There's a number of thoughts that I have going through my head for the server. So I'm just going to make a huge essay. It's a bit of a rant. Had to break it into pieces because it was too large.
Farming Rant
While there are some exploits that should be obvious to players, others are not so much. I feel that I need to express my view on this. Jobs have a vast breadth to them, and the intent behind the jobs is not always carried through with it. Miner is pretty clear in this, but Demolitionist is not so much. It's meant to destroy structures, and this seems to apply to both player built and the fortresses generated by the game. However, it's possible to view it as an unintended strategy for Demolitionist to focus exclusively on pre-generated structures.
To take this further, I want to focus on the Farmer job. As it is, it's intended to only be used in towns, and the player is supposed to know this though the jobs info stating "town only" for the crops. This is from my perspective an unnecessary nerf on the job. Instead of allowing farmers to just farm, it has to be farming on specific land. Assuming that the reasoning behind this is because of the expansive land in wastelands, allowing you to utilize more land, you have to ask, will it always stop there? Minecraft defies gravity, you can build as high as 256 blocks up, suspended by nothing. I'd say that making a 50 story farming skyscraper yields more farmland than the 16x16 plot on the floor, so now that must be considered an exploit to build farms over other farms.
I have always viewed towns as a way to protect people's builds only. Growth has to be throttled to make room for other people however, so others can also build and protect their land. However, the role of the town is not only to protect people, but to cut them off at the kneecaps when trying to utilize land for things other than utility.
Yes it takes work to build a farm higher in a town, but it also takes work to establish a farm in the wastelands. And it's not without penalties already. Grief is fair-game and when it's reset any farmland is gone.
Alright, let's change gears a little bit here and focus on some other jobs: Miner, Arborist, and Excavator. All three of these jobs is usually leveled in the wastelands, clearing out caves, chopping trees, or tearing up deserts. However, they can also be leveled in towns. There are ores underneath the soil even in town. Certainly a limited amount, but they exist. Should it be limited only to the town due to the fact of more land to mined being available in the wastelands? This applies equally to excavator, less dirt than stone, but dirt gives more experience anyways. So should it be limited only to town. Arborist even more than the others, it's resources are replenishable, it should certainly fall into the same category as farmer! As a note here, miner is listed as wilderness only, but works in town.
Just because a job is capable of being leveled in a way others don't level does not make it evil. Just because a farmer is farming outside of their town doesn't mean it shouldn't be counted to farmer. The point of resource is to provide for players without cluttering or destroying the towny server. It should be providing for farmer as well. But if it does remain as limited to town, I propose that the jobs should be renamed "Serf". It would certainly be more suited for the role it is given. Not farming, but specifically working the fields for the lord.
Job Imbalances
Several jobs are hugely unbalanced from what I have viewed. Pigmen farms still seem to be incredibly prominent, which could be due to the fact that three jobs can make profit directly off of farming them, (unless they are already dedicated to wastelands only), soldier, monsterhunter, and treasurehunter, while another big money maker, enchanter, levels indirectly off of them. It's a thin line that divides preventing exploits with keeping the game appealing to all. Jobs can make too much money off of pigmen grinders, but alternatively, they are a vanilla minecraft method for enchanting gear and using mending effectively. None of the above three jobs should make any money in towny if they do, and enchanter needs a rework in some way to account for pigmen, without hurting those who want to play minecraft and not nerfniverse.
Several jobs are just inconsistent with how they give experience. Take gold for example. For blacksmith and inventor, many items take gold to produce, but they give inequal values. The best use of gold is to make light weighted pressure plates. Almost useless in uses, but great for experience, 3.5xp per ingot. Powered rails only provide 3.36xp per ingot, and it takes redstone too. Blacksmith is at least equal in it's own job, just bad in experience, providing only 2.5xp per ingot.
Too many jobs have too much overlap between them. This is shown in simple things such as both artisan and blacksmith getting experience for shears, buckets and minecarts, and then blacksmith and inventor for iron doors and iron trapdoors. Overlap in my opinion is nasty. Some entire jobs are just patchworks from other jobs. Hunter and monsterhunter have some crossover with hunter gaining money from headshots on monsters. Add in treasurehunter and now you gain experience for picking up their items too. To bring us to the most egregious sin here, the soldier job. It's useless for providing a unique job. I think it was grown from splitting jobs from their original jobs MaM jobs to what there is now. Each was split into two, and instead of builder becoming builder and demo, it just became monsterhunter and "fuck, I'm out of ideas, oh wait, just monsterhunter again". Fisherman is sort of a play from hunter as well, focusing specifically on the fishing aspect of hunter. At least rancher and hunter have the decency to be in separate worlds, each performing their roles adequately.
to be continued....
Farming Rant
While there are some exploits that should be obvious to players, others are not so much. I feel that I need to express my view on this. Jobs have a vast breadth to them, and the intent behind the jobs is not always carried through with it. Miner is pretty clear in this, but Demolitionist is not so much. It's meant to destroy structures, and this seems to apply to both player built and the fortresses generated by the game. However, it's possible to view it as an unintended strategy for Demolitionist to focus exclusively on pre-generated structures.
To take this further, I want to focus on the Farmer job. As it is, it's intended to only be used in towns, and the player is supposed to know this though the jobs info stating "town only" for the crops. This is from my perspective an unnecessary nerf on the job. Instead of allowing farmers to just farm, it has to be farming on specific land. Assuming that the reasoning behind this is because of the expansive land in wastelands, allowing you to utilize more land, you have to ask, will it always stop there? Minecraft defies gravity, you can build as high as 256 blocks up, suspended by nothing. I'd say that making a 50 story farming skyscraper yields more farmland than the 16x16 plot on the floor, so now that must be considered an exploit to build farms over other farms.
I have always viewed towns as a way to protect people's builds only. Growth has to be throttled to make room for other people however, so others can also build and protect their land. However, the role of the town is not only to protect people, but to cut them off at the kneecaps when trying to utilize land for things other than utility.
Yes it takes work to build a farm higher in a town, but it also takes work to establish a farm in the wastelands. And it's not without penalties already. Grief is fair-game and when it's reset any farmland is gone.
Alright, let's change gears a little bit here and focus on some other jobs: Miner, Arborist, and Excavator. All three of these jobs is usually leveled in the wastelands, clearing out caves, chopping trees, or tearing up deserts. However, they can also be leveled in towns. There are ores underneath the soil even in town. Certainly a limited amount, but they exist. Should it be limited only to the town due to the fact of more land to mined being available in the wastelands? This applies equally to excavator, less dirt than stone, but dirt gives more experience anyways. So should it be limited only to town. Arborist even more than the others, it's resources are replenishable, it should certainly fall into the same category as farmer! As a note here, miner is listed as wilderness only, but works in town.
Just because a job is capable of being leveled in a way others don't level does not make it evil. Just because a farmer is farming outside of their town doesn't mean it shouldn't be counted to farmer. The point of resource is to provide for players without cluttering or destroying the towny server. It should be providing for farmer as well. But if it does remain as limited to town, I propose that the jobs should be renamed "Serf". It would certainly be more suited for the role it is given. Not farming, but specifically working the fields for the lord.
Job Imbalances
Several jobs are hugely unbalanced from what I have viewed. Pigmen farms still seem to be incredibly prominent, which could be due to the fact that three jobs can make profit directly off of farming them, (unless they are already dedicated to wastelands only), soldier, monsterhunter, and treasurehunter, while another big money maker, enchanter, levels indirectly off of them. It's a thin line that divides preventing exploits with keeping the game appealing to all. Jobs can make too much money off of pigmen grinders, but alternatively, they are a vanilla minecraft method for enchanting gear and using mending effectively. None of the above three jobs should make any money in towny if they do, and enchanter needs a rework in some way to account for pigmen, without hurting those who want to play minecraft and not nerfniverse.
Several jobs are just inconsistent with how they give experience. Take gold for example. For blacksmith and inventor, many items take gold to produce, but they give inequal values. The best use of gold is to make light weighted pressure plates. Almost useless in uses, but great for experience, 3.5xp per ingot. Powered rails only provide 3.36xp per ingot, and it takes redstone too. Blacksmith is at least equal in it's own job, just bad in experience, providing only 2.5xp per ingot.
Too many jobs have too much overlap between them. This is shown in simple things such as both artisan and blacksmith getting experience for shears, buckets and minecarts, and then blacksmith and inventor for iron doors and iron trapdoors. Overlap in my opinion is nasty. Some entire jobs are just patchworks from other jobs. Hunter and monsterhunter have some crossover with hunter gaining money from headshots on monsters. Add in treasurehunter and now you gain experience for picking up their items too. To bring us to the most egregious sin here, the soldier job. It's useless for providing a unique job. I think it was grown from splitting jobs from their original jobs MaM jobs to what there is now. Each was split into two, and instead of builder becoming builder and demo, it just became monsterhunter and "fuck, I'm out of ideas, oh wait, just monsterhunter again". Fisherman is sort of a play from hunter as well, focusing specifically on the fishing aspect of hunter. At least rancher and hunter have the decency to be in separate worlds, each performing their roles adequately.
to be continued....
