Treshure

Abandon the mina system and let players figure out a physical currency to barter with. Let voting mina be converted to a small selection of materials (iron, gold, etc). If you want to control for the amount of currently available physical currency, limit the amounts mined in the mine world/overworld, depending on how you're running it. Any attempt at a real economy is just going to be another flip to players complaining that this shit is too hard, that they hop on to roleplay and not to grind, etc etc. Minecraft is a resource abundant game, so the effort to instill "realism" will also change how people interact with the game in a noticeably negative way. Just model the economy towards behaviors that are conducive to roleplay. If you're transferring tons of iron as a payment from city to city, for instance, have it so that a large amount at one time weighs down the player and requires a mule/military escort. Set up opportunities for bandit ambushes. I dunno. I think the huge problem is that voting for the server is such an essential activity that there may never be enough of a mina sink to counter it. At the least, physical currency can be easily forgotten about, robbed, or despawned after death. Certainly more so if you stop propping up currency with an NPC banking system that is artificially secure. We've been at this for many, many years. Too little results by playing things too carefully. Just go wacky and see if you can make something work in the spirit of making conducive roleplay.

A Petraman claps. "WE COME FROM CROWS! KAWKAW!"

Summed it up as best as could be. @SquakHawk My harping on intuitive & effortless design has gotten worn and tired at this point, but I think it's worth bringing up again in this conversation. @Lojo613 and @Srihit the solutions on the nail - grant players maximal freedom and use plugins to deal with the fallout as much as feasibly possible. Every step we remove from the roleplaying process is another foot into the bureaucratic, out-of-character meat grinder. The reason we hold organic, free-build projects like the Fringe or the Whispering Crossroads in high regard (or any regard at all) is because of the free spirit of roleplay they embodied and thrived within. Nobody remembers build quality. Everyone remembers the experience. I think it's important to question the paradigm used to make decisions in map design. I believe that instead of trying to perfect a system that players can exist within, it is more important to design a system that relies and thrives upon player-led interaction. In praxis, this would look something akin to a map without pre-builds or even roads. Players would be encouraged to stake their claim, and Story Team members would lurk in the dangerous corners of a still unexplored map. Without the creation of a perfect "present" of a map ready for players to consume, players will actively be thrown into the mix to shape the landscape and story of the map. Staff resources would be directed to designing a map in size, story, and geography that would facilitate the most roleplay and engage the player with their environment. This is in essence a completely different approach, but I think it merits some discussion.

I'm digging the way you're using plugins to overcome the need for manual moderation. Tech Team has been putting out some solid shit - thank you for all that coding.

A faint creak had alerted Nob to the four legged intruder - his old hound, come through the backdoor and snaking past the aged farmer. Nob pulled open the door that the dog had crept between, and with it he was met the vastness of the setting sun. Where the sun had left, shadows now draped, and the entire country now held a soft twilight purple before all would sink away. That old farmer smiled and thumbed his tape recorder.

case in point

LotC has been suffering crab mentality surrounding Discord for a very long time. We continuously thought that it couldn't get worse after everyone shuttled into their Teamspeaks circa 2013, but that has been proven against again and again since then. Discord has got to go.

The transparency is always refreshing. I think that direct intervention can only be justified once. It would be far more preferable and less disruptive to smooth out a system that Iviarelle's group could have fallen back on. You might recall me arguing about this earlier with Narthok's rebellion and their subsequent lack of anywhere to go. I think this is just a learning moment for designing around behavior. Our systems have to reflect how roleplay naturally plays out, including the recurring scenario of rebels having a cause without a home. There are of course more issues at hand, but I believe they can be addressed in the same manner.

The Wayward Druid smiles in a lost, distant grave.

Not sure where this warped view of elven aging has come from. The precedent that I thought was universally known is that an Elf physically matures identical to a Human by reaching adulthood at 18, and I've been roleplaying elves for 9 years. The only difference is that an Elf just does not physically age afterwards. It appears to me that you're trying to conflate wisdom with maturity. What you should really ask is whether or not we should ban eighteen year old Humans from romance RPing with Elves. If an Elf can live to ten times the span of a Human, should Humans be able to romance them at all? Now you see how the waters get muddy. Elves are superhuman, so they are taking our traditional idea of what is enough to be an "adult" and stacking on top of that. That's why lots of people roleplay their elves as cold, stoic automatons; the idea of playing a centuries old immortal is literally beyond us. I think that this thinking is very proactive, but it swings a little too far in the other direction.