Melon and pumpkin discussion

[Spyow]

I remember when I used to mine for money... 1k a week...

[SalasCraft]

It's not a huge effort.  I put more effort into building my islands.

please dont let me post another 99 pages of counter arguments,
im sure you remember our discussion about the same in my own topic
alright "piss us off" but at least pay us some respect, we builded for months after all
let them flame ahead, let them share there hate, so they can get over it
this is the last thing we want to hear now your making it worse...

that said, i advice to discuss removing cactus/sugarcane aswell asap
it might look silly, but cactus is stil a nice 1/3th of a pumpkin
converting my pump farm into cactus, adding 2 more farms
and say hello to my new afk money maker

If you people keep AFKing for easy money, it might be appropriate to implement a rule to that.

which would mean, AFKing for farming = kick/ban

[Nick3306]

Cactus will most likely be removed as well.

[stewbasic]

I haven't been on this server for long, and about half the time I've spent here has been spent building melon and pumpkin farms. So I hope you appreciate that this is intended to be a constructive post when I say: I think this is a sensible decision. I don't know much about hosting a minecraft server, but I have no trouble believing that large melon farms could result in a heavy strain.

However, I do hope optical et al think systematically about the rules of the server's economy, as this will determine how players are encouraged to play. It's pretty clear what resulted in all of these farms:
*Protection stones can only be bought with server $
*The only source of server $ is selling items to the market
*The only _renewable_ item that can be sold to the market at a price comparable to the price of protection stones is (was) melons and pumpkins

Selling non-renewable items to the market as a sustainable income requires constantly expanding and claiming more mining space, and it's often not far to the neighbouring player's home. And yes "you can sell nearly every block you end up breaking", but you'd have to sell 100 stacks of cobblestone for a single tiny protection stone.

I don't know exactly what is planned for this "player-based Auction House", but if it's another way for players to transfer goods and $ between themselves, that's not really a source of server $.

Also some of the market prices really need to be rethought:

1 iron ingot buys for $200, but 1 iron block = 9 iron ingots buys for $100. A %50 discount for bulk buying?
1 gold ingot buys for $350, but 1 gold block = 9 gold ingots buys for $3500. Now bulk buying is more expensive?
1.5 stacks of coal + 12 stacks of sand costs $1170, can be made into glass panes and sold to the market for $1280.

If you don't want players doing it, set the prices so it's not profitable. And vice-versa.

[prinkey00]

< insert 99 pages of rage here >
that said, lets pretend im over it already 

ey prinkey, wanne battle it out by hardcore milking cows and selling the milk to the market
im looking forward to see where my huge rooms will be filled with soon

well no more designing huge farms for me, i will have lots of free time...
im going to quit on the baltop
for everyone that played in my castle on classic, the time is now! 

LOL, that does not sound appealing at all

EDIT:
As for the rest of the thread, I think chest shops would be a great addition to compensate for the removal of pumpkins/melons from the market. In all seriousness, I support balancing out the economy. I just don't like doing in-game transactions as they are currently set up. I don't like wasting my time on it. Half the time I try to sell or buy something the other person flakes out or takes forever to complete the transaction. I've also had third parties come and take the dropped items for themselves, and that's just hassle on top of hassle.

I would have been more inclined to make money through the free market in the first place, as opposed to the fixed pumpkin market, if I could set up chest shops. I know chest shops have been discussed, and it seems some people are opposed to the world being "littered" with old, abandoned chest shops... But, either way, the landscape is going to get littered with something one way or another.

Would the staff being willing to reopen discussion about allowing chest shops?

[cschurz]

Some quick responses to ideas presented in the last 3 pages or so:

I NEED to buy things from the market.

> That is not intended. Money should not be a substitute for effort. Melon farms aren't enough effort to make considering their income. The market should only be a convenience. It seems this server has forgotten the meaning of survival.

I've spent hundreds of thousands on a melon farm.

> Bullshit. You're a greedy, greedy person if you're attempting to construct a ridiculously big melon farm. Melon farms that are not created properly are far less effective than one built correctly (all melons are in one 16x16 chunk). It does not take hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce one of these AFK money generators when built properly. Just a fairly small well-made farm and a few hours of AFK time. Building the farm is not a strenuous activity. Redstone can be reused, pistons sold back, and land repurposed.

"You say your minds can't be changed. So basically your saying that you don't care about your players."

> We're doing this because we care. In the long run, these farms have hurt the server. Survival means nothing. Donating for money is pointless. The market prices are trivial. People only buy things from the market. These farms need to die.

"My farm is a manual farm. I put a lot of time in. I'm angry."

> Congratulations. If you put time into your farm, then you've already sold/harvested tons of melons/pumpkins. You're still part of the problem.

Chief149, the expert of all things technical, minecraft, and public relations...

> it's kind of apparent that you have no idea what you're talking about in your complaint posts.

Chestshop

> it's not going to happen unless we think of a very elegant way to accomplish it. we're seriously considering an online auction house to solve a lot of problems at once, but it would be a fair chunk of work.

--

hopefully that was easier to read than some of the essays we've got going on in this thread...

[stewbasic]

I NEED to buy things from the market.

> That is not intended. Money should not be a substitute for effort. Melon farms aren't enough effort to make considering their income. The market should only be a convenience. It seems this server has forgotten the meaning of survival.

But protection stones can only be bought from the market. As far as they are concerned, the market is a necessity, not a convenience.

[SalasCraft]

I NEED to buy things from the market.

> That is not intended. Money should not be a substitute for effort. Melon farms aren't enough effort to make considering their income. The market should only be a convenience. It seems this server has forgotten the meaning of survival.

But protection stones can only be bought from the market. As far as they are concerned, the market is a necessity, not a convenience.

He is obviously speaking in general, it's an obvious thing Protection Stones can only be acquired on the market. All the rest of the stuff in it can be found or crafted.

[stewbasic]

I NEED to buy things from the market.

> That is not intended. Money should not be a substitute for effort. Melon farms aren't enough effort to make considering their income. The market should only be a convenience. It seems this server has forgotten the meaning of survival.

But protection stones can only be bought from the market. As far as they are concerned, the market is a necessity, not a convenience.

He is obviously speaking in general, it's an obvious thing Protection Stones can only be acquired on the market. All the rest of the stuff in it can be found or crafted.

This is an example of my point about setting prices to encourage certain behaviours. If players are supposed to be buying protection stones from the market, but not buying materials that they can collect or craft, then the former should not be so expensive compared to the latter. By the time a player has raised $1500 to buy a tiny protection stone, spending an extra $500 on materials to fill it out doesn't seem like a big deal.

[cschurz]

I NEED to buy things from the market.

> That is not intended. Money should not be a substitute for effort. Melon farms aren't enough effort to make considering their income. The market should only be a convenience. It seems this server has forgotten the meaning of survival.

But protection stones can only be bought from the market. As far as they are concerned, the market is a necessity, not a convenience.

He is obviously speaking in general, it's an obvious thing Protection Stones can only be acquired on the market. All the rest of the stuff in it can be found or crafted.

This is an example of my point about setting prices to encourage certain behaviours. If players are supposed to be buying protection stones from the market, but not buying materials that they can collect or craft, then the former should not be so expensive compared to the latter. By the time a player has raised $1500 to buy a tiny protection stone, spending an extra $500 on materials to fill it out doesn't seem like a big deal.

Do you recommend we increase the costs of materials? Protection stones have to be priced in a way that disallows griefers from simply placing protection stones wherever they please - which has not yet been an issue because the stones aren't cheap.

[prinkey00]

On the topic of making chest shops more elegant, I have some suggestions, but I have no idea how difficult they would be to implement. First, would it be possible to set an expiration timer on them? For example, whenever a player places a chest, it only stays active for X amount of time. Maybe an hour, a day, a week, etc. This would prevent players from leaving them in one area indefinitely. This, however, then brings up the issue of where the items would go after the chest shop expires. I have two solutions for this off the top of my head. One, just like diamonds, the items could be returned to the player directly to their inventory. This could prove difficult depending on how many items the player puts up for sale and doesn't sell. My second suggestion would be to have some sort of bank-like system that the items transfer to for the player to go and pick up.

I've also seen a server in a "let's play" on YouTube that allowed players to rent out shops that would expire after about a week. The shops were in a mall, and the layout looked pretty nice overall. (Too bad that server sucks shit.) Unlike my previous suggestion, the items remained in the chests after the rental period expired, so players would really need to stay on top of when their time is up. This would centralize chest shops in a way that would prevent clutter. It would also be nice to be able to have a one-stop spot for player chest shops, because I hate the idea of having my /home double as a store, which is why I've avoided even attempting setting anything like that up yet.

With that said, and auction house does sound intriguing, and I'd like to hear more. Has this been discussed on the forums anywhere?

One last thing I'll add is that some sort of official trading/selling system would help clean up in-game spam, which would, in turn, lighten the mods+ overall chat-policing load.

[Nick3306]

I've also seen a server in a "let's play" on YouTube that allowed players to rent out shops that would expire after about a week. The shops were in a mall, and the layout looked pretty nice overall.

We have talked about it quite a bit and if we were to do chest shops, this is exactly how we would do it.

[D00MKNlGHT]

I've also seen a server in a "let's play" on YouTube that allowed players to rent out shops that would expire after about a week. The shops were in a mall, and the layout looked pretty nice overall.

We have talked about it quite a bit and if we were to do chest shops, this is exactly how we would do it.

That was what I said In my chest shop suggestion post long time ago xD

[E1ectrik]

Ready your pickaxes, time to strip mine the server.

^ This is what i believe is going to happen and probably have a couple more Xray cases later on

[Minute_Maid]

Ok i said this in game, and I'm more then happy to scream it in someones face for hours on end. 

Look at the name of the game (literally) "Minecraft" last time i checked that means (basically) mining and crafting.

All you people complaining about your annoying farms becoming useless, your trying to change the name of the game completely. You made this server "Farmcraft" ,sounds like a dumb Facebook game to me. If u can't see that, your blind to the cause.

Opti and the staff are turning the server back into "Minecraft". Why do you have a problem with that?

Basically its not Farmcraft its Minecraft. I'm sure if you asked him Notch would agree with what Opti and the staff is doing.

As far as cacti and stuff like that, it'll be a sad day when u make a massive automatic farm for them. You would truthfully be saying "I am going to do the exact opposite of what this server is about" and personally i don't want someone like that on the server, granted I'm only trusted.

As far as a solution to the possible mess you all seem to know so much about. Mining, ik ik they said it already and you don't like the idea of putting forth effort to make money. I have a farm, its not automatic and its to supply my shop with items. Never-the-less, i know how much time it takes to make a big, neat, good looking farm. It takes days to collect and build, i get it. But wait a second...didn't you go and "mine" for the stuff already? Sell that stuff and oops u made a couple thousand. Please share with me the problem here? Ok sure you wont make a steady income inless u mine daily and granted your farms are ,as you all say, 'useless' but then maybe in between mining you could...craft. Weird how this all works isn't it?

Granted strip mines might conquer the world but with problems comes questions with questions comes solutions.

Bad things come quickly, Good things take some time, Great things take a long time. Deal with it.