Skyblock Illegal Thread about Illegal to Trade Items

To begin with, this thread breaks these two suggestion guidelines, so I understand if nothing can be done about this:

However, I find this topic to be extremely important, and I want to once again bring up the conversation about illegal items, specifically dirt, sand (now legal), and buckets.

Currently, the server is setup in a way in which actions that are ban-able are still possible. Island farming is illegal, but still done easily by tons of people every week. Dirt trade is illegal, but still happens frequently. Buckets are illegal to trade, even though donors frequently donate buckets to new players, and new players frequently trade buckets among each other. Sand is illegal to trade for some mysterious reason still, even though red sand is able to be traded, and one can easily convert sand into red sand with some red dye (now legal).

All of these things seem to only punish new players and make the server more difficult for them, along with setting many new players up for failure or bans due to them not understanding the rules. By making something illegal but still possible, you're basically just laying traps for new players who don't know they're breaking rules.

I'll break down each of my issues with each item, and provide solutions to each issue that have been proven to work on other servers.

My final message about the matter: it's better to prevent and issue than to allow an issue to happen and punish those you catch. We currently exist in a server where they punish island farming, yet put into place policies that encourage it. Items that new players need the most and are most likely to trade for are illegal to trade, but those players are also the ones most likely to not know the rules and get caught doing these illegal trades.

We should change from a system that seeks to punish new players, and instead works to help them and give them a smooth introduction to the server.

 

Limiting resets would work and keeping the rules as they are shouldn’t affect too many new players anyway. Most of the time island farmers are actually experienced players on non donor alts and people who island farm often do it with malicious intent. We can tell the difference between a new player who island farmed a few times to a person who is abusing the system.
Having sand included as an illegal trade isn’t that big of a deal. I’ve barely seen a case of someone island farming sand in my nearly 5 years of staff. It is always either dirt only or sand+dirt+chest items. Since red sand can be traded and transformed I don’t see a need to change any rule rn.

With all video games there are commands and controls to learn. New players will be spending time learning. Sometimes learning means getting warned or banned. I too was nearly banned for island farming when I was new. We strive to use punishments less when dealing with new players and that goes with island farming too

 

Staff are advised not to ban new players who accidentally trade buckets or move dirt around not knowing the rules. The only time they should actually punish for island farming is when established players knowingly do it in large amounts (usually on an alt) just to terraform their island for free, or making a business selling lava buckets. The rule isn’t meant to so strictly enforced as to ruin the game for new players, just to stop people from taking advantage of island resets.

 

I guess I don't know the real statistics or everything going on behind the scenes. Most commonly, I hear stories of new players island farming or see new players accidentally admit to island farming in chat. I do know players who have systematically setup bots to farm islands, which would be more difficult to do with the weekly resets limits and longer delays between multiple resets in a row. I support the island farming rule staying in place, as people like this should obviously be punished. My focus is more so on changing the trade system to help new players, and not push them towards island farming.

This is part of my point as to why it should be legal. With the main island design only coming with 3 sand, very few people will ever island farm for sand. It's more so just a by-product of island farming for the dirt and lava buckets. The ease of which we can convert sand between normal and red is also part of why I think all sand trade should be legal. It is an unnecessary hurdle that feels a bit dated now.

I believe Lz's comment on the matter greatly sums up our frustration with leaving sand illegal to trade.

I don't believe that risking being banned or accidentally walking into illegal situations should be part of the learning experience with a server. Our economy system is very different from most servers, which I feel is already a big enough learning curve to deal with. Additionally, if a player is new to Skyblock in general, they have all of the Skyblock gameplay mechanics and strategies to learn. I've spent countless hours writing forum posts and helping users in chat or Discord who are new to the server, teaching them about economy, where to find things, resources available, when to use warps or player shops for items, etc.

This is a lot to take in for new players, so when you tell them all of this, then try to explain to them why they can't trade for dirt, and they can trade for red sand but not normal sand, along with all the other things they can't do, many get frustrated and leave.

I did not know about this. It is nice that staff does this and helps out new players. I know many servers do zero-tolerance policies and instantly ban players, no matter circumstances. Even though this is nice to do, in an ideal world staff shouldn't have to warn new players as often. My making things like dirt legal to trade, new players can easily buy/get some dirt donated to them without risk of being banned, and won't need to even think about the concept of island farming.

I think players motivation to buy kits and donor tiers would still be the same, if not higher since you'd have more people sticking around and enjoying the server. Also, legendary keys will always be a permanent source of income for the server no matter what happens

Seeing challenges work would be magical. Definitely would give new players some incentive to keep playing and give them set goals to work towards. I know I personally struggle to play Skyblock if I don't go in with predetermined goals to reach.

 

This isn't entirely about the whole banning part, but instead focus on the logic of the rules we have in place, and the negative impact they have on new players. I understand island farming cannot be stopped. But if you remove many of the incentives to island farm by making the resources readily available, you will cut down heavily on the island farming incidents, and not have to deal with as much gray area as to when you should punish someone.

I understand. But it still adds an additional layer of protection. As it stands, a player can setup a bot to island farm with them. They just need this one account with a 5 minute cooldown on the script, and it can farm indefinitely. With cooldowns, it adds a bit more difficulty, where the player would have to begin cycling accounts once they hit their weekly limit.

 

This is something I think many of us are in agreement about. It won't stop island farming, but I think it definitely would make it more difficult and help act as a deterrent.

I also think most people (hold Krissy) are in agreement about this. As Sando mentioned, MV removed sand from the blacklist. Most sand comes from kits and crates, with very little sand coming through from island farming. Most sand on the server is legit, and we can trade red sand, so why not let all sand be legal?

This is about where I'm at. Buckets mostly come from island's starter chests, so it makes sense to ban. But then there's people like me, who get too lazy to find their buckets sometimes and just craft new ones instead (I've now just started keeping them in my EC so I always know where they are lol). When someone needs a new bucket, I just tell them that buckets can't be traded and then give them 3 iron ingots. Most players are fine with that limitation.

This is where most of the controversy comes in. As someone who's spent well over a DC of grass on terraforming and farming over the last year, its always been a bit of a conflict for me. For one, it's mostly only an achievement to yourself. Your enemies will think you're dumb for wasting all that grass. New players get mad that you wasted so much grass when "you could've given it to people who need the grass". Additionally, there will always be the people out to discredit you, saying you just island farmed for the dirt, or traded for someone for the dirt.

With terraforming, there's also the result of tear downs. If someone does a massive terraforming job on their 199x199 island, then later tears it all down, they now have a multitude of DCs of dirt that they can't do anything with, besides invest into another terraforming or farming project. It always made me feel bad to think about the hundreds to thousands of DCs of dirt laying unused around the server, while new players are out here getting frustrated just trying to get enough grass to make their tree farm.

As to the type of players who are driven to work towards earning more grass, I think they fit into one of the main three types of players I see on the server:

1. For that group, there's people like you, Super Dave, JonSnow, and others who came to the server, enjoyed the challenge and the community, and then worked hard to make a living and grow. You guys are the golden group of people who makeup the backbone of what I love about the server. It still always inspires me when I help out a new player, teach them about the server and rules, and they have this immediate drive to them where they want to start setting up shops and farming and earning grass. That passion and dedication makes the server great.
2. The second group is casual players. People who came here one way or another, enjoyed the basic mechanics and community of the server, and have just stuck around, slowly building up. This was me on /classic for the most part. I rarely interacted with players, only really ever talking in chat looking for trades, or auctioning off a Jeb_ egg for some quick profit. Besides that, I was just silently farming on my island and building.
3. The third group is what I'd somewhat identify as. The group ranging from casual mod/hack users all the way up to the extreme hackers and cheaters. People who saw the challenge of the server, and then started thinking of ways they could cheat the system, or gain an advantage by pushing boundaries, sometimes crossing those boundaries. When faced with the dilemma of needing dirt when I joined, I didn't have that spark of passion or drive, but instead grew angry. I had my brother get on my mom's computer, showed him how to island farm for me, and then paid him Tix on Roblox for every island he farmed (this happened in 2013, so hopefully the statute of limitations is up on this lol). Other people have done similar things. Whereas I found comfort in the community on the new server, other players let their initial rage and greed build. They start finding creative ways to cheat. More efficient and safe ways to island farm. How to infiltrate Mob Arena with an army of bots and give yourself a shield. Finding ways to duplicate items or currency. How to cleanly steal items from players, or scam them without getting banned.

While there will always be people cheating the system, I think making the system better will help cut down on this, and player resentment. It doesn't have to be making dirt trade legal. Fixing challenges and having a challenge which rewards you with some more dirt as you build farms could help new players greatly (at risk of being abused by alts now having a new way of farming dirt). My main issue with dirt is you only have two ways of getting it. From your island you start with, and from placing grass. For new players, that second option isn't very viable until they've been here for a while. And even then, it's still a conflict for them. They have to decide whether the grass is worth placing, or if they want to invest it somewhere else. Whether it's through challenges, legal dirt trade, or even the store for all I care, I think adding some other way that people can work for dirt would lead to a better experience for new players.

 

I am only here to ask why island resets are still only on a 5 minute cooldown, which can even be bypassed by joining and leaving a coop.