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.