Minecraft Wiki talk:Issues/1.3.1

Villager Trading Discussion II
a! Villager trading is still very much imbalanced. Non-farmables are undervalued, e.g. 4-5 diamond must be sold for a single emerald. Meanwhile, farmable items are overvalued, e.g. 19-29 paper for an emerald. With a sufficiently large sugarcane farm, I have been able to earn around 7.44 stacks of emerald in an hour, and while this is not in and of itself bad, these emeralds can be spent of many diamond items. The net result is a far bigger earning from farming than the most efficient mining practices, even with Fortune III. In fact, just one harvesting of the farm nets a player several doublechests of diamond items, which is very overpowered. In addition, many prices are nonsensical, e.g. iron and gold are considered equal in value, and mundane items such as compasses are considered more valuable than diamond tools.

A proposed fix would be to make prices based on their cost in raw materials, and rank the materials roughly in line with their actual rarity. Farmables should have a very low value compared to non-renewable items such as mineables, because the current system leaves major exploitability from farms. Farmable offers should not be removed, of course, as it does still take time and effort to build farms, harvest them, and make the trades. One can consider comparing the amount of time it takes to farm a given amount of an item to the amount of time it takes to come across a given amount of another item when mining.

Server administrators are considering disabling trading and villagers on their servers because of the current imbalance, so this is a major annoyance. --WolfieMario 16:49, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone also made a detailed report on an older snapshot on how villager trading is not renewable too. It needs major attention. --Steve G. Wood 18:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The forum thread with that discussion is at http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1306798-villagers-deleting-trades-playtested/ Also, note that the proposed values in your spreadsheet generally make this problem worse. You are attempting to balance the system based on everyone exploiting it in the most efficient manner possible, when it already suffers from the problem that only people who are exploiting the system can make the system work at all. --Exasperation 18:38, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd actually be happy if offer removal was taken away. As I have said below, the offer deletion system does make it hard both for legitimate users and exploiters. However, I wasn't aware it was as bad as that person said; I've always been lucky enough with librarians to get selling offers as the last offer (the last offer is never removed).


 * And my charts only assume exploitation in terms of farmables. If an item can't be farmed (e.g. mined items), it has a reasonable value. The problem is that farmables are worth very little in most multiplayer situations because of the massive farms people build, which is why server administrators want trading disabled: the vanilla prices overvalue farmables relative to non-farmables. If a player wants to make the system work with my pricing, they can sell ores and even mob drops at reasonable rates. I don't assume the most efficient methods are used; I don't assume any more than 1/7 of the coal in a world is charcoal; I don't assume that most wool comes from double cave-spider grinders. In fact, as far as mob grinding goes, I assume people are actually fighting the mobs at full health and in a position where they can be harmed - this is obviously not true for people using grinders, but I was trying to acknowledge that many people don't use grinders.


 * Now I know why Jeb didn't do any reworks to pricing like this. It's not possible to satisfy anybody. If it's good for players without farms, it's overpowered for players with farms. If it's not exploitable for players that are efficient, it's not usable for players that aren't. I'm even getting conflicting suggestions from the same people sometimes - there was one person who insisted that I undervalued diamond drastically, but overvalued items made of diamond at the same time. I can't reconcile that; I already made these items worth less than the sum of their parts.


 * Can you suggest a fix that makes trading useful without exploitation, while at the same time not letting it get overpowered with exploitation? At this point, I think it would be good if we could just have a system that people don't near-unanimously agree is overpowered. It shouldn't matter that a third of players say it's not useful enough, a third of players say it's still too overpowered, and a third of players say it's balanced. It's obvious at this point that no simple fix can satisfy everybody - but it's better for a chunk of the population to say it's too much and an equal chunk to say it's too little, than for both chunks to say it's too much.


 * By the way, I've made ores sold to villagers (even coal/charcoal) go for a higher price, so it's easier to get your money's worth. I'd like to think a diamond pickaxe for a stack of iron is a good deal. --WolfieMario 22:34, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I think if the offer removal was taken away, rebalancing to make farmables harder to exploit could work - although (as you pointed out) you're never going to please everybody. I didn't mean to imply that your price rebalancing was bad, only that it interacts poorly with the offer removal system. Also, keep in mind that keeping a selling offer last is in itself an exploit requiring knowledge of the trading code - the naive trader will most likely not be able to do so for long (nor is it reasonable to expect them to do so - another argument against offer removal). I would also like to suggest that if trading using emerald blocks for expensive items were implemented, it would probably be a good idea for villagers to be spawned with 3 offers, the first two being hardcoded to 9 emeralds -> emerald block and emerald block -> 9 emeralds (not subject to offer removal or part of the pool of randomly generated offers). That way, you could make change without leaving the trade interface to find a crafting table. --Exasperation 00:03, 1 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Please see this forum thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1253062-npc-trading-brainstorm-thread-add-your-ideas/page__gopid__15823395#entry15823395

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/15617-idea-about-traders/#entry12330837
 * There are others. Basically, fixed prices that do not respond to what's happening / supply / demand will "never" be the right price. These are, as I said in a now locked thread, worthless. Remember, people have found that the best way to deal with NPC villagers right now is to kill NPC's that don't have wanted trade offers just to keep getting new ones. --Keybounce 19:05, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
 * You also cause a trading system to be stupidly broken (any trading system) by allowing the merchants infinite stock and infinite liquidity. This is (IMO) another part of the same annoyance. Fixing one aspect but not the other won't be enough to address the issue. --Simons Mith[82.69.54.207] 00:49, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think traders need to simulate commerce that realistically at all. Minecraft's not a realistic game, after all. I'd like to think of traders' offers as equivalent to the infinite world: it should take time and effort to make a profit off them, just as mining, hunting, and adventuring are. There don't need to be finite stocks and variable prices: the stock of the Minecraft world itself is infinite, and its prices are fixed. The only issue I find with the traders is that their prices are way out of line with the rest of the world. When abandoned mineshafts were added with the possibility of diamonds contained in chests, they weren't made to contain a stack of diamonds each.


 * I believe a rebalancing of trading can be done with minimal effort to the Mojang team (who are obviously in a rush to release 1.3 already), if the players can provide a fair pricing for every villager offer available. I myself am going through the process of creating the required numbers, with an eight-step process to consider the many things an item's value can hinge on. I'm nearly done, and will post the resulting spreadsheet soon, for all players to give their input and hopefully convince Mojang to replace their numbers with the numbers the majority of players find fair. --WolfieMario 02:30, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Proposed fix intended to be easy to implement, with minimal changes to trading mechanics! See this chart or this thread. Basically, I propose that the current values for offers be replaced with the values in the "NPC Trader's Price" column of that chart. As 1.3 is close to its release, it's unlikely any Mojang staff have the time to implement something that significantly reworks trading mechanics - reworking pricing, on the other hand, is fairly simple once the numbers exist. This chart is an attempt to balance pricing, ideally without nerfing trading too badly and without leaving it overpowered. No offers have been added or removed, only pricing has been changed.


 * The only change to trading mechanics would be for the handling of offers which cost more than 64 or 128 emeralds: if the offer costs more than 128 emeralds, emerald blocks must be used in addition to emeralds. If the offer costs more than 64, but less than 128, then both input slots may be used for emeralds.


 * I have made a thread on the forums for more detail and feedback, but basically, I spent a good 25 hours or so rebalancing trading based on a multi-step process. That spreadsheet is fully dynamic; a change to one cell is liable to change many others (e.g. decreasing the value of wood decreases the value of coal, and thus, all smelted items would go down slightly). I've also uploaded the spreadsheet itself, for anyone to play around with. The spreadsheet file contains more than the chart images; it also contains a column for conveniently generating the needed code (the configuration for the generated code begins at cell S43; obviously this part needs adjustment as I based it on mcp's deobfuscation of mc's code).


 * Obviously, it's not one player's right to set the prices for all trades - I'm asking anybody to chime in here, and say whether they think these prices are fair, or whether changes are required! However, if your suggestion is a complete rework of trading mechanics, please make that a reply to the issue itself, not this post - the idea of this post is for a quick fix which can be implemented, if not before 1.3's release, at least hopefully some time shortly afterwards. If you do suggest changes to my fix, try being specific: say what value (e.g. what column of an item) needs changing, and why - downloading and editing the spreadsheet may be helpful in reworking it. --WolfieMario 18:26, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * First issue: Your calculations for chainmail are off; they should be significantly less than iron, closer to leather. Second issue: That might point to a flaw in the underlying equations you use for modifying the first few columns. --Keybounce 20:01, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Third issue: The mapping between NPC Trader's price, and fair price in iron ignots is highly inconsistent. --Keybounce 20:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Chainmail is identical in durability to iron. Chainmail helmets, in fact, are identical to iron helmets in terms of both durability and armor points. All other pieces of chainmail have only one armor point (half a chestplate icon in your armor bar) fewer than iron. Leather has a fraction of the durability and armor points, and is made out of an easy-to-farm material. For the actual value of an item, you should look at the "Adjusted for Usefulness" column, not the column of a villager's price for it. In that column, chainmail is indeed worth less than iron; the complication in discerning its worth is that trading is the only source of the item. The reason its price is raised by the villager is because it can only be earned from trading; you'll see chainmail is more costly than iron in vanilla's villager trading as well. Really, that's more up to the developers than the players, as is any item that can't be earned outside of trading.


 * For your second issue, what flaw do you find in the first few columns? Chainmail essentially has no 'first few columns', because trading is the only way to obtain it. There is literally no basis for the item's value, except its usefulness, so I decided to interpret its base cost as equal to iron armor (taken from the "Adjusted for Crafting/ Smelting" column. It's based directly on iron, as I had nothing better to approximate it with. Really, I don't think chainmail is the biggest issue in villager trading; certainly not big enough that it somehow throws off all my other values.


 * Finally, you are reading the chart wrong in the iron columns. It says the price in iron per stack. Most items stack up to 64, while ender pearls stack to 16, and many items only 'stack' to 1. Otherwise, the value in iron says "fair trade": it uses the values of the "Adjusted for Usefulness" column, not the "Adjusted for Retail" column that villagers use. For clarification on all of this, please see the topic: it goes over all columns in detail. Anyways, hopefully I'll update the spreadsheet soon, so you can see all my calculations yourself. --WolfieMario 20:28, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Long discussion moved to Talk page. For other info see the related links below. I don't recall any other major discussions on the subject.--Simons Mith[82.69.54.207] 21:34, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Link 1: I hope this really is the first discussion on the subject. I keep finding more... Version 12w21b
 * Link 2: (Nothing much new discussed here): Version 12w22a
 * Link 3: Initial feedback on this annoyance - and a first-pass fix by Jeb: Version 12w24a
 * Link 4: First-pass feedback - complaint that villagers trapped for their useful trades were now changing their trades: Version 12w25a
 * Link 5: Trading discussion from the villager trading page: Talk:Trading
 * I just hope we can get Jeb to realize that wasn't enough to fix it; the offer is not removed until the trading interface is closed. I don't think it should be, of course, as this is solving the wrong problem: it makes trading more difficult in general, rather than making trading more difficult to exploit. Correcting prices would make trading easier without the need for exploitation (e.g. large farms and villager killing), and make exploitation less damaging. Making trading more difficult reduces the potential of exploitation and legitimate use equally, failing to solve the problem. --WolfieMario 21:51, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * After some discussion on the forums, I think chainmail could viably be reduced in value to as little as equal to iron: it's more enchantable, and nearly as effective; however it should not be reduced to any lower than iron. I've also lowered the price of bookshelves to 1-2 Emeralds as per suggestion. I'll probably set up a supplementary chart for alternate pricing on controversial items, as some other people have told me they don't think chainmail should drop to as low as iron. --WolfieMario 21:51, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I've made the chart downloadable here and updated the forum thread. I also edited my above post about the fix (the one that starts with bold). --WolfieMario 00:54, 31 July 2012 (UTC)


 * My thread has a poll now, in light of one of the discussions above. There are people saying my fix makes trading useless, and people saying it still leaves it overpowered. Perhaps any fix would have similar criticisms, so at least a fix can be considered balanced if the amount of people at opposite extremes happens to be around the same. --WolfieMario 22:34, 31 July 2012 (UTC)