1.14 Update Info and Concerns (Post 2)
Note this is the same post that I posted on August 14, 2019. There are however differences. I have added more concerns as well as though out ways to fix them. The similarities are because this is a document I have created to help keep my thoughts straight on this update.
The 1.14 update has added in many new blocks and items as well as overhauled village mechanics. Furthermore there are more powerful texture and block model mechanics and tags which will allow me to introduce better custom items and possibly custom blocks onto the server along with custom models for entities.
However I have some concerns with this update. This news post will mainly be addressing the concerns I have with the 1.14 update. In the future I may make a post about the new technical features in 1.14 and how I plan on using them to further enhance the server. I would also like everyone to know that even with the concerns I have, I do want to update Astria to 1.14, it may just be very delayed.
Firstly as usual many existing plugins do not work on 1.14 and need to be updated. Some are easy to find as they have errors however some may not be found until tested in game. When I get closer to releasing the 1.14 update for Astria I will open up the test server so players can help test for plugin and game play comparability.
Key:
Black Text are the issue.
Blue Text are some ideas on how I could fix it.
Green Text is the current plan I will be using to fix the issue, however this can change.
Emerald Reserves
When I started astria, I was unsure if I wanted a economy plugin. So I made emeralds a reserve currency. This allowed players to convert there money to and from emeralds at the server shop. If I ever had to remove the economy plugin, players could convert there money into emeralds. This would allow the coin currency to keep some of its value as emeralds could be traded with villagers. However as Astria aged and new mechanics were added, emeralds became a great way to store money to help reduce the loss of money steeling (Money players loose when killed by another player).
The new issue is, buying and selling goods for emeralds with villages will be easier and cheaper then before. This is worsened by some major glitches and bugs. (Covered further down) The mass production of emeralds has the ability to greatly hinder and harm the value of emeralds which in turns harms the economy.
I plan to alleviate this problem by creating a new reserve item. This will be a custom emerald item. This custom emerald will not be tradeable with villagers. However if the economy plugin ever has to be removed, they new Reserve Emeralds would be unlocked for villager trading.
Players who have coins stored as emeralds will be able to convert them back to coins and then to this new custom emerald. This will occure some time before the 1.14 update and will be announced with /mail as well as a news post. This conversion will happen over a course of a few weeks, to allow players time to convert. However any player that does not convert there old emeralds over to the new Reserve Emeralds will be at a loss after the 1.14 update. I have no ETA on when this will begin.
I could also replace the Reserve Item with a totally different item, however the item must have value in Vanilla game play, and must not be farmable. It cannot be a item that is strong or used to make strong items such as diamond as this could lead to easy diamond armor,tools, and weapons for new players taking the challenge of obtaining them. (could also lead to the server shop competing with players for diamond sales).
Lastly a few players have large amounts of money that can take up a lot of space as emeralds. This new currency will have denser variants that allow storing of more value in less space . Think emerald to emerald block. This will allow large amounts of money to be stored in smaller spaces when converted to this new custom emerald.
Farms
There are two types of farms I have large concerns with in 1.14, Iron and Totem of Undying Farms. While Iron Farms exist in previous versions of Minecraft, in 1.14 they are very powerful and can produce tens of thousands of iron in just a few hours or less. Totem of Undying Farms could make Totems very common on the server which would make rare custom items such as Life Armor a common item. I also have some powerful custom items designed that use Totems in there crafting recipes.
Currently my options for the farms are far and few. The best thing to do would be to ban there creation and use, however I feel this would be as detrimental to players and the server as allowing them would be. However I do feel that both farms need to be nerfed. However some farms such as the Iron farm are massively scalable and any nerf’s I do would be undone by making larger and more efficient farms. So a general nerf such as making them produce 50% less iron would be infective. This could then lead to players with the largest farms making the most iron harming those with smaller farms. I could also use the Villagers for the iron farms to keep track of spawns and reduce iron golem spawns based on each individual farms. I am currently looking into a few different methods to nerf Iron and Totem Farms. Any feedback on ideas on how to nerf them in a balanced way would be appreciated.
Iron Farm Nerf
All iron golems will drop 15% less iron. Furthermore villagers will have a maximum amount of golems that they can spawn (as a group) within 24 hours. There will be rules in place that will prevent a individual player from owning more then 1 Iron Farm. I hope that these will reduce the iron produced by the farm while still being fair to the player.
Totem Farm Nerf
When a illager drops a totem due to a player kill (or wolf?) the killer gets meta data placed upon them. Each point of this meta data (-6) goes onto a exponential graph that is the % chance that the totem drop is canceled. The -6 allows for normal mansion hunting to still be good, but for farms to be nerfed. The more dropped the higher the chance of not dropping one. If a drop is cancels they still get a point on there meta data but at a reduced amount. (so this value will need to be a double). There will be a system in place to detect how many a farm has produced allowing it to be limited per 24 hour period. There will be a rule where players can only own 1 Totem Farm.
Villager Trading
With 1.14, villager trading has been entirely reworked. However I feel some of the prices need to be rebalanced. There are very few trade’s that I feel are imbalanced for vanilla play, however there are many I feel are imbalanced for Astria.
I feel villager trading should be allowed and its something I do not want to disable. I am currently looking into a way to increase the prices of buying goods from villagers as well as patch or preventive measure for some of the exploits that can occur. I am also looking into adjusting the goods they sell as well as the prices and amounts they sell at.
Furthermore all prices will have a minimum cost of 2 emeralds. This is to reduce the reward for abusing certain glitches that reduce the cost of goods.
Balance List:
All armors, weapons, tools will cost +5 emeralds
Unsure about enchanted items. Could be used to farm enchantments using /salvage and books.
All enchanted Books will cost +4 emeralds (per enchant level) (unless already at 64)
Leather Armor, chain armor, Iron armor, Diamond: Will be looked into due to potential salvaging gains.
Apple: 1e for 4 apple, 3e for 5 apples.
Dried Kelp Block, 10 blocks for 1 emerald, will be 13 blocks for 1 emerald.
Globe Pattern: 8e for 1, 24e for 1.
Cross Bow: 3e for 1, 16e for 1
Tipped Arrow: 2e +5 arrow to 12e +5 arrow
Book shelf: 6e for 3 shelves, will be looked into since this could lead to a lot of cheep books when mined.
Infinite villager trading (prevents stock from running out)
This exploit can be used to trade infinetly with a village. This prevents there stock from running out. This could cause a mass production of items which in turn, can crash the economy of the server, or allow a player to gain a monopoly on a item. Or in the best case cause a decrease in the items buy and sell price.
This can be stacked w/ the hero of the village effect and glitch.
May be able to prevent this by checking if player and villager are in the same world upon trade. If not cancel trade and close inventory. (will not work). Possibly set the trades left for each item to 0 if they enter a portal (however this glitch resets this value, so this method may not work).
Could be harsh and kill villagers that travel though portals however this could hinder players moving villagers around using nether highways.
Hero of the village glitch
This is a glitch that can greatly reduce the price of all goods sold by a villager to be equal to 1 emerald. This could cause the same issues as the Infinite Trading exploit. i.e. Mass production and crashing of the economy or a possible monopoly on a single item.
Each Level 5 grants a 55% price reduction. However theirs a way to glitch this to be very high.
Chunk Swapping Bug
This is a bug that occasionally swaps chunks or replaces a chunk with another chunk. I have no way to fix this. (occurs in vanilla, do not know about bukkit/spigot). Fixed in a 1.15 snapshot.
Bamboo & Kelp
In 1.13 Kelp was added into Minecraft, and with 1.14 Bamboo was added. I feel Bamboo and Kelp farms will not be too detrimental to economy. However I do feel that very large Bamboo and Kelp farms could be detrimental to the server as they could lag the server. However I currently will not be implementing anything to reduce or hinder the farms. I hope that players will make farms that will be friendly to the server and produce as little lag as possible. However if required I will add in rules to regulate the size of these farms as well as find other ways to reduce lag.
Glitched Overpowered Armor and Crossbows
There is a chance for mob drop armors and crossbows to double enchant w/ the same enchantments or conflicting enchantments. However this chance is so rare it may never occur on the server. However if this does happen the player who has the item(s) could have a powerful weapon/armor that grants a unfair advantage.
Cross Bows
I would like to say that the concerns I have with cross bows are minor.
The Multi Shot enchantment is somewhat broken in my opinion. When a arrow is shot from a bow and hits an entity it should be consumed. However with multi shot, 1 arrow is turned into 3, as long as the middle arrow does not hit any entity it can still be picked up. This becomes worse when tipped arrows are used, as the player can shoot 3 tipped arrows, hit 2 entities with it and still get the tipped arrow back.
Rockets shot from Crossbows have a strange aggro and aggressor pattern. This causes pigmen to not become angry if attacked/killed by Rockets. This could lead to easy gold farming without setting up a gold farm, or manually hunting pigmen.
Piercing arrows can shoot though multiple mobs and does not decrease in damage as it passes though mobs. I feel as this makes a piercing bow over powered. This of course assumes the player is able to get a nice line/bunching of mobs to hit.
Quick Charge may be too powerful, but I need to do some testing.
Flying Minecart’s & Boat Minecart’s
Using a fishing rod players can fly with a minecart and other entities (with varying degrees of success). However this is a super minor concern since it requires a player to burn though a tone of fishing rods.
Players can also push minecart’s into a boat and ride it. This allows for super fast travel on rails that can be controlled with the arrow keys. This requires no powered rails to do.
This will be nerfed/removed from Astria. (However as stated a very long time ago, I am still looking to buff Furnace Mine carts)
Grinder (block)
How do custom enchants act on the Grinder. Do they give xp, are the not removed?
Final Thoughts about the 1.14 concerns
Those are the main concerns I have about the 1.14 update. As I progress in figuring out how to solve them and start preparations for the update I may come across more concerns. If you the player have any concerns about 1.14, or about the plans in this news post feel free to comment on the news post (if reading on the forms) or sending me in game mail using “/mail send daniel_return <message>”. I will do my best to keep players up to date on the progress of the 1.14 update as well as any new concerns or changes to existing concerns that come up. If you have any concerns, questions, or ideas to balance and fix some of the concerns I have feel free to contact me.