Suggestion #689

Active Gameplay Plan

TL;DR - An idea to make mob killing the meta while still having AFK as a considerably viable option.

I believe if we move towards the following changes we can have a state of play that favours active gameplay over AFKing:

- Major nerf to all planted goods (cocoa, torchflower, etc. - no more than $5 per item)
- Major buff to various mob loot (minimum of $400 per item)
- Limit spawners per chunk to 10 regardless of rank
- Add higher levels of the Looting enchantment to various kits and crate items (Looting V, potentially higher)

As well as some general accessibility changes:

- Reduce token cost of automation blocks (Harvester, ChestHopper, etc. - Reduce them to a tenth of their current pricing)
- Increase the chance of receiving automation blocks from crates (2% in vote crate)
- Bring back the ability to buy Dirt, Grass, Sand and other plant foundation blocks
- Cause all mobs to give a guaranteed soul on kill
- Remove rotating shop and have items always sellable

Improving accessibility on plant farming while reducing profit means players are more able to farm what they like with relative ease. Imposing heavy limitation on spawner count while having a massive disparity between plants and mob loot in addition to having higher levels of Looting causes the state of play to be heavily in favour of mob killing. Under these conditions, it's not harmful if automation blocks become commonplace among players.

As the game is now, rotation and removing buyable dirt etc. has not actually done anything to keep us away from an AFK meta. All it has done is create extra monotonous steps of setup before the AFK stage. Rather than building just one farm, we need to build multiple (cocoa, bamboo, etc.), and now we also have to mine tens of thousands of blocks (sand, grass, etc.) before even considering constructing farms of a massive size. Regardless of design, farms will always be a one-time construction and the focus should be on what happens after that; Do players AFK those farms? Do they have to do something actively to make use of those farms? With these changes players would get ahead by being active.