@humfrydog very nice, may i suggest some carpet, half slaps or stone pressure plates on top of the hoppers at your tree farm. it would make getting around less bumpy and not interfere with drops.

great idea, I'll add those in, thanks.

@Cileklim Rough but I can clearly see that you have spent quite some time mining this place

Yeah I ended up mining out a 40x60 or so rectangle straight down to bedrock. I've got maybe 60 double chests of stone and cobblestone from this base.

Here's the imgur link. http://imgur.com/a/dOx8p

@builder7555 Alright, i've read all the posts and this is the solution that has come out of this thread: Diamonds are too valuable so instead use emeralds as currency. I don't really see a problem with this, because rich players would still be rich players, since you can trade diamonds for emeralds, but at least then they can actually DO something with it, instead of stockpiling it, because the prices wouldn't (relatively) be as high.

I feel like people are really over valuing diamonds in this discussion. They aren't at all hard to get if you put in the time to mine them; and "stockpiling" them isn't depleting the economy because they are realistically an infinitely expandable resource. If the amount of diamonds on this server was "fixed" and we all started out with a set amount and people hoarded them that would be the case but it isn't as anyone can go down to the lower Y levels and find them.
I prefer trading diamonds as the currency of choice because of their utilitarian nature and they provide an incentive for people to trade the rarer items like shulker boxes and beacons whenever I put out a purchase request for them; people who are looking to sell these items aren't going to want emeralds, even in bulk. As one of the "rich" players on this server I happily overpay or under-price items whenever I buy/sell because I don't view them as being super rare or hard to obtain. I think a lot of people like me who spend most of their time mining end up "stockpiling" diamonds because there simply isn't really anything out there that we can't obtain through mining so we don't have any incentive to add our diamonds into circulation.
It may be an unpopular opinion but I feel like the barter system/economy is working out really well for us compared to the last server as there aren't any OP villager trades and you're forced to negotiate with other players to get items you really want. On the last server I probably traded with other players a handful of times and did the bulk of my trading through the villagers in the TP and VIP lounges. I feel like the economy has gotten a lot better since the reset, but that is just my two cents.

Here's a screencap from today of one of my shulker boxes that I keep in my e-chest for proof as well as the stats page showing how many blocks I've mined since the last reset. Using mending on everything has pretty much eliminated any consumption of diamonds for me so everything I get is pretty much straight profit.

I'll take two stacks, uncolored