Noobscraft

News, Announcements & Updates => Server Announcements => Topic started by: ItsLawrence on 23 Feb 2014, 17:39:33

Title: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: ItsLawrence on 23 Feb 2014, 17:39:33
Just a quick update regarding land pricing in the wilderness world: Some of you may have noticed that since the downtime the pricing of wilderness chunks has been greatly reduced. We listened to your feedback regarding this and have acted accordingly.

From now on the price increase is much more gradual and is capped off at 2,000,000Nbz. If you have any comments to make regarding this change please feel free to make them. We will continue to monitor this new pricing and may make new changes again. Below is a graph comparing the original pricing to the new pricing:
(https://embed.noobscraft.com/6148523063446f764c3278684c6e64795a57356a5a533570626939314c7a49794d6a49774d4445784d5441794c6e42755a775f5f)


No previous purchases will be refunded. Only newly purchased chunks will follow this pricing.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Citebafla on 23 Feb 2014, 17:42:35
FINALLY
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: EmperorMyrf on 23 Feb 2014, 18:22:05
What are the actual functions of those lines? Tryna gauge how much to save up
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: ItsLawrence on 23 Feb 2014, 18:25:33
What are the actual functions of those lines? Tryna gauge how much to save up
They aren't publicly released, you can roughly work it out though if you want to. You can only find out when you come to buying that chunk unless someone wants to calculate it and post that information.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: EmperorMyrf on 23 Feb 2014, 18:45:12
Ha, sounds like a challenge. Hopefully it's a lower order function so i won't need to buy too many to figure it out
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Silverwolf1985 on 23 Feb 2014, 19:04:50
let me post the first number haha

wild chunk number 78 costs 311k Nbz
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Niblek on 23 Feb 2014, 22:17:23
So will those of us that already bought chunks be getting a refund of the difference?  Cause... that would be like over 100k noobs for me...
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: EttaDreamfeather on 23 Feb 2014, 22:33:42
No, Lawman said in the post that nothing will be refunded.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: deebles17 on 23 Feb 2014, 23:40:04
Will we lose our plots?
I'm kinda confused here
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: EttaDreamfeather on 23 Feb 2014, 23:43:59
You're not losing anything, it's just that it's now easier/cheaper to buy wilderness plots.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: deebles17 on 23 Feb 2014, 23:51:59
So it's not 50k to buy a plot a few chunks away from yours?
THANK GOD IF ITS NOT 50K!!
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: HoppytoadBob on 23 Feb 2014, 23:53:36
  I'm glad I've only claimed 9 of my free chunks, Hoppy the Ancient Miner
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Banksweegie on 24 Feb 2014, 00:02:17
So... does that mean I get a reimbursement of sorts?  ;)
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Tidala on 24 Feb 2014, 00:15:57
No previous purchases will be refunded. Only newly purchased chunks will follow this pricing.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Niblek on 24 Feb 2014, 00:35:29
Yeah, I read the initial post about 4 times before I saw that...  It was in the sig / tagline area and I kinda auto-ignore that hehe
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Darkwings on 24 Feb 2014, 01:22:11
My first impression is that given the difference between the two models, one of them is most probably horrible. Or both.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Olah0001 on 24 Feb 2014, 03:31:54
that's so much better :D thnx

one question tho if they are low enough that players start buying a lot would u think about putting a cap on the limit we can get or no cause they aren't that low, they just look low compared to the onld prices
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Darkwings on 24 Feb 2014, 13:57:44
Placing a limit on the maximum number of chunks shouldn't be needed since the goal was to limit how many you can get by having a steep increase in price, so the whole thing would end up balancing itself thanks to economy. (assuming the economy is working as inteded)

However, now the prices could really be too low.

If the 78th chunk costs 311k as reported, it's not too far fetched to think most players will be able to claim 50+ chunks in a very short time and that may not be what the admins had in mind.

If you took a look at the top 20 in noobz, you'd see that the ones focusing on towns and chunks are mostly stalling themselves since everything they get goes into expansion.
Basically, they can get 20 chunks in a few days, get some money back and be in the same initial position.

With a growing economy -something that isn't really here yet, imo- the more money you have the more money you can make so even the if price goes up, you should have ways to increase your potential at the same rate.
Without any price cap, you'll be forced to keep growing to keep up and that's fine (again, asssuming the economy is working).

With lower prices and a 2M cap, rinse and repeat that "buy chunk, get money back" process a few times and you get a very plausible scenario of ~40 players with 60-70 wild chunks.
You don't need to keep your growing rate stable, you just need a stable amount of income (much easier to do with a growing capital in the same situation as above).
Keep going and the number will go up as more and more players (even the slower/less focused ones) will be in the same situation.

That's why my impression was mostly negative: if that situation was intended to be delayed as much as possible, with the new model it will happen in a month or two.

I don't know if that's ok or not but there's no common ground in the two models.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Nosaj544 on 24 Feb 2014, 14:58:50
I agree with Darkwings, though I still don't personally mind having cheaperish prices ;) - maybe we could find a middle ground?  Having an increasingly difficult goal makes large terrain ownership more rare and prized.

Thanks for your hard work admins!
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: GrumpyV5 on 24 Feb 2014, 15:11:07
So it's not 50k to buy a plot a few chunks away from yours?
THANK GOD IF ITS NOT 50K!!
It doesn't say anything about that price I believe. I'd assume the 50k for non-connected plots would still apply as they wish to prevent users from claiming single plots all over the place.


The new prices might lead to a much faster expansion, but the map is huge (and there are great unique spots and biomes out there). The only players who might run into problems with their expansionspace are those who claimed to close to spawn and well - you can't really be surprised if you run out of space when you claim right at the crowded center of the map, can you?
So,  if A.) you fear you might run out of space at spawn
     or B.) don't like living in a boring old vanilla-style plains biome anymore after seeing what's out there (I have to admit I made that mistake myself and just unclaimed all my 20-22 plot to move to one of the custom biomes)
then now might be a good time to move as the prices for the new plots are much lower now. ;)


As a seperate suggestion for the server regarding the expansion:
As moving out farther into the wild without /j requires a trip over several MC days it also requires that most players use up some or even all of their free plots for shelters in the nighttime. Therefore most (especially new) players would probably stay rather close to spawn and refrain form moving away from there.
Maybe a grid-network of admincreated 1plot sized simple night-shelters 1 day trip apart would actually help and encourage people to venture farther out before settling down (without them having to use up their free plots) - therefore ensuring a better spread accross the server and creating a less crowded spawnarea in the future. Marking those shelters with a beacon on top would make them easier to find (and also give the staff another good reason to not allow other beacons in the wild ;) ). This sheltergrid does not have to reach the ends of the wilderness (to not ruin the "treking and survival" experience) but maybe future players should be able to at least travel some distance at the start (i.e. an area of 20-30% of the map around spawn) without having to settle down (or loose their free plots).


If the 78th chunk costs 311k as reported, it's not too far fetched to think most players will be able to claim 50+ chunks in a very short time
But it would also mean that 3 lvl70 plots would cost as much as a town. I think that even with with a regular high income the progression will slow down enough over time to limit the number of areas over 50plots. And the pure size of the map can take a lot of expansion (the wilderness map looks smaller as it really is, there are small looking lakes out there that easily cover 70 plots).

With a growing economy -something that isn't really here yet, imo- the more money you have the more money you can make so even the if price goes up, you should have ways to increase your potential at the same rate.
Without any price cap, you'll be forced to keep growing to keep up and that's fine (again, asssuming the economy is working).
"the more money you have the more money you can make" Not necessarily, as this is not the realwolrd economy. Unlike in the real economy it's rather hard to invest, branch out or hire people in this virtual world. Therefore your possibilities are still limited to the work one player alone can do.
Of course you can use  the money to buy diamonds of others to sell them yourself - but unlike with hired workers in the real work these same miners you bought the products from might simply undercut your prices and ruin that investment.
Of yourse your income will make it easier to create more income, but at a point it will level out due to the limit of you just being one player and only being able to do so much (unless you really manage to "hire" reliable people that only sell to you and not the market).
Additionally the market (and the number of players) is not growing equally fast as the income of a good trader, therefore slowing down the increase of additional income via investment in the market. And sooner or later the market will become more and more saturated, more traders (and specialised traders focussing certain categories and being able to "mass-produce/-harvest" these items more cheaply) will emerge over time, creating more competition and therefore decreasing income. Also over time more players (potentional customers) will be able to create decent stocks of items like diamonds by themselfes, leading to a decrease in the demand for those items - lowering prices and therefore income.
Some smart way to compensate for that are of course large bulk deals (like Duelcon does); specialising on a certain product offering bigger amounts under market value to manouver out the competition (like the currently craftymatt-dominated woolmarket) or specialize on gathering huge amount of specific blocks for huge projects (like 500 doublechests of smooth sandstone in 2 days for PlayerX's big pyramidproject).
So while you might be able to create vast sums of income, not everyone will be able to do it (or WANT to do it as it requires quite a bit of work), I don't think that the income will be that high to be a problem in terms of plotprices+expansion+mapsize.
Also, if we take a look at the biggest earners in V5 we can see that many of them got rich by selling easily farmed produces (especially sugar) to the servershop. This has been disabled for just this reason in V6, so luckily earning money might be more of a challenge this time.



Last but not least, the admins always have the possibility to revise the plotprices again or put a limit on it should problems arise. So for now the new revised prices will provide a nice boost of plotexpansion to the server, but I'll assume they'll monitor it carefully and if neccessary intervene again. So I don't really see a future problem with the lower prices as it can easily be changed again should need be.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Citebafla on 24 Feb 2014, 15:15:30
I think most people largely overestimate how big a plot is... If you have 50 plots, that's only a small 100x100 area on a truly IMMENSE map. The V6 wilderness world is not only BIGGER than the V5 one, but we also don't have to share it with towns anymore. Having plots cap at 2 million is still a big achievement to buy that many plots, and still offers people some room to expand, other than the old method which would make plot number 200 cost like 30 million noobz.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: DadJaeger on 24 Feb 2014, 15:20:05
this is why Alba has 3 posts total. He is Leo Tolstoy reincarnate.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Nosaj544 on 24 Feb 2014, 15:22:01
Maybe a grid-network of admincreated 1plot sized simple night-shelters 1 day trip apart would actually help and encourage people to venture farther out before settling down... Marking those shelters with a beacon on top would make them easier to find...

Good idea.  However, what is to prevent players from claiming ALL surrounding land around these safe zones?  Admins would need to implement a safety area around the beacon areas, causing 'dead zones' in our beautiful wild.  But it does sound appealing, especially as a goal for wilderness-adventuring.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Dopehead_NL on 24 Feb 2014, 15:43:22
No need for safe houses, its survival mode.......
I have walked to the border without getting in real trouble, its not that hard outside.
You can claim a plot, spend the night and then sell it.
Or
Run like mad and leave all mobs in your wake
Or
Find an NPC village to hide in for the night, most NPC's will open doors for you.
(use the live map to find them)
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: GrumpyV5 on 24 Feb 2014, 16:31:16
No need for safe houses, its survival mode.......
I have walked to the border without getting in real trouble, its not that hard outside.
You can claim a plot, spend the night and then sell it.
Or
Run like mad and leave all mobs in your wake
Or
Find an NPC village to hide in for the night, most NPC's will open doors for you.
(use the live map to find them)
Yes, but some players might be new to the game or much younger than you (not everyone is already used to seeing creepers and zombies as rather funny and easy mobs compared to other played games). Also remember that guests and members have less free plots to claim than vips and no /jump and /back (which are a great help on these journeys) and even the basic /sethome doesn't seem to really work for them untill they have a bed. There is also the problem that we now have the possibility of /kit food which increases our range before having to settle down (but that kit is only available for now and suppossed to be removed soon).

And yes, it's survivalmode, that's why it could be limited to 30% of the map (around spawn) just to get away far enough from the spawn to the real wilderness.


Good idea.  However, what is to prevent players from claiming ALL surrounding land around these safe zones?  Admins would need to implement a safety area around the beacon areas, causing 'dead zones' in our beautiful wild.  But it does sound appealing, especially as a goal for wilderness-adventuring.
Hm, good point. An alternative could be 4 portals (1 for each direction) at the wilderness spawn sending players to another portal a certain distance (i.e. 400-800 plots) from spawn. That would make venturing out much easier for new players without taking too much of the survival aspect away(you would probably only need these portals once in the beginning) and also prevent a too crowded spawn as the general expansion is shifted into a distance and into 4 different directions. Which would also benefit players already settled down there because there will be less competition for the land around them. And it might encourage the exploration and use of all the custom biomes as well (what good are they if people would have30+ plots already before they find them, only few people might be willing to unclaim all to start anew). I guess many players wouldn't settle in the rather casial grassy plains around spawn if they knew what was out there.
Hm, which makes me think about an idea: Do we already have a thread with pictures of the custom biomes, so players can actually get an idea of what they can find out there?


this is why Alba has 3 posts total. He is Leo Tolstoy reincarnate.
Well, that might be related to the fact that this is a very new account due to problems with the old one. ;)
And I doubt many people know who Tolstoy is. It has to do with BOOKS! *watches certain TS-users running away in panic*
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: HarryX11 on 24 Feb 2014, 20:18:20
Now all that needs to be done is reducing the prices of towns :P (just kidding)
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: bwhit1256 on 24 Feb 2014, 20:57:35
Getting far out in the wilderness was an issue i also had. Best way I found was to find someone far out and ask to tp to them, then take a journey to set up a home.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: zeel01 on 24 Feb 2014, 22:35:29
While I appreciate the change I don't think it really fixes the core issue: I have to waste huge amounts of time essentially grinding to obtain the land I need. The problem isn't just the prices but the way income works. I have some thoughts on that, but I think they go a bit off topic so I have posted a new thread with my full write up:

Reconsidering the Economy - Chunk Prices Vs. Shop Usage (http://www.noobscraft.com/suggestions-ideas/reconsidering-the-economy-chunk-prices-vs-shop-usage/)

As far as traveling in the Wild goes, new players should visit the mining world to obtain some armor first if they aren't good at PVE (or at least avoiding it).  Running through the woods (especially with /kit food) is really pretty easy, and with a little time put into finding some iron it shouldn't challenge anyone. And really, it's the Wild a challenge should be expected.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Dopehead_NL on 25 Feb 2014, 08:20:58
Ah come on, its not that hard to earn some money.......
I have already owned 10 chunks of vulcano, bought plots (unattached!) in a NPC village, sold the lot and now own 12 or 14 plots in a swamp. (selling plots does not restore your money, so I lost it all)
This all before they lowered the prices................
And I estimate I play 12-16 hours a week.
By now I must have generated 100-150K (can the mods look that up somewhere ?)
Granted I have some Veteran and Vip buffs, so moving around is a bit easier for me, but still....
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: Citebafla on 28 Feb 2014, 13:51:16
After having had some time to play around with the new plot prices, I still think they are SIMPLY TOO HIGH.

Once again I like to refer back to the promise you guys made back on the builder streams when you were still preparing for V6. Where you ENSURED ME IT WOULD BE NO PROBLEM TO COLLECT 400 CHUNKS FOR MY BUILD. Right now, I already had to tone down that 400 to 120 last week, and this week I had to lower it down even more to 95 because it just isn't possible to get many more chunks without spending too much real life money on it. And even to get to those 97 plots, that is 41 more since I already have 56 plots, I still need 15-20 MILLION NOOBZ FOR IT. Even if you do say, like you said last night, that the economy is set up to potentially be 10 times bigger, this amount of money would still take me 6 months to get if I compare it with my V5 earnings and multiply it by 10.

TL;DR
Right now it would only take me A WEEK TO GO OUT, GET A JOB, AND EARN THE MONEY I NEED TO BUY 40 MORE PLOTS, while it would take 6 MONTHS AT LEAST TO GET THE NOOBZ FOR IT.

You are just discouraging every fanatic builder from going for a nice, big wilderness build. In fact, even if I spent real life money on it, it would be like 6-8 times cheaper to just save up 850k for a town, and buy myself 400 towny plots for my original build than it would be to buy 40 extra plots for my current idea. You didn't make a lasting wilderness world. You made an empty one with small, useless buildings because everyone that likes to build big will just go to the towny world. I wouldn't mind it that much if you had told in the builder streams that it would be this much. What I do hate is that you guys don't keep promises you made and seem hellbent on destroying everyone's hope at getting a nice big wilderness build if they desire to do so.  Last night I even got told that having a lot of wilderness chunks is "endgame". It's not everyone's endgame dream to own a big piece of land. For me gettin the big area is just my early game. My endgame would be just grinding mcmmo and helping other players out by providing them with cheap/free resources. Sorry if I sound annoyed in this post, but I am pretty annoyed just because in everything they say and do the admins don't seem to want people building big stuff in the wild.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: avoirdupois107 on 8 Mar 2014, 14:58:19
One of my issues with exploring in the wild is death from falls. I had a fall in the wild, and my stuff fell into a cave that was inaccessible, because I couldn't break or place blocks. I lost a really nice enchanted bow. I eventually got another one, but the frustration of seeing my items despawn when they were a couple blocks above my head was intense. That said, the danger of exploring does make me more excited about playing in the wild, but also less interested in striking out far from the spawn to see some of the biomes on the map. I realize now that I could have claimed the unclaimed chunk, placed/broken blocks, then unclaimed it, but I only had a couple minutes before my stuff despawned and I didn't think of that quickly enough.  Didn't v5 have a thing where falling into lava or dying from a fall didn't result in loss of your stuff? That kind of change would make me a lot more likely to roam the wild. An earlier commenter was stating that mobs are easy to avoid in the wild, and they are, especially if you have a horse, but there are a lot of dangerous ravines and pits that are hard to see over the "chunk loading" horizon before you're on top of them.
P.S. there is an awesome looking high plateau biome with waterfalls coming off of them that I'd love to explore (that's where I died), but it's really hard to scale cliffs without placing/breaking blocks, so I couldn't make it to the top. Any ideas on how to do that?
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: GrumpyV5 on 11 Mar 2014, 22:45:09
One of my issues with exploring in the wild is death from falls. I had a fall in the wild, and my stuff fell into a cave that was inaccessible, because I couldn't break or place blocks.
If VIP's are online you could ask them for help if ot happens again. They could /jump up there and get you your lost stuff before it despawns.
They could also jump up that cliff and let you tpa to them there.
Title: Re: Revised Wilderness Pricing
Post by: gamergirlxo on 6 Apr 2014, 04:48:39
All I'm going to contribute is that I think people complain too much and that more credit needs to be given than pointing out all the negatives. That is all. :)