The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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Personally, I think cobblestone tools should be nerfed to current wood level in this scenario, and wood ones to just half a dozen uses. Cobblestone tools would only be obtainable by using stone, not cobblestone. Iron would be a huge jump, and have a lot more uses than normal. Gold tools would be worthless nearly, having the same uses as wood does not, but mining any brick almost instantly. Diamond would be very powerful, even more so than now, but then again the scarce resources would make diamond a very contested resource, paticuarly if you think of the fact that nations would then go to war over, say, a store of 10 diamonds. Enchanting would be nerfed a bit, since at its' current stage, it would be a bit overpowered. Overall, most of you have good ideas.
I know this topic is not very friendly to users who have just found it 15 pages in, but please keep up with the contemporary discussion, quoting the third or fourth post in a topic with just under 300 posts and you may find your post irrelevant or out of place.
Despite this you do bring up a good point with the iron golems. I mean, I cannot imagine they are easy to construct, devices that would farm iron golems. But players can create villages with renewable resources and create villagers, in turn, if they have the capabilities and resources they can construct these farms. So essentially, players are able to create infinite devices (disregarding map size) leading to an infinite amount of iron. This destroys a pillar of our scarcity, but it is assuming that players create enough devices to devalue iron. I am not sure if my assumption that the average players inability to construct one of the more complex farms is enough to warrant their existence. I wouldn't mind if a few existed and were hotly contested, but if the average joe could build one, well. It may be worth intervening in this area.
I have made one of those devices. It's pretty easy, and crazy efficient. I don't even need to use it anymore. I just turn it on when the number of iron golems starts to lag the game.
Heck, usually my problem is fitting all of the iron into my inventory.
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Allocators are no longer the future, we have Hoppers now. I still like them, though.
I have made one of those devices. It's pretty easy, and crazy efficient. I don't even need to use it anymore. I just turn it on when the number of iron golems starts to lag the game.
Heck, usually my problem is fitting all of the iron into my inventory.
I've not made an iron golem grinder, but I do know that if one community created one, it could easily be sabotaged. As long as the map is small enough to prevent security simply by isolation, no large-scale farms of this kind could be made without other groups taking action. Alternatively, villages could be absent from the simulation, although I think that they are like most other resources, and extremely difficult to protect in practice anyway. A tribe strong enough to defend a large, delicate (villagers don't last long) machine might be worthy of renewable iron.
I like it a lot, it puts a new out look of the game. It requires team work, and knowledge about how much the world means to everyone. All in all, good idea. Sign me up!
I've not made an iron golem grinder, but I do know that if one community created one, it could easily be sabotaged. As long as the map is small enough to prevent security simply by isolation, no large-scale farms of this kind could be made without other groups taking action. Alternatively, villages could be absent from the simulation, although I think that they are like most other resources, and extremely difficult to protect in practice anyway. A tribe strong enough to defend a large, delicate (villagers don't last long) machine might be worthy of renewable iron.
I see your point, as long as villages aren't as common as dirt I think it could work. The only way to analyse these problems is to see them arise I suppose.
Several changes to the game play mechanics of minecraft would be made, in general, to make it harder. Organic matter would take longer to grow with bonemeal effects either being removed or being nerfed. Cobble stone would be removed completely as a material from which to create tools. All tools will have less durability, wood will only have several uses. Stacks of any item or material would be reduced to a maximum stack of 1.
No. **** that. The limited map space will add sufficient difficulty on its own. Farm animals will be hunted to extinction almost immediately, and diamond-production will peak within days (a few weeks at most) before dropping off, after which obsidian-production will drop and the creation of creeper-proof structures will come to a stop.
Just run Factions, LWC, iConomy, Gold2economy, and maybe a few other plugins that make use of money (like bounty or auction plugins).
6.) DO NOT GET TOWNY OR FACTIONS. They ruin PvP. True raiding and PvP includes the destruction of enemy structures and fortifications. Just don't get any mods that add player protection.
Factions allows the claiming of enemy territory and the destruction of structures therein. Your argument is fail.
I was on board with this idea right up until this part:
No. **** that. The limited map space will add sufficient difficulty on its own. Farm animals will be hunted to extinction almost immediately, and diamond-production will peak within days (a few weeks at most) before dropping off, after which obsidian-production will drop and the creation of creeper-proof structures will come to a stop.
Just run Factions, LWC, iConomy, Gold2economy, and maybe a few other plugins that make use of money (like bounty or auction plugins).
Factions allows the claiming of enemy territory and the destruction of structures therein. Your argument is fail.
You realize that the whole thing is meant to be as close to vanilla as possible, but trying to maintain it so it doesn't get exploited like it is currently. Plugins, like the ones you are saying, do not prevent exploiting and thus are not needed and unnecessary for this experiment. The whole point of this is to see what economy people go with. Will people trade and barter, or will they go with commerce and use a standard currency like Emeralds or Gold? That's what this whole thing is about, not just a server, a simulation. You are the one missing the point entirely.
Edit: To expand on my post. LWC is a protection plugin, the whole point of the experiment is to simulate how the players will react when facing wars and how to protect their items. What kind of tactics will they use to store their precious items? Will they even use tactics at all? How will the community trust each other knowing there are those with good items in them?
Factions is again a protection plugin. You setup a territory and boom you are protected against other factions, and quite frankly it is just as easy to exploit Factions then it is with Vanilla Minecraft. Another point to this simulation is to see what kind of military will the nations make to protect their land. What kind of defenses and routine will they use to secure their land.
Economy plugins are commerce plugins which we aren't forcing them to use. We want to see what kind of economy system the players will use to conduct economic status. Use barter or commerce, like Gold or Emeralds? What kind of measures will they use with this economic system, like businesses or banks and how will they secure those?
The OP is trying to simulate real life practices into Minecraft and see how it works out. He isn't trying to make it as realistic as possible, maybe even quite the opposite, the OP is trying to see how Minecraft will react with our real life situations. That's what this is all about.
Edit 2:
I also have a suggestion to the OP. Since we are all about simulation here why not start conducting small scale tests into seeing which systems work and how to combat exploiting? What is too hard or too easy and what is reasonable or not. Don't pay attention to how the structure of things work because that will probably be different on a larger scale, but finding exploits and tweaking gameplay mechanics to be much more difficult and truer to real life (obviously we don't have zombies or skeletons in real life, but you know what I mean) while still maintaining the Minecraft feel for the Minecraft conversion simulation to work.
Ah, someone get actually gets it. Thanks for the post danthonywalker. I'll try and make it clear that the OP holds some older ideas that we've modified or removed.
As for your edit 2, I understand what you mean, this was kind of done on sting_auers server although I don't think many documented it well. If anyone from the server wants to share any feedback in this regard, feel free to do so. From my own experiences I was still able to nomad however I gave up and joined a town because there was bugger all to raid and was rather boring, maybe I would of been more of a nomad raider if there more players. My ability to nomad was just the sheer amount of food I was able to collect, herds upon herds of cows and pigs made my journeys much easier.
Although I think setting up a server just for these small scale tests will be rather redundant when a little more work can be done to commit to a full scale test and we can analyse all the problems presented.
Ah, someone get actually gets it. Thanks for the post danthonywalker. I'll try and make it clear that the OP holds some older ideas that we've modified or removed.
As for your edit 2, I understand what you mean, this was kind of done on sting_auers server although I don't think many documented it well. If anyone from the server wants to share any feedback in this regard, feel free to do so. From my own experiences I was still able to nomad however I gave up and joined a town because there was bugger all to raid and was rather boring, maybe I would of been more of a nomad raider if there more players. My ability to nomad was just the sheer amount of food I was able to collect, herds upon herds of cows and pigs made my journeys much easier.
Although I think setting up a server just for these small scale tests will be rather redundant when a little more work can be done to commit to a full scale test and we can analyse all the problems presented.
Sting's server had hardly any of the modifications to simulate the experiment. Hard mode was virtually the only difficulty. I think it showed that the world border must be much tighter for the final product. A combination of more scarce ores, lower sea level, and a smaller map would be sufficient in my opinion, assuming there is a decent server population. Civilizations only developed because players wanted them to, not because solo survival was difficult by any means. In fact, living in groups was often more detrimental to an individual than hiding away in some ravine. Thievery and griefing made towns very inefficient. Even with the constant pressure by participants for an economy to develop led to little results because of the abundance of resources and little to no need to actually trade. Players went out of their way to trade items just in attempt for some markets to develop, but nothing came of it. (Although this may have been due to lack of time; the server only lasted 2 weeks or so.)
In order to maintain a nearly-vanilla experience, I suggest we attempt to create an ideal environment for the experiment through the initial map generation. Adjusting to a new map is a constant experience in vanilla Minecraft anyway, so a map that has been created to suit our needs will be no different. Fewer but larger veins of ores, more space underground or a lower sea level, a lower height limit, and a smaller world border can all be accomplished before players begin the simulation, and the changes would be easy to adjust to (I wouldn't be surprised if many didn't even notice a non-ordinary map). In addition, if iron farms could be a possible problem, villagers could simply be absent from the map.
The only modification I could see being needed that can't be met by specific map generation requirements is a possible bonemeal nerf, or slower plant growing times. Even these would be basically vanilla.
I definitely would argue against factions, towny, or currency plugins, as these violate the core principles of this idea. Even the limited economy on Sting's server managed a currency without plugins.
Sting's server had hardly any of the modifications to simulate the experiment. Hard mode was virtually the only difficulty. I think it showed that the world border must be much tighter for the final product. A combination of more scarce ores, lower sea level, and a smaller map would be sufficient in my opinion, assuming there is a decent server population. Civilizations only developed because players wanted them to, not because solo survival was difficult by any means. In fact, living in groups was often more detrimental to an individual than hiding away in some ravine. Thievery and griefing made towns very inefficient. Even with the constant pressure by participants for an economy to develop led to little results because of the abundance of resources and little to no need to actually trade. Players went out of their way to trade items just in attempt for some markets to develop, but nothing came of it. (Although this may have been due to lack of time; the server only lasted 2 weeks or so.)
In order to maintain a nearly-vanilla experience, I suggest we attempt to create an ideal environment for the experiment through the initial map generation. Adjusting to a new map is a constant experience in vanilla Minecraft anyway, so a map that has been created to suit our needs will be no different. Fewer but larger veins of ores, more space underground or a lower sea level, a lower height limit, and a smaller world border can all be accomplished before players begin the simulation, and the changes would be easy to adjust to (I wouldn't be surprised if many didn't even notice a non-ordinary map). In addition, if iron farms could be a possible problem, villagers could simply be absent from the map.
The only modification I could see being needed that can't be met by specific map generation requirements is a possible bonemeal nerf, or slower plant growing times. Even these would be basically vanilla.
What would lower sea level do for the purposes of the scenerio? Does the level of gold generation, mountain height, etc, scale with sea level? And what does more space underground give us?
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GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
I notice that we keep saying "let's nerf bonemeal" and "let's make ores generate in larger but more scarce veins" and "let's tweak the typical sea level" and things of that nature.
But we never specify to what degree we're doing these things. For example, how strongly will bonemeal be nerfed? will 1 use only give you 1 stage of growth, for example? how does it work on saplings? Does it work on saplings?
On the topic of ore veins, what range are we talking about for each vein? Coal seems to generate anywhere from 4 to 16 in a vein right now, Iron seems to give up to 8, more rare resources(diamond, redstone, etc) up to maybe 6?
What size do we want veins to become? twice as big? 50% bigger? Should it be different for each mineral? like, should coal spawn in veins of 20-30, but redstone in veins of 7-10?
The sea level thing is constantly bugging me. Why are people suggesting altering the sea level? what different does it make? And cavern size? what different does that make?
since we're on the general thread of nerfing exploitation of game mechanics for resources(iron golem farms), what about mob spawning/dropping systems? Should there be a nerf to those, or would the presence of multiple droppers be enough of a curb to their effectiveness?
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GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
I had the idea to simply up the chances of mobs spawning with insane armor. Like, zombies in full leather and a shovel becoming commonplace, with anything up to zombies and skeletons and pigzombies in full diamond gear appearing. I have absolutely no background in modding, but I figure the code for spawn rates would be easier to modify than the base codes for their respective HP, attack, and drops.
also, since the idea is to make the game hard enough that it becomes optimal, I think playing with existing features would be slightly closer to the theme ratmancer is going for.
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GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
I had the idea to simply up the chances of mobs spawning with insane armor. Like, zombies in full leather and a shovel becoming commonplace, with anything up to zombies and skeletons and pigzombies in full diamond gear appearing. I have absolutely no background in modding, but I figure the code for spawn rates would be easier to modify than the base codes for their respective HP, attack, and drops.
also, since the idea is to make the game hard enough that it becomes optimal, I think playing with existing features would be slightly closer to the theme ratmancer is going for.
there are quite a few plugins to make monsters harder. bloodmoon is one of them, so is monsterapocalypse. 99% of the things that people are suggesting here are possible through worldpainter and plugins.
Food will need to be looked into as well. Food, the basis for survival is too easy too obtain and further, maintain with breeding. We can nerf ores into oblivion, but people can still survive without cooperation, which is a worrying prospect. I survived my days on the aquor server through the sheer amount of food I found and then built myself a small hole each night with a furnace, cooking the meat and smelting ores, safe from any form of danger, including players due to server population density. In this anecdote danger is not evident. There is no need for cooperation for survival.
A solution I am thinking is that animals only spawn once, at the start of the server. This will allow players to create monopolies, players will hopefully realise that money can be generated by controlling the supply of food. Survival will require participation in these affairs and maybe we will see government form from business? Farming could prove a problematic alternative though.
Also PKBlaze78 has brought up an important point. We can't create these numbers out of experience, since we have none. Our first server will serve as a draft or prototype if you will, allowing us to gauge these mysterious values through our undoubtedly incorrect attempts to guess them through theory, but this is how we will learn. I can't think of these integers on the spot PKBlaze, I have to sit on it but it isa point we have to explore.
Interesting. Well written post, OP is not a fag. One of the more mature, interesting MC-players here. Good. I'll see what I can do to contribute to this thread.
Oh, and if roleplay was added this would have just been wonderful.
I am a little worried about the temptation to maintain monopolies through vandalism. You know, sneaking in and killing someone else's sheep so you have the only source. Not that I think this should be prohibited, because within the scope of the simulation it's a perfectly valid tactic, but I do feel it's really only viable because of the artificial limits on the size of the map; a larger map makes it impractical to try to exterminate every critter outside of one's own operation. My own personal preference would be for producers to compete on the basis of efficiency, not raiding so much.
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Now it can be told what I had intended for Darkfall. (Not that it was really a secret before.) I just didn't make it explicit because I didn't want to antagonize the ACU project. I wanted that to succeed, or at least become well-enough established to make things interesting once Darkfall's economy got off the ground.
See, my plan was to focus very much on NPC villager trading. I was going to produce a lot of cash crops, particularly wool and wheat, and convert them into emeralds via NPCs, so that I could then produce the other NPC goods that come from otherwise non-renewable resources. (As well, of course, we'd have a reliable and predictable source of enchantments.) Over the long haul, this would have made Darkfall relatively immune to the eventual decline in the availability of natural ores.
At the same time, I realized that there were going to be things I'd need to sell to the villagers in order to replenish the cash-crop offers that we couldn't produce in abundance in Darkfall. In fact, I sort of expected that once we got things going REALLY well, we wouldn't really need anything other than our stable of villagers, because we'd be able to trade their output for wheat, wool, pork, beef, chicken, fish, coal, etc. But regardless of domestic production, we'd've been willing to import surpluses of all these goods, paying for them in emeralds at rates that were just slightly less favourable than the average NPC offer.
In fact, I was actually thinking it would be fun and possibly even profitable to establish Darkfall as a trading city, with lots of NPCs wandering around, so that even players from other villages with their own NPCs would be tempted to come to Darkfall in search of better offers on their goods. You could take your chances with the NPCs, or you could come to a PC brokerage which would buy for slightly lower prices, but be more flexible with respect to barter and the size of the trade. (If you come to town with two stacks of beef, and all the butcher NPCs you talk to are taking them in lots of 17 at a time, you're going to have leftovers. We could negotiate a price that benefited both players, and dealt with any surplus.)
It seemed inevitable to me that we'd be issuing currency of our own, banknotes backed in emeralds. Obviously there were a couple of potential issues with an emerald-based unit, which Jr8 anticipated and tried to avoid with the ACU project. But emeralds are what the NPCs use, and what the Darkfall economy would use, so I expected we were going to have to issue some notes at some point, primarily for larger volumes. (Notes aren't stackable, whereas emeralds are, so there's a higher inventory cost to notes for less than 65 emeralds. And if you form emeralds into blocks, notes only become worthwhile for inventory purposes at denominations of 577 or more. Don't laugh. That quantity is not at all far-fetched. My very first wheat trade with the Darkfall NPCs netted just shy of two whole stacks of emeralds.)
Eventually, then, I saw the likelihood that the emerald standard might come into competition with the ACU. Not that we would try to edge them out, because I quite liked the idea of the ACU and would have tried to support it had the server continued. But if trade with villagers had become widespread, I suspect that might have given the emerald standard an edge in convenience over the ACU, because you'd need to convert your ACU to emeralds in order to do business with NPCs. (Of course, the moneychangers at Darkfall would be happy to help you with that...) So I suppose it depended on how big a role NPC trading played.
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With respect to the experiment we're talking about for this thread, I think what I'd want to try is to focus on the advantages of specialization. That is, while the basic vanilla rules make all Steve's more or less equivalent in skill, it's also true that two Steves will produce more together if one focuses on intensive wheat production and the other focuses on intensive charcoal production, than if they each diversify and produce both. None of this matters for individual player needs, because after you've got your first 3 wool for a bed you're set. But including villagers changes EVERYTHING, because suddenly there's a demand for consumer goods. This is why I think it'd be REALLY useful to include NPC villages.
We MIGHT want to remove iron golems, if we want iron mining to remain an important economic activity, but I'm not sure it's necessary. After all, an iron golem farm could just represent an advanced technology for synthetic materials made possible by a large enough population center. (That's one of the other important qualities of cities, after all: they bring brains together to figure out how to solve technical problems. A similar rationale can support any mob-grinding production method, too, so I don't have a problem with spawners.)
Actually, it seems to me that for this part of the experiment, at least, we don't even really need any special plugins. Just a population of like-minded players who are interested in the ideals of the experiment. So maybe a bunch of us should get together and find a server and just start building our economies?
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Actually, it seems to me that for this part of the experiment, at least, we don't even really need any special plugins. Just a population of like-minded players who are interested in the ideals of the experiment. So maybe a bunch of us should get together and find a server and just start building our economies?
A solution I am thinking is that animals only spawn once, at the start of the server. This will allow players to create monopolies, players will hopefully realise that money can be generated by controlling the supply of food. Survival will require participation in these affairs and maybe we will see government form from business? Farming could prove a problematic alternative though.
Also PKBlaze78 has brought up an important point. We can't create these numbers out of experience, since we have none. Our first server will serve as a draft or prototype if you will, allowing us to gauge these mysterious values through our undoubtedly incorrect attempts to guess them through theory, but this is how we will learn. I can't think of these integers on the spot PKBlaze, I have to sit on it but it isa point we have to explore.
So, on this note, I think it's a good idea to seriously consider setting up a test server for this purpose, possibly white-listed for the purpose of control. we could try to get some experimental data for an eventual successor server?
(also, don't animals already spawn once per world? I thought they changed it to that in like, beta 1.8)
Actually, I think you might be right. Although I quoted this from the minecraft wiki -- "but animals spawn very rarely. Instead, most animals spawn within chunks when they are generated.". Not too sure if it is up to date. It sounds as if you persist in one spot, animals will then spawn to their maximum capacity in the region, however are far more likely to spawn in chunks as you load them.
Like I said, if we intend on going through the hassle of making the server we may as well make it true as it can possibly be to the ideas we have discussed.
In that case, I think it's best if we compile a list of those ideas and put them in the OP for a reference point in developing the first server. We also need to decide how... exclusive? IDK if that's the word I'm looking for, but I'll use it anyways. We need to decide how exclusive our first small scale test ought to be, when it will run, etc.
Basically, we need to list those ideals so that we have some sort of document we can adhere to, and we need to be technical about planning the server itself.
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GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
I have made one of those devices. It's pretty easy, and crazy efficient. I don't even need to use it anymore. I just turn it on when the number of iron golems starts to lag the game.
Heck, usually my problem is fitting all of the iron into my inventory.
I've not made an iron golem grinder, but I do know that if one community created one, it could easily be sabotaged. As long as the map is small enough to prevent security simply by isolation, no large-scale farms of this kind could be made without other groups taking action. Alternatively, villages could be absent from the simulation, although I think that they are like most other resources, and extremely difficult to protect in practice anyway. A tribe strong enough to defend a large, delicate (villagers don't last long) machine might be worthy of renewable iron.
I see your point, as long as villages aren't as common as dirt I think it could work. The only way to analyse these problems is to see them arise I suppose.
No. **** that. The limited map space will add sufficient difficulty on its own. Farm animals will be hunted to extinction almost immediately, and diamond-production will peak within days (a few weeks at most) before dropping off, after which obsidian-production will drop and the creation of creeper-proof structures will come to a stop.
Just run Factions, LWC, iConomy, Gold2economy, and maybe a few other plugins that make use of money (like bounty or auction plugins).
Factions allows the claiming of enemy territory and the destruction of structures therein. Your argument is fail.
You realize that the whole thing is meant to be as close to vanilla as possible, but trying to maintain it so it doesn't get exploited like it is currently. Plugins, like the ones you are saying, do not prevent exploiting and thus are not needed and unnecessary for this experiment. The whole point of this is to see what economy people go with. Will people trade and barter, or will they go with commerce and use a standard currency like Emeralds or Gold? That's what this whole thing is about, not just a server, a simulation. You are the one missing the point entirely.
Edit: To expand on my post. LWC is a protection plugin, the whole point of the experiment is to simulate how the players will react when facing wars and how to protect their items. What kind of tactics will they use to store their precious items? Will they even use tactics at all? How will the community trust each other knowing there are those with good items in them?
Factions is again a protection plugin. You setup a territory and boom you are protected against other factions, and quite frankly it is just as easy to exploit Factions then it is with Vanilla Minecraft. Another point to this simulation is to see what kind of military will the nations make to protect their land. What kind of defenses and routine will they use to secure their land.
Economy plugins are commerce plugins which we aren't forcing them to use. We want to see what kind of economy system the players will use to conduct economic status. Use barter or commerce, like Gold or Emeralds? What kind of measures will they use with this economic system, like businesses or banks and how will they secure those?
The OP is trying to simulate real life practices into Minecraft and see how it works out. He isn't trying to make it as realistic as possible, maybe even quite the opposite, the OP is trying to see how Minecraft will react with our real life situations. That's what this is all about.
Edit 2:
I also have a suggestion to the OP. Since we are all about simulation here why not start conducting small scale tests into seeing which systems work and how to combat exploiting? What is too hard or too easy and what is reasonable or not. Don't pay attention to how the structure of things work because that will probably be different on a larger scale, but finding exploits and tweaking gameplay mechanics to be much more difficult and truer to real life (obviously we don't have zombies or skeletons in real life, but you know what I mean) while still maintaining the Minecraft feel for the Minecraft conversion simulation to work.
As for your edit 2, I understand what you mean, this was kind of done on sting_auers server although I don't think many documented it well. If anyone from the server wants to share any feedback in this regard, feel free to do so. From my own experiences I was still able to nomad however I gave up and joined a town because there was bugger all to raid and was rather boring, maybe I would of been more of a nomad raider if there more players. My ability to nomad was just the sheer amount of food I was able to collect, herds upon herds of cows and pigs made my journeys much easier.
Although I think setting up a server just for these small scale tests will be rather redundant when a little more work can be done to commit to a full scale test and we can analyse all the problems presented.
Sting's server had hardly any of the modifications to simulate the experiment. Hard mode was virtually the only difficulty. I think it showed that the world border must be much tighter for the final product. A combination of more scarce ores, lower sea level, and a smaller map would be sufficient in my opinion, assuming there is a decent server population. Civilizations only developed because players wanted them to, not because solo survival was difficult by any means. In fact, living in groups was often more detrimental to an individual than hiding away in some ravine. Thievery and griefing made towns very inefficient. Even with the constant pressure by participants for an economy to develop led to little results because of the abundance of resources and little to no need to actually trade. Players went out of their way to trade items just in attempt for some markets to develop, but nothing came of it. (Although this may have been due to lack of time; the server only lasted 2 weeks or so.)
In order to maintain a nearly-vanilla experience, I suggest we attempt to create an ideal environment for the experiment through the initial map generation. Adjusting to a new map is a constant experience in vanilla Minecraft anyway, so a map that has been created to suit our needs will be no different. Fewer but larger veins of ores, more space underground or a lower sea level, a lower height limit, and a smaller world border can all be accomplished before players begin the simulation, and the changes would be easy to adjust to (I wouldn't be surprised if many didn't even notice a non-ordinary map). In addition, if iron farms could be a possible problem, villagers could simply be absent from the map.
The only modification I could see being needed that can't be met by specific map generation requirements is a possible bonemeal nerf, or slower plant growing times. Even these would be basically vanilla.
I definitely would argue against factions, towny, or currency plugins, as these violate the core principles of this idea. Even the limited economy on Sting's server managed a currency without plugins.
What would lower sea level do for the purposes of the scenerio? Does the level of gold generation, mountain height, etc, scale with sea level? And what does more space underground give us?
GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
But we never specify to what degree we're doing these things. For example, how strongly will bonemeal be nerfed? will 1 use only give you 1 stage of growth, for example? how does it work on saplings? Does it work on saplings?
On the topic of ore veins, what range are we talking about for each vein? Coal seems to generate anywhere from 4 to 16 in a vein right now, Iron seems to give up to 8, more rare resources(diamond, redstone, etc) up to maybe 6?
What size do we want veins to become? twice as big? 50% bigger? Should it be different for each mineral? like, should coal spawn in veins of 20-30, but redstone in veins of 7-10?
The sea level thing is constantly bugging me. Why are people suggesting altering the sea level? what different does it make? And cavern size? what different does that make?
since we're on the general thread of nerfing exploitation of game mechanics for resources(iron golem farms), what about mob spawning/dropping systems? Should there be a nerf to those, or would the presence of multiple droppers be enough of a curb to their effectiveness?
GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
also, since the idea is to make the game hard enough that it becomes optimal, I think playing with existing features would be slightly closer to the theme ratmancer is going for.
GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
there are quite a few plugins to make monsters harder. bloodmoon is one of them, so is monsterapocalypse. 99% of the things that people are suggesting here are possible through worldpainter and plugins.
A solution I am thinking is that animals only spawn once, at the start of the server. This will allow players to create monopolies, players will hopefully realise that money can be generated by controlling the supply of food. Survival will require participation in these affairs and maybe we will see government form from business? Farming could prove a problematic alternative though.
Also PKBlaze78 has brought up an important point. We can't create these numbers out of experience, since we have none. Our first server will serve as a draft or prototype if you will, allowing us to gauge these mysterious values through our undoubtedly incorrect attempts to guess them through theory, but this is how we will learn. I can't think of these integers on the spot PKBlaze, I have to sit on it but it is a point we have to explore.
Oh, and if roleplay was added this would have just been wonderful.
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Now it can be told what I had intended for Darkfall. (Not that it was really a secret before.) I just didn't make it explicit because I didn't want to antagonize the ACU project. I wanted that to succeed, or at least become well-enough established to make things interesting once Darkfall's economy got off the ground.
See, my plan was to focus very much on NPC villager trading. I was going to produce a lot of cash crops, particularly wool and wheat, and convert them into emeralds via NPCs, so that I could then produce the other NPC goods that come from otherwise non-renewable resources. (As well, of course, we'd have a reliable and predictable source of enchantments.) Over the long haul, this would have made Darkfall relatively immune to the eventual decline in the availability of natural ores.
At the same time, I realized that there were going to be things I'd need to sell to the villagers in order to replenish the cash-crop offers that we couldn't produce in abundance in Darkfall. In fact, I sort of expected that once we got things going REALLY well, we wouldn't really need anything other than our stable of villagers, because we'd be able to trade their output for wheat, wool, pork, beef, chicken, fish, coal, etc. But regardless of domestic production, we'd've been willing to import surpluses of all these goods, paying for them in emeralds at rates that were just slightly less favourable than the average NPC offer.
In fact, I was actually thinking it would be fun and possibly even profitable to establish Darkfall as a trading city, with lots of NPCs wandering around, so that even players from other villages with their own NPCs would be tempted to come to Darkfall in search of better offers on their goods. You could take your chances with the NPCs, or you could come to a PC brokerage which would buy for slightly lower prices, but be more flexible with respect to barter and the size of the trade. (If you come to town with two stacks of beef, and all the butcher NPCs you talk to are taking them in lots of 17 at a time, you're going to have leftovers. We could negotiate a price that benefited both players, and dealt with any surplus.)
It seemed inevitable to me that we'd be issuing currency of our own, banknotes backed in emeralds. Obviously there were a couple of potential issues with an emerald-based unit, which Jr8 anticipated and tried to avoid with the ACU project. But emeralds are what the NPCs use, and what the Darkfall economy would use, so I expected we were going to have to issue some notes at some point, primarily for larger volumes. (Notes aren't stackable, whereas emeralds are, so there's a higher inventory cost to notes for less than 65 emeralds. And if you form emeralds into blocks, notes only become worthwhile for inventory purposes at denominations of 577 or more. Don't laugh. That quantity is not at all far-fetched. My very first wheat trade with the Darkfall NPCs netted just shy of two whole stacks of emeralds.)
Eventually, then, I saw the likelihood that the emerald standard might come into competition with the ACU. Not that we would try to edge them out, because I quite liked the idea of the ACU and would have tried to support it had the server continued. But if trade with villagers had become widespread, I suspect that might have given the emerald standard an edge in convenience over the ACU, because you'd need to convert your ACU to emeralds in order to do business with NPCs. (Of course, the moneychangers at Darkfall would be happy to help you with that...) So I suppose it depended on how big a role NPC trading played.
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With respect to the experiment we're talking about for this thread, I think what I'd want to try is to focus on the advantages of specialization. That is, while the basic vanilla rules make all Steve's more or less equivalent in skill, it's also true that two Steves will produce more together if one focuses on intensive wheat production and the other focuses on intensive charcoal production, than if they each diversify and produce both. None of this matters for individual player needs, because after you've got your first 3 wool for a bed you're set. But including villagers changes EVERYTHING, because suddenly there's a demand for consumer goods. This is why I think it'd be REALLY useful to include NPC villages.
We MIGHT want to remove iron golems, if we want iron mining to remain an important economic activity, but I'm not sure it's necessary. After all, an iron golem farm could just represent an advanced technology for synthetic materials made possible by a large enough population center. (That's one of the other important qualities of cities, after all: they bring brains together to figure out how to solve technical problems. A similar rationale can support any mob-grinding production method, too, so I don't have a problem with spawners.)
Actually, it seems to me that for this part of the experiment, at least, we don't even really need any special plugins. Just a population of like-minded players who are interested in the ideals of the experiment. So maybe a bunch of us should get together and find a server and just start building our economies?
So, on this note, I think it's a good idea to seriously consider setting up a test server for this purpose, possibly white-listed for the purpose of control. we could try to get some experimental data for an eventual successor server?
(also, don't animals already spawn once per world? I thought they changed it to that in like, beta 1.8)
GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
Like I said, if we intend on going through the hassle of making the server we may as well make it true as it can possibly be to the ideas we have discussed.
Basically, we need to list those ideals so that we have some sort of document we can adhere to, and we need to be technical about planning the server itself.
GENERATION 30: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.