Hello! I'm making this post as the activity on economy is decreasing and as little as three active members at once is not uncommon now. In the past, this was never the case and became a trend with the increasing entity counts and indicative TPS drops oscillating with redstone and physical light updates on the server. The production of expandable lag machines (farms going from y0 to max height) for minute profits is the major cause of this. I suggest adding a limit to the number of cactus and pumpkin stems, or even a dirt/sand limit. Adding a limit to something such as 30000 sand/grass total would be a major improvement and prevent the excessive farming that is taking place currently without affecting builders. Any change would be beneficial for people who want to enjoy their little free time in this fantastic game. Before the entity counts were reaching multi-thousands per clear-lag, we had below 200 (just like the skyblock server). The point at which this change occurred marked a turning point in the community of economy and is very indicative of a detrimental and unsustainable path the server is taking. Even with major performance improvements in the hardware of the server, the amount of lag still reaches the same TPS equilibrium due to the expansion of farms by players until the lag reaches a certain point. Thanks for your consideration. -vv
Indeed! Flowing does take water takes a lot of resources. Many members have been spreading awareness about flowing water, and with the dedicated staff we have working towards the betterment of the server it's become much less prominent. Pumpkin and cactus aren't inherently laggy in moderation. That said, the former (when built excessively) has a critical impact on the server due to the components required for its farming. Ignoring the indicative TPS oscillations from these massive farms (which can be used to track what type of farm is running and which user is running each), we still have an issue regarding entities. Infinitely expanding any mechanic in any game will cause major problems, the same applies to this style of farm. There is absolutely no reason to have 1500-2400 subchunks constantly loaded and updating. This issue should not be something that affects builders which is why I suggested such a high limit. I only hope to raise discussion on the topic and hopefully induce proper changes to improve the server. -vv
support this is a fantastic idea it accomplishes 3 things 1. lowers the excesive value of sand and grass 2. lowers inflation 3 brings greater value to quad island (yay)
low tps is very annoying but I think they should try incentive-based ways to return tps to normal before just implementing cold hard limits
TPS isn't the only consideration here, entity counts and player retention are being critically affected - especially with the entity counts being so high. The only incentive-based option as far as I'm aware would be to remove cactus and pumpkin from the shops altogether. That's not viable in my opinion as it would have a detrimental impact on new players and the concept economy as a whole. I don't see any potential for an incentive-based solution to these problems without a rework of economy at its core... I would love to hear other options but from where I stand limits are the easiest and best solution to prevent single users from loading 1500+ constantly updating sub-chunks. As I said earlier, there is absolutely no reason one person needs to consume so many server resources and generate such astronomical amounts of idle entities. -vv
I think this would be good, but at the same time, it wouldn't change anything. I forgot to add this before I posted. I look bad now. This isn't the main reason why there's heaps of server lag. Cactus yes, but pumpkins wouldn't have much of an effect. I had a chat with Crew a while ago, and he's looking at imposing piston limits, as most pistons are linked with slime blocks. This causes a large percentage of the lag on the server (not as much as flowing water, but it's up there), and is one of the main designs of many lag machines that are built on the servers affected by them... or in our case, farms. An example - I could compare something like this (refer to image below) to any decent pig grinder involving many observers, pistons, repeaters and above all else, slime blocks. (not my screenshot, and would be completely useless on our servers due to the redstone limiting plugin. While I do say this, and am comparing lag machines to pig grinders, people always find ways around limits and said few people really like to break them) I'm not going to mention names here but some of the main culprits are somewhat oblivious to the amount of lag they do cause - yes we all complain about it, but please, before complaining about it, do your research and make sure you aren't an issue first. Call a mod and clarify with them about this massive pumpkin farm you just built, it could be detrimental and will help you avoid punishment in the future. It also puts aside a lot of the flaming and arguing that results from these issues. There's always a less game-breaking way to make a farm, even if it doesn't generate as much revenue. I know you all care too much about your profits and my words will mean absolutely nothing to you, but please, the main responsibility lies on the players, not the owner. Why? Because Minecraft is a completely broken mess. 47 optimisation plugins later and noticable amounts of lag will still exist, bugs will still happen and things will still be broken, so if you genuinely care for the server, play your part and reduce your farm capacity, size, efficiency or even your entire farm design, as any small reduction of lag helps in the long run. I know we all play for the one objective of making money and building a cool island with that money, but we can all make our environment a better place at the same time.
Wanted to reply here as there have been multiple ideas circulating forums for how to help with ecos situation but before brining those up I’ll reply to the thread. For stem limits, I’m not opposed to an option like that. Although a middle ground number would have to be found as if we still allow to much then it’s pointless, and if it’s too little it gets rid of stem farms completely and throws off the economy. Are single cactus blocks considered a stem? Would they be stopped as well? Or would it have to be added as it’s own limit, I’m not too sure about certain mechanics such as these ones and how’d they actually be implemented. As for dirt/sand limit, I don’t see this as being an option. If it’s too high, it won’t make any difference to farms even if it’s lower than current major farms. Too low, and ruins any terraforming for island builders (including myself) as some islands take upwards of 9000 grass or sand plus for some major island terraforms. Some ideas that have been floating around were also suggested by multiple people including myself and wanted to bring them up here. A main idea I also talked about in another suggestion thread was the decreasing the value of the pumpkin and increasing cooked meat prices (these would have to be both in /sell all and for /warp shop as major farmers don’t even use /warp shop anymore). The server would be a better place in a spawner friendly farm based environment. It automatically puts a limit with the amount of spawners, as well it’s a VERY small amount of red stone required to keep running compared to current farms. It also has a very small amount of water flow and would decrease major farm water flow. As for entities being an issue, Drogo suggested the idea of removing hostile mobs and adding /warp hostile. This would immediately fix a small problem of entities, it’s not a major issue but it’s one less entity to worry about. Another entity fix I’m pretty sure was talked about in a different thread, is item frame limit per island or per chunk. This would be another small entity fix that wouldn’t have to be worried about on top of all current tps issues I don’t see there being any major way to fix tps issues with an immediate stop, the only way I see is we take one issue at a time and fix each one individually without throwing off the entire economy and server balance
Minecraft is by no means optimized or efficient. Java in itself is a horrible language that not even oracle considers for their backend when they market it for that use. It's ridden with security flaws, memory leaks, and countless discrepancies, but there is always an option to mitigate at least some of the problems that can occur. It isn't feasible for staff members to help players individually and check if their farms are "detrimental" to decrease their effect on the server as you suggest. While in most cases a better solution exists, creating limits where users cant exceed a specified amount of lag or resources is efficient and would solve the majority of problems facing economy now, especially regarding the infinitely expandable game mechanics eating away at the servers performance and player retention. Is there a reason you're opposed to stem limits? Cactus itself would need to remain unchanged as its growing mechanic would not function with any sort of limit (cactus exists for a tick before its broken contributing to the limit adding the possibility for many to grow in the same tick passing the limit on unsuspecting islands). Stem limits would only affect pumpkin and other crops that do not generate more of themselves excluding villager farmable crops. While I don't disagree with lowering the price at which crops sell to the shops due to the strange skew on pumpkin currently, that solution would not solve the root problem and only encourages more building for people who wish to have the same level of income. I do not think we need more inflation to occur on the server regarding cooked porkchop and meats but perhaps increasing its cost is necessary if pumpkin is going to stay at its current sell price, but that is not the topic of this forum discussion... Mob farms do not contribute to the entity counts that I am referring to and have already been discussed in other forums and thoroughly investigated by staff members which is why I am not addressing them here. The limits I'm suggesting by no means would eliminate these styles of farms from the server. They would prevent the excessive infinite expansion of these farms filling thousands of constantly updating sub-chunks. About the dirt/sand limit, as suggested earlier any number between 20000 and 30000 would have no effect on builders or even most farms. These limits may seem too high, but they would be effective in preventing the astronomical amount of entities and expanding problems stemming from these farms. I am by no means suggesting removing them altogether. I only wish to see economy in a state where players enjoy being on the server rather than making their personal number greater. -vv
The thing is, people heavily dislike limits of any kind. I like the way how you're looking at it from the server's standpoint, but what's the point of looking at it from the server side of things if the players not only hate what's imposed on them, but will continue to do it anyways? I know it would solve majority of the problems, and I'm not opposed to it. It's common sense - you have to limit the meta if it's quite overpowered and creates problems (like lag). But the main thing is, many other players will oppose it and you have to consider their opinions too. Pumpkin and cactus farms always were and always has been some of the most popular money making methods, even back in 2019 when heaps of the current limits and lag restrictions were not imposed at all. People will still create large pumpkin and cactus farms if this is imposed, it will barely be reduced, no matter how hard anyone tries. As the server grows older, the economy becomes more inflated, which results in things becoming cheaper, and larger machines & contraptions being easier to build. So back in 2019 it was very hard to build a large, efficient farm while now it is very easy to do, which results in more large, efficient, laggy farms being created. This ties in to the above point - it's not hard nor expensive to build a large pumpkin farm on economy right now. Hell, even I had one while I was a greybean on eco. tldr; Imposing a limit would help keep the lag imposed by farms down, without a doubt. However, people heavily dislike limits, even if the limit does it's job (in this case, I don't think it will do it's job as people will build large farms anyways).
My bad, I misread that first line. Still my post has addressed the concerns you have mentioned. Indeed. People will oppose any form of limit, but these changes would severely improve the server. The suggested limit I provided would not affect the majority of people. It would limit cactus as an example to 13-25 layers total, decreasing the number of chunks loaded, entities produced, and problems created that we see now. With no other viable solutions presented, a change like this is certainly necessary. Back in 2019, there was no issue with these expandable styles of farms. Most users avoided them in near totality out of consideration for the server and fear of the gray area about their size... Pumpkin and cactus have not been popular money-making methods until some point in 2020 unlike stated in your post... Friction from any community against a necessary change is no reason to decrease a platform's quality or user experience. I would love to hear other options, but nothing viable has been suggested, and the current situation is unsustainable. I do not understand what you mean by these farms will "barely be reduced" with these limits - I see no evidence of this. The limits would directly prevent the excessive astronomical numbers we have now from being reached. Even considering conjoined islands, these limits would still be an improvement to the current situation. Creating limits to which players can knowingly function inside without worry would prevent the "large farms" you suggested people would switch to as an alternative. -vv
I asked back then while I was banned from Survival what the best way of making money was. I was given pumpkins and grass and one command: farm. It's always been one of the most popular ways. It is once you get 80 angry messages in your inbox about how my farm doesn't generate a 20th of what it used to due to these new limits. People will always create backlash against it, and I may be overexaggerating, but it happens. And I see plenty. People will switch to more volatile farms, potentially more laggier farms (I've seen a little trend in Minecart farms that have been taking a lot of resources of the server), and other farming methods that are just deplorable (water flushing systems that take the TPS to 5). These farms will continue to be built. They won't stop. And the older the server gets, the more of them there will be. The problem I was trying to explain in my last post - maybe I didn't explain it very clearly, that's my fault - is that alternatives are usually more harmful than the original problem itself. Take Melon farms as an example, yeah they sell for a lot less but they give out almost 6x the amount of entities that pumpkins do (dropping 6 melons when broken as opposed to 1 pumpkin). Or pig farms, which are 3x as efficient and have 3x the redstone that a pumpkin farm usually has (pistons to push pigs into pits, where they die and drop their pork into hoppers). It will help and I don't doubt it. But it won't help a lot.
The terms "best" and "most used" have a vital difference. The sheer volume of these farms has risen exponentially in 2020, which saw comparatively a fraction of use previous to this. The combined volume before this turning point is a factor of thousands smaller than what exists now. Who gave you that odd command and message? I see no evidence of the prominence you claim these farms had in the past, especially watching the entity counts and oscillating TPS. Lack-thereof relating performance graphs before 2020 indicates that the volume of these farms is now thousands greater. This is a measurable mechanic and can be viewed through analyzing the frequencies provided by the server - the factor of these farms is growing exponentially, being non-sustainable. The limits I'm suggesting prevent users from exceeding a set amount of resources by limiting growth factors themselves rather than keeping the infinitely expandable mechanics. As far as I'm aware, there would be no alternative to making "more laggy farms" other than water flushing mob farms and chicken/egg farms which have ALREADY BEEN ADDRESSED. Users would not default to making "laggy" mob farms when provided limits such as these. It's illogical, and our staff has done a great job addressing this problem AS STATED EARLIER. I'm not against the server changing shop values to encourage less laggy farms. That said, it will not solve the root issue, and I've already addressed this in detail in a previous post... If the only reason not to implement these changes is the fact a handful of affected users may be upset I see only more reason to implement these changes before the problem spreads to a larger portion of the community. I would be interested to hear how these changes would be harmful to the server. After lots of consideration, I suggested these limits as they're beneficial to both the server and real users. As far as I'm aware, there is no detrimental factor to this. These changes would only achieve the prevention of excessive and constant resource consumption. This forum was created to encourage the improvement of the server. If you have no suggestions or comments to add, please don't convolute this topic for unbeknownst readers. -vv EDIT: Added chicken farms as a consideration for alternative "laggy" farms.
changing to support only because i like the idea of a theoretical maximum farm level so i can know how much people make
