Been here since 0.21 when everyone came here from /v/, and I can definitely say that OP is right. although there was quite a bit of hacking, everything about the community was better in 0.21, I literally only had 1 or 2 griefers in my entire first 5 days of playing. Now the game has been shitted up by 9-14 year olds who are bored and looking for attention. I still avidly play, trying to stop griefers and play the game, but it's no fun when you have to sit around and watch your stuff for fear of it getting griefed.

missin the good ol days. #nostalgia

p2p: nope.avi

registration: yes

keep IP banning: sure, but have an option that allows either nick or IP banning on server

one time fee: only if paypal is accepted, fuck having credit cards (premium features would be meh. i find that to be a rather jewish tactic, but if benny needs the doll hairs then w/e) also keep it low: i wont shell out for derpcraft, i definately wont shell out for this(unless some drastic modifications are made.).

underage B& still making your mum jokes and messing with the flow of chat: can be adverted by paying one time fee.

increasing the quality of userbase: dude, /v/ has found this place, so cancerchan has found this place. 'nuff said.

While I'm anticipating a registration system, I think that paying is a very extreme solution to a small problem, and that it will have negative effects to the community.

Imo, griefing isn't that big of a deal to me, although I admit that it is common. I rarely build anything that is higher than three blocks, so I can rebuild damages to cover quickly.

Structures that are griefed are almost always too big for the purpose that they serve. The example that I have in my mind is on pinpoint. People build and build and build until there is a behemoth fort. This fort is usually much too far back to actually snipe from (especially with rifle cone), and almost always it is brought down by the team that made it in the first place.

In order, this is how I would go about lowering the amount of griefing:

1. Somehow preventing players from making useless structures. The problem is I have no clue how to do that, but I still think it would prevent griefing the most.

2. Fix/change votekick system. Pyspades has a great system.

3. Make admin controls quicker. I don't want to have to alt+tab every time there's a griefer.

4. Registration. This will be more effective than 2 and 3, but it will take longer to set up (I think).

5. Pay to Play. If griefing is still a terrible problem after the other solutions are done, then this is worth a try. I just don't think that paying should be the first solution.

Paying also does two things: makes the community shrink, and makes it harder to grow.

If there are free demo servers, then most griefers will be there, and they will prevent new players from wanting to pay. If there is a campaign, it would be hard and time-consuming to program, and it wouldn't give people a true taste of what the game is like.

tl;dr: paying is too extreme and will really damage the community. Other solutions to griefing should be tried first.

The game is fine, griefing really just adds to the tension and excitement of the games IMO. You can votekick and kill griefers too. Plus did you really suggest the game adopting some sort of pay to play? Goddamn, hell no. This is no Korean MMO.