Org Minecraft Server

[TinCow]

Yeah, I've killed a few around there as well. Never got any drops though, would a fortune enchantment help with that?

Fortune is for ores. The enchantment you want is Looting.

[TinCow]

I would like some feedback on some changes I'm thinking about making. therother and I have discovered that EnderHome is poorly coded and causes issues for server Ops (us). I've been looking for a way to re-code the plugin to fix the problem, but I've concluded that I don't understand java and Bukkit well enough to do that. At the same time, I've been slightly annoyed with EnderHome for a while now. When I added it to the server Ender Pearls were one of the rarest items around and thus using them was a non-insignificant cost. Due to the Ender Farm, that has not been the case for a long time. Ender Pearls are now basically worthless, and EnderHome might as well just be free. That's not the fault of the Ender Farm (which is one of the best constructions on the server), it's a problem with EnderHome. At the same time, I don't want to simply remove EnderHome because I know you all love it.

It occurred to me this morning that perhaps the solution to this is to add an economy system to the server. Economy plugins are very common on Bukkit servers but I've held off on them up to now because we've always been a very cooperative server. There are many economy plugins, but they all basically work the same way. In short, you sell items/blocks for virtual money which the server keeps track of. You can then spend that money in multiple ways, such as buying different items/blocks, paying for access to console commands (such as /home), or trading money with other players. Things can get a lot more complex from there, including having player-created shops where you can sell your own items to other players at whatever price you think is fair.

As I said, there are many economy plugins. The one I'm currently looking at is Gringotts, which essentially just uses emeralds as the currency rather than some random imaginary money without any in-game representation. Moving to a system like this would allow me a lot more flexibility on command access. For example, I could set up a system where the game charges you 10 emeralds to use /home. However, I could also allow many other commands at different prices, including teleporting to another player, or even teleporting back to the location of your death for fast item retrieval. At the same time, once I add an economy plugin it's going to be very difficult to ever give it up. I'm concerned that it might cause a bit more competition on the server than we want and degrade cooperation. At the same time, it opens up a lot of possibilities for balanced game management and might make it easier for some people to get rarer blocks by sacrificing/selling larger quantities of more common blocks. I would like to hear some opinions on this.

[Scienter]

My main concern is for people (like me) who play sporadically. I use EnderHome to get me out of the Nether when I go mining for quartz and glowstone because I get so lost down there. Or if I go exploring, etc. It's saved me a lot of frustration from being lost. Since I'm not on the server as much as others, I'm concerned that the economy will be such that it would be prohibitively expensive for me to trade for enough emeralds to afford to teleport. I don't have a lot of rare resources, certainly not enough to trade, I'd be trading basic blocks. So, I'd like to see a breakdown of what it would look like. How much cobblestone can I trade for an emerald? Gravel? Dirt? etc.

[Sigurd]

I look at EnderHome as more or less essential. Just look where I placed my bed . The enderfarm is a result of needing ender pearls to travel and capturing mobs.
I didn't know that it caused problems on the server.. I might have restricted the use (I would move from the back of the chest vault to the front just to save a few seconds).

Economy... how does that work if we look past the commands cost emeralds (not a bad idea). Setting up shops to get emeralds - how do we ensure that transactions are correct. Price vs. goods movement.
Which reminds me of the city layout. I started playing with the map and came up with this preliminary design:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Legacy would be:
Yellow = new roads
Red numbers = plots to be claimed
Main plaza should be beautified
The plaza should be surrounded by shops type buildings.
The Harbour has a better location on the suggested layout.

[spankythehippo]

I was opposed to the initial currency idea. But I'm impartial to the pay-for-console-commands plugin. The only issue I have is with the setwarp thing. Wouldn't it make portal's redundant?

I have no problem with EnderHome being disabled, but the pearls will become useless. That's my only concern, which isn't really a problem. Having to dispose of the pearls is not hard, just an annoyance.

To be honest, the only thing I care about is server stability. If it's stable (which it is), I'm happy. However, I'm opposed to any plugins that make Minecraft "broken", in the sense that it drastically changes gameplay.

Which reminds me of the city layout. I started playing with the map and came up with this preliminary design:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Legacy would be:
Yellow = new roads
Red numbers = plots to be claimed
Main plaza should be beautified
The plaza should be surrounded by shops type buildings.
The Harbour has a better location on the suggested layout.

This looks excellent. But the terraforming part is the biggest obstacle.

[TinCow]

I was opposed to the initial currency idea. But I'm impartial to the pay-for-console-commands plugin. The only issue I have is with the setwarp thing. Wouldn't it make portal's redundant?

Anything that allowed players to teleport out to a specific spot is very powerful and has this risk. /home only teleports you one direction and to a pre-defined location that you can't easily change. However, adding in /tp, /sethome, /warp, etc gives people ways to erase both trips, not just the trip home. As such, it would have to be much more expensive to keep it balanced. The idea being that these are things that would be used rarely and that you'd need to save up for, rather than just using them whenever you wanted.

A MC in-game day is 20 minutes. I was thinking that maybe it could be setup so that we earned 1 credit per full 20 minutes on the server. /home is cheap and would cost 1 or 2 credits. /back and /tp are powerful and would cost maybe 10. Probably 10 for /sethome as well, since you can use it to place your spawn somewhere other than your bed. /setwarp would have to be very expensive because it works for the entire server, not just each individual player. That would have be something like 100 credits, with /warp itself costing 20 or something similar. Balance would be the key on all these things. As it is, I think /home is used too much and I'd like to slow it down some. All of the others should be orders of magnitude rarer still.

[Nigel]

Here my two cents on EnderHome:

I love the feature although I hardly use it.

To me a good exploring adventure consists of going out - finding stuff - and getting it back home safely. EnderHome seems to be too cheap an option for the back home safely part of it, so I tend to walk home after my explorations.

I do however, always keep some Ender pearls in my pocked. It adds so much comfort to my mind, that I could teleport home if I got myself absolutely stuck and unwilling to commit seppuco just to get back home. Also, I can see it in situations, where the getting home bit is no longer part of an adventure but just a tedious chore which takes away fun rather than giving it.

So keeping the /home feature, wether tied to Ender Pearls or something else, would be good.

I have some thoughts on the economy too, but will need some more time to put them into proper writing....

[TinCow]

Which reminds me of the city layout. I started playing with the map and came up with this preliminary design:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Legacy would be:
Yellow = new roads
Red numbers = plots to be claimed
Main plaza should be beautified
The plaza should be surrounded by shops type buildings.
The Harbour has a better location on the suggested layout.

Forgot to mention the above. I like this design a great deal. I agree that terraforming will take a lot of work, but everything decent takes a lot of work. I've reached a stopping point in my own home improvements and will start work on the terraforming and road network to fit the above map.

[Vladimir]

Economy: Fine the way it is. Villager trading is already an effective economy.

Enderhome: I'm one of the worst offenders. I love using it but have no problem restricting it if it's causing problems.

City Layout: I would prefer more than just a simple grid, at least around the town hall. The proposed design doesn't look very nice. Hopefully existing terrain can be incorporated into the design and it will be more organic.

[Beskar]

Another way could be a top-down design. As if the roads are creating some sort of pattern upon the ground. Though I am unsure what design would look best.

[spankythehippo]

Forgot to mention the above. I like this design a great deal. I agree that terraforming will take a lot of work, but everything decent takes a lot of work. I've reached a stopping point in my own home improvements and will start work on the terraforming and road network to fit the above map.

I think the terraforming should be done to the bare minimum. Having a completely flat city is bland. As long as the hills are not too steep.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The buildings in the background have a pleasing uneven look to it.

[Ishmael]

I'm opposed to it, personally, largely working off the principle of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Building projects on the server seems to work quite well for everybody, with a decent balance between difficulty in collecting resources and the ability to make impressive structures (earlier difficulties in acquiring sand aside). Having the ability to trade between resources opens up the possibility of exploitation of the system through grinders, farms, block generators and the like, which would in turn cheapen the value of rarer blocks. Sure, you could probably fine-tune the system to prevent this, but it seems like that would be a never-ending process.

Not to mention, as you say, that the sense of community on this server reduces the need for such a system to a large extent. If I need lots of a block for a project I'm building people are usually willing to share some of their surplus, and in turn I'll help them out later if they need anything. I can see the need for a formal trading system on large servers, where most people don't know each other, but that's not really the case for us.

With regards to EnderHome, I don't really have any strong opinions. If people think it's a bit too 'cheap' then I can live without it - I tend to get my active bed mixed up anyway, and end up halfway across the world from where I wanted to go . Of course, it is a very handy feature to have. I don't suppose it's possible to change the item requirement from ender pearls to something else?

EDIT: By the way, I like the idea of that city layout Sigurd. I like the idea of a 'townhouse' like Nigel is building, but I'd feel a bit conspicuous if it were just me building in that area.

[TinCow]

It's possible to change the item used by EnderHome within the plugin, and I've considered changing it to a Ghast Tear. That said, the plugin itself is still problematic regardless of the item used. If necessary, we can live with it, but I'd prefer to find another option if possible.

The general block economy stuff pointed out by Ishmael is what I'm most concerned about. There are tons of servers out there that run these things so presumably there are systems that are balanced, and I believe there are supply/demand systems that adjust prices dynamically. That said, it's an issue.

We could avoid that by simply using the economy for access to console commands and nothing more. If real in-game currency wasn't desirable, we could simply use virtual currency that accumulates for each player. I could probably figure out a way to simply set it up so that each player gets X credits per Y period of time, and those credits can then be spent on a variety of commands, including home. A system like that would essentially boil down to a frequency use limits on special console commands like /home. If you spend all your credits on commands, just wait longer to get more and use your feet to get around until then.

Again, I want to emphasize that moving to this kind of system also increases options for all of you because it allows me to give you access to other commands that you don't have right now. These could include:

/back - returns you to the place of your death or the last place you teleported from, whichever is more recent

/sethome - allows you to mark your 'home' location at someplace other than your bed.

/tp - teleport directly to a specific player

/setwarp - create a 'warp' which is a pre-defined teleport location for the entire server

/warp - teleport to an existing warp

I might even be able to allow you to purchase /fly for limited periods of time, say 60 seconds per use.

[Ishmael]

.
We could avoid that by simply using the economy for access to console commands and nothing more. If real in-game currency wasn't desirable, we could simply use virtual currency that accumulates for each player. I could probably figure out a way to simply set it up so that each player gets X credits per Y period of time, and those credits can then be spent on a variety of commands, including home. A system like that would essentially boil down to a frequency use limits on special console commands like /home. If you spend all your credits on commands, just wait longer to get more and use your feet to get around until then.

Again, I want to emphasize that moving to this kind of system also increases options for all of you because it allows me to give you access to other commands that you don't have right now. These could include:

/back - returns you to the place of your death or the last place you teleported from, whichever is more recent

/sethome - allows you to mark your 'home' location at someplace other than your bed.

/tp - teleport directly to a specific player

/setwarp - create a 'warp' which is a pre-defined teleport location for the entire server

/warp - teleport to an existing warp

I might even be able to allow you to purchase /fly for limited periods of time, say 60 seconds per use.

If it's possible, I definitely like the sound of this. It neatly solves the issue of EnderHome being rather devalued, but doesn't drastically change anything.

[Csargo]

We could avoid that by simply using the economy for access to console commands and nothing more. If real in-game currency wasn't desirable, we could simply use virtual currency that accumulates for each player. I could probably figure out a way to simply set it up so that each player gets X credits per Y period of time, and those credits can then be spent on a variety of commands, including home. A system like that would essentially boil down to a frequency use limits on special console commands like /home. If you spend all your credits on commands, just wait longer to get more and use your feet to get around until then.

Again, I want to emphasize that moving to this kind of system also increases options for all of you because it allows me to give you access to other commands that you don't have right now. These could include:

/back - returns you to the place of your death or the last place you teleported from, whichever is more recent

/sethome - allows you to mark your 'home' location at someplace other than your bed.

/tp - teleport directly to a specific player

/setwarp - create a 'warp' which is a pre-defined teleport location for the entire server

/warp - teleport to an existing warp

I might even be able to allow you to purchase /fly for limited periods of time, say 60 seconds per use.

I think this would be just fine for our little server. I don't think we need an actual way to buy certain items, since we'll usually trade it someone needs anything. I'm not sure, but could we use experience to purchase these commands? Or would that be too cheap?

[TinCow]

FYI, for those who are using my smelter, you need to start bringing your own fuel. My coal stock has dropped by a full double chest and I'd prefer for it not to go much lower.

I'm not sure, but could we use experience to purchase these commands? Or would that be too cheap?

I think so, but you can get 30 levels in about a minute or two in the ender farm, so xp isn't too valuable either.