Quesoman wrote:
Anyhow, you have to set apart the mindless griefing with the sole intention of destroying hours of work, and the tactical attacks in a previously agreed environment (anarchy servers) which is, as you said, part of the game.
The first is a nuisance and should be restricted, the second is FUN!
I agree with you however, you really should not incorporate ways of preventing griefing in this mod, because that is not its purpose.
By way of example, one of my favorite moments on an SMP server was when I surfaced out of the secret entrance of my underground lair to discover a group of noobs (only noobs build above ground in anarchy) had built an entire village over my base.
Obviously, this was a bad thing. Not only was there the possibility that they would accidentally tunnel into my lair given where they were situated, but it would also inevitably attract other players intent on looting/destroying the village to the location of my secret base, which might also result in it becoming a known location.
I spent the next couple of hours tearing down every single block of their village, landscaping the terrain to make it look perfectly natural, and even replanting vegetation to complete the effect. By the time I was done, not only was the village gone, but it looked like it had never even existed. Frankly, if they logged back on, I wouldn't be surprised if they thought they were the victims of a server reset.
I was just as proud of what I had accomplished there as if I had built an elaborate structure, and it was a unique gameplay experience I hadn't had in Minecraft before. IMO, just ruling out griefing and stealing entirely eliminates the very possibility of players having that kind of experience.
P.S. Eventually, that incident lead to me having to completely abandon my base. The noobs rebuilt, and accidentally tunneled very close to my multi-story underground mob-trap. While the tunnel lead into a virtual maze of a branch-mine, with the useful parts of my base spread out and hidden behind walls here and there, my base was hopelessly compromised as word got around on the server that "something was there". I managed to escape with the bulk of my valuables (mostly diamond and TnT), but it was an extremely tense period to be sure.