tl;dr - looking for new sources of income that discourage farm-building but are not overly dependent on massive amounts of time. During a recent conversation it was mentioned that our supreme overlord is displeased about the creation of bonemeal "farms" for the purpose of collecting flowers. So we started analyzing behavior to understand Erik's displeasure Why do we do this? How do we solve this? Responses to those points: I theorize (as I haven't spoken to him in a few days) that Erik is displeased about the creation of most farms because it makes collection too "easy" This game is supposed to be a challenge and somewhat balanced. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. I can only address as to why my own town created these things. While I myself am severely lacking in the life department, I still can only afford to spend a certain amount of time on Minecraft per day. I want to have a vibrant, thriving town that has a hefty upkeep and so I rely on voting for the server and completing those quests every day. The only way to meet both of these points is to create a method that allows me to maximize my results for the time I am spending on the server. For people with full-time work, or school, or other obligations, they would have even less time to make sure they can gather these things. The only way I can think of to solve this problem is to create more sources of income, so people aren't as "desperate" to create farms for faster gathering of supplies. Putting woodcutting quests in might help, and putting in some sort of server shop to allow selling of items (like cash4gold) might also be helpful. Is this where the flux shop would fit in? I didn't get to know that mechanic before it was removed. Unfortunately, I don't have better ideas that that, so I'm asking others to chip in! Do you have any ideas on how to introduce new sources of income to the server that are fair, balanced, and require some level of effort? You all know for a fact if it's too easy it won't go in, and you also have to address any way it could be manipulated for ridiculous, cheaty methods of gaining lots of money (I'm looking at you, lachie314159265 ).
Close; I don't really care if aspects of the game aren't a challenge, not everything needs to be. In this case, I didn't think about automatic flower farms when I set up a bunch of quests. Quest rewards are roughly based on how much active time is required for the task, and automated farms of any kind take that time down to 0. It's effectively a "free money" button people can push a few times a day, and that's what I'm displeased with. In general players make automatic farms because they want "free shit". I've said that quite a bit, but I'll explain for anyone who doesn't quite get it: Anytime I say "free shit", I mean things that take away from the server's experience under the guise of adding something. It's usually quite popular ideas like tpa, all encompassing admin shop, and more homes. Players seem to want these, but the end result would be a worse server. There are some players that genuinely enjoy heavily automating minecraft, but the vast majority automate, get (effectively) infinite items, and leave due to boredom. "I want a big town so I need easier sources of money". Consider: "I want a big town so I should add people and have plot taxes" Adding more cash sources without creating more cash sinks would destroy the economy - this is what caused the previous reset. Sources of cash are pretty easy, people will use them because everyone needs money. Sinks are damn hard. One of the reasons I still haven't got back to the woodcutting quests is the threat of a high degree of automation. Think giant block of wood made via pistons + tree feller. I can't balance rewards when you put normal gameplay against that kind of production. The only way to fix this is to only reward tasks which cannot be automated, which means more difficulty, rarer items, or rules/mechanics outlawing some automation. None of these options are very appealing. Alternatively, more dungeons that have rewards proportional to difficulty, which is not even possible due to the time required. So what can we do about this? Here's what I need: Many more cash sinks Cash sources that are easy to implement and ineffective/impossible to automate
Wade and I rarely do the flower quests because we don't have the time to go try to find a flower forest. The "flower farm" that Lachie made on our land was there because at the time it would produce tulips. For some reason it doesn't anymore, so I have no idea where to get tulips. Wade and I were trying to get it to work the other day because we are in desperate need for dye for concrete. But I agree with Mietm, we need more ways to make money. It's hard to add players to your town bc about the last 6-7 people we added, were only there long enough to construct ugly houses and to lock chests, so about a day, and then they never came back to the server. That left us with locked chests on plots and houses to be torn down.
I've talked with both of you in game, and it's clear that you guys don't need more money coming in. Your towns are much larger than I intended towns to grow with as few members as you have. Like I said in my last post, we need more cash sinks before extra sources can be added. Here are some suggestions that came up: Return of auctions and bar drinks, pvp tournament with buy-in, purchasing server boosts with in-game currency, pay to get out of jail early, vaults, and charging for shops/market plots in spawn. We need things that focus on mid and late game player, as early game is already focused on chest locks. td;dr Hijacking your thread, it is now opposite the title
Glad you wrote some of the ideas down! I'll keep thinking on other ways for people to spend cash, I just like having a larger variety of tasks to do, so I'm not doing the same thing every single day.