[Zz] Pre-agenda, 26th September 2020

[Mellorian]

Post any topics/apologies here!

Zedkin Members:
Treiskaideka
Dogzack123
Mellorian
SneakySkeleton

[Mellorian]

We should follow up on the dragon egg discussion.

[Zedwick]

We should follow up on the dragon egg discussion.

Tez suggested last meeting that it didn't make sense to put artificial limits on acquiring an item in a sandbox game, and I made some remark about sandbox not meaning we should get unlimited everything. I think I may have misunderstood the point being made, however, as a sandbox game does mean you are given a set of mechanics and can experiment with those mechanics to do as you please. Putting an artificial limit on a mechanic which is just "you've already performed this action, you do not get a reward this time", as we suggested, may arguably break the sandbox model.

So is there a better alternative to maintain dragon egg scarcity whilst introducing a mechanic to get more of them?

In vanilla I suppose you could argue it makes sense for the existing, first, dragon to drop an egg as it may have been carrying an egg already as an older dragon. The dragons which are freshly spawned are young, and do not carry eggs. So... If you keep a dragon around for longer, maybe there's a higher chance to drop an egg?
We probably don't really want to encourage keeping dragons alive in the end, though.

[Mellorian]

I feel that, as I said during the meeting, in Vanilla you only get one egg, and that's it.

As a server with many players, however, this leads to players not getting an egg.

I think that the best way to stick to vanilla, while allowing everyone to have an egg, is for the first dragon killed (or spawned) for each player, to drop an egg.

It was mentioned that alts could maybe be used to farm eggs that way, but I feel the rules already made around alts could easily be made to cover this.

[Dax23333]

Some thoughts around this from a smelly smellvs'er...

-Could make each player able to obtain an egg using advancements in some way. You'd get it from an advancement reward, or the advancement would make it place in the centre. Would have to deal with the case of multiple players killing it at once for that second case. Though you can kill it without anybody getting the advancement, using beds for example. Not that that'd make a person popular on Zz. Basically the same as what Mell is saying, this could be done fairly easily with advancements.
Concequences of this I can see? Would remain rare, and no player could farm up many of them. To obtain more than one would require buying them from people.

-Another option is a very low drop chance akin to wither skulls or potentially even lower. This would be farmable and one player could potentially obtain many eggs given a silly amount of patience and time. Would also encourage the construction of dragon slaying contraptions as killing it efficiently would be very helpful in this situation which may or may not be interesting to the players of Zz. I would certainly find it fun.
One player could obtain multiple eggs. Does not help newer players gain accomplishment for killing dragon, this would only really help established players.

-A variation on the low drop chance, the dragon drops a single 'egg shard' item which can be crafted into an egg by putting 9 in a crafting grid. Kill 9 dragons, get 1 egg, progress maintained. Not sure how this would be implemented if it can be at all.
This would basically be the same as the previous but with less rage inducing rng.

-You could have a specific set of actions that allow an egg to drop. For example, slay dragon with airborne melee attacks only and it'll drop an egg. Certainly possible, crit jumps would count as would elytra sword attacks. This would make the dragon egg difficult to obtain and be a measure of skill rather than patience. Disclaimer - this example is for illustration only and not a final suggestion.
This raises the bar far above many players, not everyone can or has killed the dragon before. Also would feel quite arbitary. One skilled player would gain a silly number of eggs fairly quickly if they cracked the method.

[Tezcatlip]

That's not like I adamantly fight for free egss, but it genuinly puzzles me, why some trivial things like these are percieved as the apex of minecraft. The main game loop is trivial, and if I have wanted challenge or achievment hunting I would probably do SL1 DS or something. In all honesty I can not pretend that killing a dragon or wither in vanilla MC is something noteworthy.

Can't imagine economy being the main focus of this game as well, it's not EVE or PoE. Especially on ZZ, where economy is largely irrelevant due to the server being empty outside of gatherings once every two weeks, where a group of random people make assumptions about local economy based on an entirely different server.

Personaly I just consider dragon egg as a nice lamp base.

As a side note: having an actual item-egg dropping once per player is very thin ice. If the Zz was a multiplayer server, this kind of treatment would likely lead scamming and alting to prosper.

[Mellorian]

Especially on ZZ, where economy is largely irrelevant due to the server being empty outside of gatherings once every two weeks, where a group of random people make assumptions about local economy based on an entirely different server.

The people are in no way random. They are people who have a long history in Zedwork, that have been voted on to the Zedkins by people with even longer histories. We welcome new council members, and specifically have a place for it at the end of every meeting. We do not just make assumptions, we try and take into account everyone's viewpoints - as was clearly shown with the in-depth discussions we had regarding iron farming. Most everyone on the council had no personal interest in wanting iron farming, and yet we did not dismiss or belittle the topic, as it was requested to be brought up. You can read the https://zedwork.co.uk/wiki/Zedkins page to see what the Zedkins do, and why.

As a side note: having an actual item-egg dropping once per player is very thin ice. If the Zz was a multiplayer server, this kind of treatment would likely lead scamming and alting to prosper.

This should be a main point. This is the kind of thing we want to discuss.