Bring back the Rev18 iron grinder system

[dnynumberone]

The new golem spawner thing is a good idea, but flawed. Right now, for the most part, they're just kinda helping the rich get richer, instead of being a community resource.

 

Add them randomly across the map.  Or choose 4 random names from users who happen to be online and ask if they want one and where.  Something.  There's an emphasis on building communal projects (such as rails) and right now rails are limited to a select few.

 

I think there's also a fundamental flaw with the idea of having them as "prizes later."

 

First - "prizes" - this denotes winning certain events.  Typically, people who win events come from big towns with lots of resources.  So there's already a bit of a built in bias towards established towns/regular players.

 

Second - "later" - when? A week/month/2 months/etc?  Very vague. And, again, I can see the attempt at trying to keep players around with an incentive, but it really ends up more as a bias towards established/regular players. 

 

This rev has had a lot of experiments performed on it.  And I am loving a lot of things about that.  But I believe this golem spawner thing requires some tweaking, much like the horses required some as well.

[tobylane]

I'd like to end this iron scarcity experiment. I'd give examples but I fear being too specific.

[totemo]

I think the custom spawners suck and most of them should be dropped.

 

They just replace some more interesting part of the game with standing around AFK for free stuff. To the extent that we make some part of the game easy to beat, we make it boring.

 

Examples of spawners that suck:

• Iron spawners replace mining and exploration, to the detriment of the game. Iron should not be so absurdly cheap to get that people make huge ugly buildings out of it. There is no shortage of iron on this map. Collectively, PvE has mined 234 thousand iron ore blocks in the first 23 days of the rev. That's 10,000 ore per day. I have personally mined 5401 iron ore, or 9.38 stacks of iron blocks - enough for 3 and a half beacon bases. There is plenty of iron for rails, and even if there was not, we would be able to collect rails from abandoned mines.
• About 10% of all chunks in the world are slime chunks, which means there are roughly 14,000 of them. Conventional slime grinders produce far more slime than anyone actually needs, particularly if you combine multiple slime chunks. They're not particularly complicated to build - they just require effort - and with Haste 2 beacons, the amount of effort required is far less than in the past.

[dnynumberone]

re:totemo

 

I almost entirely agree with you, but think that's a bit of a side topic.  This rev has special spawners, and I think they could be dealt with a bit better. 

 

I do agree there is a great deal of iron to be mined. Partly I think this supports my proposal - if there's already plenty of iron, what's 4 more spawners? Partly, remember, for some people to collect that iron they need to do a whole lot of single player farming/harvesting/repairing.  In the past for projects (like rails) one could hop to the nearby town that made a grinder for a bit.  Not so easy now. 

Edited December 3, 2016 by dnynumberone

[TheNightsKing]

I'm afraid I'm not a fan of the iron spawners this time at all. They're far, far slower than mining (which has its advantages in terms of getting people doing the diggy). Personally I think we had them right when they were introduced with the level cap in rev 17. They were good but not utterly ridiculous like they were last rev.

 

After the first week or so's high usage levels, PvE is at its best when it is a rail heavy map. It's when getting from A-B is hard that it feels dead. And that needs decent amounts of iron.

 

If you're frugal, there's roughly enough iron to make the rails if you dig between points, but that leaves little for other purposes.

[torteela]

if people want more iron for rails just bump the amount of rails you get per batch. that'd encourage rail building while not over-saturating the server with iron. but its like what, two weeks into the rev? not everywhere on the map is supposed to be connected by rail this soon. just get people to coordinate hub cities/stations and draw up a nice map of how to go around on various regional rails. there's no real other reason to need a bunch of iron (except for hoppers for auto sorters which are the devil) so that should take care of the problem.

 

but really, P goes from the "dirt hut barely getting by" phase to the "we're building a utopian metropolis" in about two days. i don't think that needs to happen any faster.

[dnynumberone]

Well, to be fair, /seen torteela (Nov 22) - do you have the best pulse on what P is like atm?

[dnynumberone]

>but really, P goes from the "dirt hut barely getting by" phase to the "we're building a utopian metropolis" in about two days. i don't think that needs to happen any faster.

 

 

I completely agree with this. I am saying the current iron grinder/"prize award" format just reinforces that.

 

Edit : Rose had planned for a second iron golem spawner in our iron grinder setup.  We just pretty much assumed we would win won of those "prizes" eventually - however ephemeral, we pretty much knew one more (at least) would end up in our possession.  

 

As much as it benefits Rose, I do not like this.  We shouldn't be this arrogant that "of course we're going to win one of those iron golem spawner prizes, so let's plan our build accordingly."  That's just terribly conceited.  

 

Yes, I am lobbying against my town.  Apologies pez, tic, zom, and so on.  But when rose is planning a build based on the assumption we'll win one of those golem prizes...I think something is off-kilter.  And we could use more things that benefit new/independent players.

Edited December 4, 2016 by dnynumberone

[torteela]

edit: i hadn't refreshed the page after reading your first post and didn't see your second one before replying oops. you can probably ignore most of it. i was talking more about game balance than the spawners themselves. part of the problem is that almost any way you do it big towns like rose will have a better chance of getting them. if they're hidden in the ground, towns have more people to dig to find them. if its a lottery, towns have more people to enter it. server rewards almost always reward towns. i'm not sure how to get around that besides intentionally giving spawners to small groups of players or individuals. 

 

original post more about game balance that probably isn't related:

i do feel pretty qualified to talk about rails and iron, considering i probably crafted and placed more rails than almost anyone the preceding five revs. in 14 i dug my own personal 3x3 tunnel about 3000 blocks and made a two way rail in it using the iron i got from digging. i don't think that took more than a week. maybe two. i had so much ore left over i just ran around throwing diamonds and iron at people the rest of the rev. never used any kind of grinder to get iron (mostly because i didn't know where they were). I probably spent about half of my 12 hours of this rev mining, and the ore distributions seem pretty comparable to that. I've been mining about 700 blocks at a time and coming back with 1.3-1.5 stacks of ingots , which is enough for about 250 blocks of rail. 

Even if ore distributions are worse this rev, which i don't think they are, I've always personally thought things should be more scarce. In three revs of running smart rails, simply by asking for people's leftover iron we were never in need and after a few weeks could just focus on getting the rails up and ignore mining. Which was nice, but once grinders were up we'd have more iron than we knew what to do with. It's always seemed like there was too much of it.

In your post above you said:

 

 

Partly, remember, for some people to collect that iron they need to do a whole lot of single player farming/harvesting/repairing.  In the past for projects (like rails) one could hop to the nearby town that made a grinder for a bit.  Not so easy now. 

A big part of survival minecraft is gathering the materials you need for a project. I think its a good thing if that isn't so easy. A lot of people build their thing for the rev then leave and wait for next rev because they get bored. If it takes them a little longer to build and they end up sticking around a bit longer that's a good thing.

[dnynumberone]

i agree a lot with your last paragraph.  But your first 2+ paragraphs are basically stating past-rev-credentials.  Again, this rev - iron spawners are radically altered, people can't make their own villages, ores are plumped some amount, horses are hugely different - there are a LOT of changes this rev.  Again...maybe familiarize yourself with this particular rev's ins and outs?  Because almost all of your past-rev-cred is kinda drastically changed this go around. I mean, you're talking about rev14 mining...there are so many mechanic changes since rev14...you know we're on 19 now right...?

 

**Apologies!** - didn't see your edit until too late.  

Edited December 4, 2016 by dnynumberone

[dnynumberone]

I also very much understand there's a terribly...terrible...awful poop way to balance things.  I am part of Rose, and I like seeing Rose successful.  I also remember when Rose was first starting, and how much help it took from the community at large.  And that interaction was so great.  Rose's very first beacon pyramid, about 1/2 the iron blocks were donated from people around the map.  

 

So yeah I'm totally caught in a conundrum of wanting to see the little guy succeed while also wanting Rose to do well.  

 

But, along those lines - Rose has a pretty good userbase.  A lot of towns do.  Do they really need any more advantages? This is why I initially recommended adding 4+ new spawners at random places, or asking 4 users at random.    I want the little guy to make something big. 

[dnynumberone]

(I have the feeling AceMarconi might be starting something big hopefully  )

[tobylane]

The experiences given here are from people who play a lot. I hear a good amount of thought about people who don't play a lot, but not much yet on this topic.

 

The golem spawners are not here for a random attraction like all the others, including the witch spawner in Wellspring back when I was playing a lot. They are a newer thing to deal with lag from the megaproject iron farms every town would make. Let's not treat golem spawners the same as slime.

 

Other uses of iron include hoppers and maps. I'm living in Ambrosia where we built a storage room reasonably quickly but with a large empty back room. It's there for when we have enough hoppers for a sorting system. Maybe one day these will become so popular and laggy we need some golem-spawner-like solution for them. I sought out something I hadn't done before so I've been mapping. In Ambrosia town hall there's a large wall with about 30 maps, a small wall with 5 zoom 2 maps, 1 of each in my home and 3 accidental dupes in the storage room. That's 136 iron which is close to what I've mined this rev.

 

What are we trying to achieve? With the vanilla farms or the golem spawner farms access and availability always seemed open to the point of communist (a good thing). I don't see how we can improve on that. Active people usually work together in cities, therefore the greatest use of any block or item will be in cities. Even if there was a point in reducing that how could it be done? I don't think it can be. I was surprised when people were talking in global chat about the villager trades various cities have, where is the best place to get enchanted diamond picks or the best trade for pumpkins. A nearly free diamond pick and motivation is what is getting so much done, not nearly free rails and hoppers. I don't think you can take away the ease of getting iron and diamond tools and expect motivation to last as long as you want.

[totemo]

That's 136 iron which is close to what I've mined this rev.

 

I just hopped on my donkey, rode north of Pico for 2 and half minutes, went into a cave that someone had clearly already partly explored and mined 2 stacks + 8 = 136 iron ore in 7 and a half minutes. In another 5 minutes, tops, I could be back home in Pico with that your entire rev's iron production smelting in my furnaces.

 

So what you are basing your argument on (and it's not clear to me what that is), boils down to 15 minutes of play time. If people can't be bothered to invest 15 minutes in this game, they shouldn't venture an opinion on how other people play it.

[dnynumberone]

I just hopped on my donkey, rode north of Pico for 2 and half minutes, went into a cave that someone had clearly already partly explored and mined 2 stacks + 8 = 136 iron ore in 7 and a half minutes. In another 5 minutes, tops, I could be back home in Pico with that your entire rev's iron production smelting in my furnaces.

 

So what you are basing your argument on (and it's not clear to me what that is), boils down to 15 minutes of play time. If people can't be bothered to invest 15 minutes in this game, they shouldn't venture an opinion on how other people play it.

 

I think, if the subject of this thread was slightly changed, we would be in complete agreement.  I would prefer this server return to vanilla-except-where-necessary.  

 

Along those lines, I think a lot of long time players could be more empathizing with what it's like to start off on the server without the resources of a town behind you.

 

For some people, hopping on a donkey might not be a possibility.  Or it might be a crappy one because they're just busy trying to survive.  As a single player, might take them 5-10 minutes to ride them the same distance.  As a single player, they might not have the greatest dia picks with cool enchants.  As a single player, they might not have the food to sustain such a long journey.  and for those players in the past, they could have maybe popped over to a nearby big town and use an iron grinder for a few hours and be good.  You're correct, it's very easy for people who are parts of big towns to get iron very quickly.  For others, it's become a huge speedbump.

 

In essence, I think a lot of these changes are focused on established towns, and really forgetting about new/independent players. One almost has to be a specialist in regards to the server intricacies to play here.  How does that help attract new players?   

 

So for this particular topic - iron golem spawners - we have them this rev, so let's find a better way to use them.

 

As the side topic - I agree, special spawners shouldn't really be used.

[Guest Former Staff]

So for this particular topic - iron golem spawners - we have them this rev, so let's find a better way to use them.

 

As the side topic - I agree, special spawners shouldn't really be used.

 

For all of the discussion that has been had during this topic for me, it boils down to these two points and I agree with both.

 

If ever a discussion happens about what P could look like without special spawners, I'd be happy to participate with a few ideas.

[Trooprm32]

 

If ever a discussion happens about what P could look like without special spawners, I'd be happy to participate with a few ideas.

 

Doesn't hurt to discuss it anyways, since it's the topic at hand.

 

I didn't like how we handled iron golem spawners last rev; it was too easy. This rev there has been an understandable step back, and it is in essence more vanilla, but I still prefer the grandiose vanilla method of spawning iron golems. We got rid of them then due to hundreds of idle villagers, and I think we could have probably done a better job with the "replacement". Thinking of new ways to do things that replace detrimental vanilla mechanics, but also feel vanilla unto itself is very difficult.

[TheNightsKing]

I just hopped on my donkey, rode north of Pico for 2 and half minutes, went into a cave that someone had clearly already partly explored and mined 2 stacks + 8 = 136 iron ore in 7 and a half minutes. In another 5 minutes, tops, I could be back home in Pico with that your entire rev's iron production smelting in my furnaces.

 

So what you are basing your argument on (and it's not clear to me what that is), boils down to 15 minutes of play time. If people can't be bothered to invest 15 minutes in this game, they shouldn't venture an opinion on how other people play it.

 

No offense totemo, but you are always an outlier in terms of resource gathering. I've spent hours mining from Ambrosia to Clearmont and the north east portal and other ways. This has barely produced enough rails for the distance. In fact I needed to ask Clearmont for iron to finish off the connection to them. It's far from not being bothered to play the game.

[Silversunset01]

No offense totemo, but you are always an outlier in terms of resource gathering. I've spent hours mining from Ambrosia to Clearmont and the north east portal and other ways. This has barely produced enough rails for the distance. In fact I needed to ask Clearmont for iron to finish off the connection to them. It's far from not being bothered to play the game.

 

I think everyone has a different experience - i've dug out one smallish sewer tunnel under haven (maybe 100x10x4) and got close to 3 stacks of ore. I'm actually enjoying not having an easy grinder setup again, i'm finding i'm rather excited when i find ores rather than just paving over them because they're inconvenient. It makes the game feel more worthwhile than just plopping an alt in an afk box.

[robr]

I don't think we should be pointing to "go mining" and using that as the shining example of a vanilla experience - I recently started a vanilla server for my son and the first thing we did after finding a vanilla village was build an old school vanilla iron grinder.. it's not huge, just one pod - but was doable for the two of us .. if we want to get rid of the custom spawners, then great, half the time they seem to be discovered by people who don't want to share anyway, but then we need to bring back some sort of method to enable the vanilla creation of iron grinders for those who want to automate things and concentrate on creating and not just spend all the time we have mining .. the old iron pods were neither quick to build nor easy on resources, they required coordination and a lot of effort between spacing, villager breeding, etc - the least we can do is rig something so the build and effort has to go in, but some sort of tech solution elimaintes the villager component ..

(Sorry for typos and ramble, on phone)

[dnynumberone]

Well this topic has wildly diverged from its original intention (addressing specific current rev issues) to more general rev-wide issues, so hey let's dive right into that - 

 

>I'm actually enjoying not having an easy grinder setup again, i'm finding i'm rather excited when i find ores rather than just paving over them because they're inconvenient. It makes the game feel more worthwhile than just plopping an alt in an afk box.

 

Your experience.  Great.  And we can run polls, maybe that's the majority experience.  Why  we're now segueing into this topic is - we are becoming further and further and further from vanilla with each rev.  We are, IMO, reaching the point where you have to be a specialist in regards to all the server rules/claims/custom spawners/regions and all the other intricacies, that you have to be a specialist to use this server. see robr's recent experience.

 

People enjoy building iron grinders.  People enjoy breeding horses.  People enjoy vanilla - as close as can be while keeping multiplayer possible.  

 

These past two revs, and this most recent in particular, have completely soured me on the special spawners.  Region protections, claims, those will always be tricky to explain to new users.  Horses and iron shouldn't be.  

 

And, if pressed on the issue, I would give up bonemealing double slabs/mushrooms/wood/etc if it meant we returned to vanilla in other ways. If too many horses are really an issue, ask those people to reduce their numbers.  That's the far superior solution than making custom spawners/leveling/experience/whatever mechanics.

 

Going anti-vanilla/specialized instead of just telling a few people "hey, you have too many horses, we're getting rid of some" is kinda the worst possible solution.

[dnynumberone]

Also, while we're on the subject of "enjoyment" - some people, one person in particular you're quite familiar with who you'll know next line, really enjoyed breeding the best possible horse.  Some people enjoyed that so much they kept at it until they were tired of the constant hate because their horses were always the best.  And after that person decided to stop, other people decided they enjoyed it, and they wanted to keep that tradition.  And they enjoyed making the best possible horses for free for the rev to enjoy.

 

Instead of like...spamming spacebar...

 

Some people also enjoy making really great iron grinders for everyone to use.  

 

Instead of like...happening to find one...

 

Enjoyment is great.  But it seems we need more players?  Maybe venturing further from vanilla isn't the answer. Maybe if someone has too many horses, tell them to chill. If two towns are building  vanilla iron grinders next to each other, ask them to cooperate.

 

Edit : maybe make an mcp classic server where worldguard is basically the only plugin? I would enjoy that..

Edited December 6, 2016 by dnynumberone

[Guest Former Staff]

Well this topic has wildly diverged from its original intention (addressing specific current rev issues) to more general rev-wide issues, so hey let's dive right into that -

 

I've been holding off on your signal to put forward my ideas as I see you've been trying to keep this topic, on-topic.

 

In terms of the current revision, we are 25 days into it and while I'm not a supporter of custom spawners in general, I do agree that the few people who have access to them are in a unique position where the rich get richer as you said and that doesn't bode well. It's a tough one to get the right balance on this revision particularly in the first quarter of it as too many spawners will overload iron into the economy and too few will benefit the few.

 

---

 

When it comes to future revisions, I've had a few ideas on how to go about it. I'm not sure that these ideas are best for P or even that they would be considered but I want to throw them out there anyway.

 

I'd like to see a map & nether with no custom spawners. The overworld itself would ideally be a little smaller in scale (possibly somewhere between 4000 x 4000 and 5000 x 5000 and with the ore distribution reduced to vanilla here.

 

That's as far as the vanilla side to my suggestion goes, the rest is a bit different. Part two would involve a portal at spawn which is not active but has a donation chest in front of it which has every slot filled with a rare resource, such as diamonds (stacks of 1 to prevent other items from being donated). When the community comes together and fills that chest with diamonds then the admins activate the portal which would open up another overworld. The second overworld could have crazy, amplified terrain, secrets hidden, maybe another scavenger hunt. Possibly custom mobs could spawn here and possibly custom drops so that exploring this second overworld is both dangerous and gives rewards for player versus environment content.

 

The way I'd see this then is that we have a much closer vanilla experience at the start of the revision and would be more welcoming for new people to grasp throughout and that some of the less-than-vanilla features could be put into another multiverse world with a risk vs reward (pve) element to it.

[SirLyle]

At the risk of totemo telling me to fuck off back to SSP again; I'm going to fundamentally disagree with his stance on minecraft playstyle.

 

It's a well known "problem" that player count drops as the rev goes on. To combat that this rev changes were made: those changes being to encourage grinding in horses and essentially grinding in mines (because everyone knowns repetitive monotony is the best game mechanic).

 

One paraphrased comment a staff member relayed to me was a complaint about how short the tech tree on P is. The "solution" to this tech tree issue is apparently to make iron harder to get than vanilla; while its technically possible to get an elytra (an end game item that requires visiting the nether then the end) the first day without ever leaving an overworld mineshaft. PvE hasn't extended the tech tree, it's inverted it.

 

On the "just go mine" attitude:

 

Some people don't play minecraft in order to do the same thing for hours on end. Many people play it to *create* something, forcing them to spend more time than vanilla to accomplish that task doesn't make for a great vanilla server. In vanilla minecraft if you need iron, you make an iron grinder. Those were originally replaced because of lag, but they were replaced with something roughly equivalent. This rev if you need iron you can't have a solution approaching vanilla play style if you aren't one of the lucky ones.

 

I personally play PvE with an emphasis on vE; i.e. conquoring the environment. That's why I'm always in Solace making farms. But because the first step of making nice farms is getting iron; and solace isn't one of the chosen ones, I'm shit out of luck for what I wanted to build this rev.

 

torteela

 

 

i do feel pretty qualified to talk about rails and iron, considering i probably crafted and placed more rails than almost anyone the preceding five revs.

 

 

I think me and drt would contest that. Considering that:

 

rev 14 me and artixlight did over 1k of a huge garden tunnel to connect Whiteoak to CARBON

rev 15 me and artixlight connected Solace to CARBON

rev 17 I connected Solace to CARBON lite

rev 17 I also I also dug a 16 wide tunnel from Solace to world border with space for 16 rails (only ~half got filled)

rev 18 I connected over 1k Solace to lite basically by myself

rev 18 I also helped build the main part of lite

 

Narissis alone probably beat you two revs.

 

3k of rails is nothing, I've already made over 3k of ice tunnel on this rev just going from spawn to the slimegrinder

 

Also it's a little unfair to compare the smart rail iron collection since we got many donations from people who used nearly 0 iron themselves.

 

A lot of people build their thing for the rev then leave and wait for next rev because they get bored. If it takes them a little longer to build and they end up sticking around a bit longer that's a good thing.

 

 

 

I'd argue people might be discouraged about building if they can't build what they want. Do we really want people spending more time doing what they are already doing; or trying to get them to do more overall?

 

I just hopped on my donkey, rode north of Pico for 2 and half minutes, went into a cave that someone had clearly already partly explored and mined 2 stacks + 8 = 136 iron ore in 7 and a half minutes. In another 5 minutes, tops, I could be back home in Pico with that your entire rev's iron production smelting in my furnaces.

 

I've mined 111,027 stone; a 3x4 tunnel from spawn to the slime grinder with branches for the NW end portal and the Shulker grinder

 

I mined every iron I came across which is 2839 iron according to my statistics. 2484 of that is in a beacon pyramid. Solace currently has 323 and has built no rails. Heck solace is almost at the point where we have more beacons than we have iron to make pyramids---we were at that point for a while.

 

Want people to stick around? Make the end game stuff (elytra, beacons) harder to get. Or instead of making plugins to remove vanilla features: make plugs to add features and goals to strive towards.

[dnynumberone]

Lyle - I agree with a lot of what you said (tho let's stay away from the rail wars, I understand you have done a a helluva lot and torteela has done a helluva lot, can we leave it at that?).

 

I think that when lag issues arrive, it is better to deal with that person more personally (and perhaps more harshly^1?) than to completely revise a vanilla mechanic.  

 

I understand that at a certain point in time (really, several) - a certain person (really, several) - were told they were really causing a strain on the server with one of their activities.  And that even after warnings, even after having admins intervene once, those player(s) continued anyway.  

 

So we're going to radically alter vanilla mechanics and make it even harder for new people to join? How does that logic follow?

 

_______

 

The very summation of my argument is - the more vanilla we are (I understand certain things like LWC/etc have to exist), the more likely we are to draw new players.  The trend has been move away from vanilla in order to address a few issues that come up with a few people.  Deal with those people better instead, keep the server as vanilla as possible, keep the number of server-specific-alterations to a minimum.  

 

^1 (thought ^1 superscript worked)

 

_____

 

Edit 2 : Imagine moblimiter kept horses to ~~10~~ 20. Oh boy you'd have to really be dedicated to make a  great horse that way, and it would be for the most part vanilla. But that challenge. One might even have to work from other breeders from other towns in order to, vanilla-ey, make a great horse. 

 

Instead of...spamming spacebar...

Edited December 7, 2016 by dnynumberone