Suggestion On Revitalization of the HC Economy

[Weikauno]

Economy in minecraft can generally be boiled down to what dictates the ratio of resource gathering to resource use.


The main issue in HC's past economies:
Throughout most of HC's past, low-skill/PVP-averse players have been given the short stick, losing tons of resources to roaming PVP players, especially with the track skill in the sandbox. This massive transfer of resources can be represented as a shift in the individual player's gather/use ratio(This doesn't necessarily mean we should straight out protect these low-skill/PVP-averse players! But the system needs a way to keep these kinds of players wanting to play on the server). PVP players keep their gather/use ratio fairly neutral in this interaction, as they are using tools/weapons/armor to gather resources from other players. However, unwilling/non-PVP players killed by PVP players get an increase to gathering in their gather/use ratio, large and frustrating enough in the past to make many players quit the game. The effects of this imbalance can also be seen in the complaints of PVP players, as players generally opt not to carry valuables around, making open world PVP boring/unrewarding. My point is, the effect of PVP on the ratio has been too much in past economies to retain any kind of casual, semi-casual or even hardcore player-base.

In response to this fatal artificial/player-made shift in the gathering/use ratio, there are 3 responses/options I could think of:
1. Prosperity/Scarcity rebalance: Increase item drops/income, income sources, and accessibility(new-player/core content updates)

2. Safety: restrict ability to steal/places of theft(item protection)

3. Superiority: Make rarer, higher-tier items to disincentivize theft of lower level items(hardcore-player/end-game content)


All of these options must be considered carefully, as each one, if taken over-board(or not taken far enough!) can lead to breaking the sense of adventure/suspense/accomplishment within the game.

Too much scarcity and too much prosperity lead to the same outcome, making it not worth it to try(too scarce) or not worth it to increase(too prosperous). Too much superiority leads to everything being too easy, a.k.a. faster map burnout for both long-time players(nothing left to do) and late-comers(can't do anything because of long-time player over-dominance), while low superiority makes it not worth it to go for better than the default. Too much safety makes town/player conflict boring and causes frustration in PVP-focused players, while not enough causes frustration in low-skill/PVP-averse players.



So, to remedy this issue, I propose these changes, as a start:

Professions reworks, Town safety, and Expanded Exchange:

Professions: Total Restructuring(Prosperity: Accessibility)

There are two kinds of professions: gathering professions and refinery professions.
Gathering professions amplify vanilla resource gathering, while refinery professions give vanilla items new uses, transmutations or enhanced vanilla functions.
Farmer and Miner are primarily gathering professions.
Alchemist, Blacksmith, Enchanter, Engineer, Merchant, and Runesmith are all primarily, if not purely, refinery professions.
(As you can see, there are 3x as many refinery professions as there are gathering!)

The unique nature of Herocraft's more dependent economy makes it much more interesting than vanilla, however too much dependency leads to frustration, especially in solo or small group players, or when the server's population is at a low point.

With these thoughts in mind, I propose that professions be completely revamped/combined into 3 mega-size professions that fit both categories gathering and refinery, equally or close to equally.

These 3 professions would be:

Tinkerer: Profession with all Blacksmith and Enchanter skills, and some Miner skills, handles all things tools, armor and weapons.
Description: "Creates tools, weapons and armor, and modifies and repairs them to increase their effectiveness, versatility and longevity."
Miner Skills:
AssemblePickaxe
Superheat
SmeltGold

Cultivator: Profession with all Alchemist, Runesmith and Farmer skills. Handles all things consumable.
Description: "Creates concoctions, foods and runes from cultivated plants, animals and exotic materials."
*has TNT skill for town raids

Constructor: Profession with all Engineer and Merchant skills, and some Miner skills. Handles all things infrastructure.
Description: "Terraforms land and builds complex infrastructure such as gates, bridges, sensors, etc."
Miner skills:
Excavate
Ultravision
Mining

Reducing the number of professions will increase accessibility to solo and 2-3 player groups and thus retention of those players, which hopefully leads to these solos and small groups eventually socializing and creating new towns. It will also work to keep the economy flowing in times of low population, reducing strain on players/towns who's townmates/friends stop playing for the time being.



Town Safety: Builder Protection and Removal of Death Chests

I propose that while within your own town, keep inventory on death is applied. Making towns look beautiful is a huge part of making the server desirable to explore, so builders losing resources while on the job is not something we want. It does push the safety balance's upper limit, however I believe this change is absolutely necessary. It might be a good idea to remove the warp skill being universally on every class with this change. I would also remove death chests universally. From my experience, all they seem to do is put mining trips and PVE on easy mode, and in a PVP setting encourage repeat killings of low-skill/low-level players that run to their death chests with a false hope of getting anything back.



Expanded Exchange: Steady Income(Prosperity: Core Content)
Herocraft has lacked a baseline, deterministic money grind source in the past(Gold haul being largely up to RNG). A steady income source(along with good leveling design) keeps players feeling like they are making some progress every day, and allows players to lightly interact with the economy when the gold mines are dry, and when the player decides to do one of a million other things in the game than mine for gold.

I propose adding cobblestone and wood(both renewables, to keep rarer resources within the actual economy/map) as a new money source.
New shops signs in the exchange:
Cobblestone(1 stack) - sell for 1 coin
Wood(1 stack, any kind) - sell for 1 coin





Other ideas that came up in other threads or that I just thought of that could be nice:
-Mob arenas give money per kill or per round
-PVP arenas with betting(by spectators, participants or both)
-PVP arena map build competitions in towns

Thanks for reading, and for everyone that has been participating in the conversations in-game and here on the forums. Give me your thoughts on all this!

 

[Plagiarizing]

Id suggest adding more to the economy not just mining/wood cutting throw Cactus, sugar cane, wheat, potatos, carrots, beats, a class revamp needs to happen. I don't necessarily agree with players keeping items in towns within death just my opinion this makes raiding a town extremely one sided. Players can TP back to there town with their full loot set almost instantly after dying making raiding kind of pointless. People raid to pillage and to PVP, the angelchest system needs to at the least have a time reduction to like 5 minutes if not removed. Classes need a massive overhaul not just balancing issue but their skills need an overhaul. Half the melee classes are just left click spam half the casters do nothing other than minor poke damage with no real kill potential on most of the classes. The support classes are borderline useless other than monk with their big healing, the support classes do virtually nothing other than sponge damage for a few seconds before dying we've tested this with multiple 2v2 3v3 matches. Also it's hard to tell when somebody on your team is low HP unless in voice and even harder to target them in the midst of a fight.

 

[Weikauno]

Id suggest adding more to the economy not just mining/wood cutting throw Cactus, sugar cane, wheat, potatos, carrots, beats, a class revamp needs to happen. I don't necessarily agree with players keeping items in towns within death just my opinion this makes raiding a town extremely one sided. Players can TP back to there town with their full loot set almost instantly after dying making raiding kind of pointless. People raid to pillage and to PVP, the angelchest system needs to at the least have a time reduction to like 5 minutes if not removed. Classes need a massive overhaul not just balancing issue but their skills need an overhaul. Half the melee classes are just left click spam half the casters do nothing other than minor poke damage with no real kill potential on most of the classes. The support classes are borderline useless other than monk with their big healing, the support classes do virtually nothing other than sponge damage for a few seconds before dying we've tested this with multiple 2v2 3v3 matches. Also it's hard to tell when somebody on your team is low HP unless in voice and even harder to target them in the midst of a fight.

1. I chose cobblestone and wood, as they are found nearly everywhere on the map, are renewable, and can be obtained by any profession. I only chose 2 blocks, as having too much able to be sold in the exchange can lead to less player shop interaction, as well as map stripping. I think your suggestion of Cactus is a good addition in the spirit of providing baseline grind as Cactus is basically the tree of the desert biomes, however foodstuffs fall strictly under a profession(Farmer currently, Cultivator in my proposed reworks), which leads to an imbalance between profession baseline grind. Players should be selling essentials like foods to other players, not the server.
2. Builders clearly need more protection, do you have any ideas for alternatives to protect them? With the keep inventory change, if you want more counter-changes, we can look at removing the recall skill as well, forcing towns to think more about spawn points/graveyards and how they affect town raids, and/or removing LWCs, allowing more looting of valuables from town chests instead of present town members.

3. I want to talk about class re-designs/review of combat as well, but in this thread please keep it relating to the OP, economy talk! Thanks.

 

[Plagiarizing]

1. I chose cobblestone and wood, as they are found nearly everywhere on the map, are renewable, and can be obtained by any profession. I only chose 2 blocks, as having too much able to be sold in the exchange can lead to less player shop interaction, as well as map stripping. I think your suggestion of Cactus is a good addition in the spirit of providing baseline grind as Cactus is basically the tree of the desert biomes, however foodstuffs fall strictly under a profession(Farmer currently, Cultivator in my proposed reworks), which leads to an imbalance between profession baseline grind. Players should be selling essentials like foods to other players, not the server.
2. Builders clearly need more protection, do you have any ideas for alternatives to protect them? With the keep inventory change, if you want more counter-changes, we can look at removing the recall skill as well, forcing towns to think more about spawn points/graveyards and how they affect town raids, and/or removing LWCs, allowing more looting of valuables from town chests instead of present town members.

3. I want to talk about class re-designs/review of combat as well, but in this thread please keep it relating to the OP, economy talk! Thanks.

Okay so for the shop things adding more items would create more interaction not less right? Idk it makes sense to me that it would but you could be right, just in my opinion players are going to sell rare items more so than they would food to other players I don't think players are really going to be going to selling food for a main way of currency but I think creating massive farms should be rewarded, eventually it gets to the point where the town has too much food and you really only need 16 food to go out and farm to level. I think the whole professions in general take away from general minecraft content which IMO HC lacks alot of right now I think make professions give bonuses not permissions to do certain things. People need to be able to generate small income revenues in their town to make money from their town so if they have nothing to do they can just farm adding only things like gold makes the economy so small that you really cannot do a whole lot give players more options for economy so there is more options for class changing and town creating this will also give the players that are bored with their current class or bored with leveling/pvping the option to progress through something else on the server. The way beta sits is enough content for a player to have fun for a couple of weeks then they won't have anything to do I mentioned time and time again to incentivize PVP through "Pvp tokens" per kill auto-bounties now before you state "people will just abuse auto bounties" there is a global kill feed rather than banning people doing this set their level to 0 and their money to 0. That is enough punishment where they wont do it again and if they do reset them again and ban them for a week.

Town Protection thought - Upon claiming your towns first chunk of land make PvP within town borders disabled for 24 hours. This is more than enough time for a builder to Get a baseline set up. I mean if you want the server hardcore the builders need to understand they need to be careful if they don't spend the first 24 hours wisely. Or you could simply make an option to disable Pvp in your town but make your town daily upkeep cost very expensive such as 5000 coins a day to keep pvp disabled "Make it once you disable it you cant reenable it until the 24 hour period is up to prevent exploitation." Pay for protection sort of deal. This price may have to increase once the server goes further along. I truthfully think towns should be more raidable as is but it should require resources and time to do so based on the size of the town.

 

[xexorian]

Professions reworks, Town safety, and Expanded Exchange:

Professions: Total Restructuring(Prosperity: Accessibility)

There are two kinds of professions: gathering professions and refinery professions.
Gathering professions amplify vanilla resource gathering, while refinery professions give vanilla items new uses, transmutations or enhanced vanilla functions.
Farmer and Miner are primarily gathering professions.
Alchemist, Blacksmith, Enchanter, Engineer, Merchant, and Runesmith are all primarily, if not purely, refinery professions.
(As you can see, there are 3x as many refinery professions as there are gathering!)

The unique nature of Herocraft's more dependent economy makes it much more interesting than vanilla, however too much dependency leads to frustration, especially in solo or small group players, or when the server's population is at a low point.

With these thoughts in mind, I propose that professions be completely revamped/combined into 3 mega-size professions that fit both categories gathering and refinery, equally or close to equally.

These 3 professions would be:

Tinkerer: Profession with all Blacksmith and Enchanter skills, and some Miner skills, handles all things tools, armor and weapons.
Description: "Creates tools, weapons and armor, and modifies and repairs them to increase their effectiveness, versatility and longevity."
Miner Skills:
AssemblePickaxe
Superheat
SmeltGold

Cultivator: Profession with all Alchemist, Runesmith and Farmer skills. Handles all things consumable.
Description: "Creates concoctions, foods and runes from cultivated plants, animals and exotic materials."
*has TNT skill for town raids

Constructor: Profession with all Engineer and Merchant skills, and some Miner skills. Handles all things infrastructure.
Description: "Terraforms land and builds complex infrastructure such as gates, bridges, sensors, etc."
Miner skills:
Excavate
Ultravision
Mining

Reducing the number of professions will increase accessibility to solo and 2-3 player groups and thus retention of those players, which hopefully leads to these solos and small groups eventually socializing and creating new towns. It will also work to keep the economy flowing in times of low population, reducing strain on players/towns who's townmates/friends stop playing for the time being.

While I agree with most of your sentiment on this; I think a reduction in professions was something HC needed for the last several active maps it had. I was complaining all the time how I was having to swap professions and buy up the ingredients to do this just to craft my town-specific / kingdom-specific required items for tax and maintenance and was a huge load to take care of, granted we had 5 towns in the kingdom back then, it was a lot to manage even for a group of people. 100% onboard with simplifying professions. I will say though, that with mining being the primary income for gold, that was the reason for the 'warshard' map which auto-regenerated and wasnt for building but just mining out, and was supposed to get a new seed every week or something to prevent people from over farming hotspots.

Town Safety: Builder Protection and Removal of Death Chests

I propose that while within your own town, keep inventory on death is applied. Making towns look beautiful is a huge part of making the server desirable to explore, so builders losing resources while on the job is not something we want. It does push the safety balance's upper limit, however I believe this change is absolutely necessary. It might be a good idea to remove the warp skill being universally on every class with this change. I would also remove death chests universally. From my experience, all they seem to do is put mining trips and PVE on easy mode, and in a PVP setting encourage repeat killings of low-skill/low-level players that run to their death chests with a false hope of getting anything back.

I'm actually for this. I can't tell you how many times people would come over trying to do wizardly pk stuff to me while I was up high trying to place a roof and just randomly get zapped or hit by a fireball and knocked down 30 blocks to take half my health in dmg. It's funny the first few times, but it got old after months of camping. (you guys are really bored, ok?)

However, I pointed out the various issues with the death chests and what they caused player behavior-wise in your other post. So, I do agree they could be removed and we could use a different system, entirely.

Expanded Exchange: Steady Income(Prosperity: Core Content)
Herocraft has lacked a baseline, deterministic money grind source in the past(Gold haul being largely up to RNG). A steady income source(along with good leveling design) keeps players feeling like they are making some progress every day, and allows players to lightly interact with the economy when the gold mines are dry, and when the player decides to do one of a million other things in the game than mine for gold.

I propose adding cobblestone and wood(both renewables, to keep rarer resources within the actual economy/map) as a new money source.
New shops signs in the exchange:
Cobblestone(1 stack) - sell for 1 coin
Wood(1 stack, any kind) - sell for 1 coin

I'm surprised the exchange doesn't buy up wood or cobble, even at 1 coin though... that said, I feel like all the resources could be brought into better alignment, looking at TTG (time-to-gather) and various technical factors for balancing. As you mentioned, too much prosperity hurts just as much as too little.

Other ideas that came up in other threads or that I just thought of that could be nice:
-Mob arenas give money per kill or per round
-PVP arenas with betting(by spectators, participants or both)
-PVP arena map build competitions in towns

Thanks for reading, and for everyone that has been participating in the conversations in-game and here on the forums. Give me your thoughts on all this!

Mob Arenas used to give money at one point, I could see them bringing back MA as the prime money farm but that's what dungeons were supposed to do originally. Money/EXP farms and hopefully PVP hotspots. But that was never stressed, and most people were just going town to town to gank instead of exploring. Or just mining underground most of the day. There wasn't a real good in-between fit because there wasn't a lot to do once you set up your base. There were no rewards for travelling around the map. I feel like as a start they could make u explore to find the herogates, and explore to get the warp or home/recall skills, etc. There are a LOT of features that are immediately unlocked and if the system was designed around introducing you to each of them over a longer period of time, just letting you play 'minecraft' at first and then get more 'herocrafty'.