See a TL;DR at the bottom (probably the best place to start)
This is probably the most important forum post I’ll ever make. I’m extremely sorry for the length, but this post is made less for the casual forum-goer and more as a serious suggestion for the senior staff.
I want to start this off by saying that nearly all the ideas I’ve expressed in this post are not new, but things I’ve been thinking about for months. Some go back to almost the beginning of 1.9 and others are more recent, and more recently I began thinking about and planning my shulker grinder and business within 30 minutes of the 1.11 announcement (I was watching the stream on a delay). I knew from the start how overpowered it would end up being, and the potential impact on the server’s economy (which I thought was already broken for other reasons). I’m certainly willing to debate the points I’ve made in this post, and I’m not opposed to changing my mind on many of them if you’re able to convince me.
Inflation of diamonds (and all other mineral wealth)
For a long time I was a solo player. The things I loved (and still love) most about minecraft are mining, exploring, and any kind of mob farming, and I was completely content to do those things without any help from a basemate. I wasn’t active in chat for the few months I played in 1.8, and in the beginning of 1.9 I only remember using chat to make crucial trades (mainly buying mending books from adam, to be honest). I distinctly remember going on a 10+ hour mining spree sometime back in April, making several trips back home to dump off what I had collected (long mining sessions were something I did very regularly around the time). My memory is hazy, but I very distinctly remember a player bragging about the loads of diamonds he made farming potatoes all day while being mostly afk. He had made several times more than me by simply planting crops and exchanging them for emeralds then for diamonds. This was when crop farming was even more overpowered than it is now (I still feel an emerald to diamond conversion will be overpowered regardless of the actual ratio). I would love for someone to rationalize to me: (a) why in a game where the universal currency (diamonds) is already naturally inflated by enchantments like mending and fortune there is ANY reason to add diamonds to the game outside of what’s mined from the ground, and (b) why it’s possible that someone is able to skillessly gain more wealth farming than I’m able to by mining (which I believe I’m the best at on the server, both in ores/time and also in terms of bulk amounts of ore collected in the server's history). As far as I’m concerned, the damage has already been done by needlessly adding stupid amounts of diamonds to the economy, and even a complete removal of the diamond to emerald trade will do nothing to fix the current broken system. Over the last few days even I’ve had players say that they feel like the stacks of diamond blocks they have are worthless, or that they’re practically playing in creative mode (the building materials market has not responded to the inflated diamond market, so it is too easy to acquire large amounts of building materials in bulk for minimal diamonds). I will not name-drop anyone for fear of misrepresenting them, but it’s safe to say I’m not the only player that thinks there are way too many diamonds on the server. After that day back in April I decided to quit CraftyMynes forever, and I would have have quit on April 26 if Adam had not offered to let me live with him (and really introduce me for the first time to the wonderful community). Since then I’ve done my best to give back to the community in every way I can, and I think I’ve done a decent job, but what’s been troubling me for the last few months is this: I would not have stayed on this server if it wasn’t for the foothold I got in the community, so, if I joined the server for the first time today, I would not last more than a month because of the state of the economy. Period. I’m begging you guys, please devote some time to balancing the economy; I don’t want to think about how many potential players like me we’ve lost or will lose unless something is done. I’ve been scared to bring this up in the past, and wouldn’t have brought it up now if it wasn’t for the current situation surrounding spawn eggs.
Problems with vanilla Minecraft economy
There are several problems with trying to balance the economy for a game like Minecraft. In other video games centered around multiplayer, developers are able to add late-game items that take months if not years to obtain from when you first start out. In Minecraft, however, the game has and always will be balanced around single player, as it makes no sense to exclude players in single player worlds from obtaining late-game items. If the price of an item on the Minecraft market is too high, a player always has the option to go exploring to obtain the item themselves within a reasonable amount of time (<5 hours for even the most exclusive items like elytra or totems of undying). I personally believe that for a healthy market in vanilla Minecraft, many players would each have to specialize in selling different items (not super relevant, but in 1.8 after gathering basic diamond tools I wanted to make my entire living off of selling wither skulls and using the profits to buy other items, just as a fun challenge for myself). For instance, some players might focus almost exclusively on elytra/dragon heads/shulker boxes exploring the end, others would focus on having a book shop using librarians. Some would sell massive quantities of building blocks, and others might focus on selling wither heads and beacons like I planned to in 1.8. Finally, all players (but especially a small few) would build a natural currency by mining diamonds, gold, iron, and other minerals that everyone needs. While I understand this will never be possible like I want it (since one person can more or less dabble in all of these areas), I believe that with the current states of both Minecraft and CraftyMynes point to the immediate future (next 3-5 months) as the most opportune time to reset the server and permanently fix the player-based economy. Obviously shulker boxes would have a legitimate economic value, and I’ll argue that book shops will be fixes as well in the next section.
zombie spawner changes
For players that are not aware, the 1.11 changes to zombie spawners is that zombie villagers (zillagers) will no longer spawn from naturally occurring zombie spawners. Since CraftyMynes has mobgriefing turned off, we can’t breed villagers using food, so the most practical way to obtain villagers (especially librarians for book shops and making god armor/tools) was to filter out zillagers from zombie spawner and convert them to normal villagers. It’s not hard to do if you find a spawner, and many players have gathered dozens of librarians this way, and even found optimized ones that sell overpowered enchantments (mending, looting III, fortune III, etc.) for at or close to the minimum price of 10 emeralds. While I absolutely support these types of shops, the higher barrier to entry that these shops will now have in 1.11 (it will be harder, but not impossible to gather large amounts of villagers) I believe is strictly better for the economy of the CraftyMynes server. It will force players/teams that want to get into the book shop business to put in massive amounts of time to set up shop, and then they will reap the well-deserved rewards selling their rarer and more highly valued items. As an aside, it’s enchantments like fortune and mending that help break the economy in the first place, but there’s not much we can do about that other than increase the rarity and value of such enchantments. Therefore (and I would love to hear counterarguments), I believe that the change to zombie spawners in 1.11 is the single biggest economy-fixing change that has ever happened to CraftyMynes (assuming mobgriefing remains off). I hope we are able to take full advantage of it with a reset rather than leaving players with stockpiled enchanted books/gear or librarians a permanent advantage in the future of the server.
spawn eggs debate
Even though at this time it appears Crafty has changed his mind and allowed for spawners to continue being converted, I absolutely disagree with this decision in the long run (although I do understand why it was made). Obviously shulker spawners are blatantly overpowered, but I do not believe this is the only one. Using spawners, players are currently able to grind sheep, squids, and even bunnies to get wool, inc sacs, and rabbit’s feet. All of these items normally require large amounts of effort to acquire in bulk, either setting up large farms or spending hours hunting down the mobs (I spend several hours collecting 16.5 stacks of inc sacs last week). In addition, there will always be the threat of another disaster like the shulkers: it will always be possible that future updates will cause otherwise harmless spawn eggs to become ridiculously valuable. Who knows, maybe bats or endermites will eventually be given drops, or any other mob might be given a rare drop (like zombies sometimes dropping iron ingots, or bunnies sometimes dropping a rabbit’s foot). Therefore, in my mind the only way to guarantee that spawners are future-proof looking months/years in the future is either to stop offering spawn eggs (or spawner conversions) immediately, or in the case of a reset never offer them at all. This is why I currently disagree with Crafty’s decision to change his mind on the topic of spawn eggs: in a perfect world we could revert all spawners to their original states, but people paid real money for those spawn eggs and I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask them to give those up. Therefore the next best thing is to stop offering spawner conversions altogether as a form of damage control.
Player/Staff Heads
First I want to say that player heads are one of the only markets on this server with (in my opinion) a healthy economy. Not only does it offer some incentive to engage in pvp (which I personally don’t care about, but I want CraftyMynes to appeal to a wide range of players), but it also effectively adds a new economy to Minecraft where not every player is capable of gathering an item given enough time. Rare player heads are some of the only truly exclusive items in the game (along with the dragon’s egg, totems of undying, Notch apples, etc.) and I think the current system is near perfect. However, I am extremely disappointed with how imbalanced some of the markets selling admin heads is. In particular, I remember the time Miz got 1 kill on Baron in jail resulting in a dropped head. In the current economy, it could possibly sell for around 1000 diamond blocks. Don’t get me wrong, if I had the same opportunity I’d also take it, but I don’t think anyone should be able to earn hundreds of diamond blocks without considerable effort put in (this is an idea that ties this entire post together). Not to mention the fact that veteran players are considerably more likely to acquire admin heads than new players, so at best it’s not even a random lottery to make one player rich. I would be in favor of removing head drops for upper staff members (perhaps mod 2 and up). A possible problem with this idea is that when a player is promoted so that their head stops dropping, their head might skyrocket in value since there are now a definite number of them on the server. I tie this up nicely in the next section.
vip+/server bill alternatives
I understand fully aware that vip+ and server bill are needed to keep the server running. Many players only donate to get the spawn eggs in craftycrates (that’s the only item in the crate non-vip+’s ever ask about), so my argument against spawn eggs logically leads to a decline of donations. As a solution, I propose that each craftycrate includes at least 1 admin head. I believe there has been no better suggestion put forth by staff or the community to sell craftycrates other than using spawn eggs in some sense, and coupled with my idea to stop admin heads from dropping naturally is an adequate solution to the problem. These heads will still carry significant value, but it won't be gamebreaking in the thousands of diamond blocks. I'd love to see a survey of players and whether they'd continue or start to donate knowing craftycrates would have admin heads and not spawn eggs.
TL;DR
A reset of the server would/could:
- fix the shulker box economy permanently
- balance villager based book and god-gear based economy by increasing the barrier to entry.
- fix the insanely inflated mineral wealth that currently exists and is apparent for upper-middle to high class players on this server (my personal biggest concern that I’ve held for nearly 7 months)
Also my suggestions concerning craftycrates could:
- ensure nothing like the current shulker box economy could ever occur again
- fix the (in my opinion) highly volatile economy centered around some rare staff heads
- practically guarantee a future-proof economy looking months or even years down the road, if combined with a server reset
I understand the gravity of what me asking for a reset means both for senior staff setting up a new world and for players on the server being stripped of their bases and wealth. I hope the length of this post and the thought I’ve put into it can convince staff and players alike that I’ve put in a sufficient amount of thought to be qualified to make such a suggestion.
