Suggestion Townships 3.3 update discussion

[Teslanut]

This is a very interesting topic which I feel needs to be considered in great detail. There are people out there for whom the system is great, it is a form of income generation, and there are others who feel that the system is broken because it allows those people to generate income. So there are two clear camps in this discussion, but changes which dramatically tip the scale in one way is bad for business. It would be the same as saying "Let's make everything PVP" just to please the few who want more PVP.

Let's start with what seems to be the big issue on everyone's mind: Income.

Eliminating income from houses takes a problem, the issue of too much income, and tips the scales in the exact opposite direction. As it stands right now most of a town's income comes from soul shard production and the housing essentially neutralizes the taxes (with a few hundred soul overage for max housing. Eliminating income from housing does 2 things:

* Forces towns to maximize soul good production/fight for those goods which is bad for small towns who don't have the flexibility that larger towns have. This means if you cant find a trading partner for a few days, a town owner would be in a bind. Also, since the soul goods at that point would be out there to cover the taxes, the town taxes would have to be equal to half the cost of maximum sale per day since to buy goods it costs half the profit. Example: If a T1 town has a limit of 1 shop and has to buy their good which they sell at 500s, the T1 town tax would have to be 250 to allow that owner to buy the good for 250 and sell it to the server for 500 breaking even.

* Gives little incentive for town owners to pay for protective structures. Yes, you're doing it so people have protected regions. But it's hard to justify shelling out a few hundred of your own income so another player, who is likely not going to stick around, can have a protected region.

Addressing the income issue, I feel Trapzor's recommendation was brilliant. Since town owners essentially view housing as a way to eliminate taxes, lets make housing a way to eliminate taxes and the soul shard production and sale a way to generate income to expand the town and its structures.

I don't recall who mentioned no limit on shacks - I think that is brilliant as well. Shacks are a perfect way for new people to have a region which doesn't cost much to the town. Make them dirt cheap, 25 or 50 souls, and have no impact on the town taxes. That addresses the welcome stranger issue.

Whatever happened to the original intent of the income from housing going into the structure owner's pocket? You could let towns manage the taxes that way, individual town members own their own house, income from that house goes into their personal bank and a town can tax its residents whatever it needs to cover the town taxes. I can see this as a self correcting method as if there are greedy town owners who decide to over-tax, those town members would just leave the town removing their house in the process.

So, that said, consider this: Shacks are cheap for a town owner to build but generate no income. Houses are cheapish to build but are limit one per person and the income goes into the owners treasury.

Pros and Cons to consider about this method:

Pro - It would motivate town owners to recruit members and be active to keep those members. Realistically right now if I wanted to create a town just to make money, I'd want to recruit newbs who logged in once, joined the town, and never logged in again. If the house is owned by the town member, and it is their responsibility to feed it, then you want that person to log in at least a few times a week.

Con - players who log in once and never log in again, or play for a week and quit. They have a house that never gets fed, and now a town owner is stuck with a dead income generating structure.

I am 100 percent on-board with the elimination of biome restrictions or the severe reduction of those restrictions. Towns have to be planned thoroughly to grow past T3, as it is, where if you did not build your town hall at a point where three biomes intersect you won't be able to cover the taxes for the larger townships.

Either eliminate the biome restrictions or dramatically reduce them which would do the same if you straddled 2 biomes.

I love the fact that your town can build these cool buildings. I want to see more buildings which work and do stuff. That would also help balance the economy if you had something to actually spend money on.

@Nukadokuu You forgot one thing in your income statistics. A T3 town with 4 gold mines and a very active member filling those mines every 4 hours or so will generate a stack of gold blocks a day. That's over 500s a day or so.

 

[LovelyArmor]

That's what I mean with my post when I said that the economy would be good if it tied into skills, attributes, etc.
Well stated!

Well the idea is to create revenue for the server, as well as a way to promote player activity. So finding ways to give players a reason to spend the money they have is awesome! I really do like it but I also feel like we need to not take from items that are currently in the store to do so.
It's a system --> More players -->Lead to more activity --> Leads to people paying money towards the server--> Supports the server so it can give more things for players to do ---> More things to do--->More people join and stay---> Larger player base to fuel the ingame economy---> server makes more money.

 

[Warforged79]

I had a post but saw this and decided to cut 'n paste here also.

Whilst in conversation with the marvelous peoples of the off-peak Herocraft, i have decided to add what i think to be my positive suggestions towards what i believe to be the betterment of the server that I have come to love and contribute financially (under the current map). Before i begin on my crusade and open the forums to discussion let me tel you of my credentials. I also co-run my own server, i have previously been a admin on a once great but now closed server and am a j-mod on another heroes server... but where do i love to spend my time and donate... HEROCRAFT!

... and here we begin on the discussion with my hopes"

*White lists - When i had to find a heroes server i was brought to 3 options. Herocraft, a certain ascended (who was whitelisted) and a 3rd. White-list on an ascended server took days and turned me off the server so i was lucky to find my feet walking the halls of herocraft! However, greylist works if the server can add a mini-server where a greylist does there tutorial there the joins the website to grant them a portal to the tru server!

* Griefing - If minor griefing is done (an admins nightmare) there is a mod Creeper regen that after 5 secs auto replaces blocks bought by towns/protections

*Hunts - A hunt should include a building material required for town buildings and upgrades. This promotes PvP and a desire to leave town.

Towns - A town should start with X taxes and each building should add Y souls reductions to the tax until the town costs no tax BUT
the town should be capped so NO profits can be made... that should be a product of dungeons, selling drops etc.
or keep towns same but remove the withdrawal feature so towns pay there own way but people don't profit.
or Any profits made by a town then the amount is even distributed between all town members

Towns pt2 - On corroding or ending a town should explode across the server depositing an array of bonus hunts {not graphically but just a description in chat, the vanishing of blocks leaving original soil and locked chests)

New players - if a new player causes a town to die due to breaking a room heart-block (chest) etc then the starting costs should come from them with a IOU ( so they have to pay the 1st 100s to the town owner as compensation)


These are just the start of my thoughts in aims of enhancement towards the current map and i ask you all to contribute good, honest contributions to the betterment of the server.

 

[Alator]

Lots of discussion going on. I want to first say thanks for having a civil conversation. It's a rare sight, heh.

Second, understand that something is going to change. The specifics of what need to be determined. I'm going to try to respond to the concepts put forward (not individual people), as there are overlapping ideas going on. But again, remember, the current system is changing.

Comment 1: "I'm/my townies are very busy IRL and can't spend oodles of time in game acquiring souls to pay for a town. With the way biome restrictions work, we'll never make money."

I understand completely, as I also work full time and have an apartment and other activities to juggle. This is slightly a "have your cake and eat it too" issue, as towns were never meant to be 'easy'. Biome restrictions are meant to have towns located in places unique item generation, as far as food and blocks go. However, you need people accepting your specific kind of soul item, which does involve some randomness and chance. I'd be willing to consider the removal of biome restrictions from soul structures. That should alleviate much of the headaches in finding a trading partner.

Comment 2: "Without housing income, taxes become too ridiculous. Towns will die, no-one will want towns, Herocraft will end, the world will explode."

I mentioned in my post that taxes would be adjusted. I'm, not going to expect players to pay thousands of souls per day, heh. The entire system will be rebalanced. It worked for many years without any type of generated income, you will still have some options.

Comment 3: "Why can't we keep things as they are, and just fix war?"

Simply put, war is broken and doesn't work. It was intended that war would the the check against towns generating lots of money, however that check is not working, and towns are getting too crazy. Just look at money top. Players have never been able to acquire that much money this quickly before, and it's because of townships. We need another solution.

Comment 4: "The server needs more gold sinks. More things for people to buy"

In a game such as Minecraft, this just isn't going to happen. Custom Items is intended to add something players want to buy, but currently, who is going to pay more for stacks of building materials? Extra food? Adding in systems to remove money from players in a blanket system will only affect those who don;t have much money. Money sinks to address the MASSIVE money generation through townships would be a band-aid, and not addressing the problem, which is the massive money generation through townships.

Comment 4: "Why not add really expensive things that towns can buy if they have lots of money?"

The problem isn't so much that towns can generate lots of money, it's that town owners can withdraw that money and use it for themselves.

Comment 5:"Why can't we just have some kind of unlimited cheap no-income shacks for region control?"

Interesting idea, I could run with something similar.

Alator's Compromise #1

• Disable the to/withdraw command.
  • This would prevent players using towns as personal money generators.
• Buying a region inside of a superregion (town) would draw from the town bank, not the player inventory.
  • Town income already goes to the town bank, now it can be used for more than taxes. (Need to buy a region? You can still /to deposit).
• Loosten (not remove) soul-structure biome restrictions.
  • Removing them makes it pointless to have separate soul structure types, and biome restrictions make for some neat options I feel (with some tweaks. I agree they are really restrictive atm).

This might make souls item trading a little more complex, but can still be done. The purpose of these changes would be to not touch what players are used to and not potentially make taxes worse for towns that have spent considerable time into the current system, while eliminating the potential for players to generate stupid amount of money. It would also open up for future "cool" regions that cost lots of souls to be added.

 

[GriffTV]

It sounds good to me. I feel that adding a limit to how many owners would be a good idea depending on the township size.

 

[LovelyArmor]

I'm going to state that this is 100% based of my experience on the new township model and my opinion. I want to make a raw, direct point of how it feels as a player. I don't sugarcoat things I care about and I certainly don't sugarcoat my feelings for people that I highly respect.

Lots of discussion going on. I want to first say thanks for having a civil conversation. It's a rare sight, heh.

Comment 3: "Why can't we keep things as they are, and just fix war?"

Simply put, war is broken and doesn't work. It was intended that war would the the check against towns generating lots of money, however that check is not working, and towns are getting too crazy. Just look at money top. Players have never been able to acquire that much money this quickly before, and it's because of townships. We need another solution.


Alator's Compromise #1

• Disable the to/withdraw command.
  • This would prevent players using towns as personal money generators.
• Buying a region inside of a superregion (town) would draw from the town bank, not the player inventory.
  • Town income already goes to the town bank, now it can be used for more than taxes. (Need to buy a region? You can still /to deposit).
• Loosten (not remove) soul-structure biome restrictions.
  • Removing them makes it pointless to have separate soul structure types, and biome restrictions make for some neat options I feel (with some tweaks. I agree they are really restrictive atm).

This might make souls item trading a little more complex, but can still be done. The purpose of these changes would be to not touch what players are used to and not potentially make taxes worse for towns that have spent considerable time into the current system, while eliminating the potential for players to generate stupid amount of money. It would also open up for future "cool" regions that cost lots of souls to be added.

On your comment number 3, I just have to say "Who cares?" It wasn't the townships that started to make players money, it's the fact that they got Trade District shops up quicker than other players at the start of the new Map. It's not because of townships, it's because they know the best ways to generate income really quickly on this server. @trapzor @alexhoff1 are wonderful person and figured out a way to get in, setup, make tons of money by filling that shop up and now has the benefit of a town after he already made tons of money.


Don't punish the people who just started to finally make money in their towns just because a few players accumulated wealth in a quick fashion. They aren't affecting anyone else, besides themselves at this point. The economy is lacking in a flow but it's currently working. Players will find a way to get a flow started. If you don't have a solution at this moment, don't change the economy just because of a few people.
Unless you plan on draining everyone's bank account and starting everyone off at ground zero they already have the money, touching townships isn't going to change the amount of money they already have, it's just going to slow them down-maybe a tiny bit.

Removing the income generated by housing and lowering the taxes, better include a refund on every single one of those buildings. Houses are mainly being used to pay the taxes. If the taxes are adjusted to where those houses are useless, then a refund into the players pocket is only fair considering that's where the money came from to pay for those buildings. Most towns have an undercity being used for most of their players, especially Veteran players who have learned to prefer storing their items underground anyways.

• If I can't take money out of my townbank, how am I supposed to pay for the Materials required to make some of these buildings? Because if my townbank is going to be shelling out money to buy those buildings, there HAS TO be a way for those building requirements to adjusted because there is a huge difference between what a person starting a Tribe can afford and what City can afford. There is also a difference between time restrictions and item availability to players.

• Why not keep the biome restriction on soul-generated buildings as is and remove the restriction on farms or other buildings that produce regents for the towns? Allow towns to all have at least a wheat farms and other food farms.

If a player has worked hard, poured in thousands of dollars into their town and it finally hits a point where they are now generating income for their town. They should be allowed to remove that money and spend it how they please. It took my town to get to Tier 4, where we are finally able to generate income past our taxes so we can afford to build more buildings, buy the items we may need to create those buildings and supply items for my town members, pay for their classes, offer new players a place to live so they can learn about the server and not worry that they may have to spend hours mining, farming or slaying ontop of learning about Herocraft.

I would like to be able to take all of those hours of working that I put into my town, to benefit new players. I cannot do that if I cannot remove money from my bank so that I can have new players join me. If I have to constantly worry about making money for my taxes, for my required regents for my town. Then I will not be interested in recruiting new players into my town because I cannot trust that they will stay on this server and help me. I will not have the resources, the money, the time or the energy to teach new players how Herocraft works and constantly be farming, mining, slaying, building, creating more trade options for my town.

My town is not my job. It is my home that I built and I have hit a point where now I can afford to work with it so I can benefit new players. I made my town for me, to have a region protected for me, so that I can fullfill my overarching goals on the sever. Which is-build a beautiful town that I can be proud of and find a home for new players to grow, learn and maybe branch off to make their own towns.

If I lose my ability to focus on what's more important to me-new players and older players coming back- I will feel like all of my hard work was worthless, I will feel betrayed. I will stop adding new members to my town because I won't trust they will stay because I have nothing to offer them.

 

[LovelyArmor]

It sounds good to me. I feel that adding a limit to how many owners would be a good idea depending on the township size.

Two. I feel the limit should be Two owners and everyone else be a manager or an officer.

 

[alexhoff1]

Comment 3: "Why can't we keep things as they are, and just fix war?"

Simply put, war is broken and doesn't work. It was intended that war would the the check against towns generating lots of money, however that check is not working, and towns are getting too crazy. Just look at money top. Players have never been able to acquire that much money this quickly before, and it's because of townships. We need another solution.

Comment 4: "The server needs more gold sinks. More things for people to buy"

In a game such as Minecraft, this just isn't going to happen. Custom Items is intended to add something players want to buy, but currently, who is going to pay more for stacks of building materials? Extra food? Adding in systems to remove money from players in a blanket system will only affect those who don;t have much money. Money sinks to address the MASSIVE money generation through townships would be a band-aid, and not addressing the problem, which is the massive money generation through townships.

Comment 4: "Why not add really expensive things that towns can buy if they have lots of money?"

The problem isn't so much that towns can generate lots of money, it's that town owners can withdraw that money and use it for themselves.

Comment 5:"Why can't we just have some kind of unlimited cheap no-income shacks for region control?"

Interesting idea, I could run with something similar.

Alator's Compromise #1

• Disable the to/withdraw command.
  • This would prevent players using towns as personal money generators.
• Buying a region inside of a superregion (town) would draw from the town bank, not the player inventory.
  • Town income already goes to the town bank, now it can be used for more than taxes. (Need to buy a region? You can still /to deposit).
• Loosten (not remove) soul-structure biome restrictions.
  • Removing them makes it pointless to have separate soul structure types, and biome restrictions make for some neat options I feel (with some tweaks. I agree they are really restrictive atm).

This might make souls item trading a little more complex, but can still be done. The purpose of these changes would be to not touch what players are used to and not potentially make taxes worse for towns that have spent considerable time into the current system, while eliminating the potential for players to generate stupid amount of money. It would also open up for future "cool" regions that cost lots of souls to be added.

I think at this point I am obligated to go "noooooooooooooo."

And btw, I'll remind you that I raid too. Ontop of that, I have had a lot of money before too, this is just a little more than what I had previously obtained.

EDIT: also, all of your calculations are off I know how much a single town can produce and I would rather not share that.

 

[Ruger392]

The idea'l of making money from your town and being able to use the money was a BIG reason this map to even have atown and not a pr, taking away this imo is taking away one of the few good things about townships 3.0

 

[BoDuhal]

I'll start off like this, I like to build, I have spent alot of my own moneys, to make the structures that are required to make the town function, I do not have lots of money stacked up, i assist new players when they join my town, help with materilas needed, DO NOT charge taxes to any townies, yet this will be cut out. well time to build a PR and watch the stuff fall,
My town struggled through a month or little more with no income, taxes removed, housing not working, We never gave up.
Why struggle to help others that join when we have to fight every thing else?

Ruger392 I think you mentioned your town was stuck, i renamed my town did not help, Upgraded, it started working again! you might want to try that.

 

[Teslanut]

Ruger has the same issue as we do in Indar. We could upgrade, sure, but if it doesnt work now we're stuck trying to cover a MUCH bigger tax bill.

 

[trapzor]

It was intended that war would the the check against towns generating lots of money, however that check is not working, and towns are getting too crazy. Just look at money top. Players have never been able to acquire that much money this quickly before, and it's because of townships. We need another solution.

@trapzor ... figured out a way to get in, setup, make tons of money by filling that shop up and now has the benefit of a town after he already made tons of money.

I can't speak for everyone on money top, but LovelyArmor is essentially correct. My balance was around 50k before Eneokun asked me to step in and run Dawnstar, none of that came from the Townships plugin, because I wasn't a town owner before that point. Once I took over Dawnstar (by request) I did set it's affairs in order so that it would be financially stable and able to expand. I do now regularly make withdrawals, because I think it's safer to keep the money in my balance because there are mechanics that can rapidly drain a town's bank account (redstone in the townhall chest), but to date I've made more money from keeping my shop stocked than from the Towships plugin, and I don't think trade shops are broken.

I'm not saying it might not be a good idea to tweak things (see my earlier post for suggestions), just setting the record straight on this point. Alexhoff I know does have a town, but much of his income comes from other sources as well, because his balance goes up faster than it could based on the size of his town alone. You'd need to ask him about the specifics. My town generates around 750 souls per day after upkeep, for reference, if that helps give some numbers for discussion purposes (via 3 soul shops).

 

[trapzor]

Accidental post.

 

[Alator]

Lots of good ideas, thanks peeps. I'm working on this at the moment. It will likely take more time to get things where I'm comfortable with them. I'm merging in some of the ideas people have, as they are helpful.

 

[Alator]

K, I've taken your comments, along with some other issues, and come up with the following. More comments, please!

• Player cap per town set to be unlimited for all tiers (technically will capped at 999). Minimum player counts remain.
• Player cap increase per housing region removed.
• Housing region costs halved.
• Housing income changed to the following:
  • shack - 5
  • house - 10
  • chalet - 15
  • manor - 20
  • mansion - 25
  • villa - 30
  • estate - 35
• Food requirements removed from housing for payoffs.
• Tribe housing caps increased to 6 shacks and 2 houses.
  
• Soul Items server price reduced to 100.
• Loosen up soul structure biome restrictions a bit.
  
• Max player tax reduced to 20s.

These should make things a little more straightforward for towns, and hopefully a little less complicated, but I'm not 100% sold yet. Also, remember, towns are still cheaper with this system than they have been in a long time.

 

[DEMOCALIBER]

K, I've taken your comments, along with some other issues, and come up with the following. More comments, please!

• Player cap per town set to be unlimited for all tiers (technically will capped at 999). Minimum player counts remain.
• Player cap increase per housing region removed.
• Housing region costs halved.
• Housing income changed to the following:
  • shack - 5
  • house - 10
  • chalet - 15
  • manor - 20
  • mansion - 25
  • villa - 30
  • estate - 35
• Food requirements removed from housing for payoffs.
• Tribe housing caps increased to 6 shacks and 2 houses.
  
• Soul Items server price reduced to 100.
• Loosen up soul structure biome restrictions a bit.
  
• Max player tax reduced to 20s.

These should make things a little more straightforward for towns, and hopefully a little less complicated, but I'm not 100% sold yet. Also, remember, towns are still cheaper with this system than they have been in a long time.

I like everything here except cutting soul items by 4/5 I think halving them would do better. It would limit income potential but would provide enough for towns to help with specs if they choose. Towns making about 1k-1.5k daily instead of 3-4k definitely seems way more reasonable than how it presently is.

 

[LovelyArmor]

I like everything here except cutting soul items by 4/5 I think halving them would do better. It would limit income potential but would provide enough for towns to help with specs if they choose. Towns making about 1k-1.5k daily instead of 3-4k definitely seems way more reasonable than how it presently is.

I agree with Demo. It begins halved would be more reasonable.
It simply being 100 will just discourage players from even bothering to us the shops since mining/slaying and farming should get you that if more in some cases.

 

[TheManiac23]

And whats with the town tax? How should i pay 1040s tax every day with only 300 income from houses?

 

[DEMOCALIBER]

In all honesty, the housing income could remain unchanged. Soul Production could be reduced to 250-200 server price. That would have towns only making like 1-1.5k daily instead of 3-4k+. This would allow towns to pay their taxes (assuming that remains unchanged), have the ability to NOT tax their members (like I'd like to...I don't want to tax my members), be able to help with specs for members, and have a little left over to have incentive to run the town (manager/owner disposable income).

EDIT: On further speculation. Soul Items being cut to 250 server price would seem the most fair. That way if people have bought stocks of items at 250 for 10. They can AT LEAST get even return by selling them to the server, rather than just eating the loss.

 

[TheManiac23]

And dont Forget the Region cost. Not sure if it should be adjusted or not. but we should keep them in mind.
I mean 8k for a CityHall is kinda much.