Diamonds* and Glowstone need to be removed from trading.* Or Altered
I recently, was informed that you can trade for diamonds and even glowstone. I was appalled and shocked by this statement. "This must just be a testing bug" I thought, and I hope to hell it is.
Why?
Alright. So, let's talk value for a minute. What does value, in minecraft mean? Basically, if something is useful to players it has value. If you reduce the amount of this item(s). Value increases. Value is also increased by the difficulty of finding said item, and how useful it is.
Diamonds
Diamonds are the ****. They make the best armor and tools in the game, by a long shot! They also can make a enchanting table. The details of the diamond, is as follows.
Very strong material for tools/armor.
Very rare compared to other ores
Lots of mining and/or exploring required to locate them.
Only found below level 16, which can be dangerous with lava everywhere.
Because of these 4 conditions, Diamond has value. This conditions are the same for 99% of Minecraft players. Thus resulting in a nearly equal felt value for every player. Which means, that pretty much everyone across the board knows the value of a diamond,and knows it's high! Even people who don't play, but know the lore/story of the game, know that diamonds are a big part of Minecraft.
All of you know this, be honest, every-time your mining and find diamond there is always that "YEAH!" moment. Does that happen with iron? Nah, Redstone? Nope, Gold? a little... But you get the picture here. Everyone generally flips their **** over diamonds. That is the kind of value they have obtained from their 4 conditions.
The trading issue...
The reason the trading issue bothers me. Is that it threatens to bring down the value of our friend, diamond. Why? If all the sudden, the dangerous of spending hours cave exploring, monster slaying, and lava swimming, can be avoided by whip'n out some emeralds. That awesome feeling...is demised somewhat. No longer would people be required to set up branch mines, or spend all the time looking for diamonds. While some call this less tedious. The tedious nature of diamonds, is their balance. They are super powerful, and thus, super hard to find and very time consuming. Simply trading some junk items for enough emeralds to buy one...Just blows a small hole in their value.
If this feature, is not a bug, or is chosen to be left in the game the value of diamonds for all players will be greatly reduced. Mining is half the game, and this would allow for the best item in the game to be obtained without even mining practically at all. That is where the value diminish comes in.
Players can choose NOT to trade for diamonds, but that doesn't change the fact the across the board value of this precious gems, will be greatly damaged.
So...no trading Diamonds at all?=[
Well, this is where the "OR Altered" statement comes in. Diamonds, would be fined to be traded for as long as they were, to be blunt, expensive as ****. With this, their value can be actually increased and not damaged. Now, based off what I have seen currently, which may or may not be the final pricing and such, Diamonds should cost way over 64 emeralds. I was able to get 8 emeralds, in 30 minutes, without really trying that much at all.
Based on CURRENT values, I would place their value between 128 and 152 emeralds. (Maybe more?)
See, that is where the grey area comes in, we don't know what values will be final. So we cannot say for sure. All I know, is that, as stated above...
Diamonds, in order to maintain their level of super high value, need to be expensive as ****.
So...what about GlowStone?
Glowstone does NOT have the same value system as diamond. As long as I have played, glowstone has always been a "Check it out! I kicked ass in the nether!" type of item. The more you had, the cooler you where. (Or just lucky) Now we all know glowstone is not insanely hard to gather...but it can prove to be quite dangerous. So the trading issue here...is...well the same as above. The whole struggle to make a nether gate, travel there, make a somewhat decent base, survive, find glowstone, and mine it without exploding or swimming in lava, is just removed if you can trade for it.
Where diamond would be ok for trading in the over-world (again, as long as it costs you 3 arms and 5 legs). Glowstone should never sold there. Because it's not a natural item in the over-world. Even if you don't care about the whole "How the **** did these mute, brown coat wear'n yahoo's get this ****?", It's still a item that is dedicated to the Nether. I mean, it's the same concept if we made it where you could trade for a Blaze Rod. It just doesn't make sense. Nether items need to stay in, that's right, the Nether. There isn't really a whole lot of stuff there in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I love the Nether. But we need to keep it's treasures. inside of it. They are the reward for the area's higher challenge.
Closing Statements...
With all that said, it is important to understand that snapshots are testing versions and not the final thing. My hopes is that Jeb understands the importance of the different values of certain items like the ones we have talked about in this thread today. Heck, maybe this is all a bug, and not meant to be there in the first place. Who knows. All I am trying to say is... it would be a bad idea. Unless it was VERY well thought out. But glowstone...? No...It just doesn't make sense.
Only the next update, (Or Jeb's twitter) will tell us where this is going.
Hopefully, you have read most of this and understand where I am coming from on the sense of item value among the Minecraft community, and why it is important not to damage said value.
Lock.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The oceans of minecraft are vast and nearly endless... and we just have a floating little box to traverse across them..." - doctorseaweed2
Well, they could have gone into the nether with iron golems
I think that would make an interesting comic of a testificate and his iron golem exploring the nether
Edit: THe nether seems to be an important place in their religion as well, since priests are interested in goods there
Now see...that makes me happy. I never thought about that kind of stuff. Very interesting to think about. Maybe the priests could be interesting in buying glowstone?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The oceans of minecraft are vast and nearly endless... and we just have a floating little box to traverse across them..." - doctorseaweed2
Now see...that makes me happy. I never thought about that kind of stuff. Very interesting to think about. Maybe the priests could be interesting in buying glowstone?
Priests don't buy glowstone, but they're the only ones who sell it, and they DO buy Eyes of Ender.
I think that they are probably the most interested in the Nether, out of the Testificates.
I'm iffy about diamonds. 3-5 diamonds net you a single emerald.
But it takes a dozen emeralds to buy a diamond sword from the blacksmith.
So, when thinking about value, it's almost never a good idea to sell your diamonds.
I've not seen either diamond or glowstone in trading; though I'm at a "low" tier of trading. Presumably there is a lot of trading involved to get to that point. I did purchase a diamond chestplate for 16 emeralds. It would have been faster to just branch mine for diamonds to make it though.
I still think it's balanced so far. It usually takes the same amount of time to get the item either way.
I like that you can sell coal now. My previous world (I'm not using it with this snap) has three double chests full of it and it would be nice to convert some of that into emeralds and thus other materials. Same with various other stuff that I have a large surplus of.
Actually, this will give me a reason to find a closer village. The only one I found in my world is 3K blocks away from any of my bases. Just finding a village can be a pain in the ass. I can never seem to find the bloody things. I found two pyramids before I found one, which is the only reason I even had emeralds to trade. So you have to consider that just as mining requires a lot of time and luck more than anything so too would trading; you would need to get lucky to find a village, spend time harvest wool or wheat, trade it, etc. It's a similar mechanical process to mining, really.
My proposal: Add in the "Merchant" villager. The Merchant will only appear once in a while, carries rare goods at a high price and will despawn even if you trapped him somehow (to simulate "traveling").
"How the **** did these mute, brown coat wear'n yahoo's get this ****?"
XD
But anyway, I totally agree with you. The only problem is that you can only have 64 of one item in a stack (without mods or anything), so you can't trade more than 64 emeralds to get a diamond.
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I didn't feel like making a good signature, so I just typed this up.
Have you ever tried enchanting a diamond pickaxe? Trying to get silk touch is insanely hard, and you can easily go through 30 diamonds to get the enchantment. The current trading system seems completely balanced at the moment, I hope they don't change it.
I find diamonds in Abandoned Mines, Pyramids, Strongholds and now trading. It seems fairly alright to get diamonds from trading, as long as it's at 'bout 16 emeralds. 48 emeralds for a pick. That's still a bit.
Glowstone seems like another thing entirely, it's nice for me to get a few before going to the nether.
I do think that buying diamond materials should be more costly, but certainly not between 128 and 152 emeralds. You may as well remove them from trading if they're to be that expensive because no one would ever, ever buy one. Personally, I don't give a care as finding and collecting a stockpile of diamonds is already easy. I may never buy a single diamond from a villager.
That said, the value for emeralds needs to be balanced some. Conversions don't make much sense as of now.
What is bad about whipping out some emeralds which are 25 times rarer than diamond and only spawn in a extreme hills biome for a few diamonds?
What is bad about something more valuable than diamonds giving you diamonds?
Testificates need to sell Glowstone because SMP servers often run out because it's such a popular block.
This is an absolutely fantastic point. Within a few hours of a server's first nether portal opening, it can be a ridiculous walk just to SEE glowstone, much less mine it.
I don't think it should be cheap, but it should be there. No, it doesn't make sense that villagers have it, but it doesn't matter because it fixes a really, really annoying problem. I'm willing to overlook it.
I do think that buying diamond materials should be more costly, but certainly not between 128 and 152 emeralds. You may as well remove them from trading if they're to be that expensive because no one would ever, ever buy one. Personally, I don't give a care as finding and collecting a stockpile of diamonds is already easy. I may never buy a single diamond from a villager.
This sums up my feelings about diamonds, as well.
The thing that you haven't taken into account in this thread (which is, by the way, very well put together even if I don't agree with it, so kudos) is the factor of time. Even if you can trade for the valuable diamond, the amount of time it takes you to trade in the "useless" items and get one offsets the ease of acquisition. Put it this way; if it takes you an hour to grow enough food/shear enough wool to make a couple of diamond picks worth in emeralds, why not just, you know, mine it yourself? Yeah, it's more dangerous, but in the same time you can get way more diamonds AND other materials you pick up along the way. It may be easier, but it's still not cost efficient or fast.
First off, they need to remove so you can't buy emeralds with wheat. They have their own freaking wheat anyway!
Is also totally correct. Even though I'm in support of diamond and glowstone sales, wheat is silly. They have wheat farms, and, more importantly, you can grow wheat instantly with bonemeal while simultaneously receiving seeds to grow more wheat. Not only are they buying something illogical, but the very act of harvesting insta-grown wheat gives you more wheat to plant, it's paying for itself!
My suggestion? If you're going to allow the sale of renewable resources (which I feel is important, and the only reason this system is worth it at all), consider melons and pumpkins. Why?
You can bonemeal stems, but that does NOT produce a crop. There is in fact no way to force spawn a sellable crop.
They don't drop seeds, or, more accurately, you have to sacrifice the crop to get the seed.
They take a really long time to grow if you don't bonemeal the stems to begin with.
The idea here is that they would buy whole pumpkins, or whole (not sliced) melons. You could still maintain a farm, but you wouldn't be able to right click spam with dead skeleton dust to quickly amass a fortune.
Anyway, nice thread.
I appreciate the analysis in combination with your complaint, rather than the usual thread-long whinefest with no attempt to quantify an argument that we tend to see around here. <3
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Superpop is so underground, he lives with a Diglett!
I agree about the diamonds part, though 128 emeralds for 1 diamond is too much. 64 sounds like a good trade though.
Glowstone should stay as a trade-able item, for reasons many has stated, though I see where you're coming from.
You know what would be a good solution? You know about the strongholds in the nether? They do seem pretty empty right now, if you get what I'm saying.
Emeralds aren't THAT rare. You can even trade things like food, wheat and wool for them, so you can easily get a lot of them (well, if you have a massive wheat farm or something like that)
emeralds are exactly as common as diamonds...they do not need to be a stack for one diamond...you are silly...there would be no point in making that trade...i hate useless features...trading is already useless...dont try and get it nerfed...too much nostalgia here...for the oldin days of finding diamonds but thats all it is...i think it should be 2 emeralds per diamond...
Now in this thread, you're saying that we shouldn't be able to get diamonds from villagers by trading with emeralds. Here's the thing - we can't. We can only trade our diamonds for emeralds.
This is true, but you CAN buy diamond tools with emeralds. Now, it takes a dozen emeralds to buy one diamond sword. The issue here, is that the villagers have basically ripped you off. Because 3-5 diamonds can only be traded for ONE emerald. With 3-5 diamonds, you could just make a diamond sword. At the very least, it means that a diamond sword should technically cost only one emerald, not 12-13. If we do the math, 12 emeralds multiplied by 4 diamonds each, we have enough diamonds for TWO FULL SETS of diamond armor.
I really don't mind about the diamond part, but there should be a "nether village" that is in the over world ( It should be as rare as diamonds) that is the only way to trade for "nether stuff" ( Glowstone, ghast tear,ext.)
I recently, was informed that you can trade for diamonds and even glowstone. I was appalled and shocked by this statement. "This must just be a testing bug" I thought, and I hope to hell it is.
Alright. So, let's talk value for a minute. What does value, in minecraft mean? Basically, if something is useful to players it has value. If you reduce the amount of this item(s). Value increases. Value is also increased by the difficulty of finding said item, and how useful it is.
Because of these 4 conditions, Diamond has value. This conditions are the same for 99% of Minecraft players. Thus resulting in a nearly equal felt value for every player. Which means, that pretty much everyone across the board knows the value of a diamond,and knows it's high! Even people who don't play, but know the lore/story of the game, know that diamonds are a big part of Minecraft.
All of you know this, be honest, every-time your mining and find diamond there is always that "YEAH!" moment. Does that happen with iron? Nah, Redstone? Nope, Gold? a little... But you get the picture here. Everyone generally flips their **** over diamonds. That is the kind of value they have obtained from their 4 conditions.
The reason the trading issue bothers me. Is that it threatens to bring down the value of our friend, diamond. Why? If all the sudden, the dangerous of spending hours cave exploring, monster slaying, and lava swimming, can be avoided by whip'n out some emeralds. That awesome feeling...is demised somewhat. No longer would people be required to set up branch mines, or spend all the time looking for diamonds. While some call this less tedious. The tedious nature of diamonds, is their balance. They are super powerful, and thus, super hard to find and very time consuming. Simply trading some junk items for enough emeralds to buy one...Just blows a small hole in their value.
If this feature, is not a bug, or is chosen to be left in the game the value of diamonds for all players will be greatly reduced. Mining is half the game, and this would allow for the best item in the game to be obtained without even mining practically at all. That is where the value diminish comes in.
Players can choose NOT to trade for diamonds, but that doesn't change the fact the across the board value of this precious gems, will be greatly damaged.
Well, this is where the "OR Altered" statement comes in. Diamonds, would be fined to be traded for as long as they were, to be blunt, expensive as ****. With this, their value can be actually increased and not damaged. Now, based off what I have seen currently, which may or may not be the final pricing and such, Diamonds should cost way over 64 emeralds. I was able to get 8 emeralds, in 30 minutes, without really trying that much at all.
Based on CURRENT values, I would place their value between 128 and 152 emeralds. (Maybe more?)
See, that is where the grey area comes in, we don't know what values will be final. So we cannot say for sure. All I know, is that, as stated above...
Diamonds, in order to maintain their level of super high value, need to be expensive as ****.
Glowstone does NOT have the same value system as diamond. As long as I have played, glowstone has always been a "Check it out! I kicked ass in the nether!" type of item. The more you had, the cooler you where. (Or just lucky) Now we all know glowstone is not insanely hard to gather...but it can prove to be quite dangerous. So the trading issue here...is...well the same as above. The whole struggle to make a nether gate, travel there, make a somewhat decent base, survive, find glowstone, and mine it without exploding or swimming in lava, is just removed if you can trade for it.
Where diamond would be ok for trading in the over-world (again, as long as it costs you 3 arms and 5 legs). Glowstone should never sold there. Because it's not a natural item in the over-world. Even if you don't care about the whole "How the **** did these mute, brown coat wear'n yahoo's get this ****?", It's still a item that is dedicated to the Nether. I mean, it's the same concept if we made it where you could trade for a Blaze Rod. It just doesn't make sense. Nether items need to stay in, that's right, the Nether. There isn't really a whole lot of stuff there in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I love the Nether. But we need to keep it's treasures. inside of it. They are the reward for the area's higher challenge.
With all that said, it is important to understand that snapshots are testing versions and not the final thing. My hopes is that Jeb understands the importance of the different values of certain items like the ones we have talked about in this thread today. Heck, maybe this is all a bug, and not meant to be there in the first place. Who knows. All I am trying to say is... it would be a bad idea. Unless it was VERY well thought out. But glowstone...? No...It just doesn't make sense.
Only the next update, (Or Jeb's twitter) will tell us where this is going.
Hopefully, you have read most of this and understand where I am coming from on the sense of item value among the Minecraft community, and why it is important not to damage said value.
Lock.
"The oceans of minecraft are vast and nearly endless... and we just have a floating little box to traverse across them..." - doctorseaweed2
I think that would make an interesting comic of a testificate and his iron golem exploring the nether
Edit: THe nether seems to be an important place in their religion as well, since priests are interested in goods there
Now see...that makes me happy. I never thought about that kind of stuff. Very interesting to think about. Maybe the priests could be interesting in buying glowstone?
"The oceans of minecraft are vast and nearly endless... and we just have a floating little box to traverse across them..." - doctorseaweed2
Priests don't buy glowstone, but they're the only ones who sell it, and they DO buy Eyes of Ender.
I think that they are probably the most interested in the Nether, out of the Testificates.
I'm iffy about diamonds. 3-5 diamonds net you a single emerald.
But it takes a dozen emeralds to buy a diamond sword from the blacksmith.
So, when thinking about value, it's almost never a good idea to sell your diamonds.
I still think it's balanced so far. It usually takes the same amount of time to get the item either way.
I like that you can sell coal now. My previous world (I'm not using it with this snap) has three double chests full of it and it would be nice to convert some of that into emeralds and thus other materials. Same with various other stuff that I have a large surplus of.
Actually, this will give me a reason to find a closer village. The only one I found in my world is 3K blocks away from any of my bases. Just finding a village can be a pain in the ass. I can never seem to find the bloody things. I found two pyramids before I found one, which is the only reason I even had emeralds to trade. So you have to consider that just as mining requires a lot of time and luck more than anything so too would trading; you would need to get lucky to find a village, spend time harvest wool or wheat, trade it, etc. It's a similar mechanical process to mining, really.
XD
But anyway, I totally agree with you. The only problem is that you can only have 64 of one item in a stack (without mods or anything), so you can't trade more than 64 emeralds to get a diamond.
Glowstone seems like another thing entirely, it's nice for me to get a few before going to the nether.
Also, Fire resistance potions make gathering Glowstone pretty darn easy in my opinion.
That said, the value for emeralds needs to be balanced some. Conversions don't make much sense as of now.
What is bad about something more valuable than diamonds giving you diamonds?
This is an absolutely fantastic point. Within a few hours of a server's first nether portal opening, it can be a ridiculous walk just to SEE glowstone, much less mine it.
I don't think it should be cheap, but it should be there. No, it doesn't make sense that villagers have it, but it doesn't matter because it fixes a really, really annoying problem. I'm willing to overlook it.
This sums up my feelings about diamonds, as well.
The thing that you haven't taken into account in this thread (which is, by the way, very well put together even if I don't agree with it, so kudos) is the factor of time. Even if you can trade for the valuable diamond, the amount of time it takes you to trade in the "useless" items and get one offsets the ease of acquisition. Put it this way; if it takes you an hour to grow enough food/shear enough wool to make a couple of diamond picks worth in emeralds, why not just, you know, mine it yourself? Yeah, it's more dangerous, but in the same time you can get way more diamonds AND other materials you pick up along the way. It may be easier, but it's still not cost efficient or fast.
That said, the last post I'm going to quote:
Is also totally correct. Even though I'm in support of diamond and glowstone sales, wheat is silly. They have wheat farms, and, more importantly, you can grow wheat instantly with bonemeal while simultaneously receiving seeds to grow more wheat. Not only are they buying something illogical, but the very act of harvesting insta-grown wheat gives you more wheat to plant, it's paying for itself!
My suggestion? If you're going to allow the sale of renewable resources (which I feel is important, and the only reason this system is worth it at all), consider melons and pumpkins. Why?
Anyway, nice thread.
I appreciate the analysis in combination with your complaint, rather than the usual thread-long whinefest with no attempt to quantify an argument that we tend to see around here. <3
Superpop is so underground, he lives with a Diglett!
It's like Nebris joins servers 20 times a day for the sole purpose of getting Glowstone.
Glowstone should stay as a trade-able item, for reasons many has stated, though I see where you're coming from.
You know what would be a good solution? You know about the strongholds in the nether? They do seem pretty empty right now, if you get what I'm saying.
Um, nothing to see here folks! Just go mine that Netherrack!
This is true, but you CAN buy diamond tools with emeralds. Now, it takes a dozen emeralds to buy one diamond sword. The issue here, is that the villagers have basically ripped you off. Because 3-5 diamonds can only be traded for ONE emerald. With 3-5 diamonds, you could just make a diamond sword. At the very least, it means that a diamond sword should technically cost only one emerald, not 12-13. If we do the math, 12 emeralds multiplied by 4 diamonds each, we have enough diamonds for TWO FULL SETS of diamond armor.
In short, the exchange rates are screwed up, LOL.