Implemented Island level algorithm

When the leaderboard feature first came out, Drogo played with it for a while. Essentially Drogo just created a huge block of ice that placed him on top of the leaderboards. Then the value of ice was dropped and so did Drogo’s position on the leaderboard.
Today, people still look to find the easiest to source block of high enough value to warrant farming and building huge slabs of it. At the moment it seems to be slimeblocks and Drogo sees players building huge slabs of these currently. No doubt the value of these will be dropped soon.
Drogo's suggestion to counter this is to have the value of each block diminish as they make a up a higher percentage of the total block count. The following algorithm should work.

BlockXValue=BlockXBaseValue * (#AllBlocks - #BlockX)/#AllBlocks

Or Lz’s equivalent but but more mathematically elegant formula.

BlockXValue = (1 - #BlockX/#AllBlocks) * BlockXBaseValue

Where:
BlockXValue = Final value of block type X
BlockXBaseValue = Current value of block type X
#AllBlocks = Total of all blocks on island
#BlockX = Total of block type X

This will continue to reward people for blocks of high value and larger islands, but will also reward people for variability of block type which Drogo thinks, will give the leaderboard the intended function of rewarding beautiful builds rather than hunks of high value blocks.
Essentially a huge hunk of only one block type will be worthless but people who have built using many different block types will be rewarded.

 

I just visit second place island and see they are adding very much slimeblock too. Want 1st spot

 

I really like this idea, but what about diamonds is someone is placing pure diamond blocks there level will decrease per block when it is a block that isn’t easily obtained

 

if your island is nothing but diamond blocks then yes , you’re island level will be low.

IF you have thousands of blocks on you’re island like all of those at the top of the leaderboards and place 100 diamond blocks then the final value of them won’t change change much at all.

 

If it works as expected it probably won’t make any difference to the current leaderboards and Haberson should still be on top. But as TheKraken pointed out, second place is boosting their island level by taking advantage of the system as it is currently, just as Drogo did when it was first implemented. Drogo did this knowing he was just being cheeky and that it wouldn’t last.

 

This is one of the best suggestions I've seen in a very long time.

 

Drogo just took a look around some of the top islands and is now not so sure what change this will make to the leaderboards if implemented.
Using x-ray to see slimeblocks, Drogo saw massive amounts of them being used to boost island level. We're talking like half a million slimeblocks on one island alone! Drogo didn't realise this was being done so extensively.

When Drogo did this with ice, he did so pretty much knowing they would change its value and they did.

 

Yea people will place large amounts of ugly blocks just to boost levels. Leeeroieee maybe its something to be looked at?

 

Drogo suspects this will be an easy change to make and given the work that was done to put this feature in place initially, it will be well worth doing. It will open leaderboards up to people who want to put real effort into creating nice islands.

Drogo suspects this practice of building huge solid chunks of blocks may have just started with one person, then others took it up just to remain competitive and doing the same was the only real way to do so.

 

I don't play on skyblock anymore but remember people building mass block slabs, just looks ugly and gets you on top place. Love this idea. Should encourage creativity. Full Support!

 

Support. It would really great to see beautiful islands built by varieties of blocks instead of it being a huge cube/pyramid of 1 block thus making it ugly.

 

Support, seeing islands with 50k+ slime blocks is boring.

 

This spreadsheet sums up how it would work. The values and block quantities are arbitrary but you can see by having and island that is 94% slime blocks will drop the block value from 5 to 0.3. They still make up a large part of the final island level but not to the point that it’s worth exploiting. All other block types have their value pretty much unchanged.
Island level/block value - Google Sheets

 

Support. I lost my top island in economy because of this. I don’t play econ anymore tho but still....

 

Drogo took a look below the second place island to where there is a mass of slime blocks and things became very laggy.
Not sure if it's just me so can someone else please see how it goes for them. Drogo has seen forum threads discussing lag caused by large chunks of slimeblocks. Not sure if it has something to do with them being transparent so that blocks behind have to be rendered, If so, it might just be local lag?

 

Drogo is now in the process of rebuilding his island and would like to have a crack at the leaderboards by producing a very nice island. Drogo is looking to spend several DC's of grass on this endeavor but knows that it is not possible unless he spends hours/days placing slimeblocks. Drogo will not be doing this!

The leaderboards was a terrific feature that was added to the game that encouraged people to build wonderful islands. It adds to the game of skyblock, something else for all players to work towards and improves the server itself if it can showcase wonderful creations. Drogo doesn't believe it functions in the way it was intended as and hopes his suggestion is an easy fix to bring back to the game, something that the development team obviously put some hours/days of work towards initially.

 

Could the /leaderboards potentially be judged by players, being able to up-vote/ down-vote islands? Could get nasty but just a suggestion.

 

Of those that would bother to judge/rate, there are some with quite a few alts and close followers that would most likely make that an unfair system.
Additionally it would be easy to buy ratings from greenies for grass. Drogo thinks the current system with his suggested change would be the fairest system.