So there seem to have been some misunderstandings regarding the last post and what the actual issue is. You can put things together while reading all the comments on the previous post, but for ease of access and clarity, let me summarize things here.
So first of all, spawn eggs are not meant to be in Survival mode. Survival mode is about not having unlimited things of everything. While vanilla provides for some unlimited items when you work out how to do it (like using a mob spawner as a resource once you made sure that the mobs cannot attack you), I do not think that those are good in a multi-player scenario. While it’s very hard to get all the resources one wants in single player, multi player can provide for these things through separation of labor. The only reason we offered spawn eggs in the shop at a reasonably cheap price was that you could bread most of these animals afterwards anyhow. But you still had to breed them. They did not jump in unlimited numbers out of a magic box. This whole scenario is by the way also in gross violation of one of our biggest rules: “No handouts”. To be honest I am a bit disappointed that nobody ever thought that this whole situation is not how we have been running the server for the last years and asked me if I was aware about this. Well, lessons learned, I will have to take more time with the next update and make sure I understand all the repercussions of the new features.
So following this, the option that you can essentially gather unlimited resources and those even in unlimited variations (think horse types, cat colors etc) is something that you can expect in creative mode, but not in survival. There is a clear conflict between easy accessible spawn eggs and having the spawner option at the same time.
So my conclusion is that one of them has to go. Either we prevent the spawners to be altered by spawn eggs, or the spawn eggs disappear. Since I do not have a ready-made solution to revert what has been done to the spawners, I removed the eggs from the shop. If we find a practicable solution for the spawners, the eggs will be back in the shop.
I have to agree with Unc. I have been here many years with Uncovery and I was able to grow. It takes time and work but you can do it.
I do also agree with unc on the situation with the spawners, although i do have a squid spawner that is primarily for producing squid for the aquarium nothing more. I have no objections to taking it apart.
We should be able to clean the mess, or most of it anyway.. we’re a family and we don’t want to risk a ban.
I think that if you lock spawner transformation and set the following rules we should be ok:
– Passive mob spawners have to be destroyed asap
– The product of any passive mob spawning out of a spawner between now and its destruction on has to be destroyed
– The contents of collecting chests in a any passive mob spawner system have to be destroyed
– Any breach to these rules is a ban
I had no problem throwing several stacks of ender pearls after exploiting the unwanted ender farm.
I’ll regret my quad spawner and wish I could set it back to 3 spiders/1 skelly as it was originally, but I can live without it, I’ll keep the cow farm set-up (which actually involved a lot of work) as a hall-of-shame.
PS: On second thought, maybe I’d like to change my cow spawners into squid spawners, so that they remain spawners at least, instead of destroying them. Since they’re all located under lvl 40 they’ll be totally useless and purely decorative.
While I definitely think your first two points(destroying passive spawners and any future products of them) are a great start. I think it might be a bit harsh to expect people who have gotten materials from it prior to this issue being brought up to destroy them. Like owl said it’s a bit of a slippery slope. This whole situation is a bit of a challenge to deal with.
That being said, I thought I might aswell throw in a couple of words in my/our defense:
– I didn’t report the feature but I didn’t hide it either, I discussed it several times in open chat.
– Building machines that help you gather unlimited ressources is not caracteristic of creative mode, since in creative mode you can obtain those directly from your inventory anyway. They are very caracteristic of constructive/no grief survival worlds like the empire or kingdom worlds.
– After a few months on the servers’s survival mode there are many ressources that are available
in infinite quantities (= more than you’ll ever need). Passive mob spawners just added ink, beef, leather and wool to them. 1.8 also brought us infinite fish through guardian farms.
– I have seen a lot of mob heads and beacons on some of the ancient’s lots. My understanding is that there was once an event in which all hostile mobs would drop their head upon killing. I missed it, I live with it. Ancients having stuff that you can’t have (at least not as easily) is not such a big deal, after all the survival world is a lot more cooperative here than it is competitive.
– “Handout” is a rather relative notion. With the current shop’s “economy”, as soon as you find your way to the voting booth you have access in very large quantities to a whole range of stuff that is supposed to be tough to get: bows, arrows, potatoes, carrots, reeds, melon.. where’s the work here? I already wrote in favour of minimum prices, I haven’t changed my mind, I don’t like free market applied to survival minecraft :)
– I spent dozens of hours working on my cow farm.. I might aswell have collected as much beef/leather if I had spent the same time breeding and killing cattle. I’m pretty sure breeding/killing cattle is a lot faster source than a single cow spawner and implies a lot more afk than actual work (I did fill a whole double chest of beef before cow spawners appeared -> btw, that means your payment is legit, Pine ;).
(just to clarify: the objective of this post was not to have you change your mind, but to mitigate your judgement on the “abusers”)
One issue not discussed is what is to become of the large populations of villagers that some have created to provide materials and librarians creating books for every enchantment possible? They must all be killed, no? And what of the riches of materials that were obtained from such trades? Burn them as well? What of the Uncs that enriched those that sold items obtained in this manner? What of the tools purchased? Does this lead us to a complete reset of empire, kingdom, nether, darklands, and aether and wiping balances, deposits, and shops to nil? I can live with anything Uncovery decides. It is his server and the best I have found.
True. I won’t defend my librarian collection either.. I have already killed more than 1000 villagers to select them, I can kill 30 more.
A complete reset of all kingdom constructions would be a bit overreacting though, in my humble opinion.
Yeah for the record, I will not ask people to destroy what they got because of the spawners. But they will have to reduce the mob numbers on their lots to fit the limits.
Since spawner eggs are not normally available in Survival mode, I suppose they could be just eliminated.
If it’s possible to create one time kits, perhaps a command like ‘/kit spawneggs’ could be implemented, to give two of passive mobs spawn eggs to player. After that – either ask for eggs from those who still have them, or venture on expedition to find ones.
We’re playing Survival with my wife from time to time. Finding passive mobs is often a challenge, and we had to travel thousands of blocks at times, build safe passages and dig underground tunnels, just to find and transport a pair of cows, for example.
So, one-time kits and disabling changing spawner type with spawn eggs could make the game more balanced.
The only question I am unsure about is villagers. They are useful creatures for obtaining some valuable goods like enchanted and diamond tools. Perhaps their spawn eggs might remain in admin shop, but cost significantly more than they are currently.
Another possible solution – based on how Empire and Kingdoms maps are restricted – is to spawn large (relatively) amount of mobs in distant parts and let players travel for them, to use leads. That could add additional challenge, but result in good payoff when mobs are safely brought and multiplied.
Apart from that, keep current /headcount to reasonable amounts.
Also, if squid spawning is not restricted, people can build their spawning areas – there are many well-known designs – and get reasonable amount of ink sacs in legitimate ways.
I hope some ideas can be useful.
I actually like this idea of a spawn egg kit. What if it ran on a timer, so people could use it once a month or something?
only downside, is we’d sacrifice singular farming of mobs.
Thanks. Let’s how things will be going after current changes. My opinion is, spawner eggs supply should anyway be limited.