Lets discuss NEXUS, INFLATION and WHY LC IS BAD!

[Man of Respect 5471]

    INTRODUCTION

        One or two years ago, I fought constantly on the forums for the removal of Nexus. Influential nation heads, regular players and a lot of other people aimed for an end to Nexus, constantly bringing up the matter each month, until, per player pressure and forum ****-talking, it got removed. Several players were feeling and still feel accomplished, with an almost even positioning against the end of Nexus (roughly 30-50% as far as I remember).

 

    WHAT IS NEXUS

        Nexus is a custom crafting plugin that involved custom recipes which encompassed both crafting time and skill points. These skill points could be earned by doing things that involves your proffession, such as crafting a large amount of items or gathering resources. Each player was restricted normally by 4 to 5 profession slots, which involved your primary, secondary and bonus slot, which could be acquired by playing roughly for 250 hours with a persona. Most races used to have a crafting bonus for specific resources, such as wood elves getting a bonus of 30% more experience for crafting items related to woodworking (bows) and having their racial set by default to woodworking as well, but some races also had minus profficiency to some select professions, which meant they could have -20% on a specific function that they could do, such as ologs having -20% on enchanting and tinkering.

 

        As you progressed through your profession by gathering resources or crafting, you could gain more experience. What this did was:

• For mining and lumberjacking, the player started with Mining Fatigue I. It was a large hassle to do mining or removing buildings that involved wood logs, specially arenas. If a single block in an arena was a stone or wood block, you would get mining fatigue for a brief moment. But once you hit a certain point, the mining fatigue is removed, and eventually as you go on, you can get up to Haste II on your tools for mining and clearing trees. It was necessary atleast 350.000 points on the profession to get Haste, which was Legendary, and each dark oak log yielded a custom amount that went roughly from 6 to 9 experience, but to get to dark oak logs, it was necessary to harvest either birch or oak planks, which had ~2 to 4 experience while you need 70.000 to harvest either acacia or dark oak logs.
• For cooking, you could craft food that had a time to expire and also stronger, PvP oriented food, such as golden apples (not the god apple) or Haggis, that gave you back 5 food points and 12 saturation (which I don't recall exactly what it was for). If you did not have cooking, you were restricted to bad food that quickly expired, which was stale bread (1.5 hunger). If you wanted something actual, you'd need to buy the bread (2.5, default) that can expire after a set time and the shop never gets refilled most of the time. Higher leveled chefs were able to create food that could last longer and more expensive (but better) food.
• Fishing was ******* insane. It was incredibly time consuming but at 350.000 experience you could get a grappling hook. You could pay 10$ for a skill re-spec and throw all your points into fishing for a grappling hook that can get you over any defense. I got an entire raiding party multiple times over the enemy walls. And these grappling hooks were cheap since they were fishing rods... yeah.
• Blacksmithing gave your swords a damage boost which increased as you went through with your experience. Armor also had a slow but it was reduced as you progressed. Some chest pieces had 23% slow, and the full set gave you roughly around 40%, while someone with a large amount of points into blacksmithing (1.000.000, but 350.000 was acceptable to most people) had somewhere around 15% for the full set. Every competent nation had a blacksmith. The issue with blacksmithing is that it was time consuming and required large amounts of resources until you could reach your objective.
• Alchemy gave you the extra firepower that, if combined with diamond armor, could overpower entire armies of poorly geared soldiers. Strenght, jump, speed, health and hand grenades (alchemist fire). Or maybe arrows that either reduced the hunger of the enemy, gave them slow or damaged greatly their armor?
• Enchanting took large amounts of time and sometimes you could get a level two enchantment that was not combat related. But giving Protection and Sharpness I to your entire nation was a challenge but it gave a huge edge over the enemy.
• Woodworking could give you bows that gave roughly around 60% arrow speed and you could two-shot people with armor from leatherworking, which increased your arrow damage in exchange for your defense. The highest armor percentage I've calculated was 52% extra bow damage; add it with a Power I bow and armor-piercing arrows
• Breeding was able to operate miracles on its early stages with 20 blocks per second horses. You were able to do 1v10's with a horse and proper terrain just by kiting people around with one of these horses. They also had large amounts of health.

 

tl;dr

For crafting, profession level by default reduced crafting time.

For gathering professions, specifically wood and stone, higher levels gave you Haste II.

It was disbalanced in certain aspects.

 

    ECONOMY ON NEXUS vs AXIOS

The way that money used to get inside with Nexus was either by selling iron or wood on CT and by voting, which could give you roughly up to 500 or 300 minas per week. The prices on CT set a minium so iron or wood would drop down below that point. You could sell it to other players because they were actually looking for these resources so they can craft items. Everyone needed the gatherers, and they were few, specially the ones willing to contribute to their nation. This is roughly how economy currently works from my point of view:

 

Keep in mind that Nexus is not a map but a plugin. Monkbread also existed when Nexus existed.

 

In both cases:

Iron supply is high and infinite

They both promote PvP (explained after these topics)

 

    A THEORY

The differences for NEXUS

• When Nexus was in place, LC existed. This removed the need for building resources since you could pay for them instead of having someone grind resources for you, but you still did need minas to buy said resources. This gave higher value to minas. You couldn't simply inject minas in the economy by doing a daily activity that requires a small amount of time. Thus, resource demand was usually low.
• Iron demand was higher because:
  • Tools; iron tools could be used and enchanted just like a diamond tool although diamonds were much higher in demand and you could acquire one roughly for ~20 minas.
  • Iron armor
    • Repairing was also possible, which increased the iron demand even further.
    • Although diamond armor began to exist at a certain point, iron armor was much more affordable and cheaper than diamond armor.
  • Horse armor (gold horse armor was better but some people still did iron armor for horses)
  • Pikes or lances constantly could break and involved a higher need for iron, specially since each one costed 3 iron and the crafting time.
  • Siege projectiles required large amounts of iron to be crafted
• Diamond was high on demand because:
  • Diamond armor was released for the playerbase at the ballin' cost of somewhere around 120.000 minas for all recipes at a later point of the map. Due to its high demand and the rarity of diamonds (which was less rare back then) and the different resources that were included into it alongside the obligation of requiring Protection I (unless you're stupid) raised the price of a full diamond was set to something around 12k. The amount of diamond sets alongside Prot I sets defined a nation's GDP.
  • Diamond tools were always high on demand. I even made a system for myself, which, by consequence, involved a few people, creating employement. I also compared it to the current system.
  • As far as I recall, certain weapons required diamonds (like the branches needed for making swords that are acquired from lumberjacking)
• Gold was high on demand because:
  • Horses used golden carrots to breed and you could also breed elite horses.
  • They could also use golden armor, which was superior to iron horse armor.
  • Golden apples took an entire day to be crafted and only lasted for roughly two days to a week. Orcs could still use them because they could eat expired food.

 

The differences for reduced VANILLA EXPERIENCE (currently LOTC)

We must also keep in mind that LotC is a Roleplay Server.

Reduced vanilla refer to no enchantments, limited gear and different ore spawn rates.

• Currently, there is no LC. This gives value to resources harvested by players and substantially increase their price, since there's a high demand and low supply in the market. Say, if there's a stack of logs in CT for 0.1 mina per log, wouldn't you instantly buy everything without a second thought if you needed it? Limited Creative does not provide an incentive for players to go out and gather resources, but rather, log in once a day and vote or go hunting and acquire everything you need within a day of constant grinding. By not implementing LC, you can get a nation or a playerbase that wants to build something greater to actually go out and get the resources by themselves or either buy them. The things that are the highest in demand are:
  • Feathers and flint
    • Feathers can be used to make arrows, but chicken breeding time is limited and egg spawning has been removed. Since arrows are constantly being used, their demand increases exponentially. Flint also takes time to acquire but nothing that can't be solved with a golden shovel from the Wonder Shop, that does not promote player trade and a demand for resources.
  • Dyes
    • Skeletons are rare these days, and to make dyes you obviously need bones. You can either buy bones or dyes from CT or from players, which, of course, Santegia sells them ?
  • Building materials
    • With freebuild, indepedent nations or tiles that were built upon often raise and go. This increases the demand for building materials, and since people can vote to get money, LC would remove the need to acquire people and go out harvesting resources for the nation.
  • Steak and pork
    • Steak and pork are the strongest PvP food because it gives you 4 hunger points. This increases its demand.
• The trade that happens the most and moves the most of the money around is:
  • Roleplay items that are either:
    • Overpriced
      • Overpriced roleplay items will go for absurd prices, such as 2000 to 10000 for even the most simple things, but the acquisitive power of people is so high that these items get sold off.
    • Roleplay item for roleplay item
      • Minas are so low in value or use that the money itself loses power, which promotes trading a roleplay item for another roleplay item.
  • Wonder Shop items
    • The ultimate goal of the wonder shop items is of either PvP or aesthetic items, but all of them can be also acquired by voting.
  • War
    • The most necessary money sink is currently war. If there's no war, money loses even further its value. But iron armor comes out so cheap in most cases (Around 60 minas a set with the current iron price) that you can simply vote and acquire gear for the war provided there's a place to buy it from. A lot of people also have immense amounts of stocked money that were earned through voting or selling iron, but around half or most of it comes normally from voting or hunting plugin, which, the most decent ones should net you more than 2k per hour.
• Iron is cheap because
  • The wonder shop provides players with special tools by sinking their money into somewhere else, the void, no one, flushhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Such does not promote player-to-player trading at the start but can be used to acquire ores or building materials at a much faster rate.
  • Iron armor is cheap and only the most incompetent player groups aren't able to fully supply their part of the rally with basic gear that does not include a bow. Yes, if you're a nation or group leader and you can't supply your own nation, maybe you should get your players to go mining and make a nation vault to not be so incompetent. Or do it by yourself.
    • The only way that an iron set could possibly go away is by lack of repairing, being great in PvP to never die or grinding with the hunting plugin, which is a low risk and high reward thing in most of the cases.
  • Iron is infinite on supply and low on demand because you can instantly spawn in money with no effort to buy it, which reduces its price.
• Gold is low on demand because
  • Its only use is to make golden carrots or golden blocks for building, just like emeralds...
• Diamond has a low demand
  • Even if we can't enchant diamond armor, we can still make diamond tools or use diamond for roleplay (with some creativity), and they'll be much cheaper than the Shop of Wonders tools.

In other words, what is more rare and difficult to get while its necessary has its price raised, while other possibly important things are put down to the ground. There are probably flaws on this theory for both sides.

The lack of Nexus also promotes PvP, since people can spend very little on a full set for raiding/banditry, and the guard force is put on an also equal gear, which then comes down to how well people can PvP and command people around (?)

 

    THE ISSUES WITH NEXUS

 

        Nexus was highly unpopular amongst the playerbase due to its time comsuption characteristic. The main argument was that it was time consuming and people didn't have time to go and roleplay, which meant that they were struck down to a daily activity of going forth, harvesting resources or crafting and preparing for war. I mean, money wins wars in Nexus. If you can afford to give all of your players a full diamond set for raiding and warclaims, wouldn't you be an unstoppable force or atleast one that can crush insignificant playerbases such as the druids or elves? It's a system that pays off your time spent grinding to the ultimate goal of PvP. If you can set up a situation where everyone grinds to acquire wealth for the nation, wouldn't the nation (well managed) be able to provide people with gear?

       Unless you want to PvP or defend your nation, you didn't necessarily need to grind.

 

        But at the same time Nexus was unbalanced because of its varying and armor weapon %'s. Starting or weaker groups had little chance against larger groups because it was an immense difference of gear power (?)

        It was also restrictive regarding building materials because you needed woodworkers to get even the most simple building materials. Stale bread was also a hassle (?)

 

 ---

Sort of tl;dr

Inflation is created because money has no value; there's little to no player-to-player trade; Nexus created a healthy economy

 

I got tired of typing, lets argue so I can expand on the topic.

Please don't post "-1" or be passive agressive or "NEXUS WAS REALLY BAD" because that's not cool ?

 

edit: Its Atlas, not Axios, sry

[Pinochet 356]

i appreciate the concern on the local minecraft economy, but i'd much rather have systems be put in place that we're inspired by nexus in the current version as it is rather then a whole reintroduction to the system

[Raomir 1855]

LoTC’s problem is that both systems promote PvP yet PvP is so restricted.

[ShIXTank 95]

Bring Nexus back!!!

It was ruined when Diamond Armors were added

[L0rdLawyer 2272]

Nexus was never a problem as I have said since you fools protested it. The issue was nexus skills and pvp items that teegah added with kowamans support. Nexus was amazing. Nexus skills was terrible.

[wolfdwg 2677]

Just give a watered down version if nexus crafting and I'd be fine, never truly wanted to see nexus gone.

[Man of Respect 5471]

Just now, L0fi said:

Just give a watered down version if nexus crafting and I'd be fine, never truly wanted to see nexus gone.

You used to enchant a few stuff for me as far as I recall, so lit 

[Unwillingly 18096]

Honestly I liked Nexus too. I'd like to see it come back, but balanced so that things aren't too hard to get. Professions were cool too. It made RP immersive. Now it just feels like vanilla minecraft, really.

[Britannicvs 2508]

Nexus crafting and professions back? Yes. Timers or Energy system? NO

[Pond 1069]

+1, bring back Nexus (and pvp buff)

[Security_ 2287]

I don't think too many people hated all of Nexus, most of its problems (from what I've seen) was the professions, which would keep people grinding rather than RPing. The crafting was great and added a lot of flavor to the server. It'd be nice to reintroduce nexus, but without professions it'd be difficult to regulate how items are created, but yeah bring back Nexus

[Fishy 2709]

The issue is resource inflation not the lack of a skills plugin. There is no scarcity in the economy and resources such as iron can be extracted ad infinitum for free from public sources. This is why the average iron price is roughly 1-3 minas and also why it never went above 10 minas for all of Nexus' implementation. 

 

On another note, Nexus was one of the most horrid experiences for player involvement due to the excessive amounts of grinding it required to even achieve a competitive level. While I didn't particularly dislike things such as pikes, lances, and the pets plugin, the complexity the plugin introduced was unnecessary. If any plugin that modifies crafting is made, it should purely add on to rather than restrict the crafting system.

[Chimp 528]

Do what you did with the war rules, get a bunch of people in a discord to give their input and tweak the new nexus with the feedback given so that most people are happy with what is implemented.

[argonian 14254]

There is no inflation. Inflation is rising price of goods, right now we have 1 mina iron. 

[Lark 2227]

You don't want nexus back.

 

What you do want are

 

The ability to sell resources to CT for money, which is good.

Being able to independently make RP items with cool fancy bells and whistles, which is nice

Something to grind, to break RP, which is also nice

 

I'm sure there are a few more things but those are things I too would like to see back as well. But honestly, the server is in a decent place right now. Give it time and trust in the coders to bring us some cool stuff