Server Rules

SMPOnline Season 4

Official Detailed Rules

The clarifications of the rules specified below are not all-inclusive. Moderation action can be taken at any time if necessary to maintain a fun, chill server environment. Ban duration can be lessened upon appeal if deemed too harsh. These rules are subject to change - it’s your responsibility to keep up to date with them here.

DO NOT “orbit” streamers, creators, or their friends

We’ve previously been lax about enforcement of this. However, as Season 4 has been designed with a chill stream environment in mind for some of the balancing, this has become more important. You should be on the server to play, not to watch. Traveling to locations near certain folks just to “watch them” is not allowed.

To clarify, it is perfectly okay to build and play the game nearby Carson or anyone else - in fact, we encourage you to. Running bits is great too! However, taking every opportunity to be around one of these people and/or run bits at every possible moment may result in a varied punishment depending on what you’re doing. If you’re teleported away, hit, told to stop, or otherwise have something happen to you, please cease what you were doing immediately. Chances are, whatever you were doing was contributing to a poor experience for whoever you’re orbiting. 

Examples of orbiting behaviors:

• Doing /sit or sitting on slabs/stairs nearby someone
• Running aimlessly around someone without any clear goal other than being around them
• Watching someone from a distance (often with a Spyglass)
• Using the online world map to find a streamer’s coordinates and traveling to them without being asked to help or having any intention of playing the game nearby
• Going out of your way to find and talk to someone in voice chat without having a valid reason to do so
• Throwing random junk items at someone as a “joke,” or offering them as trade requests

Orbiting can have serious consequences for the community as it makes streamer interactions far less likely to happen, reducing the number of players that may realistically know about or join the subserver. Please do your part in helping the community by not being an orbiter!

Treat others with respect

Don't be rude to other players. Don't purposely claim other players’ builds or build too close to someone else if they'd prefer to play on their own. You're not entitled to access to anyone's chunks. Hate campaigning against certain players in the server is not allowed. If someone’s being a jerk, please contact the staff and let them deal with it. Don’t make it your problem.

Do not harass players on this server - doing so will result in a ban. The subserver is not the place to act upon your personal differences with others. Leave players alone if they do not wish to talk to / interact with you. If someone's upset with a joke scam you made, please refund them. “Hits” are only allowed if all parties involved are willingly participating.

Do your best to respect the wishes of others, especially when you’ve chosen to live in a town. While we do not enforce town rules, we do ask that you respect the wishes of town members when building within close proximity or within a town. Intentionally antagonizing members of a town will result in punishment for parties involved - even if they’re town leadership.

Avoid building deep pits/quarries in the middle of active player towns - doing so may result in loss of claimed chunks or manual editing of your claim to blend it with the area. Don’t destroy town roads without permission from established town members. 

Don’t overuse soundboards or “mic spam” music. You will be voice-muted if you’re annoying people.

These rules apply to all server members, including staff, so be nice in general :).

Don’t enforce rules yourself

All rules for the server are set by the management of the server (Carson, Matt, Loki). These rules are what are enforced by moderators, and are the rules you are currently reading. All other rules, such as town or city rules (“unofficial rules”), will not be enforced by subserver staff. 

For any of your unofficial rules, you may not force people to comply. The following are guidelines for how to enforce your unofficial rules. Any enforcement should never require moderator involvement.

Things you are not allowed to do to enforce unofficial rules include…

• threatening to kill them or any mobs of theirs, or actually doing so
• harassment of any kind, anywhere
• suggesting the mods will punish them if they do not comply
• “banning” people from your town
• trapping players in claimed areas (a “jail”)
• immediately revoking access to subclaims containing their possessions/builds

Things you can do to enforce unofficial rules include…

• allowing the individual to take their stuff, then removing access from their subclaim
• requesting people follow your rules, but not in a persisting manner
• restricting access to certain town/city builds via the “interaction” flag

If someone is breaking any of the official rules, let them know, and if they continue to break the rule, make a ticket in our Discord. Do not take enforcement into your own hands. Contact online staff if someone is actively causing problems, or otherwise make a ticket.

Don’t make abusive claims

Our claim system requires the use of Creepa Coin to protect your land and valuables. This is to avoid “claim spam” by new members of the server. There are a few cases where claims can be inappropriate, however. Here are a few situations where a claim is inappropriate:

• Claiming land exclusively to claim a mob spawner
• Claiming a stronghold or ancient city and not allowing public access
• Claiming all of (or a large portion of) the land around a town or base
• Claiming all blocks down to the bottom of the world without legitimate reason
• Claiming someone else’s build without permission
• Claiming land at spawn just to sell it or offer it to other players
• Claiming land and leaving the claim empty, without any chests or indication of activity (spam claims)

Our claim system protects your build from the sky limit to y=30 by default. You can adjust the depth of your claim by setting the “Lower Bound Y” of your claim to lower values, such as -10. However, you should not do this unless you’re using this space below your claim. 

The point of this limit is to allow for mining and infrastructure creation (tunnels for minecarts and boats) without restriction. Claiming to bedrock for no reason is against the rules and will result in your claim being adjusted, or a warning/temporary ban if intentional.

Don’t misuse the claim system NEW

Our current claim system has many features, some of which allow you to do certain things we don't strictly want you to do. When you make a claim, the claim should be for yourself and anyone else you plan to play on the server with. We want our claims to be easily transferable to other claim systems in the future without much hassle, so please follow these rules.

Here's an outline of what's acceptable and not acceptable with the claim system.

Examples of Correct Claim System Usage

• Claiming land to build a base
• Claiming land to build a small town with your friends
• Claiming land for a build, shop, or something you plan to do
• Claiming land to reserve for future citizens of your town

Examples of Misuse of Claim System

• Claiming land, offering it to new players, then granting them permissions for the claim
  
  • Instead, remove the claim and pay the other player. Additionally, you may transfer claim ownership, but bear in mind that you will need to have them remove your permissions.
• Claiming land to sell to other players for CC, items, etc
  • This is Abusive Claiming and can result in punishments.
• Claiming land to reserve for your town too close to spawn
  • If you're within 50 chunks (800 blocks) of spawn, you're too close. 
• Maintaining claim ownership of random players claims and builds for any reason
  • Our claim system is on the server to prevent griefing. We don't want people who are effectively strangers to have build access to other people's stuff. Claims should be owned by who uses them, not random individuals.
  • Note here that owning the claims to your friends bases is fine, this is only relevant for other folks.

These rules are in place to prevent numerous issues from arising that require moderator intervention, such as griefing, inactive claim owners causing problems, and other issues. We intend to, at some point, improve or replace our current claim system with something robust, specifically with features for selling, renting, or otherwise granting conditional claim perms (while maintaining ownership rights to revoke those permissions easily).

No Griefing or Stealing

Griefing includes destroying any player creations without prior moderator approval. Even unclaimed builds are protected under this rule. 

• Do not steal items from unclaimed chests, shulkers
• Do not trap players in their claims or build "junk" at the edges of their claims.
• Do not claim other people's builds and restrict their access.
• Do not block portals or create portal traps.
• Do not trap players in your claims.
• Do not flow water or lava into another player’s claims.
• Don't build trees adjacent to claims to spam leaves in their claim.
• Don't kill or steal other players’ mobs.

• Don’t kill other players to steal their items.

  • This includes creating “traps” that cause players to unexpectedly die.

• Don’t attack people unprovoked.

• Don’t randomly kill people.

  • Being hit once or annoyed by a player is not an excuse to kill them. If they’re harassing you, report them in a ticket, preferably with video evidence.
• Don't build anything intending to irritate, harass, or otherwise piss off another player.
• Don't make junk shops in the community market.
• Don't spam useless auctions.
• DO NOT create lava casts! No exceptions

• Don’t build intentionally bad-looking creations inside of towns or within close proximity of other players.

  • In general, stick to the aesthetic of the town. If people don’t like your build, move or rework it.
    

Avoid blocking rivers and waterways with bridges or walls. The exception to this is when terraforming and simply getting rid of a river. The optimal gap is at least 1.5 blocks above the water to allow boats to travel comfortably below. Don’t leave temporary river-crossing bridges in the water.

Don’t build “awful looking” sky pathways/highways/railways. Designs that mirror real-life bridges or structures are allowed, but long, snaking single-block width paths to connect long-distance rails or pathways together are not allowed, even if “temporary.” Please collect all of the necessary building materials before creating large, map-sprawling structures.

Do not use Hacks, Exploits, or Banned Mods

Clients and client mods that provide minimaps, waypoints, or other minimal gameplay tweaks or enhancement mods are fine. However, using x-ray, flight hacks, speed hacks, autoclicker/macros, and other external tools/mods to gain a gameplay advantage are not allowed. Don't use automated accounts (aka bots) for any purpose.

Reversing the seed for an advantage will result in punishment. Please use our world map to locate points of interest easily.

Do not abuse duplication bugs or exploits within Minecraft. Report all exploits that provide an advantage to the game to mods for rewards. Do not avoid our AFK kick system. Do not AFK fish. 

Do not use mini-map plugins to assist with caving, avoiding lava, or provide any other means of advantage over users without the mod. You should only use these mods as maps, not as tools to find things you didn’t know existed.

For more details on allowed or disallowed mods, please keep up to date with our Restricted or Banned Mods list.

Don't intentionally lag the server

Avoid automated farming as much as possible. Farms should be made at a reasonable scale and kept manual for harvesting. Excessive mobs or piston/block/door movements will lag the server during peak hours, so avoid farms requiring redstone or high mob counts. 

Building lag machines will result in a permanent ban (it's not a joke OR funny). Redstone contraptions will be disabled if required to prevent server lag.

Do not build farms at spawn, or in high-traffic areas. Farms in these areas will be disabled by staff by whatever means required. High entity counts in high-traffic areas are a major contributor to lag and will not be tolerated in the interest of a smooth playing experience. Build all types of farms far away from cities and spawn. This includes villager trading areas! Automatic farms near spawn or high traffic areas will be removed.

Do not AFK at farms of any kind. If you need to keep something loaded, build it near where you personally play. Don’t build contraptions to avoid our AFK kick at your farm. If you need to stop playing while at a farm, disconnect from the server.

Respect staff and their decisions

Staff on the server will, as required, issue punishments and warnings. These staff actions are deliberate and are in response to actions taken by community members.  However, some bans have reasons other than cheating or griefing. Toxicity, causing significant drama, bigotry, or harassment are all reasons for bans. 

For privacy reasons, we typically do not disclose the reasons for punishments to anyone other than the banned user. We also do not share the names of staff members involved in punishing any given user.

Any builds, books, signage, or other user creations depicting, referencing, or alluding to banned users may be removed at any time at the discretion of the staff team. Users found to be intentionally generating content referencing banned users may be punished, up to a ban. Punishment severity is determined case-by-case.

Discussion of banned users in chat and voice chat is perfectly okay, but please remain respectful, do not spread false information, and keep it to a minimum. If you object to your punishment, please make a ticket in our Discord. Arguing about punishments in server chat is not allowed as it is extremely disruptive.

Follow all usual Twitch chat rules

Excessive foul language, slurs, Twitch-banned terms, and spam are not prohibited and will more than likely result in a ban. Excessively edgy jokes (suicide, shootings, racism, etc) are not allowed.

Hate symbols and anti-semitic imagery/allusions/themed builds/jokes will result in a ban. Do not build anything that shouldn't be or cannot be shown on Twitch. These rules apply to voice chat as well! Do not violate these rules in voice chat - many people are recording/streaming on the server at any time and you WILL be reported!

Advertising will potentially result in a temporary ban, especially if done so during a CallMeCarson Livestream. Avoid discussing controversial topics in chat, and please be respectful of other streamers and content creators. Discussion of streamer drama will likely result in a mute of some kind.