I can understand the aesthetic desire to be able to remove torches, especially in snowy biomes. I also understand the inconvenience of lighting large areas with torches. As someone who loves to build and is quite focused on details, I deal with things like this all the time. These struggles are inherent to the survival experience.
However, it is for that very reason that I do not support the use of this plug-in on the server. Project Hermertia is, at its core, a vanilla survival server, and it is unique among servers of its kind because it is relatively orderly and because of its excellent community. It occupies a wonderful balance between PvP, PvE, and RP/lore. When anything non-vanilla is introduced, it is undermining to the idea of what Project Hermertia is. Admittedly, in the case of "giving" villager eggs and the /jail plug-in, non-survival and non-vanilla elements have improved our server and even proven necessary for it to function. I do not feel as though a mob-proofing plug-in would do either of these things.
I feel the same way about this plug-in that I do about a suggestion that was once raised, which would have allowed people to have mountain ranges world painted into their lands. I believe this is a workaround for convenience's sake and thus disregards a fundamental reason why we play in survival in the first place: the struggle. There is a great satisfaction in, after working hard and toughing it out, looking upon the finished product of that labor. Without the struggle, the experience is unfullfilling.
There are many things that are inconvenient: mining, cutting down trees, travelling, excavating. These are all things that could be eliminated if we did not hold so fast to vanilla survival. But we continue to hold fast because it is what makes this server what it is, instead of a PvE server, or a creative mode server, or any other server out there. It's why we didn't choose to let people edit their lands with worldpaint, why we didn't implement anti-theft plug-ins, why we haven't done so many things we could have. They would have made Project Hermertia something other than what it is and, ultimately, other than what it is meant to be.
The best case scenario if this plug-in were used, as I see it, is Nicholas's suggestion, which entails that only well-established and completed builds be given such protection, so that it could not be used as an "easy out" in the construction process. However, it is difficult to tell when something is "completed". Builds may be modified, added to, or removed with time, so the idea of completion is quite arbitrary, as it is with many creative endeavors, and thus incapable of directing our use of the plug-in.
These reasons are why I don't support the use of such a plug-in.
Long story short: -I understand the struggle of lighting large areas -The struggle is part of vanilla survival, even though this server isn't 100% vanilla -The end result is more fulfilling if we have to struggle to achieve it -It is important to preserve as much of the vanilla survival aspect as possible because it's what makes the server unique -Nicholas's suggestions are the best ones, but due to the arbitrariness and ambiguity of what "complete" means it won't be enough -Therefore, I don't support the plug-in
_________________ Ulrik Gunnarson Duke of the Gathered Races of Hermertia Homeland (GRHH) The Chairman of the GRHH Co.
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