Suggestion #12244

Survival Economy Changes

I've played and learned the current survival economy pre-dupe incident and I have some ideas and suggestions to make some changes to the economy for a better and fun season going forward. Please skip to the end for the summary if you don't like to read all of it.

Current Survival Economy Problems
- Inflated - item prices are too high.
- Farms are only centered towards one kind - cocoa, witches, sugar canes, iron golem as the most dominant.
- AFK-reliant - build a farm and afk, profit for the rest of the season.
- HOF dominated by mostly 3+ parties - those who have established a farm at early phase of the season dominates HOF for the rest of the season.
- Massive storages causing lag and HOF snipes
- Profit loopholes that comes with over-inflated economy

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===== Suggestive Changes =====
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====== Dynamic Pricing + 1-day Rotations + Not bloated fixed pricing ======

> Dynamic pricing, from past seasons, have been proven to limit total economy inflation by having the dominant farm's shop sell price drop to $0.1 if the supply becomes too high.
> 1-day shop rotation ensures that no one farm dominates for the entire HOF round (14 days) by having the shop price rotate more frequently. People are now more and more likely to build varied farms that cater to the rapidly changing shop rotations. Shop items that are not in daily rotation becomes dynamic (price dropping from their fixed price to $0.1 or even lesser when supply becomes too much), and items in daily rotation will revert back to fixed price.
> Reducing fixed price to all farmable items (suggestion like $1 cactus, $2 potato, wheat, $4 beef, etc...) and more to fast-growing crops and dominant spawner farms (cocoa $0.4, sugar cane $0.75, netherwart $0.75, witch (redstone $6/7), iron golem (iron $6/7)) ensures the economy becomes stable in the long period. Billion balance could now be prestigious again.
> Shards obtained from farms should also reflect dynamic changes. Items not in daily rotation should give less shards and normal shard rate for items in daily rotation.

Pros:
- Overall longevity of the server and possibility to last for the intended 12-month duration while avoiding inflation
- Encourages players to build variety of farms and actively log-in to adapt their farm

Cons:
- Players could still make 1 type of farm and wait for their farm's rotation, but is heavily nerfed

====== Reward active grinders and Nerf AFK Farms ======

> AFK Farms dominate both balance and HOF. Why is that those who are literally AFK are winning HOF or getting more money than those who actively grinds? Shouldn't it be the opposite? What some ways I've thought to solve this issue is:
- All spawner hostile-mobs (skelly, zombie, bogged, etc...) drop money ONLY when killed by a player, and not killed by environment (lava, falls, cramming, suffucation, etc...). Right now only naturally spawning mobs (nighttime zombie, creeper, etc) drop money. This change will incentivize players to make mob grinders to up their farm output and actively click to kill mobs and gain more money. Public warps will gain more tractions and will help new players immensely.
- This will affect soul shop but I believe the current system where non-hostile mobs only count to souls is enough.
> Hostile-mob spawners drop money when killed by a player, while non-hostile mob spawners give souls when killed by a player.
> No changes to /soulshop prices should be done except for spawner (30k souls drop to 10k) as I believe the 30k for a spawner is immensely hard and would require too much effort and make the soul grinders not viable currency option.
> Wild spawners still disabled (major x-ray problem) and keep 7m fixed spawner price in /shop. Perhaps increase spawner drop chance in vote crates to accomodate lower fixed price change and allow players to establish spawner farms easier and be competitive
> Looting swords and varied mob from spawners also help the 1-day rotation change. Players will now seek more varied mob eggs to add to their grinders.
> Or even perhaps bring back stackable mobs

Perhaps a controversial change to Nerf AFK Farm
> Change activation range of chesthoppers, harvesters, chunk collectors to 2 chunks away from the center chunk (player chunk) making max possible farm size for one player to afk ONLY to 25 chunks (5x5). Or perhaps even make harvesters only 1 chunk activation (9 chunk or 3x3) and chesthoppers to 25 chunk (5x5) because the new height limit already makes 25 chunk farm overpowered.

Pros:
- Active players can even out the competition by grinding their spawners as it drops money and loot
- More attention to /soul currency
- More varied grinders and more attention to niche mob eggs
- Limit viability of /afk for balance or HOF

Cons:
- Increase amount of autoclickers, macros

====== HOF System Change ======

> I personally believe the current HOF system is good because instead of selling in /shop, the item price is added to HOF points instead greatly preventing powerful party farms from monopoly and causing total server balance increase, overall preventing mass inflation. However, the issue I find is that there are only 3+ parties competing because of such powerful, established farms early in the season, making it extremely difficult for new players who joined later to go for HOF. There is not a good system to prevent this that I could think off but perhaps winning HOF parties have 7-day period where they can't add points (applied to all players of the top 5 parties so changing party is out of the question) and locking their party on making changes (adding members who can add points, or leaving winning HOF party to avoid restriction) for 7 days. This will give those who wish to go for HOF 7 days to build a lead and actually compete.
> It goes like this for the whole duration of a HOF round:
- Previous Top 5 HOF winner parties (including all players in those parties) are prevented from adding points for 7 days. Allowing non-Top 5 parties to build a lead.
- On the last week of the HOF round, TOP 10-15 or even all parties are prevented from making any changes (no adding or quitting party member). Essentially locking all parties and preventing loopholes on the restriction.
- The last 7 days will also enable adding HOF points to the previous Top 5 parties and its players.
> This semi-solution + rapidly changing rotation will create a more intense and fair HOF suitable for many players.

Pros:
- More competitive HOF
- Allows non-Top 5 HOF parties to build a lead and have a chance to win
- Create a healthy cycle of winners and avoid dominant parties

Cons:
- Party locking may cause problems (e.g. insiding/stealing, where player does not contribute to the growth), may be fixed by banning player with sufficient evidence for the duration of the HOF round until they can be kicked out

====== Storages and Bulk Selling During Rotation or HOF Ending ======

> A major issue are players storing their farm's loot and mass selling them during the item's rotation for more profit. While I could see this as a very strategic way to challenge players and plan for snipes or gain extra profit, I believe it is somewhat unbalanced.
> A change i'd like to see to discouraged is multi-tool selling. Multi-tool encourages these bulk storages and selling by allowing players to click chests and sell items quickly. What a good way to discourage bulk selling is lowering profit sold using multi-tool by 10-20%. This will encourage players to use the chesthoppers/harvesters/etc...'s built-in auto-sell feature and reduce massive storages or make players grind a bit by making them manually take the items out in chest and /sell in shop to get original sell price.
> Multi-tool should have a 10-20% profit nerf on sell and points.
> How about storage barrels? Storage barrels should receive the mass sell/add points nerf too in my opinion. If the change for disallowing shulkers/bundles in storage barrels is to be added, then make the storage barrel's percentage in crates increase and have their upgrade price in a cheap, fixed price (5k or 10k shards). This will increase the supply for storage barrels thereby reducing hopper-use and lag whilst giving a nerf to those who plan to circumvent daily rotations or Top 5 parties by storing their farm's loot.

Pros:
- Reduce lag with hoppers and massive storage systems
- Discourage bulk storing and selling for extra profit
- Encourage auto-selling and facilitate efficient farms

Cons:
- Players may still create mass storages but with small penalty

====== Additional Changes ======

> After getting max mob achievement stats (e.g. 1k cows killed), additional mob kills should give +5-10 tokens (e.g. For every additional 1k cows killed, you get +5 tokens). Further incentivizing active farming
> Remove spawner upgrades and bring back vanilla spawning behaviour... trust me almost no one upgrades their spawner because it takes more than 25k souls to max it...

====== Summary ======

> Overall sell price reduction for most farmable items
> 1-day rotation for shop items
> Dynamic pricing for items out of daily rotation and fixed price for items in daily rotation
> Hostile-mob spawners drop extra money when killed by a player, while non-hostile mob spawners give souls when killed by a player
> Reduce harvester and chesthopper/chunk collector activation range*
> Previous Top 5 HOF round winners cannot add points for 7 days
> Discourage bulk storage selling or points adding by putting small nerf to multi-tool and storage barrels
> Removing spawner upgrades or bring back stackable mobs
> Adding extra tokens to gain after maxing out a kill mob achievement



Thoughts: I may not have a voice in this server but these are changes that I, and others, have experienced that needs changing for the overall health of the server. I don't expect all of my suggestions in here to be accepted, and this suggestion may not be read or seen by staff at all. Rather here are my thoughts, as a long time player, on the current state of the survival economy and how one-sided and unfair it can be for new players. Any thoughts, comments, things I missed, please let me know. I'm eager to help make changes to help this server. Thank you and have a good day!