[Guide] Surviving the Wastelands

Discussion in 'Empire Help & Support' started by wisepsn, Mar 26, 2013.

?

Are you excited for the wastelands?

Yes. 29 vote(s) 50.0%
I am already planning. 22 vote(s) 37.9%
No. 3 vote(s) 5.2%
There is a wastelands? 4 vote(s) 6.9%
  1. What will be in the wastelands?
  2. Let me give you the quotes on what Aikar said about the Wastelands..

  3. Get to a new world today!
    Guess everyone is excited to see a new world, but you could and you still can see it all the time,
    every single day or even many times a day, like at least 3 times every hour if you want -
    in the current, good old wilderness and nether.

    All you need to do is travel for few minutes.
    I plan to open a fast railway track to the public in a day or two,
    so you will be able to reach that new world in 4-5 minutes.

    Actually, why Wastelands?
    So that few brand new and novice Minecraft players that join EMC
    can find Quartz and other ores right in front of their door, like in single player.
    This really benefits only a minority, because on one side, experienced players know
    how to travel and have fun traveling, and on the other side, novice players fear
    the night, the monsters and other dangers so much that they don't go to the
    wilderness anyway.

    As we can see now: within a day from upgrading to 1.5,
    auctions with Quartz popped out like mushrooms after the rain.
    Can you see how the challenge to get out to the not yet generated areas
    in the nether is interesting and valuable part of the game?
    Probably as interesting as quartz itself.

    Wastelands needed? Negative.

    What are the drawbacks?
    Adding Wastelands takes away from the game, it makes it easier, and thus
    makes it less interesting. People will enjoy the new world for few days,
    but then it will get boring.

    Majority of the people who go out and mine enjoy traveling out,
    digging tunnels, building railways, building bases, improving their skill
    and optimizing operations. Wasteland takes that away. There is no need
    to travel any more, no need to build good bases, you just spawn there and dig.
    Easy and boring. (But not easy enough for novice player anyway.)

    What about the future updates?
    What if Mojang massively adds new biomes, ores and items?
    They would still be reachable within few minutes.
    The challenge to get out and find them would add to the game,
    it would make the game more interesting.
    Wastelands wouldn't be needed for a long time.

    Will it change economy, will the prices drop?
    My prediction: not much, and only temporary.

    Reducing the travel time only reduces smaller part of the time and effort
    to get resources. I travel to my mining sites between 2 and 5 minutes
    (around 10 minutes for Quartz), and I spend there 30-60 minutes while mining.
    Around 4 minutes from around 40 is 10%. And if using railway, it is the easy part.
    So it's really not much.

    It might soon even have opposite effect.
    If the people who mine and collect stuff on a regular basis will be put off
    and will be soon bored by Wastelands, they will probably find some other interests
    and it could happen that the already scarce supply on goods gets even scarcer.

    Even if that does not happen, if there will be enough (new) people who
    will be willing to mine, collect and sell materials, I bet that it won't be
    enough to balance the inflation.

    Is adding Wastelands a good idea?
    I don't think so.
  4. WAT! What wasteland! I thought wasteland got removed last year!

    Wow cool!
  5. i think zombie pigmen get mad at players when they mine quarts or maybe it's just a random angry zombie pigman
  6. *Cough All your enchant needs at 2515... *cough
    wisepsn likes this.
  7. Some of this may be true but at the end of the day, Wastelands are needed and I'm sure an intelligent man such as yourself will know why. :)
  8. manic where dat rail at?
    edit: also manic i disagree that wastelands is not needed. think about the long run. maybe two years down the road all kinds of updates and new blocks and stuff eventually its going to be such a chore to get new blocks that you are going to have to go an easy 25000 blocks to get your hands on
    pyro_vampiress likes this.
  9. He's on topic and just stating his opinion. I don't think that he's trying to de-rail this thread :p
  10. If you know a good reason besides making quartz (new ores) reachable without travel, please remind me :)

    Yes, eventually ... possibly in few years, hmm, let's think about it a bit.
    Since the last reset, how much of the area is explored?
    How much of the area outside of pre-generated land?

    When you move out, the available area increases with square of the distance.
    If you are at 5k, the available area is 5,000² π ≈ 78.5 million blocks
    To double the available area to around 157 million blocks, how far out do you need to move?
    √ (157M / π) ≈ 7k
    See?

    25k? It's reachable within 7-8 minutes.
    (25k)² π ≈ 1,963 millions blocks, that is 25 times the area with radius 5k.
    In 2 years?
    Not really. :)

    From that aspect, adding Wastelands is just ... not needed.

    PS: Where the railway is? :) The first one I'm preparing for public use is on smp7. I'll start a thread for it when it's ready. PM me if you'd like to take part.
    ZBSDKryten likes this.
  11. You guys are seriously making me laugh with these posts, Lol.
    Twitch1 likes this.
  12. awww i thought it was smp6 :( i can contribute a few stacks of rails tho :D
  13. It will be MUCH sooner than a few years I can almost guarantee at the rate mojang adds new things we would need to do a reset at some point...but let's pretend it is a few years and you've been building a wild base for a few years in our one and only wilderness with no wastelands.

    Wouldn't you be quite upset in a few years that we didn't add a wastelands and had to reset your few years of work wild base? I know I would. Things we're doing today are going to prevent MAJOR disaster down the road.
  14. Glad it worked on someone. :)
  15. How many other points of view have you really considered?? I make (very well hidden) bases out in the current wilderness, find a couple of nice areas rich with resources, but then by the time the next update comes up I have to travel further out and make another base in order to acquire new items. This makes it so that people who are very experienced and ambitious need to make longer and longer trips each time a new update comes out. Going by your math, how many extra minutes of travel could be tacked on at each and every update, make the total round trip to bring everything back to town longer with the increased amount of traveling?

    Also, another point I think you should consider is that on some, possibly all, servers there is a type of monopoly where people who have the time to make those trips are owning the market. As previously stated there were people who had quarts ore and block available within hours up the 1.5.1 update; all of us little people who don't have that time to make those trips don't stand a chance to become suppliers, which hinders our market simply because there are not enough suppliers, and too many people with overpriced shops and far too many buyers. This new world will even out that inequity by creating more suppliers who can sell more to more shops, shops will have more ready product on hand, and prices will become more competitive. In the end, because of that last part, prices for some incredibly easy to get items will drop down significantly, and I predict that higher priced items will also come down a notch or two.
  16. Everything is possible, but Wasteland just takes away the need to travel and does not in any other way change what happens with the current Wilderness.

    One can speculate that in the future, it could happen that the generation of chunks for the current Wilderness will have to be changed on EMC side to keep it from a reset and thus that it could happen that the current Wilderness would never receive some new features (ores).
    But this is quite unlikely to happen. We can expect that Mojang will keep the compatibility and smooth chunk generation.

    This is quite the situation we already have now.
    It is an excellent idea to keep the current Wilderness from reset and to stick to the survival game-play.
    But Wasteland is not needed to achieve that, at least not now and in the foreseeable future.

    People obviously enjoy the challenge to reach not yet generated areas (and to learn how to do that).
    Given public railways like "Quartz Express" it's actually quite cheap and easy, but not too easy, one still has to travel.
    It is not necessary and IMO not a good idea to remove the travel aspect from the game.

    Please don't get me wrong - it is obvious that Wastelands would reduce my customer base for the "railway business" to the people that want to reach far places in the current Wilderness and Nether regardless of availability of quartz. I hope it is also obvious that I'm opening that tracks to public use not to make a fortune (although I'd like to at least cover the costs) but to make the game interesting and fun.
    (There are ways to make rupees much faster than digging thousands of blocks long tunnels, covering with half-slabs, making boost loops and stations, taking care that people understand how to use it, fear stealing and griefing...)

    Anyway, it seems that we all agree in one point: Wasteland is not needed at the present time.
  17. About the time needed to travel
    For the Overworld (Wilderness) it is 3-5 minutes now.
    With the next update with new ores in the nether, I expect it to increases by around 1/2 minute (30s).
    But then, with following updates, the extra needed time is less and less because the available area is bigger, it increases with square of the distance traveled. I'd expect it not to increase significantly beyond 6-7 minutes.

    As people will more and more build new settlements in the Wilderness, the average needed time will be much less than that. I'd expect that there will be people who will transport goods between towns and settlements to earn rupees. A new business will emerge. This means development of the game-play and the community.

    For the Nether, the needed time is around 10 minutes now, around 1 minute extra with the next update that would bring new ores to the nether. I'd expect it not to increase significantly after reaching 12-13 minutes. Perhaps we could add outposts to the Nether, same as we have them in the Overworld.

    About people who have very limited game-play time
    I don't think this would be a valid argument. You're saying that some people don't have time to travel. But then, they also don't have enough time to dig, because digging takes 10 times longer than traveling and they also don't have enough time to build etc.

    But even if, you can see that many people collect quartz, that it is not expensive. People who have very limited time will do other jobs, like collect sand and sandstone (travel time under 2 minutes), make over 6,000r per hour and easily buy quartz.
    Actually, at the moment, one of the fastest ways to get quartz is to collect sand and sandstone.
    See?

    About suppliers, buyers and prices
    The cause of this is not the time needed to get to a mining site. Not at all.
    See, there are shops with fair prices, with low margin (like my 12162).
    See, high prices are good for "little people", because they can sell the stuff at a higher price, because it evens out inequities, it makes rich people less rich.
    The cause of this problem is the inflation (through excessive emission of "free rupees"), and increase in prices is the natural answer to that problem in order to even out and stabilize the economy.

    Just ask yourself this question: why would someone put an effort in collecting resources and sell them for rupees? Why, really? If you want I'll address this question and explain under "Marketplace Discussion."

    Unfortunately, I don't expect significant and lasting change, for reasons stated in the previous postings and because of the "why" question.
    Why would they? Certainly not because the travel time is shortened by 2 minutes.

    Like what items would become incredibly easy to get? Really?
  18. I believe it's the opposite. Most people not only feel we need it, but have requested it for some time now.
    wisepsn likes this.
  19. Only coz they're scaredy-pants and lazy little good-for-nothin's;);):rolleyes:
    M4nic_M1ner likes this.