I love how you wrote a lot of details... but many will turn away looking at just writing and no pics :(

Every new player that joins the server gets kicked from an internal server error. They are able to rejoin, and everything seems to work as intended after.

Still a bit un-nerving as this seems to be the ultimate solution for me atm.

Uploaded Beta 1.1, which adds several configuration options, including both of the options requested in comments! :) See updated description text above for details.

@megabytes

Agreed on tweaking the sizes and resource minimums.

Okay, I understand where you're coming from. That sense of immensity comes at a price, though. Say two friends join the server a week apart - without teleportation, how will they find each other? F3 to get coords sounds unpleasant, hacky, and slow. Is there a way we can make this scenario work without shrinking the world?

As for griefing options, I know LogBlock is very popular as a grief UNDO. I've yet to see experience any plugin which effectively prevents grief in the first place, but doesn't require adminstrators to manually set protected areas for each player. Maybe that's a good future project. :) I have some ideas. But I have to get this one done first.

@bigscary

400x400 seems like a good number, but it would take testing on a live server with other players to be sure. We have a player on our server that has put up "safe havens" at every 500x500th block in the world for new players to camp out at night as they look for unclaimed land/resources. Guaranteeing resources is only a matter of adjusting the percentage of resources that determines the guarantee, another thing that needs testing on a live server to find the right figures.

My suggestion below is inspired by the fact that we don't allow players to teleport on our server and would probably disable that aspect of this plugin during trials. It's not only a huge crutch for PVP, but also makes the world feel less...grand. We like to keep it feeling like a vanilla server, but also give players the means for protecting their builds and belongings from griefing and theft.

@SirMonsterSlayer

Under the current design, a new player can go anywhere he wants and make that new region his home. There's nothing forcing players to stay in the area where they spawn - it's just a suggestion (and a good one - the player will find resources, active players, and lots of space there). And the wilderness is only 200 blocks away, guaranteed.

@micdoodle8

Yes, once I get the whole thing stable, I'll release the source. HOWEVER! This is the perfect time to request configuration options. What tweaks did you have in mind?

@megabytes

My immediate thought is that I don't want to get into the business of trying to stop griefers. There's this rule of thumb that an addon should do one thing and do it well - I'd only be adding a small impediment to griefing in general, since there are some workarounds, and nothing to stop griefing in the open region (no invite needed there). Other plugins, especially LogBlock, do a MUCH better job of hobbling griefers.

HOWEVER, still it's an interesting idea and I'm going to give it some thought. I'll balance ease of implementation against the payoff and let you know. :)

Since you've got a mind for grief, I could REALLY use your help. I need to test the plugin itself against grief - can you think of any ways to grief the system itself? For example, can you imagine a way to grief teleporting players because you know where they land, or to hide or destroy the region posts? I'd really appreciate some feedback in that area. :) Care to set up a small server on your desktop and see if you can break something?? Can you sabotage the available resources to undermine the system, or find an easy way to upset the balance of space and resources?

My math was wrong - it's 400x400 = 160000 square blocks. It's huge. Actually it's so huge, that I'm concerned it will be too difficult to find the guaranteed available resources. What do you think? And yes, it's bedrock to sky.

Can you clarify the 1600 square meters region size? Is this a 40x40 block square, bedrock to sky? You mentioned it's roughly equal to the max view distance, which I think is around 200 blocks?

Great idea!

We have a strong community of players on our server, but one problem we face is a low adoption rate - it's tough to get new players to stick. I think a big reason is because of the lack of immediate resources or building space. This plugin may be a solution to our problem.

I did notice a small weakness that can be exploited by an organized group of griefers: "When a new player joins, he or she may immediately move into any region, even into the wilderness. No, this isn't a perfect solution - but players who aren't trying to intentionally abuse the system won't upset the balance."

We've had our server attacked by organized groups and usually they don't get very far. This is because we took great care in building our server and plugins to be self-policing. Players manage themselves, allowing us (admins) to be very hands-off. By allowing players to immediately change their home region, a small group of players could cause a great deal of grief and damage to a particular target. I'd like to offer a solution:

New players aren't allowed to move regions for the first week. Instead, established players (at least a week old?) can "invite" these brand new players during their first-week period to join their home region. This would allow friends of established players to join and immediately start playing in the same home region via invite. An organized group could still exploit this, but would require a much greater effort, especially if you capped the number of region invites to a couple per day/week or based on the age/play time of the player.