Hello everyone,
This is my first forums post so go easy on me but I'd like to talk about the current META on Skyblock and give some feedback on it.
First of, I want to say that I'm an experienced Skyblock player and I've been playing Skyblock on multiple server networks for the past 5 years. I've seen a lot of different sides to Skyblock and I also staffed on a big Skyblock server for quite a while. I'm just saying this so I don't look like a random guy that doesn't know much about Skyblock at all in the hope that this gets taken somewhat seriously.
So after the new release of Skyblock Season X I started playing this server and I started testing all the different money making methods. Bamboo came out on top so I started building a huge bamboo farm. After 3 days bamboo got nerfed into the ground. Instead of it growing 12-16 blocks It now grows only 5 blocks. This is a major nerf and I lost a lot of time because of this. I do get it though as bamboo was pretty good compared to all the other crops.
After this major bamboo nerf people started looking for the next best money making method. Because all crops were pretty balanced out it was pretty hard to find one until tonight. The admins decided to buff cactus to 3.5$ each. When I first got ahold of this change I thought It was a joke as but I soon found out the new skyblock META is now cactus. I don't have a problem with building a huge farm even though it can be pretty mind killing and It isn't the most exiting thing to build. I quickly got to work. After some nerfs, and buffs staff has come to the conclusion to balance cactus at a price of 2$ and to lower the growth speed.
Now that you have the backstory I'd like to get into the part where I give my opinion and my feedback followed by a few of my calculations. First of let's get into the issues I have with these cactus changes.
1. Cactus is P2W: Cactus farms on Manacube are only good if you use a sell chest and a chunk hopper. Which are both obtainable through the store, the cubit shop and crate keys. You might be able to win a few keys here and there but this mainly comes down to whoever has the most money to spend on the store to get the best equipment for these cactus farms. I get this might be good for business but I don't think people should have to rely on actual money to be able to compete or even make a decent amount of money on Skyblock. In the long run this also wont be good for business as you'll lose some players that can't keep up with everyone else because they only spend little to no amount of money, this'll make the server less active and with that less fun for the players that do spend a lot of money.
2. Cactus is AFK2WIN: As most of you probably already know, you need to AFK cactus for it to grow. You have to be anywhere on your island for it to grow on Manacube which I think is really nice but most people can't leave their MC and PC running all night to reach the maximum potential of their cactus farm.
This gives an advantage to experienced players with alts and CC (Console Client) eventhough these experienced already have a huge advantage, their experience.
I've been reading around on the forums and I've been talking to different staff members and I came to understand that the management of the server doesn't want a lot of automation and they especially don't want to make the server AFK2WIN. I think buffing cactus is a really strange decision when you look from this perspective as cactus is the most automated and AFKable crop/money making method out there apart from maybe spawners. I also personally don't think building cactus farms and then AFKing for the remaining time of the season is the most entertaining way to spend your time and some players will probably agree with me on that. Most AFK servers also drop in playercount over the course of the season from my experience but that could be different on Manacube as it's a less competitive server as im used to.
3. The season already released: I get that balancing the server is very important but making major changes after the release of the server like making cactus META out of nowhere for no reason at all is kind of unasked for if you ask me. I think these changes should be made pre-release and not a few days into the season when people already built different farms and made strategies based on different aspects of the server.
4. Calculations: As of right now cactus sells for 3.5$ and when you have a full chunk of cactus with a tier 2 sell chest + a chunk hopper you make around 10k per minute. This takes around 5-6 hours to build alone (some island have a lot of members so that reduces the time). This means you can get 14.4mil a day for the entire season as long as you afk for 5-6 hours of work if you're a solo player. This is extremely overpowered so if what I heard is right the price of cactus is going to get reduced to 3$ and the crop growth rate is going to get reduced. Now this might seem like a big change but if we do the same calculations taking in that the price of cactus gets reduced to 2$ It'll be 9.6mil a day. Even if the growth rate gets reduced by 30% you can still increase this back up by upgrading the growth rate of cactus by 30% in your /is upgrades. This is fairly easy to do and my guess is it would take around 10 hours for 1 person to max this island upgrade out completely leaving cactus at 9.6mil a day if it does get nerfed according to the playerbase.
Conclusion: 9.6mil a day for 5-6 hours of work as a solo if the price/growth rates even get reduced in the first place is absolutely out of the ordinary. I looked around and I already found someone with 8 full chunks of cactus while this change got made today. Even if he started building the cactus after the release which is very unlikely it took him 4 days to build 8 chunks. This means that soon everyone is going to have 10+ chunks making 96mil a day completely ruining everything else like the new /worlds a lot of developers worked on. Some big teams might even be able build up to 4-5 chunks a day. Soon we'll be at an economy where all that matters is AFKing and building cactus all day long which I think is mind-killing and boring. The server will be filled with alts and the server will be less active. Everything else will become irrelevant because cactus is better anyways.
I know some people wont agree with me and that's completely fine. I also get that people that already have a big cactus farm will try to say this thread is entirely false and some people might say I'm just bad for not having a cactus farm already but to defend myself I'd like to say that I'm a grinder. I have alts and I do spend money on the server so this Isn't just to save my own *ss. This might come across a bit harsh but I really enjoyed playing the server so far and it would be a shame to see the server go this way in my opinion.
I'd also like to apologize for any spelling mistakes I made as my native language isn't English. If you point them out to me I'll make sure to edit them out ( :
Sorry for this long chunk of text but I tried to explain everything in full detail.
Thanks for reading and have a great night,
-Nova (Npva#1931 on discord)
This is my first forums post so go easy on me but I'd like to talk about the current META on Skyblock and give some feedback on it.
First of, I want to say that I'm an experienced Skyblock player and I've been playing Skyblock on multiple server networks for the past 5 years. I've seen a lot of different sides to Skyblock and I also staffed on a big Skyblock server for quite a while. I'm just saying this so I don't look like a random guy that doesn't know much about Skyblock at all in the hope that this gets taken somewhat seriously.
So after the new release of Skyblock Season X I started playing this server and I started testing all the different money making methods. Bamboo came out on top so I started building a huge bamboo farm. After 3 days bamboo got nerfed into the ground. Instead of it growing 12-16 blocks It now grows only 5 blocks. This is a major nerf and I lost a lot of time because of this. I do get it though as bamboo was pretty good compared to all the other crops.
After this major bamboo nerf people started looking for the next best money making method. Because all crops were pretty balanced out it was pretty hard to find one until tonight. The admins decided to buff cactus to 3.5$ each. When I first got ahold of this change I thought It was a joke as but I soon found out the new skyblock META is now cactus. I don't have a problem with building a huge farm even though it can be pretty mind killing and It isn't the most exiting thing to build. I quickly got to work. After some nerfs, and buffs staff has come to the conclusion to balance cactus at a price of 2$ and to lower the growth speed.
Now that you have the backstory I'd like to get into the part where I give my opinion and my feedback followed by a few of my calculations. First of let's get into the issues I have with these cactus changes.
1. Cactus is P2W: Cactus farms on Manacube are only good if you use a sell chest and a chunk hopper. Which are both obtainable through the store, the cubit shop and crate keys. You might be able to win a few keys here and there but this mainly comes down to whoever has the most money to spend on the store to get the best equipment for these cactus farms. I get this might be good for business but I don't think people should have to rely on actual money to be able to compete or even make a decent amount of money on Skyblock. In the long run this also wont be good for business as you'll lose some players that can't keep up with everyone else because they only spend little to no amount of money, this'll make the server less active and with that less fun for the players that do spend a lot of money.
2. Cactus is AFK2WIN: As most of you probably already know, you need to AFK cactus for it to grow. You have to be anywhere on your island for it to grow on Manacube which I think is really nice but most people can't leave their MC and PC running all night to reach the maximum potential of their cactus farm.
This gives an advantage to experienced players with alts and CC (Console Client) eventhough these experienced already have a huge advantage, their experience.
I've been reading around on the forums and I've been talking to different staff members and I came to understand that the management of the server doesn't want a lot of automation and they especially don't want to make the server AFK2WIN. I think buffing cactus is a really strange decision when you look from this perspective as cactus is the most automated and AFKable crop/money making method out there apart from maybe spawners. I also personally don't think building cactus farms and then AFKing for the remaining time of the season is the most entertaining way to spend your time and some players will probably agree with me on that. Most AFK servers also drop in playercount over the course of the season from my experience but that could be different on Manacube as it's a less competitive server as im used to.
3. The season already released: I get that balancing the server is very important but making major changes after the release of the server like making cactus META out of nowhere for no reason at all is kind of unasked for if you ask me. I think these changes should be made pre-release and not a few days into the season when people already built different farms and made strategies based on different aspects of the server.
4. Calculations: As of right now cactus sells for 3.5$ and when you have a full chunk of cactus with a tier 2 sell chest + a chunk hopper you make around 10k per minute. This takes around 5-6 hours to build alone (some island have a lot of members so that reduces the time). This means you can get 14.4mil a day for the entire season as long as you afk for 5-6 hours of work if you're a solo player. This is extremely overpowered so if what I heard is right the price of cactus is going to get reduced to 3$ and the crop growth rate is going to get reduced. Now this might seem like a big change but if we do the same calculations taking in that the price of cactus gets reduced to 2$ It'll be 9.6mil a day. Even if the growth rate gets reduced by 30% you can still increase this back up by upgrading the growth rate of cactus by 30% in your /is upgrades. This is fairly easy to do and my guess is it would take around 10 hours for 1 person to max this island upgrade out completely leaving cactus at 9.6mil a day if it does get nerfed according to the playerbase.
Conclusion: 9.6mil a day for 5-6 hours of work as a solo if the price/growth rates even get reduced in the first place is absolutely out of the ordinary. I looked around and I already found someone with 8 full chunks of cactus while this change got made today. Even if he started building the cactus after the release which is very unlikely it took him 4 days to build 8 chunks. This means that soon everyone is going to have 10+ chunks making 96mil a day completely ruining everything else like the new /worlds a lot of developers worked on. Some big teams might even be able build up to 4-5 chunks a day. Soon we'll be at an economy where all that matters is AFKing and building cactus all day long which I think is mind-killing and boring. The server will be filled with alts and the server will be less active. Everything else will become irrelevant because cactus is better anyways.
I know some people wont agree with me and that's completely fine. I also get that people that already have a big cactus farm will try to say this thread is entirely false and some people might say I'm just bad for not having a cactus farm already but to defend myself I'd like to say that I'm a grinder. I have alts and I do spend money on the server so this Isn't just to save my own *ss. This might come across a bit harsh but I really enjoyed playing the server so far and it would be a shame to see the server go this way in my opinion.
I'd also like to apologize for any spelling mistakes I made as my native language isn't English. If you point them out to me I'll make sure to edit them out ( :
Sorry for this long chunk of text but I tried to explain everything in full detail.
Thanks for reading and have a great night,
-Nova (Npva#1931 on discord)
