I like the way you put that. I do indeed have a Iron Farm " decent size" I only afk at 10 to 20 minutes at a time. I think I have work more hours on it to improve its production than collecting Iron ingots. Anyone can make iron farm but it takes time and resources to make it have its full potential.
I couldn't care less if Iron farms are nerfed. I use one, it serves me well for my village in the Wild, and I also note the price of Iron hasn't changed, so it's clearly not affected the supply aspect of the economy. However, if we're talking about sorting out iron farms, then lets see it applied across the board. Lets get rid of Spawner farms, cobble and Obsidian gens, lets get rid of everything which manipulates the game mechanics to provide a benefit. Lets get it back to playing the game the way it was intended. Then we'll see prices rise as certain materials and items actually become a bit of a slog to collect, and everything will get better. Stop focusing on one element of a bigger problem.
Why? What will happen then? (BTW, some people think that ore is worth more, because you get xp when smelting. I don't think that xp covers the cost of smelting because it is way better to kill creepers ) So what? Where is the problem? If you like, keep asking why and giving answers until you/we find the core problems and motives.
Also the prices for ores should go up because of the difficulty going to normal. More players are going to die and lose their picks,armor, and loot they have gather from there mining trips. So there the staff is helping the EMC economy for you members who like that part on the Empire. *reaches out for handshake
Please detail how our changes have prevented you from having fun or playing the game in reasonable manners then we can adjust if there is truely something broken. Please do not complain simply for the fact that regulation exists, complain when the regulation prevents you from having fun. Regulation keeps order and sanity, and shows the server owners care about the quality of the server. I ask that you please take a day or two and join the top 10 servers on the voting sites. Check out the restrictions they have in place. One of them doesn't allow the use of pistons. most of them destroy your entities in some way or aother, others even block item frames. These are the top servers of minecraft... Majority of players do not care that their sheep isnt going to regrow wool while they are mining, or that their crops are not growing because they are 5 chunks away. Most of these changes we have applied happen on the same/similar level with a lower view-distance, and thats VANILLA behavior! So if you have a problem with the restrictions in place, you should file a complaint to Mojang. We are simply adjusting the implementation details on how they are triggered, in order to provide a better overall experience. So you're asking us to close our doors to new members? SMP4 or 6 might disagree with you on the new members thing. They are quite lonely compared to 1 or 9. We are at 10 servers because we required it due to new member influx. Our goal is to provide amazing gameplay AND be big. Our amazing gameplay is going to be what drives more players to EMC, so the only way to avoid the changes would be to deny those people entry... Sorry its not going to happen. Player loss had absolutely NOTHING to do with us adding new servers. The reason for our loss has been stated multiple times -- lack of updates due to Justins inactivity and the bugs the 1.3 update caused. We can not upgrade the servers much more past what they are. We have already begun the planning for upgrading hardware -- but thats pretty much the end of the line once we get this next hardware... Solving the problem with entities is what needs to be done. Out of our 10k active players, how many do you count are complaining that gameplay is too restricted, and again as I asked above... What changes that are in place are preventing you from having fun because they are too restrictive? Before iron farms, what did people do? they played the game... They mined it. They found diamonds too to boot! By forcing you to not AFK for hours only helps you as a player. when your to the point your AFKing for hours, your about to quit the game. Forcing you to behave differently can remove the monotonous action and potentially save you from quitting. So in essence, we are helping people on a personal level, You're welcome Last I checked, 99% of our players are not complaining (do the math, we have over 5000 players still here thats older than 30 days out of the 10000 actual active, and I'm pretty confident that there is less than 50 people unhappy with these restrictions) Combined with that theres been virtually no negative feedback other than the few random people on the thread about activation range -- Id say yes we are 100% meeting that goal.
The issue that I see goes back to the AFK issue. It is an extremely touchy subject. As is "ownership" of anything in the wild. "I should be able to kick people from my farm because I built it" is an extremely common (and valid) statement. Just as, "I should be able to use it, as I took the time to find it" is the same. So, in my opinion, this comes down to common courtesy. Which, I'm sure you realize, we are trying to encourage here. How we should encourage as opposed to enforce is the quandary, hence our staff titles of "Moderator."
Since when is 500 sheep in a small area is perfectly acceptable? Why is 5000 sheep in town that noone is using draining server resources acceptable? Since when is AFK'ing for hours on end not actually playing the game, selling mass amounts of resources that in that you collected while asleep or at work, perfectly acceptable? Where did we ever encourage AFK grinding? when TEXP was put in place we had an active and enforced no afk rule. We actually never took it away... so its still in place, we just havent enforced it due to entity limiter.
Now really? Aikar goes to the trouble of very thoughtfully replying to your posts, and then you do that?
I've stated my opinions very clearly. I've not much else to say. Just acknowledging that I hear him - and while I completely disagree, what else can I do?
They will be no problem, trust me on that. Fair enough, but if I were Aikar, just /shrug would come across as very rude.
AFK'ing would stop a certain percentage of farm use, but it'd just mean people would either sit actively at a spawner or find ways to avoid the AFK (Rail circle, boat, etc). I'm just sticking to the original topic of the iron farm nerfing debate and saying you (AlexChance) can't target one and not the others. AFK isn't something I've an issue with.
Verily and forsooth. How does finding something someone took the time to research and build give anyone the right to its use? Besides being impolite, it can easily be considered theft through loss of use. There are kids that routinely use Live map just to find bases and farms in the Wild then go to them to profit from someone else's work. How can that be seen as valid? There's a middle ground for me at least. If someone takes the time to let me get to know and trust them in game, I'll gladly share with them. I understand that some people have a hard time even staying alive out there, much less building much of anything and I think I've been quite generous with a lot of people. I've built a lot of stone generators, helped dig residences, and so forth in Town for people, mainly to just do something nice for someone. On the other hand, if someone forces themselves on me in an attempt to profit, they're going to meet with resistance or a hostile attitude. Depending on the circumstances, I'd rather gut a farm than let someone take advantage of me by forcing me to let them use it. I can always build another somewhere else. The idea that finding someone else's farm to use rather than building your own is valid seems lazy to me and not in the spirit of Minecraft. I don't understand how a moderator can support it. I hope Wild Protection will address this in some manner. If someone can't use an area in the Wild unless they politely ask the owner first, it will enforce a bit of civility on those of us who lack it. People won't be so afraid to build large scale projects, won't feel the need to hide them, and feel less afraid to share them with others.
I AGREE! I "yay" to this post. Players use too much chunks, they're very greedy about it. Chunks should also be banned and deleted! They cause too much lag and houses pests such as entities.
There are several issues that came up in this thread, perhaps we could somehow discuss them one by one? Somehow in a more organized way, perhaps someone has a practical idea how to do that. Here's what I've got - How do we see (E)MC? - Is it just a video game that is about <insert description of how to "play (E)MC properly">? - Is it more than that? A virtual world with its laws and mechanics, together with a population, a community, that gives us at the impression (at least) that the possibilities are virtually endless and that the limitations for our ideas and creations are only in our heads? A virtual universe that challenges our gray matter? For me, a video game where few scenarios happen over and over again is soon enough boring. I play on EMC for months now because week for week there is a progress, there is a development, there is something new - mainly not because Mojang has added some items / ores / mobs, but because we, the people here came up with new ideas, because we are exploring and developing this world and this community and because this allows reflection of our mentality and our capabilities in an unburdened way and allows for development of our own. There are many people here that do not play just to kill time, but because playing is the work of the child (and the child in everyone of the adults among us) and is important for healthy development of creativity and a healthy cognitive and emotional development overall. I think that is what makes this game so good. If this world is being restricted, nerfed or moved towards absurd - I think that it is understandable - that hurts the game-play and takes away fun. Where do restrictions come from? A - Restrictions coming from Mojang. As I already mentioned, this is somewhat like a climate change. We have to adapt, and this is a part of the game. On the other side, we can organize, write to Mojang and/or support distinct suggestions - if we feel strong enough about a distinct feature. B - There are technical restrictions that are not easy to change. We have to accept that and we hope that there are gifted people around who like Minecraft enough to think, invest effort and overcome that technical restrictions. Up to rewriting the server partially or completely. (Can you imagine a set of computers linked together in a network to provide processing power for just a single server with dozens of players, where most of the chunks are loaded all the time? Where, for example, a cargo composition started from 30k blocks away arrives after traveling through more than 1800 chunks?) I think it is important to see that the community and this virtual world generally has priority above technical and administrative circumstances. That the hardware, software, maintenance, development and administration are asked to provide what the community and the world need, and it is not the other way around, it is not that the community and the world are there because a set of servers and administration needs them. C - Restrict how to play Minecraft to any apparently "valuable", "decent", "acceptable", "reasonable" etc. manner? Artificially restrict what is "playing" and what is "not playing" etc? "Helping" players by restricting their game-play? This restriction has far more destructive potential than any technical circumstance, as this is opposed to the idea of a sandbox game, of a virtual world with its laws and mechanics. This would be putting barriers onto creativity and development, I hope it is obvious how this hurts the game and takes away fun. D - Financial restrictions, capacity restrictions? I just want to mention this topic for the sake of completeness and add that a dedicated 6-core server with 6x 3,2 GHz CPU, 32 GiB RAM, 128 GB SSD, 2x 1 TB SAS HDD and unlimited Internet traffic costs about $135 per month - all inclusive: hardware, housing, power, hardware maintenance and internet traffic. That's 27 iron supporters per server. E - AFK is not playing? Staying AFK is needed to keep some chunks loaded. To keep at least a part of the virtual world alive, keep farms and machines working. Is that not playing? See under "C." Does that use the servers, the CPUs, RAM and bandwidth? Yes it does! The virtual world, our farms and machines need life, not hibernation. "Helping" people to play "properly" by kicking their B? Please choose words to describe this idea yourself F - A way (within the game rules and game mechanics) to obtain some items more easily shall be restricted, because it changes the game or economy or how I feel today or whatever. Hey, are we allowed to use a calculator while playing, or even spreadsheet software? Are we allowed to apply some knowledge of trigonometry, statistics or math in general? Or even economy? You know, it helps immensely and gives a huge advantage in this game and this virtual world. Is there a need to further explain the mind, the tenor of this idea? G - Preventing conflicts, restricting due to potential abuse, restricting to reduce effort needed for moderation? "Solve" the problem of uninvited guest using your farm by nerfing your farm or even disallowing it? Disallow fireworks because they make noise and can be abused? Disallow XY part of the game because it could potentially be abused? WTFudge? Please choose even more appropriate words to describe the insanity of that ideas yourself... H - Who owns a farm in the wild, who is allowed to use it? No need for authoritative restrictions here. We can establish the needed rules and practice here as community or on the level of sub-community in case of outposts. I'm constantly confronted with this problem: "Do you have a farm / grinder? You sure have! Can I use it, please please?" - "You can if you contribute (like expand it) or pay a rent, otherwise it could be a kind of stealing. And you need to prove yourself competent first." Or any other regulation the owners are comfortable with... Have fun!
