I have an enchanted book I found with the following:



Accepting offers.

Recently a number of topics regarding chunk pricing and the shop have arisen. The chunk prices have come down as a result (though perhaps not far enough), though changes to the shop have not come due to the policy that anything that can be farmed with too much ease should not be accepted by the shop. Both issues however are merely opposite sides of a coin. . .

TL;DR:
The V6 economy is wrong, the requirements to gain money do not match with its value. The income to chunk price ratio needs to be such that players that play normally can build normally - but to facilitate this the way income works has to be revamped to encourage player engagement by rewarding diverse and active play, while discouraging mass farming as the primary income for all players. We don’t just need one change, we need a few changes that work  together to increase engagement and reduce player frustration. . .

The Meat:
Now I'm not going to disagree with the premise of buying chunks, part of what makes Noobs town a good server is that there are heavy restrictions on what people can build where.  It makes it hard for people to cause trouble, and very much easier to police those who are.  However it causes problems for anyone who wants to build something big and grand.

I would contest that while the pay to build system is needed, it also breaks many of the core mechanics of Minecraft -- and that's the game we are here to play.  To balance that it is important that other mechanics are in place to mitigate the problems without causing more.  Unfortunately I do not think that V6 Noobs is doing this.

Now from reading a number of posts the intent of the admins is clear -- we want active players working toward long-term goals, and we want the V6 world to last.  Those are admirable goals, but unless they expect players to be online 8 hours a day for months that's not what this system is going to get- instead players will burn out.

Minecraft is a great many things -- Building, destroying, fighting, farming, mining, and crafting.  The current setup isn't conducive to most of those things.  Building is a pain if you don't have the land to build in, and aside from mining all the others are rather unrewarding. The problem is not just with the chunk prices but also with the relative lack of income sources. Counter to what seems reasonable to any minecraft player the most profitable materiel in the server is. . . Cobblestone. I can actually make far more money mindlessly mining stone while watching Family Guy on Netflix than I can by farming (plants or animals) or fighting monsters. Tell me that's not a little counter-intuitive. Sure it means I'm on the server all the time, but is that really the kind of "active" we are looking for?

Now I have seen the arguments against using such things as a means to accumulate noobs -- they can produce so many noobs so fast that players who set up massive farms can become unbelievably wealthy.  So for V6 the ability to sell such things has been removed. Problem is the chunk prices still reflect an economy where I can sit AFK while an autonomous cactus/sugar farm fills chests (yay hoppers!) full of money.  The hope is that players will use the auction (or P2P economy in general) to make money. But we run into a problem -- most people don't want to play stock market simulator.  I sure don't.  Maybe I could play the market game, farm goods and sell it to the masses, buy up items and resell at higher prices, but I don't want to play that game -- I want to play Minecraft.  I think many players agree.

Chunky is here to prevent obnoxious play, and the limited market is here to prevent autonomous play. . .  But what we need is something that promotes normal play.  People who mine normally, farm normally, build normally. And in exchange they need to be able to expand normally.

So how can we reward players for playing the game instead of the plugins? Well for one reward diverse play, let us sell almost anything, but limit how much of a given thing can be sold at a given price over a time period.  For instance, if every stack of cobble is worth 5% less than the last (to a minimum), and becomes worth 5% more every hour (to a maximum) then I can't just sell a bunch of cobble and call it a day.  If this is true for almost all items then if I farm them all a little then I can make more than farming one a lot. This also mean that if you do want to mass farm a specific item then you will have a bigger customer base -- most players will not be mass farming, thus when they need a big supply of something they are more likely to pay a premium (not to mention they should have more money and can afford it).

Furthermore wages for active play could be implemented. Based on MCMMO levels (with some skills weighted higher or lower) every hour of active (not just non-AFK, but significant levels of movement and interaction) would gain you a wage.  This way even if you aren't farming at the moment you can still make money by being active based on your previous effort.  The idea here is that MCMMO can be used to track active play in a number of situations (lower weight on those skills, such as acrobatics, that are easy to farm) and could thus be used as a way to reward monetarily for not just playing but engaging in the game.

On the flip side there is the matter of the chunks.  The price there needs to be balanced such that the income of an active player farming and leveling skills reasonably can unlock chunks at a high enough rate to build without feeling imposed upon to do unreasonable levels of farming to gain land.  In a normal game of Minecraft as the game progresses there will be a gain in excess resources that grows continuously -- the resources required to survive and build are often dwarfed by what the player can gather.  As long as burning that excess is all that is required (with minimal need to play the market game) to have the land the player wants then the balance is optimal.  Any lower a price and people will expand farther than reasonable (read: farther than they can fill will cool structures) and any higher and the player will be frustrated and will lose interest.

All this to say that the V6 economy is still wrong, the requirements to gain money do not match with its value.  The income to chunk price ratio needs to be such that players that play normally can build normally - but to facilitate this the way income works has to be revamped to encourage player engagement.

I have a huge nether wart farm, it is massive, and used to produce vast sums of warts. However ever since 1.2.4 no warts have grown, they just stay at stage one.

Yes the farm is in the nether, Yes it is set up such that it should grow. I am not doing something wrong. It worked before.

Now this farm was a big time investment, and now it seems to be useless. So what gives? Why don't warts grow? Is this issue ever going to be fixed?

Is it just me or has the server been down for hours? And has this happened a lot lately. . .

http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/sublimation/

This plugin allows for ice to be collected with the use of a silk touch pickaxe (just as it originally could be) while also fixing the over powered nature of ice in the nether.

It can be configured to either stop the placement (like world guard, simply put it back in your inventory) or make it fizzle out just like placing water.


Advantages:
- New building materiel
- Ice looks cool
- Ability to stack water
- Makes silk touch worth something
- Ice!

Disadvantages:
- One more plugin to deal with
- People complaining that they can't place ice in nether

Alternatives/Additions:
- Make this a VIP only perk
- Let us buy Ice with points (still use plugin to block nether)
- Have mods place ice (treat like lava)
- Sadness'z cuz we can't haz ice'z

I see that you can purchase "points" and use it to buy items, including a pig spawner.

My question is, if one gets a pig spawner, places it, and needs to move it, must they purchase a new one? Or is there a plugin that lets the owner move/collect the spawner? (Or will mods move them for you?).

If not, has the server considered using the creatureBox pluggin? It lets you give collection abilities to certain players, or make them pay to use it. It could configured so that VIPs could use it, or probably so that players can spend "points" to use it. Would be a great addition to the server.