Thread Objective: Create a specific roadplan regarding the specific goals, that devs and admins can implement with very little tweaks if they accept the suggestion Specific Goals: Replace voting as #1 answer to the question: “How do I make rupees” Change method for obtaining Voting Gear to an in game reward system Provide something concrete, with actual numbers and descriptions in what we think is “balanced gameplay” for the future of EMC Maximizing what can be accomplished with the developers time Create something fun for both new and old players TLDR at the bottom Note: This suggestion has an companion spreadsheet - click here to open itVoting: Voting has been essential to getting EMC’s name out there via raising its rank on server lists, however, It may be nearing time to change things up on how it works on the in-game side, What to keep: Voting bonus count 7-day Derelict extension Premium Item - Pool What to change: Rupee and token rewards Voter Items Remove Diamond & Emerald from votes Reasoning: It’s gotten to the point on EMC where if a new player asks “How do I make rupees” one of the main and accurately best replies they will get is “vote”, This makes a kind of odd situation, Its good for EMC’s ranking on voting sites, but also ends up making one of the most reliable ways to make rupees and also obtain arguably the best armor and tools on the server, by not playing. By removing Currency and shifting voter items to other sources (except the 100 vote thank you), it would make it more reasonable, leaving voting streaks and the derelict extension to encourage people to still vote while also keeping the ability for players to keep their friends from going derelict, (see voter item rebranding and rotating shop for in game function replacements) Voter Gear Replacement With removal of voter items from voting, there would need to be a rename of current ones (The code to update enchantments on voter items should be able to detect and rename on the inventory opening) to transition to an in-game method of obtaining these reward items, encouraging and rewarding play Presenting, Adventurer's Equipment, Rewarded for obtaining milestone amounts of Achievement Points These items would be rewarded in their original vote reward order at increments of 50 achievement points Note: these items would be functionally the same, just renamed and with a new and improved method for obtaining If this suggestion is implemented, we recommend looking at previous member suggestion threads, which detail some additions, mechanic changes and ideas which could be adapted positively to Adventurer’s Equipment, but not within the objective of this thread. https://empireminecraft.com/threads/idea-voter-items-overhaul.86387/ https://empireminecraft.com/threads/suggestion-survival-update-use-for-dragon-stones.86255/ Voter Water Bottle (mud creation) Voter Ender Pearl Note the addition of new items will give something to work towards for established players. Achievements A feature mentioned in the EMC roadplan is Achievements. We suggest taking a look back at this and making a twist on the original concept to adapt to this thread, since it can be combined in what we believe is a way that really fits into EMC’s “Play your way” style. With Achievements, we also propose Achievement Points being an excellent way to reward players with Adventurer's equipment (see voter Item rebranding for details on that). The achievements players would be able to earn, would reward the player a variable amount of points depending on the difficulty of each achievement. Implementation would require A GUI to show categories like player settings, Track completion via integer count or boolean Achievement triggers via count, staff trigger, reward signs (SS only - for seasonal events such as Halloween story quest, or similar) /achievements to open the GUI plus sub command for SS+ to grant credit for things like a firefloor win, similar to how they do with tokens for event wins Icon in the Empire assistant to open it Include current score next to vote bonus in /p Playersetting to disable any achievement chat messages While designing the specific achievements the goal was to make them Fair, Non-cheeseable and include diverse playstyles. It's important to remember that the initial balancing of points is intentionally difficult, as more achievements are added overtime it will undoubtedly shift the difficulty level of specific amounts The Achievement list we prepared can be found in the companion spreadsheet under sheet name “Ach” - click here to open it Name: Enraged Combatant | Survival Kill 10 types of enraged mobs Name: I won't fall | Win 1 round of firefloor Full list of prepared achievements in the sheet
Rotating Shop: With the voting rupee reward gone, we would like to suggest replacing it with an effort-based system consolidated into a “Rotating shop.” This idea was originally mentioned on the chickeneer fixes the economy thread, but we thought it would be a good addition/solution to include it in this thread, described in a much more complete way. To replace this, we must first understand what we are replacing, so I’ll start with some hypotheticals. Player Type 1. Players can earn 400 rupees if they vote daily on a voting site, and they can increase that amount by 100 to 400 rupees if they choose to vote on a premium site(shown by the star in the Vote forum section). They also can earn patterned rupee bonuses based on milestone goals of the vote bonus. What does this mean? If a player votes everyday on a premium voting site, and only that single site, they can earn per day a base of 500 rupees (1) + 1,325 rupees per daily average from the bonuses. This means that they get a minimum income of around 12,800 rupees per week for the player. Player Type 2. This player, on top of voting on a single premium voting site, chooses to support EMC all the way by voting on all (2) of the voting sites. This means that their daily base rises from 500 rupees to 1,700 rupees, which equates to around 21,000 rupees per week for the player. For this example, we’ll assume EMC has 100 people voting consistently, and already can achieve the maximum voting rupee bonus per site. 50 of them will be Player Type 1 and the other half will be Player Type 2. If we calculate the total influx of rupees, we get that 50 Type 1 Players add ~640K rupees per week and 50 Type 2 Players add ~1.1m rupees per week, bringing a total of 1,700,000 new rupees brought in into the economy for little to no effort to people, and zero effort of in-game time. Notes: I know that if you vote using TopG you would get 700 rupees instead of 500 rupees, but due to the recent changes to their site, and that I wanted to give the most conservative estimate, I choose to simulate the situation for a player who voted in ServerPact. Currently there are 9 listed, but because at least one site seems to be down all the time, for the calculations I’m going to assume that 8 voting sites is the maximum. According to the Forums on Aug 26, EMC has had around 1400 active players last month, and through our observations which can be seen in the linked spreadsheet, we noted that on Premium sites close to 100 players vote on premium sites on a daily basis; and if you go down the server list, at the bottom we get close to 65 players voting per day. This puts our example on a very conservative estimate, of which the real amount of rupee-influx per week is close to a million rupees higher than our estimate. We do understand that alts are being voted for, but those rupees at the end of the day do end up in the economy, and that derelict-players are being voted for, with possibly those rupees not making an impact on the economy, however they could be drained from those derelict accounts through different means, and they always have the potential to return. (However these points, should not matter, as our calculations were done to get the minimum rupee influx) What can we conclude? The proposed system must achieve similar rupee gains for players, While we know it is not possible to match these systems exactly in terms of total server influx, we attempted to balance them so as to not cause extreme inflation or deflation. So what’s our Rotating Shop idea? We would like to add the ability for the Empire/server to buy effort/skill based items (non-afkable / non-grindable by players with little-to-no risk). What does this look like? These items will probably be a non-renewable-resource with modifications to accommodate for EMC’s context. The items will be listed in our companion-spreadsheet, which will include all of our process, and steps to reach the decisions we took, when creating developing this idea - LINK HERE) It's worth remembering that just because farm items are excluded from the shop lists, it does not mean that player farms are useless. These items can still be sold to other players and to player shops, as well as use them for your own needs. This rotating shop is intended to be a backup with lower prices than you will find from players at the benefit of consistency/availability, excluding farmable items from it is for balance purposes. Features: Specific details and implementation of the shop: General: The player would have the ability to sell to the server, thus earning money through 3 random items selected from the item list (List in spreadsheet). These would rotate every 72 hours. We designed the system to have no maximum sales, since prices would be balanced/rewarded toward this, but it could be implemented with a maximum daily amount if deemed necessary. How would the player interact with this rotating shop? We imagined 2 versions, each with their pros and cons, and different implementation difficulty, but we found it worthy to mention both. Variation one: Physical Location Location: /shopworld with 3 shop signs. - Players would be able to interact with each other and it can give a sense of community to see others playing as well, one might find someone else who likes to gather and end up going mining together and becoming friends, this version is also able to utilize the current empire shop system, which has been tested extensively. Each shop would be to sell 3 random items selected from the item list (List in spreadsheet) Technical implementation: One of our top goals with this suggestion thread was to design this in a way that maximizes the positive impact on EMC per time required by devs to implement it, this rotation part of the shop is definitely the most challenging code wise. Rotation time: 72 hour intervals, rotating at midnight EMC Time (same as rupee bonus) Shop sign replacement process: -Load chunk on stage copy of shopworld -Remove old sign -Randomly choose new item and price from config file containing data (recommended data in spreadsheet linked) (Believed to be the difficult part implementation wise) -Place new sign -Push shopworld world to other smps Variation Two: Digital Shop Location: /sellshop - Personalized virtual GUI for the shop Each player would have 3 random items in their own /sellshop - preventing a daily spike on specific items for the day. (players would not necessarily join and go mine together =/ ) However, this would help with future implementation of QOL features, such as, being able to skip an item that you do not like, easy access earning rupees and going back to personal projects easier, variability/luck based pricing, or event-based personal pricing (ie. “You have defeated 10 custom bosses in the last week, for keeping EMC safe, your prices have a chance to be 5% higher than usual”) - lots of fun stuff could be added, but hard and long implementation process which might not be worth it in the end. Pricing of Items Balance. Balance of the economy is a big part of this idea, and if accepted and implemented, would definitely change some of the economy. A big part of what we wanted to do here was to give a thorough list with specific description, prices, and farmability of the items we consider to be a good addition to this shop. In general, the items selected, were sorted in terms of rarity and difficulty to obtain, in a non-afk-able manner. The full item/block list is in the spreadsheet. We also describe three different methods in which EMC could potentially adopt to price the items. Strategy #1- Effort Based Pricing: This strategy consists of roughly outlining items into "treasure", "rares" and “common." and having all items in that category have a similar pricing range. This would disregard the individual effort that is required for each item. This means, this system would highlight: that some items are more valuable than others, so determined players would technically be able to earn a better minimum income, compared to passive play. Strategy #2- Time Based Pricing: This consists of attempting to make an accurate estimate of an hourly collection rate for each item. This could be implemented by having a fixed amount of rupees for a 1-hour of work, or combining Strategy #1 into it, and include variability that way. Strategy #3: Trial-and-Check Pricing: Study the average sales of such items via transaction logs, and ratio them to ⅓ or ⅕ of the price. Then periodically revise pricing to improve or reduce rupee influx into the economy to have a healthy amount of inflation. What do we recommend? #3, even if it has a higher expected maintenance. However, we still find important to keep in mind Strategy #1 and #2, since this is probably the biggest proposed change in this thread. Players who were earning a guaranteed 12k rupees, will need to adjust to these changes. Nerfing always comes with some negative outlook. However, we believe it is in the best interest of EMC to implement it for a healthy and prosperous economy in the future. Simulation Tool Within the Companion Spreadsheet, we also constructed a simulation tool which would be useful to compare and evaluate the voting rupee influx (on player and overall). We created it so it could still have the potential to be a useful resource for the @admins even if none of the ideas are accepted. It has thorough research on the subject, and a somewhat real estimate of what to expect if similar systems are implemented. The outcome of what you get relating to this thread in the simulation is the following image. It gives you a summary of estimated amount earnings for the server and per player, with the expected on a per hour/per basis. If EMC decided to intervene in the economy, this tool would help understand the expected impact of such changes. Thank you! for reading our post, this thread and suggestion was a combined effort from jewel_king and Tuqueque, with feedback from a few of our friends, and was compiled with the intent of helping to improve the server we care about. (Thank you to chickeneer for having previously compiled Minecraft items into a spreadsheet!) We welcome and encourage any feedback, comments or questions
PS: We specifically decided to not post a survey in this thread to hear the specific opinions from the community. This thread touches several game changes from features that have been there from the very beginning of EMC. It will be useful if people reply with their opinions to see whether or not these changes would help EMC’s future. TLDR Remove rupees voting bonus --> Minimum income replaced by Rotating Shop where Server buys off effort-based items. Voter Gear Rebrand -> Adventurer's Gear able to be obtained through in-game (custom) achievements Achievement List -> thought out in a non-game-breaking manner Thorough companion-spreadsheet created to aid in implementation and design process of economic changes, if any intervention is done by the server
There are a lot of interesting ideas. The rotating shop one is good. It would keep players actively engaged and also keep them learning new things about collecting resources and other things. Personally, I don't really keep up with updates to see what's new, so this could help us all see what's new, in demand, rare or hard to get, etc. The achievements are cool, too. It sets a goal in a game that otherwise doesn't really have any specific goals (mine and craft). As shown with the vanilla achievements, there are players who would be interested in this. Special, unique, and useful rewards come to mind. Imagine unlocking a pickaxe that could insta-mine deepslate after completing mining achievements or something similar. Or you could unlock residence-wide beacon buffs without beacons after developing more of your residence (this might be difficult to implement). Similar to trophy points on the forums, that could also be what displays in the player info menu for those achievements. There could be a leaderboard for this, too! EMC has reached a point where, on the economy side, opening a shop and getting sales from it could be difficult. There are a lot of players who already have... everything. So, they don't need to buy anything. This eliminates a large customer base for those players who are looking to make a profit off their shops. And lowering shop prices has little-to-no impact because of the lack of demand. It could even make it not worth gathering those resources in the wastelands because of that. I haven't read much about the "chickeneer fixes the economy thread," but I'm sure there are great ideas - and some that have translated to here - that would be beneficial to fixing the economy.
BUMP!! thanks ulti for reply I'm still unsure if silence means silently nodding in agreement, or silent disagreement. For either side... it would be useful to specify such sentiments, at least for future reference for the devs if any similar ideas appear in the future. Thanks!
Pretty amazing effort to put all of this together. I agree with Ulti that the Rotating Shop and Achievements are cool ideas. They would create other ways to engage with players separately from Events, Forums and in-game Chat. By that I mean partnering up to gather materials for the day's sale items or to work on an Achievement. If any of these made it to implementation, I would take advantage of them. Thanks Tuqueque and jewel_king for this comprehensive proposal!
All the "eventing" achievements would all be unobtainable by me and players like me that are asleep at those times. From me it gets a no unless you first address the issue of having events at all times of the day, not just at 11pm or 3am & similar
Hey Fred thanks for the feedback, timezones wasn't really something we had considered so thank you if you haven't already we would suggest filling out mooples event survey LINK as its probably the best place to express your desire for other time zone events On the topic of this thread, When balancing the example set of initial achievements we tried to keep it to the goals of having the overall system be optional (like voting) but also for those interested, making achievements for as many playstyles as possible, The hard part of balancing this is making there be enough points in each type of play style that players don't feel obligated to do ones they dislike, while also not making things too easy for players who enjoy many types of playstyles, We really want this suggestion to be friendly to every type of player, If you or anyone reading this has any ideas for balancing or improving it, we would be happy to hear it!
I filled moople's survey 1 or 2 days ago. And I understand that (at the moment?) I am part of a very limited group of players, I just wanted to point out that event-based items might not be really friendly. I would at least make it participate to X such events, not win the event, not everyone got the skills, and I would already feel forced to play something that maybe I normally would not
EMC gameplay can be summarized in play-your-way. Adding some participation based ones could be a good idea for some (if/when Achievements are accepted and implemented). However we mostly focused on creating achievements that would be rewarded by gameplay effort. It’s ok to not be attracted to all the achievements, and the idea was to create enough to cover enough (breadth) interests among specific areas, if people only play in that specific type of of play-style. However each type of gameplay would have enough content within that specific area (depth), and ideally the list of achievements would increase over time. What you speak also talks about a discussion which has been in EMC for many years, the fairness of timezones/rewards, PPP, halloween, holiday chest etc. Events and such situations have evolved throughout the years to avoid such situations. It is good that you brought up the topic as it is definitely something to consider when adding these features, but our thinking process was mostly, to create enough achievements in a diversified manner to the point where it doesn’t really matter if a player is keen on not playing in a certain type of way. What type of achievements in either non-timezone oriented events, or other areas would you recommend adding, to further mitigate what you describe?
