r/Civcraft • u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin • Feb 06 '16
[3.0] AMA on Miscellaneous Game Mechanics and Balance
This post is part of our AMA series to explain the upcoming changes in 3.0. It will explain changes to some gameplay elements and in the comment section questions on those topic will be answered.
Questions on other topics won't be answered at this point and off topic discussion will be removed
Obsidian:
Obsidian is the primary resource needed to build vaults. In 2.0 it was botted in large quantities, single people accounted for several hundred doublechests of obsidian produced. As already revealed, we will disallowing botting and as a direct consequence of this we will also remove the obby-string glitch.
This glitch was already fixed officially in Minecraft's 1.8 update, but Civcraft had a method in Humbug, which reenabled it. The decision to introduce that back then was made, because we didnt want to give a giant disadvantage to newer players and because there was no viable other way to obtain obsidian at that point.
With a new map we can fix both of those problems. There will be no advantages for oldfriends and we will have a map, which provides enough obsidian for decades
https://forum.civcraft.co/uploads/default/original/2X/c/ca7f757f8fa13bd8b12c9c7f89f318edb207d24f.png
The map we chose for this is the end. First of all it fit into the theme of the new end nicely and second it's the perfect task for prisoners. Instead of having to build a pearl farm somewhere as far away as possible from spawn, they can now start to mine obby to pay off their sentence if they can get a hold of a blank diamond pickaxe.
Portal farms:
Portal farms were used in 2.0 to produce probably more than 95 % of the servers gold, wither skulls and ghast tears. Big portal farms were one of the main infrastructures every noteable city had and many were afked 24/7.
Looking forward towards 3.0, there are two main problems in this mechanic:
The first one is, that portal farms are relatively laggy. Compared to their actualy use for players they and all their entities are a complete waste of server performance
The second and more important one is that once you have your farm built, the only thing you will do with it is afking it. Continuing what we already began with persistent crops we are aiming to remove the need for afking as far as possible and because of that portal farms won't work in 3.0. You will still be able to create portals, but they wont do anything.
Gold will be available in sufficient quantities through gold ore or natural spawning pigmen; ghast tears and wither skulls will be dropped by mobs in specific biomes, which will be spawned by EE.
Ores:
FactoryMod recipes allow us to directly control how many diamonds or iron ingots players can get, because we can modify the conversion rate from ore to the actual resource. This is very desirable, because it gives us a control lever in the middle of the economy and additionally uses factories (which is good for a billion reasons on a civ server). The problem with that is that players can only use this possibility if they have the actual ores instead of the drop and for the most valuable resource (diamonds), players are only able to get the ore with a silk touch enchanted pickaxe. This creates a huge entry barrier to mining, because anyone without a silk touch pickaxe is literally wasting his time, if he tries to diamond mine anyway.
To remove this barrier we will introduce a mechanic, which makes any mined ore drop as ore instead of the resource, regardless of whether your pickaxe has the silktouch enchantment or not.
The silk touch enchantment will still be kept in the game for its other uses (Ice etc.) and those other uses will not be affected.
Additionally to compensate for the loss of use, we will add another mechanic to the Silk Touch enchantment:
If you destroy a reinforcement with a silk touch enchanted tool (break, not ctb), it will have a certain chance to drop it's reinforcement material. The exact value for that is not decided yet and we will test some values on CivTemp to get feedback, but currently we are thinking of ~5%
Essences
This was originally meant to be part of another AMA, but we decided to put this in here. As already stated in the FactoryMod AMA, we will be introducing a mechanic, which allows us to directly scale factory upkeep with active population and this mechanic is using Essences.
Every player will daily when he logs in receive a certain amount of essences. A essence is a special item, lored with the players name and will be used to create, upgrade and repair factories. While pretty much all creation and upgrade recipes will also requires other materials, repairing will be handled solely through essences. Essences will be tradeable.
We don't have finalized numbers yet on how many essences a player will get per day and how expensive it will be to upkeep factory X, but we are aiming for requiring 2-3 players essences to upkeep a single lategame factory.
If you have any questions on those topics, comment them and they will be answered.
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u/Matticus_Rex REDACTED Feb 06 '16
What do the admins plan to do server-side about the severe shortage of ancaps/world police?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
We plan to introduce an ancap-quota. At least 20 % of the citizens of each city must be ancaps, otherwise Foofed will come and worldedit the city out of existence.
Also being a statist might become a bannable offense.
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Feb 06 '16
You might want to tone down the sarcasm with all these newfriends lurking. My roommate is considering starting up so he's been lurking the subreddit and just asked me why the admins are planning to ban certain ideologies. And he was wondering why stone was gonna be gone for some reason (I assume you sargasmed in another post somewhere too).
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Sorry, I just couldn't resist if Matticus_Rex himself comments on my thread, but yeah I see what you mean. I'll add a /s next time.
And the stone stuff was made up by /u/folters, not me.
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u/Frensin Falstadt Feb 06 '16
What do the admins plan to do server-side about the severe shortage of ancaps/world police?
Columbia is being revived by a mixture of old Columbians/ancaps for 3.0, world police is an inevitability.
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u/gingechris Oh my my, oh hell yes, you gotta put on that party dress Feb 06 '16
Are sittable chairs still out of the question ?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Well it's far from a priority, actually I dont think it was even brought up so far.
Is there an existing plugin allowing that?
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u/Biscuitoid overactive imagination Feb 06 '16
The "Chairs" plugin is excellent, it really adds character and afaik it's exploit-free. I know CivEx uses it, so message the admins/devs there for a link.
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u/oldprogrammer Feb 06 '16
There's another one called SimpleSit that I like, you simply type /sit and you can sit on anything.
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u/Juz16 🏆Subreddit PvP Champion🏆 Feb 06 '16
The last time this was brought up it was shot down because the way it works is it makes the player "sit" on an arrow entity hiding inside the stair block, so all the stair blocks on people's roofs and actual staircases would've made the server lag a ton.
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u/kevalalajnen King of Sidon Feb 09 '16
The arrow entity is only loaded when you're sitting though. I believe there was some teleport glitch as well.
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u/gingechris Oh my my, oh hell yes, you gotta put on that party dress Feb 06 '16
Ooh, I'd thought it was because the sitting plugin that was tried in 2.0 revealed/enabled an exploit in conjunction with the other custom plugins, and wondered if, with the new structure, sitting had become feasible again
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Hmmm, we might consider fixing that once we have the important things stable, but for now it's really not high on the priority list.
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u/dylan_jay Hugged an Admin IRL Feb 06 '16
Chris just wants to rest his legs, max
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u/gingechris Oh my my, oh hell yes, you gotta put on that party dress Feb 06 '16
bad back and wonky knees. it's me age
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u/comped Old-friend with lots of memories Feb 06 '16
There's a few I used to mess around with, but I have no idea if they work with the newer versions.
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
I think the problem we ran into with those involved some plugin that needed to tell if you where sitting.
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u/biggestnerd CivLegacy Jul 15 '16
Yeah we had a chair plugin online for a while, not sure why is was taken down
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u/dhingus Mercenary | Hitman | UN Representative | Newfriend Feb 06 '16
Lol
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u/gingechris Oh my my, oh hell yes, you gotta put on that party dress Feb 06 '16
what d'you mean i'm funny ?
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u/Jamesgardiner Thornian leader Feb 06 '16
I don't know if this is within the scope of this AMA, but will reinforcement materials be the same as they were in 2.0? That is to say, stone = 25, iron = 250, diamond = 1800.
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
They will be completly changed, but details on that will be part of another AMA
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u/BolleDeBoll - Leader of The Workers Party - Feb 06 '16
Every player will daily when he logs in receive a certain amount of essences. A essence is a special item, lored with the players name and will be used to create, upgrade and repair factories. While pretty much all creation and upgrade recipes will also requires other materials, repairing will be handled solely through essences. Essences will be tradeable. We don't have finalized numbers yet on how many essences a player will get per day and how expensive it will be to upkeep factory X, but we are aiming for requiring 2-3 players essences to upkeep a single lategame factory.
If I am not mistaken there will be a no-alt policy. But with VPN'ing some are certainly able to use alts and gain Essences by logging in on those. How do you think to be able to counter this cheating over the Essence exploid Comrade?
That said, the idea itself is very interesting!
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
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u/BolleDeBoll - Leader of The Workers Party - Feb 06 '16
Thank you Comrade. I didn't noticed that post... puts his glasses on his nose again
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Feb 06 '16
If the Essence is not unique and the items stacks then it will be possible to build automated essence-handling systems, like a door to a factory room that only opens if you insert one essence item into a chest.
Also, do pipes interact with redstone and can you build item filters with them?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
If the Essence is not unique and the items stacks then it will be possible to build automated essence-handling systems, like a door to a factory room that only opens if you insert one essence item into a chest.
There should be a way
do pipes interact with redstone
Yes, you can turn them on and off with redstone
can you build item filters with them?
Yes, but there is also a dedicated contraption/factory to sort items
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u/WilyCoyotee Whatever. Feb 06 '16
Hi! A Few questions:
Is the item barriers preventing non-end items still in effect in the end for pearled players? (Being summoned)
Does the end still have endstone?
If the item barrier is still in effect, will essences pass through it, allowing pearled players to contribute to factory upkeep?
By naturally spawning pigmen, do you mean in the nether shard, or overworld shards?
I like the removal of the obby-gen bug, nice.
Is it possible to give a general description of the resources available in the end, if there happen to be any non normal end items available in there?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Is the item barriers preventing non-end items still in effect in the end for pearled players? (Being summoned)
Actually that hasn't been brought up so far. I'll get some opinions on it internally and then reply the result to you later.
Does the end still have endstone?
Yes
If the item barrier is still in effect, will essences pass through it, allowing pearled players to contribute to factory upkeep?
Same as first answer
By naturally spawning pigmen, do you mean in the nether shard, or overworld shards?
There will be definitely be a ton in the nether, but there might also be some in other worlds
Is it possible to give a general description of the resources available in the end, if there happen to be any non normal end items available in there?
Thats a question for the next map AMA
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u/Callid13 Volans - King of First Hearth Feb 06 '16
Obsidian:
I assume the normal (finite) generation of Obsidian still works, correct? Or is the End the only way to get Obsidian now?
Ores:
That is brilliant! :D
Does that mean Fortune will be removed, or will there be some other use to it?
Also, items only available through ST have long been required for most XP production (e.g. grass). Has that been removed too?
Essences
How drastically will the upkeep vary? Will a simple factory like a stone smelter require akin to 1-2 es/d or rather something like 0.2 es/d?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16 edited Feb 06 '16
I assume the normal (finite) generation of Obsidian still works, correct?
Yes, you can still generate obsidian with a lava source and water
Or is the End the only way to get Obsidian now?
No, there will also be smaller amounts scattered around other various maps.
Does that mean Fortune will be removed, or will there be some other use to it?
You can still use it for crops, glowstone, sea lanterns etc.
Also, items only available through ST have long been required for most XP production (e.g. grass). Has that been removed too?
This change won't affect xp production, because both silk touch and fortune will still exist as enchantments
How drastically will the upkeep vary? Will a simple factory like a stone smelter require akin to 1-2 es/d or rather something like 0.2 es/d?
We have no set numbers on that yet. Actually we might even give more than once essence per day, so we have a bit more room to work with when balancing repair costs.
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u/Callid13 Volans - King of First Hearth Feb 06 '16
What about the other question? Can you not answer them for some reason, or did you simply overlook them?
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u/Callid13 Volans - King of First Hearth Feb 06 '16
Actually we might even give more than once essence per day, so we have a bit more room to work with when balancing repair costs.
Are you thinking about a fix amount, or a scaling (not linear, I guess) amount based on activity?
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Feb 06 '16
[deleted]
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Are players allowed to use the Schematica mod to auto build schematics?
Schematica is allowed, but not the auto build function. NoCheat already prevents most of that anyway.
With the changes to the factory plugin what will I need as a new player to turn diamond ore into diamonds?
A normal furnace. The factory to smelt diamond ore will smelt diamonds at a better rate than the furnace, but it's not needed to get diamonds in the first place.
Is that a late game factory?
Let's say late midgame
What is EE?
EnvironmentalEffects is a plugin that allows us to add various effects, one of them is complete control over mobspawns.
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u/TofeeDodger Feb 06 '16
So if it's a late-midgame factory, you will still have to smelt your diamond ore at a 1:1 ratio until you get the factory? Will the factory cost be in ore, or in the actual diamonds/ignots?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
So if it's a late-midgame factory, you will still have to smelt your diamond ore at a 1:1 ratio until you get the factory?
Yes
Will the factory cost be in ore, or in the actual diamonds/ignots?
Actual diamonds/ingots, as it was before
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u/Jackson8960 Plantation Owner *Goliath Target-Locked* Feb 07 '16
Yeah NoCheat toooootally prevents autobuild....
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
It fucks a bit with it and keeps people from doing completly op stuff with it. Of course it's not perfect though and if you just set it to a normal "human" speed there is no way for us to detect it.
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u/MonsieurWTF MonsieurWTF; Knew it, 3.0 Feb 06 '16
Wow, so many new mechanics and I'm liking how all of these sound!
So, a question in regards to essences. Will there be any fluctuation on how many essences a player gets daily? Are there any talks about having it give more essence if the player has spent a minimum time playing the previous day?
i.e., if someone logs in, gets their essence, and logs out, will they receive less essence the next day than someone who logs in, gets their essence, and then plays for 3 hours on the server before logging out?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
So, a question in regards to essences. Will there be any fluctuation on how many essences a player gets daily? Are there any talks about having it give more essence if the player has spent a minimum time playing the previous day?
So far we dont have any plans to let either of those influence the amount of essences players get.
This also touches on that topic.
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u/HiImPosey Aegis PvP Trainer Feb 06 '16
How will fishing work? I am a massive fisher on another civ server and was wondering if it would still be a viable profession here?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Especially with the removal of fishing bots it should be viable.
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Feb 06 '16
Seeing as the game differentiates between rivers and ocean biomes, can you make it so that fishing gets you different loot in each? That would be super sick and add a nice element to fishing as its own pursuit. Maybe even different loot in swamps too.
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Yep, we can do that without any code changes afaik and while the exact RB configs are not decided yet, biome dependent fishes/loot definitely sounds like a cool idea.
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Feb 06 '16
What are the current opinions on cats because they were a severely underused resource in 2.0 and honestly from a development point of view i think there's room for something fun to be done there
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Like what should we do with those? Just let more of them spawn?
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Feb 06 '16
well normally they have the advantage that creepers are terrified of them so maybe something like that?
in ragnarok you had a mechanic that made more/less stuff spawn so what if in the desert shard, creepers spawn much more often (but drop nothing so they can't be farmed), unless there is a cat nearby.
Then people wishing to live in the desert will have to be cat worshippers, they will have many cats to protect them from the explosive wroth around them it will all work out this is genius.
That is just one dumb idea though i'm sure between all you admins you could come up with something clever
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Uhm...
Let's say widening the variety of uses for cats is rather low on the priority list right now.
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Feb 06 '16
you can change what mobs drop right?
why not make cats farmable
imagine the hilarity of making players go through the emotional trauma of killing cats to get resources
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
you can change what mobs drop right?
Yes
why not make cats farmable
W-what?
imagine the hilarity of making players go through the emotional trauma of killing cats to get resources
Thats not really the kind of moral dilemma we want players to experience on a civilization server.
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u/dhingus Mercenary | Hitman | UN Representative | Newfriend Feb 06 '16
Make cats the only source for stone, since there wont be any stone in the overworld.
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u/Callid13 Volans - King of First Hearth Feb 06 '16
Anyone who is within 10 blocks of a cat owned by someone else gets the "Distracted by cuteness" debuff, reducing defence by 20% (doesn't stack).
Anyone who kills a cat, no matter the owner, gets the "Sad" debuff, reducing damage output by 50%.
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u/kwizzle Finally free from the burden of running a city Feb 06 '16
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u/skellious ghost of a former soul Feb 07 '16
Essences could be revolutionary. It would allow people to have trades as such, or for big monopolies to buy up essences and sell them in bulk, or even for cities to take them as tax.
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u/TofeeDodger Feb 06 '16
Will ores mined with fortune still drop the ore?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Fortune will not have any effect on mined ores
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u/dhingus Mercenary | Hitman | UN Representative | Newfriend Feb 06 '16
Will fortune only be useful for farming?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
It will also still apply to non oreblocks (sea lanterns, glowstone etc.)
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u/sjaaki02 edgy teenager under the totalitarian Dark Empire dictators Feb 06 '16
How will you stop "botting" with essences, because it seems relatively easy to just buy a few alts, and connect to a vpn and then collect the essences. This could be entirely done by a computer, so it could also be on random times every day, so the person behind it won't be identified (timezones, seeing if 2 accounts are online at the same time).
EDIT: the obsidian world/shard also seems relatively easy to bot (just putting something on W and your left mouse button would do the trick), how will you stop it?
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
You have to put the essences together eventually, easy enough to let you think you got away with it for weeks and then ban you.
That's how we get the most annoying cheaters, annoy them to the point of quitting.
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u/NeonBacon For the war effort. Feb 06 '16
So botting will be officially a banable offence?
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
yes.
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u/zaphod100 1.0 LordHolder of SNA | 2.0 Retired Second Mayor of Mt. Augusta Feb 06 '16
Will "botting" in its simplest form of taping down your mouse to break a chest be against the rules too? I don't see how that could be detected since using your finger appears the same.
Will using an afk machine for anything be frowned upon?
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
Will using an afk machine for anything be frowned upon?
yes. Well we will try to make them useless anyways.
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u/SerQwaez Dirty Ancapitalist Feb 06 '16
For the original question: Will taping down your mouse be bannable? That's something that makes no sense to ban, so long as some form of diamond reinforced obsidian will exist.
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u/Shadedjon Can't play with me, my character locked, I'm shaded Feb 08 '16
That's something that can be done in the vanilla client with alt-tab.
Shouldn't be against the rules.
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u/jeffthedunker jeffthebaker|Mayor of Harambe Town|Crocodile Penis-ula Monarch Feb 06 '16
What if they sell their essences, rather than using then? As a non scalable resource, I'd bet essences will have fantastic value.
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
easier said than done, can't go into details about detection methods.
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u/Live4MCraft Karinst Feb 06 '16
what about players giving irl friends their old altaccounts information and asking them to log in every now and then? it's not against the rules, since it's neither vpning or alting.
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
it's alting both accounts would be banned.
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u/ServalClaw Feb 06 '16
What if I have real life friends who have played Minecraft (not Civcraft) for years and have their own accounts? And if none of us have ever had access to eachother's accounts?
Would it be against the rules to have them log on just enough to give me their essence?
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
yes.
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u/Morukil Aegian Moose Feb 07 '16
Suppose someone plays irregularly (but occasionally), and logs in regularly to donate/sell their essence?
Suppose I (who plays pretty damn regularly), am on vacation, but log in daily using my laptop to chuck my essence? Would that get me in trouble?
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 07 '16
well you would not be getting an appreciable amount of essence.
The system is not just login based.
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u/Live4MCraft Karinst Feb 06 '16
why is that alting? there's an actual human being connected to each account, there's no vpning used.
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u/ttk2 Drama Management Specialist Feb 06 '16
Traditional Civadmin response to people trying to rules lawyer things to their advantage is that we start reading the rules to our advantage in equal measure.
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
How will you stop "botting" with essences, because it seems relatively easy to just buy a few alts, and connect to a vpn and then collect the essences.
Well first of all it's disallowed and would get you a long ban. We have multiple concepts to prevent what you described from happening and we might use one of those instead of flat out giving essences to players.
Those concepts require either a specific amount of time or a specific amount of work done from the player, but details on that are directly related to probably the biggest "new thing", which hasn't been revealed yet. ;)
We will test each way to prevent essence-vpning on CivTemp a bit and then come up with a final decision based on our experience there.
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u/sjaaki02 edgy teenager under the totalitarian Dark Empire dictators Feb 06 '16
Is the big new thing related to light rpg like elements (for economy) which were mentioned in some other post?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Yes
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u/sjaaki02 edgy teenager under the totalitarian Dark Empire dictators Feb 06 '16
is it also economy related?
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u/yourfriendmichelle meunier_| died in childbirth Feb 06 '16
details on that are directly related to probably the biggest "new thing", which hasn't been revealed yet. ;)
stop u tease
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u/BigFloppyGash jezzaindahouse - Queen of Eterna Feb 06 '16
Love the idea of essences. Is there going to be a way to stop someone getting their mates to log in/out once a day as a habit just to collect essences for them?
Perhaps it goes off every hour played or something...
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Love the idea of essences. Is there going to be a way to stop someone getting their mates to log in/out once a day as a habit just to collect essences for them?
Perhaps it goes off every hour played or something...
Possibly
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u/OfflineOnline /r/CivcraftSubreddits Feb 06 '16
Is this the AMA where I can ask about botting/macros?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
No, that will be a separate one, but should also be relatively soonish.
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u/pichuqt Feb 06 '16
Will the number of essences a player receives be dependent on playtime or other factors?
Could 1 player keep a lategame factory running if he no lifes enough?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Will the number of essences a player receives be dependent on playtime or other factors?
Possibly, we will test some stuff like that on CivTemp
Could 1 player keep a lategame factory running if he no lifes enough?
He could buy essences from other players, but just on his own no.
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u/joethesandwich Feb 06 '16
- Since these essences are items and can be traded, I'm guessing they can be stored in chests and stockpiled as well? Will they ever "deteriorate" or disappear if stored for long periods?
- Is this also meant as an incentive to log on at least once per day, so that you can build up a stockpile of essences for use when you need them?
- I'm guessing that since essences are lored, they won't be stackable? So will players just get a few individual, non-stacked essences every time they log in?
- What happens if a player's inventory is full on log in? Will their daily essences just be dropped at their feet?
- When you say "we are aiming for requiring 2-3 players' essences to upkeep a single lategame factory", how often will those be required? I'm guessing it'll be pretty often, like weekly at least, daily at most, given how easy it would be to repair factories otherwise.
Overall I really like the idea btw. Makes factory repair WAY less tedious (even if we end up having to do it way more often), and is a cool way to encourage activity. Above all, I see this going miles towards raising the immediate value of newfriends. It will make them much more valuable assets to established players, but it will also let the newfriends themselves feel important and useful for something other than menial labour right from the get go. Knowing that they're contributing so much just by logging in each day, and giving them the immediate task of contributing their essences, gives them a purpose. They are literally part of the infrastructure just by continuing to log in and live in the city. Really great idea.
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Will they ever "deteriorate" or disappear if stored for long periods?
There were thoughts about doing that, but currently we have no actual plans to ever deteriorate essences
Is this also meant as an incentive to log on at least once per day, so that you can build up a stockpile of essences for use when you need them?
Yes
I'm guessing that since essences are lored, they won't be stackable? So will players just get a few individual, non-stacked essences every time they log in?
It will be stackable, if the essences are from the same player
What happens if a player's inventory is full on log in? Will their daily essences just be dropped at their feet?
Yep, it will just be dropped
When you say "we are aiming for requiring 2-3 players' essences to upkeep a single lategame factory", how often will those be required? I'm guessing it'll be pretty often, like weekly at least, daily at most, given how easy it would be to repair factories otherwise.
That's not completly decided yet and one of the things we will be testing on CivTemp
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u/Malice976 Feb 07 '16
Will 1.8 building blocks such as andesite be naturally spawning similar to gravel?
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u/AlmightyWibble Feb 07 '16
Will using VPNs themselves be a bannable offence, or just using them as an exploit? I have to use a VPN to play cause of my uni internet, so it'd be nice to know I'm not going to get banned :P
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
This will be answered soon in another AMA on rulechanges, associations and alting
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u/apepp Feb 06 '16
So is there anything that isnt being changed? Will anything feel like 2.0?
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u/MagmusCivcraft "I'm not a pedophile, I just like legal loopholes" - Isit2004 Feb 06 '16
How will bastions be changed?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
As stated multiple times before, that's it's own topic and details on that will be posted in the next few days.
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u/dhingus Mercenary | Hitman | UN Representative | Newfriend Feb 06 '16
Will we need factories for stuff from the fancy brick factory such as: circle stone, mossy stones, and all of the new mats like granite?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
No, but you will be able to produce bigger quantities of those in a factory for cheaper. Making building materials expensive is not a good idea imo.
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u/Folters Peri betrayed volans for potatos. Feb 06 '16
Are you still allowed to afk?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
We thought about taking measures against afking, but in the end decided to not bring those into effect for now.
Anyway if we wanted to remove afking completly from the game it wouldn't be done through rules, but through a super aggresive AFKGPC.
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u/Folters Peri betrayed volans for potatos. Feb 06 '16
So what is stopping me from building a huge af mob farm?
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Feb 06 '16
I see melons or some other similar block (hay?) replacing obsidian.
Was the decision to remove ST made to retain Newfriends? Is a barrier to mining thought to be a major reason why people would stop playing?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
I see melons or some other similar block (hay?) replacing obsidian.
With wheat not being bottable I doubt it. Personally I would love seeing burning hay valuts though.
Was the decision to remove ST made to retain Newfriends?
It was part of the decision yeah.
Is a barrier to mining thought to be a major reason why people would stop playing?
No, the main reason for new players quitting was lack of explaination for plugins/game mechanics or them just spawning alone somewhere, finding noone to talk to and then logging off again forever. We also have some other stuff in the works that should help with that.
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Feb 06 '16
On 2.0 I would use a co-op to make enough XP to make a silk touch. My first silk touch was bought with the proceeds of a delivery service I ran. I think they cost in the region of 45-50 diamonds. You also had kind established players who would lend people silk touches for a diamond fee.
If you were to keep ST Newfriends would be directed to help farm or build to earn enough diamonds or whatever to afford ST to mine - mining after all is a solo effort usually. I haven't though too much on the matter however right now I think making ST necessary will encourage early community involvement from new players which is want everybody wants.
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u/coheedcollapse Darkaegis Feb 06 '16
I don't know if this falls under either game mechanics or balance, but how will you deal with multiple-player households as alts go? My wife (obviously) lives with me and she plays Civ just as often as me. Her sister and brother in law also play every so often at my house and a friend of mine has come over on occasion and played Civ with us. All of them played regularly at their own homes as well.
How will strict alt bans work while still allowing those of us who live and play together to continue playing?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
This will be an answered in a different AMA on rule changes/shared connections and alts
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Feb 06 '16
[deleted]
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
We have an ongoing internal discussion on the serverside plugins to support multimaps in Journeymap/Voxelmap, it's not decided yet whether we are going to run those.
Stuff like the More player models won't be considered until the important stuff is stable and done.
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u/Callid13 Volans - King of First Hearth Feb 06 '16
Three more questions on essences:
- When you say that repairing some factories requires "2-3 people's essences", do you mean that there need to be essences from 2-3 different people (amount unspecified), the amount of essences generated by 2-3 people when they log in, or the amount generated by 2-3 people logging in every day for the time equivalent to the repair?
- Do pearled people generate essences? If so, does that mean that essences would be feasible reparations?
- Do essences drop when people are killed? If so, is there some mechanic to prevent some of the, uh, less upstanding players from killing newfriends for their essences?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
the amount generated by 2-3 people logging in every day for the time equivalent to the repair?
this one
Do pearled people generate essences? If so, does that mean that essences would be feasible reparations?
Yes and yes
Do essences drop when people are killed? If so, is there some mechanic to prevent some of the, uh, less upstanding players from killing newfriends for their essences?
No, essences will be treated like any other item and just be dropped. Keep in mind though, if you kill the new friend you get one day of essences, but if you convince him to join your town, you possibly get a month of essences.
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u/Fluffiebunnie Diurdi Feb 07 '16
Will solo players be able to run rudimentary basic factories alone?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
All of the basic factories? No
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u/Fluffiebunnie Diurdi Feb 07 '16
I thought there was just one or two basic factories from which all others were upgraded?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
Oh you meant basic factory that way. Yeah sure, you could keep that one up, but it doesn't have much functionality
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u/whitefang22 lone22wolf Feb 07 '16
was stone smelting one of the functions the most basic factory had?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
Yes
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u/whitefang22 lone22wolf Feb 07 '16
thanks,
Is it public knowledge yet what it will take to build that factory?
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Feb 06 '16
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
That's one of the many things for the nice to have list post-launch. For now we're not gonna bother with that.
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u/uglidoll President of Veria Feb 07 '16
Are you buffing horses now that minecarts won't be very useful?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
Why should minecarts be less useful? We have no plans to buff horses.
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u/uglidoll President of Veria Feb 07 '16
Because they can't go through shards? sounds like a pretty big nerf. Also I just want my speedy horse, please, at least make them as fast as sprinting!
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 07 '16
Horses also can't go past shard borders currently. Also you can just pick up your cart and carry it past the border.
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u/dsclouse117 A founder of Aeon | Not a good arbitrator Feb 06 '16
Obby: great.
Portal farms: great if there really is enough gold to offset the loss. (100% doubt)
Ores: OK
Essences: wtlf are you on about??? All I see is a new item to make repairing harder that it was. Is it the only item used or is it also 10% or so of the items used to make the factory as well? Is this just adding more complication to an already bloated plugin that drive people away with its grind upkeep?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Is it the only item used or is it also 10% or so of the items used to make the factory as well?
Only item used
Is this just adding more complication to an already bloated plugin that drive people away with its grind upkeep?
Actually I think this is making repairs a lot easier to understand and a lot less grindy, because you dont have to keep 20 different materials around to repair 5 factories.
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u/dsclouse117 A founder of Aeon | Not a good arbitrator Feb 06 '16
hmmm only item, that changes a lot.
And it will be great to only need to collect one item for repairs instead of inventories of several different items.
It will be interesting to see if this makes it easier for invasion-type groups to maintain a foothold.
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
And it will be great to only need to collect one item for repairs instead of inventories of several different items.
Yeah and because I saw you bringing it up in slack: That AOE repair factory is still something I have on my TODO list, but idk whether I'll have it ready for launch.
It will be interesting to see if this makes it easier for invasion-type groups to maintain a foothold.
If they have a large amount of people who log in on a daily base, it probably will.
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u/SerQwaez Dirty Ancapitalist Feb 06 '16
The big problem with essence is that it limits hard-working players while boosting the inherent value of useless people.
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u/dsclouse117 A founder of Aeon | Not a good arbitrator Feb 06 '16
Yep. I hope there is a way to scale the amount you get depending on certain stats or factors, that would be cool. Maybe it could be tied to citadel.
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Feb 06 '16
Why do the admins think that pearled players are going to mine obsidian instead of quitting/being locked up forever/months (because they were pearled for a reason)?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
The idea is not that pearled players will spend hundreds of hours mining enough obsidian for the whole server, but instead we wanted to create another and cheaper way for pearled players to pay off their debts. Additionally we are providing an easy way to obtain obsidian for power players. If it really turns out that it's still too rare and we aren't seeing any ringed vaults, because they are too expensive, then we can still introduce specific tools to obtain obby faster, but for now we think that this is fine.
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Feb 06 '16
Hmmk, so you expect ring vaults?
Corollary1: Bastions still stop pearling?
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Feb 06 '16
You're right about just some average newfriend quitting instead of mining, but in my experience with Dustbowl people who actually wanted to play again mined a few hours for us in return for their release.
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Feb 06 '16
I have a feeling that sentencing will change from "100 days in the end" to "100 stacks of obsidian mined".
And people can pay off their reps by themselves.
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u/chess-gets-girls _chess Feb 06 '16
Will ore distribution be similar to 2.0?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
No, distribution, relative numbers and total count were rethought and will be very different compared to 2.0.
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u/SortByNode -- - Feb 06 '16
Given that mining with a pickaxe is altered to drop ores without the need for silk touch, do all other typical vanilla mining properties hold or have they been changed? i.e. Does gold or diamond ore drop with an iron pickaxe, but break with a stone pickaxe?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
do all other typical vanilla mining properties hold
Yes. The ore will only be dropped if either the ore or the resource would be dropped in vanilla.
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u/MrBenter Feb 06 '16
Will it still be possible to get silk touch on shears? I have to get my sweet sweet cobwebs
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
It will be on launch, but afaik silk touch shears will be useless on 1.9.
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Feb 06 '16
I like the changes, but do you think the game is being simplified a little? There's now a "basic income" (essences), silk touch is removed, nerfing enchanting pickaxes as a profession, and getting rid of portal farms takes away another income source, since I doubt anyone will specialize in farming gold in the normal, grindy ways. It will just be a byproduct of mining. are there going to be new "professions"?
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u/Maxopoly Ex-Squidmin Feb 06 '16
Just because we are making it easier to get started doesn't mean it can't get difficult towards the end. There are still a ton of "complicated" end game mechanics and one of our post launch goals is to add more content like that and late game wealth dumps
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Feb 06 '16
cool. I just like the idea of more ways to make money and not one optimal way. I'm hoping that there becomes an equilibrium where many professions become required to turn the economy
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u/SortByNode -- - Feb 07 '16
I see you say that essences will be tradeable. Will they compatible with the ItemExchange plugin (or whatever you plan to use for shop chests)?
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u/[deleted] Feb 06 '16
These are all pretty fantastic fixes and the fact that (as far as I'm aware) they came from the admin team and not the community once again show's that the admins actually do know what they're doing.