Village librarians pay 1 emerald for a written book, which makes a publishing business a pretty lucrative source of emeralds.
But there's a major flaw to this: it provides players with an incentive to steal and horde books in order to convert them to emeralds.
For example, let's say you own a server and you put a chest of books by spawn containing the server rules, with the idea that each new player take one. Sure griefers might steal them all and toss them in a pit. But there isn't any practical incentive to doing so, besides being a jerk.
That changes with Librarians. Now that chest of books is actually a chest of potential emeralds, it provides an incentive to take them all. Book theft is now rewarded.
And imagine if you write a book of short stories or poetry or whatever else for other players to peruse. When someone sells that book, they're destroying your work. It's not like a used book store in real life, where selling the book allows someone else to read it. Basically, village librarians are paying players to burn books.
The fix is simple. Librarians should be a little more selective, and avoid the used book market. They should only buy Written Books if the seller is the author. That way people can still create books to sell them, but there's no incentive to take other people's books.
The alternative too this would be that the librarian would keep the books and allow players to read them but not take them. To cover people over selling copies of the same book, librarians will not accept the same book twice.
One other issue is players just selling empty books for emeralds. I'd solve this by having them check that it was more than two pages and more than 14 different letters. Not 26 as two pages might not have every letter in the alphabet but it quite likely would have at least 14. This unfortunately wouldn't stop players from posting long lines of 15 different letters of gibberish, but it would be a start.
This would also mean that bookshelves would have the alternate use of storing the library books which I know has been suggested a lot, but the difference here is it is only the librarian who controls what goes in or more specifically the player would have to sell the book to get it in. Besides that, if the shelves run out of space he will stop buying written books tell the player makes more shelves. This has a downside of "bookshelf spamming" and an alternative to this book limit would be to have all the books accessed for any library designated shelves similar to a ender chest but probably limited to local chunks. This would open up for a nice book rating mod, for players to rate the local library books, and get the bad books down-voted into oblivion.
The alternative too this would be that the librarian would keep the books and allow players to read them but not take them. To cover people over selling copies of the same book, librarians will not accept the same book twice.
One other issue is players just selling empty books for emeralds. I'd solve this by having them check that it was more than two pages and more than 14 different letters. Not 26 as two pages might not have every letter in the alphabet but it quite likely would have at least 14. This unfortunately wouldn't stop players from posting long lines of 15 different letters of gibberish, but it would be a start.
This would also mean that bookshelves would have the alternate use of storing the library books which I know has been suggested a lot, but the difference here is it is only the librarian who controls what goes in or more specifically the player would have to sell the book to get it in. Besides that, if the shelves run out of space he will stop buying written books tell the player makes more shelves. This has a downside of "bookshelf spamming" and an alternative to this book limit would be to have all the books accessed for any library designated shelves similar to a ender chest but probably limited to local chunks. This would open up for a nice book rating mod, for players to rate the local library books, and get the bad books down-voted into oblivion.
Interesting, I like the idea of librarians running a used book store.
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No, there has never, ever been a sandbox game with a story or ending... except Grand Theft Auto... and Saints Row... and Red Dead Redemption... and Crack Down... and Assassins Creed...
Hmmm. A kind of copyright system, built into the game?
I see the rationale, and I mostly agree, except that (increasingly like copyright enforcement measures in the real world) this would restrict behaviours in game that we might want to allow. For one thing, I might want to focus my time on shearing sheep, and having a friend take the wool and go sell it to villagers. A perfectly legitimate transaction for wool, but suddenly impossible if I'm sending my friend to go sell some books I just wrote. Also, it seems to me that finding ancient tomes and selling them to book dealers in a village is something else we'd want to allow. Heck, even stealing books from others and selling them can be an appropriate thing to permit if we want a server to provide any kind of realistic world.
When I first read Eraed's thread for village libraries, I was lukewarm to the idea, but reading this thread as well has alerted me to more of the possibilities and reasons for tinkering with books. I have added to that thread a suggestion that I think would address Regular Hexahedron's concerns in this thread.
To sum that solution up, suppose that selling a book to a librarian caused it to be published. Bookshelf blocks would be the interface that allowed you access to published books. So, rather than giving every player a copy of the book of server rules, that book would be published via a librarian, and accessible from every bookshelf anywhere in the game.
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But there's a major flaw to this: it provides players with an incentive to steal and horde books in order to convert them to emeralds.
For example, let's say you own a server and you put a chest of books by spawn containing the server rules, with the idea that each new player take one. Sure griefers might steal them all and toss them in a pit. But there isn't any practical incentive to doing so, besides being a jerk.
That changes with Librarians. Now that chest of books is actually a chest of potential emeralds, it provides an incentive to take them all. Book theft is now rewarded.
And imagine if you write a book of short stories or poetry or whatever else for other players to peruse. When someone sells that book, they're destroying your work. It's not like a used book store in real life, where selling the book allows someone else to read it. Basically, village librarians are paying players to burn books.
The fix is simple. Librarians should be a little more selective, and avoid the used book market. They should only buy Written Books if the seller is the author. That way people can still create books to sell them, but there's no incentive to take other people's books.
One other issue is players just selling empty books for emeralds. I'd solve this by having them check that it was more than two pages and more than 14 different letters. Not 26 as two pages might not have every letter in the alphabet but it quite likely would have at least 14. This unfortunately wouldn't stop players from posting long lines of 15 different letters of gibberish, but it would be a start.
This would also mean that bookshelves would have the alternate use of storing the library books which I know has been suggested a lot, but the difference here is it is only the librarian who controls what goes in or more specifically the player would have to sell the book to get it in. Besides that, if the shelves run out of space he will stop buying written books tell the player makes more shelves. This has a downside of "bookshelf spamming" and an alternative to this book limit would be to have all the books accessed for any library designated shelves similar to a ender chest but probably limited to local chunks. This would open up for a nice book rating mod, for players to rate the local library books, and get the bad books down-voted into oblivion.
Also worth noting is this thread which is related to copying books: http://www.minecraft...oks-book-press/
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MY DIK EZ VARI BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEG SUK ET
Interesting, I like the idea of librarians running a used book store.
I suppose I should make a thread about that now.
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I see the rationale, and I mostly agree, except that (increasingly like copyright enforcement measures in the real world) this would restrict behaviours in game that we might want to allow. For one thing, I might want to focus my time on shearing sheep, and having a friend take the wool and go sell it to villagers. A perfectly legitimate transaction for wool, but suddenly impossible if I'm sending my friend to go sell some books I just wrote. Also, it seems to me that finding ancient tomes and selling them to book dealers in a village is something else we'd want to allow. Heck, even stealing books from others and selling them can be an appropriate thing to permit if we want a server to provide any kind of realistic world.
When I first read Eraed's thread for village libraries, I was lukewarm to the idea, but reading this thread as well has alerted me to more of the possibilities and reasons for tinkering with books. I have added to that thread a suggestion that I think would address Regular Hexahedron's concerns in this thread.
To sum that solution up, suppose that selling a book to a librarian caused it to be published. Bookshelf blocks would be the interface that allowed you access to published books. So, rather than giving every player a copy of the book of server rules, that book would be published via a librarian, and accessible from every bookshelf anywhere in the game.