NOTE: My goal of this post is not to shade or attack the developers and admins that worked on the skyblock reset. I have seen first hand how they work their asses off to keep this server running and having the best for its players. Criticism is needed for change to happen and I would like to show my opinion in a positive and respectful manner. If you disagree with something I have said please reply to this thread.
Introduction
I wanted to start off with a brief introduction. For all of you who don't know my name is Mike, I was a skyblock mod around 6 months and mod+ for another 6 months before retiring mid june of this year due to irl commitments. While I was staff I became very knowledgable of the gamemode along with being involved with the community. I am creating this post to share my first impressions of the new skyblock season and hopefully sum up the viewpoints of the community in one post.
First comments
My goal is to be completely honest so i have to say i am pretty disappointed with the current state of the gamemode. Logging on for the first time around a month into the season i expected to see many players grinding actively to get even the smallest amounts of money and the gamemode not to be infested with alts making passive money for top players. This however was not the case seeing top players with BILLIONS, yes with a B i was also amazed within the first MONTH of the season along with afking with alts to be the front runner in money making methods. This is even worse than the previous season where farming was atleast the most profitable for the first month before spawners took over. Checking out the worlds I love the way that they are set up and think they are a great addition to the season. I think that ranks and prestiges are also a nice addition for f2p players hoping to get a rank with cubits.
Worlds
As I have said in my first comments I think worlds were a step in the right direction from the slayer regions we had last season. I love the ability to gain money and mana through pve and passive mining/woodcutting. i have not looked at or seen all of the legendary rewards from the worlds but a suggestion i had from last season that I feel would still apply to this season is to add some sort of salvaging npc that allows you to salvage extra legendary drops for an x amount of souls would be nice to make them all have atleast some worth to them. I think worlds are very unique and fun which makes manacube skyblock stand out from other skyblock servers. Another thing I think would help is having a lot of smaller maybe untextured mobs scattered around the worlds that drop minimal items but fill in the sort of empty space in the large worlds
Economy
Oh lord where do I start with this. It is clear that manacube has always had an issue with economy and balance to gamemodes. This seasons economy is the worst we have ever seen despite attempts to nerf many of the main money making methods. The reason behind this is because it was already too late. These changes, nerfs and balancing need to happen in the beta of the new season. Making 100m in 2 days within the first week from something as simple as bamboo farms is just unacceptable. I have said this before and I will say it forever that we need longer staff, qa, elite and ranked betas. Currently the longest complete beta that I have been a part of is 2 days. We need beta with fully completed features for in my opinion 5-10 days to completely work out a stable economy and bugs that are due to come up. It is really sad to see all of the work put in by the admins and devs to go almost unappreciated by the amount an item sells for making players speed through all early ways of playing the gamemode to immediately hitting the brick wall of afking spawners and alts.
2 other threads I enjoyed reading and completely agree with about economy related things.
https://manacube.com/threads/sell-chest-duration.72598/
https://manacube.com/threads/nerfing.73088/#post-266539
Crates
I understand that the server needs to make money in order to stay running and pay all of its admins/devs who work hard on the server and that Dacon (I guess now also Pizza) will at the end of the day need to make the decisions that will most benefit their business and I respect it. They have built this company for years and know how to keep it running. But I also feel more compromises can be taken to help make crates be more of a small boost for top players that are willing to spend money to compete rather than game changers. I asked one of the top players how their island got to their position on the leaderboard and they said that it was mostly from keys and items gained from the crates. I will keep them anonymous but when I asked if they found bosses or other features like that interesting he said that he doesn't do them because the money he would make from them doesn't even compare to the money he already has. The crates have basically ruined their skyblock experience due to the only way of competing being to purchase them.
Suggestions
In my opinion the skyblock gamemode would benefit the most and remain balanced for a longer time is to shift progression of players and islands from the quality and quantity of spawners to worlds and gear to take part in the worlds. By having 8-10 different worlds of increasing difficulty and profits only the most active players will be able to hold a leaderboard spot and will need to continue playing to hold this spot. This doesn't mean that spawners will just not exist, but the money gained from them will have little to no impact when compared to the money gained from the worlds.
These worlds would also have restriction required to access them whether its a custom item crafted from rare drops on the previous worlds or skills like Slayer and Gatherer that are increased by killing mobs found in the worlds or collecting resources from the world. These are just some ideas on how to make the worlds the main focus of the gamemode.
My final suggestion is a fix to what I believe is the main reason why every time the servers economy gets flooded way too quickly. All seasons that we have played focus on the purchasing of items directly from the shop such as spawners which takes money out of the overall economy of the server, but not long later gets paid off and creates an infinite source of inflation to the economy. I am not used to this seasons economy yet so I will use last seasons as an example. A stack of iron golem spawners cost around 250m . That means 9 stacks which is the amount that can be afked by one alt account would be 2.25b. These 9 stacks of spawners makes around 50m an hour meaning that in just 45 hours, the spawners would repay for themselves and provide the owner with infinite profit coming directly from console.
To counter this, players need to spend their money between each other on items that will boost their active grinding like better armor, weapons, abilities, stats etc, rather than afk money making methods like spawners. Currently we have almost none of these items that are gained through active grinding methods that are worth a lot of money and have a high demand from the players. We need more custom items and crafting that are needed by other players to progress. Like an upgrade to a sword that would give the slightest damage boost to slayer mobs or like i said previously, a custom item crafted from rare drops on the previous worlds that is required to gain access to new worlds. These would take time and effort to acquire and will have a high price on the market for other players who maybe dont want to grind that item specifically and just choose to purchase it.
Introduction
I wanted to start off with a brief introduction. For all of you who don't know my name is Mike, I was a skyblock mod around 6 months and mod+ for another 6 months before retiring mid june of this year due to irl commitments. While I was staff I became very knowledgable of the gamemode along with being involved with the community. I am creating this post to share my first impressions of the new skyblock season and hopefully sum up the viewpoints of the community in one post.
First comments
My goal is to be completely honest so i have to say i am pretty disappointed with the current state of the gamemode. Logging on for the first time around a month into the season i expected to see many players grinding actively to get even the smallest amounts of money and the gamemode not to be infested with alts making passive money for top players. This however was not the case seeing top players with BILLIONS, yes with a B i was also amazed within the first MONTH of the season along with afking with alts to be the front runner in money making methods. This is even worse than the previous season where farming was atleast the most profitable for the first month before spawners took over. Checking out the worlds I love the way that they are set up and think they are a great addition to the season. I think that ranks and prestiges are also a nice addition for f2p players hoping to get a rank with cubits.
Worlds
As I have said in my first comments I think worlds were a step in the right direction from the slayer regions we had last season. I love the ability to gain money and mana through pve and passive mining/woodcutting. i have not looked at or seen all of the legendary rewards from the worlds but a suggestion i had from last season that I feel would still apply to this season is to add some sort of salvaging npc that allows you to salvage extra legendary drops for an x amount of souls would be nice to make them all have atleast some worth to them. I think worlds are very unique and fun which makes manacube skyblock stand out from other skyblock servers. Another thing I think would help is having a lot of smaller maybe untextured mobs scattered around the worlds that drop minimal items but fill in the sort of empty space in the large worlds
Economy
Oh lord where do I start with this. It is clear that manacube has always had an issue with economy and balance to gamemodes. This seasons economy is the worst we have ever seen despite attempts to nerf many of the main money making methods. The reason behind this is because it was already too late. These changes, nerfs and balancing need to happen in the beta of the new season. Making 100m in 2 days within the first week from something as simple as bamboo farms is just unacceptable. I have said this before and I will say it forever that we need longer staff, qa, elite and ranked betas. Currently the longest complete beta that I have been a part of is 2 days. We need beta with fully completed features for in my opinion 5-10 days to completely work out a stable economy and bugs that are due to come up. It is really sad to see all of the work put in by the admins and devs to go almost unappreciated by the amount an item sells for making players speed through all early ways of playing the gamemode to immediately hitting the brick wall of afking spawners and alts.
2 other threads I enjoyed reading and completely agree with about economy related things.
https://manacube.com/threads/sell-chest-duration.72598/
https://manacube.com/threads/nerfing.73088/#post-266539
Crates
I understand that the server needs to make money in order to stay running and pay all of its admins/devs who work hard on the server and that Dacon (I guess now also Pizza) will at the end of the day need to make the decisions that will most benefit their business and I respect it. They have built this company for years and know how to keep it running. But I also feel more compromises can be taken to help make crates be more of a small boost for top players that are willing to spend money to compete rather than game changers. I asked one of the top players how their island got to their position on the leaderboard and they said that it was mostly from keys and items gained from the crates. I will keep them anonymous but when I asked if they found bosses or other features like that interesting he said that he doesn't do them because the money he would make from them doesn't even compare to the money he already has. The crates have basically ruined their skyblock experience due to the only way of competing being to purchase them.
Suggestions
In my opinion the skyblock gamemode would benefit the most and remain balanced for a longer time is to shift progression of players and islands from the quality and quantity of spawners to worlds and gear to take part in the worlds. By having 8-10 different worlds of increasing difficulty and profits only the most active players will be able to hold a leaderboard spot and will need to continue playing to hold this spot. This doesn't mean that spawners will just not exist, but the money gained from them will have little to no impact when compared to the money gained from the worlds.
These worlds would also have restriction required to access them whether its a custom item crafted from rare drops on the previous worlds or skills like Slayer and Gatherer that are increased by killing mobs found in the worlds or collecting resources from the world. These are just some ideas on how to make the worlds the main focus of the gamemode.
My final suggestion is a fix to what I believe is the main reason why every time the servers economy gets flooded way too quickly. All seasons that we have played focus on the purchasing of items directly from the shop such as spawners which takes money out of the overall economy of the server, but not long later gets paid off and creates an infinite source of inflation to the economy. I am not used to this seasons economy yet so I will use last seasons as an example. A stack of iron golem spawners cost around 250m . That means 9 stacks which is the amount that can be afked by one alt account would be 2.25b. These 9 stacks of spawners makes around 50m an hour meaning that in just 45 hours, the spawners would repay for themselves and provide the owner with infinite profit coming directly from console.
To counter this, players need to spend their money between each other on items that will boost their active grinding like better armor, weapons, abilities, stats etc, rather than afk money making methods like spawners. Currently we have almost none of these items that are gained through active grinding methods that are worth a lot of money and have a high demand from the players. We need more custom items and crafting that are needed by other players to progress. Like an upgrade to a sword that would give the slightest damage boost to slayer mobs or like i said previously, a custom item crafted from rare drops on the previous worlds that is required to gain access to new worlds. These would take time and effort to acquire and will have a high price on the market for other players who maybe dont want to grind that item specifically and just choose to purchase it.
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