Fine-tuning the mob drop multiplier balance - your thoughts?

[staygroovy57]

So I have been taking a while just going over things, I mean it's not like I hate it getting double ghast tears, double gunpowder and double ink sacs...

But I am wondering whether long-term consequences will really be good if this continues. Prices for ghast tears already plummeting on the Exchange.

So basically, I feel as if we don't need mob multiplying for:

- 1) ghasts (tears + gunpowder)

- 2) squid (ink sacs)

The mob multiplier effect is only necessary for those entities that have had their spawning severely curtailed and are needed in large numbers, and neither of the above seem to really be affected in the same way as farmable mobs (pigmen, cows, pigs, etc... ) 

Pigmen I don't know what to say because if it's size-dependent it's never going to be ideal, so a compromise has to be made. Right now feels bearable as it is.

Anything else that comes to mind?

Incidentally, getting pearls from endermen is doing a bit better in The End. That one I wouldn't change, because it's still quite dismal compared to before, but a little less so.

[justin kilpatrick]

so we should move from a general x2 to more specific ones, then lets try and list everything that benefits from x2 unambiguously and then discuss whatever is left.  

[Nick]

Alternatively, let's set the global back to 1 and just individually buff. Then people can complain about drops being too low and we can increase the individual rates.

N

[justin kilpatrick]

that sounds better to ideal, but we all know its going to take forever to get feedback.

[staygroovy57]

Alternatively, let's set the global back to 1 and just individually buff. Then people can complain about drops being too low and we can increase the individual rates.

Actually, I am not sure this is necessary, we're already almost there. 

Can't think of anything else beside squid and ghasts but the other stuff has been OK, would rather not recommend having to redo everything.

There really aren't that many other drops...(pigmen = acceptable, endermen = fine, cave spiders = good, cows, pigs, chicken, sheep = OK, wither skeletons = fine as well)

Only question marks would be zombies, baby zombies, witches, large spiders, creepers and skeletons.

Can't answer this, but I really don't see them as a problem because they spawn so little anyway, or their drops are sort of inconsequential. 

[xavter2]

I still like the idea of disabling mustercull(or making it rather high) on pigmen and multiplying their drops by 9 and editing humbug to only create 1 in 9 pigmen. This would allow larger portal farms to retain their value while also cutting the pigmen lag. Thoughts?

[Robert Berrier]

Mustercull already limits how many can spawn in a particular area. If there is improvement to be made in the blocking of spawns it should be done within mustercull since it is the plugin that is suppose to control mob populations.

[gmlaxfanatic2]

I feel like this shouldn't always be so hard. Could we just record every single drop and then whenever a game parameter is changed we should fairly easily be able to determine how to compensate with drop rates.

Sure there will be market responses that destort the effect, but we could probably still do good enough to make it so each change doesn't require significant discussion.

[justin kilpatrick]

that sounds nice, but keeping a counter like that might be nontirival. 

[Nick]

http://discover-prism.com/

N

[justin kilpatrick]

that's a lot of extra data to log, but yes that would probably get enough. 

[Gavin Jenkins]

For whatever reason, squids and slimes and things still spawn way less often than they used to.

A mob drop multiplier has brought them to somewhat reasonable levels. Maybe it's not even because of mustercull, but regardless, these things really do need the multiplier to not be astronomically scarce.

[justin kilpatrick]

what values would be suggested?

[Gavin Jenkins]

I'm not actually sure what's causing the mobs to spawn less frequently. So it's hard to put a corresponding value on it. Notice that ink, though, for example, has risen to 16d/stack instead of it's 2-4d/stack a couple months ago. Slimes have risen from 1-1.5d to 5d.

Something is making these wild mobs 4x more expensive even with double drops, implying they are for some reason spawning very roughly 8x less often than they used to.

I don't think you should just react blindly to market prices, though, or that the earlier prices were necessarily "correct" as targets. It would be nicer to know why they're spawning less in the first place and then drop that many drops.

So I'd suggest just leaving it at 2x conservatively, but actively investigating why they are rarer for now.

[Robert Berrier]

I thought we found out the mob spawn range was too small as ttk speculated here http://www.reddit.com/r/Civcraft/comments/2yfn2t/morning_changelog_20150309/ Maybe try bumping the range again since I don't think lowering it really helped with lag anyhow.

[justin kilpatrick]

that's the current proposal? I don't think it was more than it is now months ago.