Sponges

[Altus Clura]

Sponges are essential to a non grief server, they limit the load on Staff, and help keep the server's builds looking well.
but look how horrible this block looks!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

we should be able to hide this disgusting thing!
sure you can put it under your build, but then you can protect even less of your build.
sure you could have it floating in mid air, but that takes a lot away from the build, we're paying $8000 to protect our build, not to make it look bad...

Now, I have two ideas on how this problem can be settled.
-the vertical area covered by the sponges can be increased, so that you can place your sponge under or over your build without it compromising the use of most of its field, or
-you could grant us the use of /ps hide and /ps unhide

I feel that in doing this, you would add a lot to the server, and satisfy a lot of your members.
so, why not do it?
thank you for you time.

[Coolcrab88]

However if you could hide them then that could be a good troll as you may get a player hiding a protection stone inside your house without your knowing and/or you won't be able to locate it (possibly even with a Moderator's help). However I must agree that they are ugly. Not sure if it's possible to change which blocks you use.

[Altus Clura]

Well... moderators would be able to /ps unhide them, so that would not be a problem

[JoshieAteMyBaby]

Hiding blocks also allow the opportunity to make invisible walls, which come with their own positives and negatives.. but I think it cold be cool as well, and I agree that protection sponges are a bit difficult to work with, especially on big builds.

[Altus Clura]

When you hide a sponge you can walk through it, and place a block in the same block its in, its as if its not there. it does not make an 'invisible wall'

[DeeKay]

You could always edit your sponge texture.

[Altus Clura]

I personaly build to satisfy others, not myself, this helps because i make a lot of community buildings, that is why i don't use resource packs.
In my case changing the texture would not help, and hounestly how many people on this server do you think actually knows how to?

[DeeKay]

I'm not opposing to the idea or anything, I'm just throwing out suggestions first. Is the one block really that much of a nuisance? I mean you're the first person to bring this up.

[JoshieAteMyBaby]

for a huge build, like a tower for example, there isn't really any place to stick a sponge where it isn't visible, it becomes a building challenge to find a place to put them that's hidden.

[Blood]

Sponges arent ugly they're awesome! 

[CollisionCourse]

I personally believe the sponges should protect the same 13 by 13 but its vertical height increased, for 8000$ is not much of a good performance vs price ratio, it would be nice to have a better looking block, sponge in its own is a bad looking block that never really goes good with anything

[Altus Clura]

This is what I'm currently dealing with...

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and I've only started building...

[DeeKay]

it would be nice to have a better looking block, sponge in its own is a bad looking block that never really goes good with anything

Yeah, that would be a good idea if every other block wasn't craftable or obtainable.

[CollisionCourse]

it would be nice to have a better looking block, sponge in its own is a bad looking block that never really goes good with anything

Yeah, that would be a good idea if every other block wasn't craftable or obtainable.

why not just trash the entire sponge system, there are other forms of protection that when handled and implemented correctly often exceed the sponge without having to place a block, Ex, there's a plugin that lets a player choose a certain region and protect it but its limited to a certain number of blocks say the base number where you can start is 1000 by either donating to the server or buying it at the /shops you can increase the amount of protection you could set, after a quick Google search i believe to have to have found what im talking about: http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/grief-prevention/

[JoshieAteMyBaby]

its not necessarily the sponge material itself or what it looks like, its just a pain to figure out where to put them so they arnt visible. And while the sponge system isn't perfect, I don't think it really needs to be ditched. It could use some improvement though.. are there any other solutions to having ugly blocks stick out around your build? Also, wouldnt you just forget where you placed your sponge if you made it invisible?