Pay-to-Win on the OG:SMP, does it exist and what can be done about it?

[Red]

Hello everyone! I'm sure many of you know from the Discord, however, I felt this was a better place to have an in-depth discussion about this topic. One of the ongoing debates throughout the community is about the SMP having donators perks that could be considered pay-to-win. Keep in mind, I am a Prime rank, so I do get some of the extra perks, however, I don't have everything. I also encourage you to read through the whole post before replying.


DISCLAIMER (PLEASE READ!)
While I do give my opinion on the matter near the end of the post, I am making this thread mostly as a place to lay out both sides of the argument and spark discussion. Please try to be friendly in the comments and don't attack others for their opinions, even if you disagree with them. Also, a lot of this is coming from memory, which is why I don't have specific examples. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING! Finally, this is a very long post.


Possible Pay-to-Win Features on the SMP
Donators get two perks that are unique to survival and I have seen the community debate over both of them:
- Multiple sethomes (2, 3, and 4, depending on your rank)
- Multiple reps per day (2, 3, 4, and OG+'s can rep themselves once)


What people against these perks are saying
Many of the people that don't like these are nine times out of ten not donators. This is completely understandable. They want to play on the server without worrying about being overpowered by people that had extra money to spend on a rank. With that being said, I have seen some donators take their side, citing the unfairness of the perks.

People without a rank only get one sethome, while all donators have at least two. Especially since this is a server where you could be griefed at any point, having only one place to teleport to can be really bad, especially if you want to make you base, farms, etc. far away from each other. The solution I have heard tossed around the most is giving everyone at least two homes and taking away donators' extras, as this would allow all players to set up better systems for protecting themselves and their things and it would level the playing field.

The rep system is very controversial overall, however, I am only going to speak on the extra reps donators get. While many of the people are against donators having multiple reps, the most controversial topic is OG+ players being able to rep themselves once per day. The argument is that It would be virtually impossible to keep them at negative rep, therefore taking away certain privileges players get. The general consensus on this side is that taking away that feature would solve a lot of problems. The other argument is that donators can come together and downrep someone into oblivion if they wanted to, instantly giving away coordinates and removing access to teleport commands, which could ruin a player's experience.


What people for these perks are saying
As expected, the people who don't think these things are pay-to-win are mostly people with ranks. It makes sense, because they want to keep the features they paid money to get. I haven't seen as many people speaking out on this side, simply because the overwhelming majority of players are not on this side. The other thing is that these arguments are essentially the exact opposite of the other side, but I will do my best to provide new information.
I have seen a few donators arguing for no-ranks to get at least two homes, however, from what I can gather, they generally think they should be able to have more, since it is already a perk. Having two is really all you need, and while the extras are beneficial, they aren't too vital. The other, more blunt argument is that if you really care about the server and want extra homes, you will buy a rank, however, the general consensus is that all players should have two homes.

Repping is definitely more hotly debated than homes. I would first like to point out, that as far as I am aware, there have been no coordinated downrep attacks (I am not positive, though) and the two people with the lowest reps on the SMP are donators. The argument on this side is that one rep per day won't make a huge difference if you are consistently being a terrible person to other players. Of course there are exceptions to this, however, they are few and far between. The other thing I have seen is that having multiple reps allows for people to better weed out the good from the bad and supporting the rep "economy" overall.


My take on the situation
Please keep in mind that I have the Prime rank on the server, so I have two sethomes as well as two daily reps.
I definitely think that everyone should get two homes across the board. Even if one of them is used on the market, that could still be very beneficial to some players. Also, having multiple locations for XP farms, bases, etc. is very smart and two homes is very helpful for that. With that being said, I do think donators should get some form of upgrade from two homes. Maybe it is more homes, maybe it is something else, I don't know, but I would love suggestions.

Personally, I have not seen the self-rep system abused in any way as of yet, especially considering there are extremely few OG+ players out there. With that being said, it is still a possibility. My suggestion for this is increasing the time from a daily rep to perhaps a bi-weekly or weekly rep, but not removing it altogether. I also agree that multiple reps can be bad when in the wrong hands, but I also think they could be very beneficial, so here is my suggestion: when a donator gets to a certain negative rep, be it five, ten, or fifteen, they lose their ability to have multiple reps. It could even be tiered so they lose one rep at five, one at ten, and one at fifteen, so anyone at negative fifteen rep will only have one rep per day no matter what. Personally, I think this is a pretty good idea, but I'd love to here what everyone thinks about it.

What perks can be added for donators that aren't pay-to-win?
One thing I have been thinking about is that there are a lot of SG and hub perks, but only two for SMP and both are controversial. There are some cosmetics, but donators don't even have an advantage with that because the cosmetic shops act as money sinks and giving donators more SMP money would actually be pay-to-win. Unfortunately, I don't really have any ideas for what could be added as donator perks. If you do, put them below!

Conclusion
Anyways that's about it. If you read all the way through, thanks! I hope you understand that this is purely me trying to lay out the two arguments, provide suggestions, and hopefully incite a discussion!

 

[ItzFlip]

Hey! I really appreciate you making this post. We actually are working on a change to how donor ranks can use the rep system in the next coming days. As for the set homes, we are discussing potentially adding a second set home for everyone, but nothing is confirmed yet.

 

[snowcoal]

I agree with most of this except for taking the extra homes away from the donors. I currently have OG and for me, having 3 homes is essential. I have 2 overworld bases with different types of farms, and a nether home that I use to go far into the nether. Losing any of these would be very annoying for me at least. My opinion is that non-donors should get 2-3, and donors should get an extra. If my 3rd home was removed Id probably have to use an alt to get around it, and the homes shouldnt be based on who has the most alt accounts.

Another thing I think is that homes should not be allowed to be set in the end. One of the ways that the homes make the server PTW is that a home can be set at an end city, and every reset, the player can spawn there and farm the shulkers/elytra easily and then sell them, quite literally making it PTW. Every end reset should also reset any end homes, or no homes should be allowed in the end in general.

For the rep systenm, I think is that OG+ should not be allowed to rep themselves. Other than that (a lot of OG+ players have very high rep for this reason), I havent seen much abuse of the rep system and I think its fine the way it is other than OG+ self-repping.

Finally, in terms of other perks, I think theres honestly not much more that could be added. I bought my rank like a day after the server was released to the public for one reason and one reason only and that was to support the server as I liked the idea behind it. Ive never really used any of the cosmetics as I dont care much about cosmetics.

 

[IamMiku]

There's one feature I would like to change, it's the multiple reps for ranks. I think it'd be a lot better if no matter what rank you are, you can't rep the same player more than once a day. To avoid total abuse of it (2 OGs could ruin a person's time on the server within 2 or 3 days)

 

[Mr McGee]

I agree with Miku. I think being able to rep the same person more than once a day is pretty bad. Even if you could rep as many people as you wanted a day but not the same person would probably be better. Perhaps an hour cool down instead of a day.

 

[Red]

I agree with most of this except for taking the extra homes away from the donors.

Like I said, I also think donors should have some benefit with the homes system, but I feel this will always be something that is considered pay-to-win by some community members. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Another thing I think is that homes should not be allowed to be set in the end.

I didn't even think about this but it definitely should be a thing."

There's one feature I would like to change, it's the multiple reps for ranks. I think it'd be a lot better if no matter what rank you are, you can't rep the same player more than once a day. To avoid total abuse of it (2 OGs could ruin a person's time on the server within 2 or 3 days)

I agree, but I also think that could prevent someone's rep from rightfully going down a lot. This was my solution to it:

I also agree that multiple reps can be bad when in the wrong hands, but I also think they could be very beneficial, so here is my suggestion: when a donator gets to a certain negative rep, be it five, ten, or fifteen, they lose their ability to have multiple reps. It could even be tiered so they lose one rep at five, one at ten, and one at fifteen, so anyone at negative fifteen rep will only have one rep per day no matter what. Personally, I think this is a pretty good idea, but I'd love to here what everyone thinks about it.

Let me know what your thoughts are on that idea!

 

[SouthDakotaGirl]

I find this very interesting. I agree with what you said about only having one home. It can be pretty frustrating to only have one home. I would love to be able to have multiple homes.

I disagree that it is somewhat pay-to-win. I think that the donors do deserve to get something for their money. I'm just not sure that multiple homes and the ability to rep multiple times is fair to everyone else. They do get to color text in chat and have thier name more visible. I am not a donor so what do I know.

Edit: So I had a idea, it might be stupid but I'm going to say it anyway. What if there was a donor market? Like a place where only donors could only buy stalls. It would open up more regular stalls since most of them are rented by donors. Idk this might be a stupid idea and even more pay-to-win.

Idk these are just my opinions.

 

[ItzFlip]

There's one feature I would like to change, it's the multiple reps for ranks. I think it'd be a lot better if no matter what rank you are, you can't rep the same player more than once a day. To avoid total abuse of it (2 OGs could ruin a person's time on the server within 2 or 3 days)

This is already being implemented in the next rep update

 

[Mrhankwalum]

I think in general, everybody should have 1 set home if any, in TheMisterEpic's video, he discussed missing the old feeling of SMPs without all of the plugins and pay to win features. I think one of the things that makes Minecraft really fun is the challenge of getting from one place to another without being able to teleport there, this adds a bit of a challenge (you have to remember coordinates etc.). So whaddya think staff? Thanks,

-Hank

 

[ItzFlip]

I think in general, everybody should have 1 set home if any, in TheMisterEpic's video, he discussed missing the old feeling of SMPs without all of the plugins and pay to win features. I think one of the things that makes Minecraft really fun is the challenge of getting from one place to another without being able to teleport there, this adds a bit of a challenge (you have to remember coordinates etc.). So whaddya think staff? Thanks,

-Hank

I totally understand how set homes could be seen as pay to win; however, in traditional survival servers, communities were very close (as in everyone's homes were within 1000 blocks of spawn). The difference here is, most players have bases that are up to 25k blocks from spawn. That feature of setting a home is very useful here, as players would get very frustrated going from spawn and having to travel 25k blocks to their base. We are trying our absolute hardest to keep it as vanilla as possible, but our goal is to keep it interesting as well. This is where the market, bounty, and rep systems come into play. Normal vanilla survival would get boring within 2-4 weeks of playing so we added those features in order to keep the survival experience fresh, fun, and entertaining. Hope this helps!

 

[Mrhankwalum]

I get that. Thanks!