it that way. One idea is to protect it via WorldGuard so towns don't have to protect it. We create a resource world and tie more functionality into Cemetech, you can strip mine the resource as you want world but either need Y posts on Cemetech to build outside a town or purchase a permit. Of course, you could get around that by extending your town to the build site, build, then sell those plots/chunks back to the server. But I'm not too keen about a resource world as our currency will likely not be farmable (circling back to the quest suggestion).