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  • A case for Aspiria, the economy; and against Moderator abuse

    Hello, thank you for taking the time to read this forum post.

    There is a danger present in the staff circle of this server; including un-noted biases, special relationships, and friend circles. I will not be pointing out any staff members, in order to preserve the right of their integrity.

    One thing that has been more prevalent in the past few weeks, and something that every Aspiria member should be concerned about are the economic changes going on; moderator caused. A recent example of this is the mycelium value reduction, rendering many mining operations by several individuals non-profitable. The players have a stellar right to make a decent profit on this server, to enjoy the things which their money may buy, within a high-value economy. Mycelium is the rarest dirt-based material in minecraft, which leads to significant bounces in the accounts of members.

    I say this to bring to light one thought: After careful inspection of the economy on multiple trials, I have determined, with the support of others, that there are no ways to levy the market or abuse it to make massive profits. Despite this new economic fairness, there are new threats to the economy.

    I am aware of several of our current moderators who have been, or still are, abusing their powers to gain massive profits in the economy, in favor of their friends. Every member has the right to know the following information, which I have gathered from several sources:

    1. Two of the Moderators are in a romantic relationship with eachother in this present time.
    2. One of these moderators has access to the following tool.
    - /i - The ability to spawn in items, outside of creative mode
    3. All moderators have access to rollback - which can respawn in items, making an infinite supply of resellable items.
    4. There is abuse of these moderator privileges going on.
    5. There is a division within the staff team, where two parties butt heads, although it may not be present in the server chat.
    6. The owner is a busy individual, and may not know the insider issues that are occurring.

    These factors lead to an unsupervised staff team, and a fair amount of freedom for economy abuse against the economy and members; as well as many biases in favor of Moderator help, and the power to push forward with personal vendettas against members (This was, and is still happening)

    Aspiria has the potential to be an amazing server, and with the owner's hard work and the welcoming community of the members, I speculate the server will achieve it's goals. These in-staff issues will be a blocking factor to this goal being achieved. I am well-read and informed on the issues that are currently going on in the server: being a longtime member, investor of the server, and former moderator, and I have made this determination.

    With all in mind: I strongly encourage the following to be followed through and carried out.

    1. The commands of the one moderator with /i be inspected, and /i be removed, assuring that there is no potential for spawning in items. I am not confident that this staff member should be capable to spawn in items; as it has, and will continue to cause economy abuse against the members on this server. These individuals involved know who they are, the consequences that is has, and will put forward by the community.

    2. That each member, including you, be well-informed on what is happening in Aspiria, and keep an eye on the /baltop. It is one of the best ways to detect Mod-economy abuse, as it is near impossible given the current market prices, for any person's account to go up drastically. The members also have the right and responsibility to remind these staff members of their responsibility, and tell the owner likewise to assure that this server is the best of them all, and the safest of them all.

    3. That there be a more transparent communication between staff, and member.

    4. That the owner take the responsibility to carry out these suggestions, and assure the team is on-track, and prepared for Aspiria's soon success.

    If you wish to contact me;
    - Skype: Thecarlosman

    Thank you.
    - MrMcBurger
     
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    Hello,

    Thank you for bringing this sensitive topic to light MrMcBurger, As a donor and regular user of Aspiria Server and only this server, I was unaware such things were going on and utterly shocked by these findings. I spend alot of time and effort getting my economy balance to where it is to date, only to find there are those who abuse the system for their self gain. Last week I think I was in the second page of BALTOP, this week amazingly 20 people got rich very quick and now I find I am on page 4.

    I would recommend an immediate investigation into these allegations and those who are found guilty have their balance reduced to zero. Further more IF staff are involved , they be removed from their trusted role immediately.

    Also, is there a way all STAFF commands issued can be monitored/logged for possible abuse?


    Have a nice day

    TheWJM


    On a separate note, I don't like the new shop pricing either. It makes my Mycelin farm useless now :/
     

    PsyberTech

    Colossus
    Hello everyone,

    As to Mycelium...

    We see that the sell price for Mycelium has dropped to $10.00 ea. The replacement price for dirt is $2.00 ea. Using sustainable resupply of resources, and not strip mining entire biomes, the profit on each block of dirt converted to mycelium is now $8.00 ea. So a person buys a stack of dirt for $128.00, converts it to Mycelium and sells it for $480.00 is still making $352.00 per stack. My main economic influx of funds is sugar cane. Being lazy, it is an easy harvest that you do not have to replant which gives $192.00 per stack. You just need to plant a lot of it...

    With this in mind, and at the lower sell price, Mycelium is still more profitable per stack than the most common sugar cane harvesting used by most players. It is just going to take much longer for the original Mycelium farmers to sustain their former incomes. Last night I set up and shown how to create a sustainable Mycelium income without Biome destruction. Buy the dirt to replace what you have removed. Done the way I set up, you are constantly harvesting as fast as you can replace the excavation with new dirt. I made $200,000.00 in 16 hours of testing. But that was when I was making from memory.. about $1660.00 per stack minus the $128.00 for the replacement dirt. Because I am guessing, lets just call it $1600.00 in profits per stack. I know it was that much or more for sure. A vast amount of money compared to any player earlier tasking.

    This should be called an Alchemy bug... We were turning Dirt directly into Gold for Gold's sake. This was not as much as an exploit, but as a testament to the depths of time invested by players to rape and pillage biomes for their own benefit. I learned about the /baltop list last night too and made the comment that this was just like early American settlers in the Industrial era throughout the country. Lets ruin entire environments before law makers could protect the community, just because they wanted to be at the top of some richest player list.

    Up until last night, it would seem that all Mycelium excavation was by massive biome strip mining of entire Mushroom Biomes. The true extent of this has not been fully documented. It would take a DynMap to find all of the destruction, but considering the size of this world, the rendering would shut down this server for days if not a week depending upon the resolution of the map. Creating a map would not be within the best interest of the Community as a whole. Unless you already have one which may be the Lag problem as of late...

    If this was real life, I am sure that those whom devastated the biomes would have been financially forced to the job of reclamation to each area so devastated. Considering they would only have to pay for the replacement dirt, their semi-ill begotten gains would still be in fact extensive. Baring the fact that I have not seen much in the way of rules pointed towards the protection of the environment, I would find myself in a difficult position of demanding restoration or the confiscation of earned funds. I shall leave those thoughts to my betters above my pay grade.

    As for me, if I can get the X Y Z locations of the effected areas, I would like to start a Biome recovery project on my own. I would restore the landscape to as close to original condition block by block and add some Elfish whimsy with paths, a few bridges and cute cottages here and there. It would be my hope that from them on, anyone wishing to remove Mycelium would replace the blocks with fresh dirt to preserve the habitat.

    My opinion for now, and perhaps the future, is that the sell price for Mycelium blocks should stand at $10.00 each until such time as a later review may adjust the price up or down. Still everyone must remember... Anyone can make Millions of credits on this server at any time if they wish to place ALL of their attentions and dedications upon the task. It is our duty to make sure they do not do it in a week or two by watching market pricing and that /baltop list. This needs to be done without damaging the profit of the 97% of us just making what we need for the items we require. Not enough profit, weighed against the hours of work needed to provide for our simple needs, and for the needs of those new players joining our community, will outweigh the desire to invest the time here, thus forcing players to look to other communities.

    It is a fine line we must walk, and never will everyone be happy.

    As to the ability to /I any items and hand them out. I have no comment because I have no knowledge of any infractions. It is my hope that this not be abused. Especially to the extent that the economy is impaired. All of my direct dealings with the Junior and Senior Moderators have been warm, friendly and professional. It is my hope that it stays that way. I would caution that General Chat is not always the best place for every conversation. /Party Chat is a wondrous thing.

    Thank you... Sigh... I wanted to just post a paragraph about the current pricing. Sorry. :)
     

    PandaMaxTPN

    Established
    Titan
    I have been around on the server for a very long time, since early 1.5, and it is still the server I play the most on Minecraft. I definitely can agree the moderator abuse is happening, and has been happeing. And yes, some people are in relationships making it unjust. I agree that this can be very unfair to people, I think that the moderators should be banned from using their commands to give themselves or other players free money or items. They should only be allowed to use them for helping purposes. And as far as the /ban commands go, I have seen some occurrences where moderators, are banning people for no reason, or because something they did outside of Minecraft or the server. Overall I think this is a problem and thank you Burger/Carlos for bringing it to our attention.

    ~Maxxi ;3
     
    Hello,

    I was already aware that 2 staff members were in a romantic relationship (Anyone who knows who they are, please do NOT speak out, it is unfair and a private matter) and I think this has nothing to do with anything and the owner is aware of this.

    I would also like to bring to light that one staff with access to /i is at the literal bottom of the /baltop and other mods with access to rollback are low in terms of money. The few mods that are high in Cash have either been gifted it by some kind players, or have legitimate methods of getting them such as a stone generator, enderman farms, or silk touched ores.

    As for access to /i and rollback powers, that's completely necessary... without those commands then the mods can't do anything to help if there is damage to property or items stolen.

    Yes, there has been abuse of these powers but in most cases BIGUNMAN has been made aware of them but there is no division in the staff, and if there was I would hope that because of the age and maturity of the current staff members, they would be easily able to sort such problems out.

    The staff are not terrible at their jobs and its unfair that people keep looking for problems with the team since they're volunteers. As far as minecraft servers go, we've got a pretty just team...

    Sincerely
    -Zeeph​
     
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    Alicietta

    Ultimate
    Well, You see there's no abuse going on within the team, quite frankly I'm surprised you would bring this up, (You know exactly why), linking to Zeeph's point:
    Hello,

    I was already aware that 2 staff members were in a romantic relationship (Anyone who knows who they are, please do NOT speak out, it is unfair and a private matter) and I think this has nothing to do with anything and the owner is aware of this.

    I would also like to bring to light that one staff with access to /i is at the literal bottom of the /baltop and other mods with access to rollback are low in terms of money. The few mods that are high in Cash have either been gifted it by some kind players, or have legitimate methods of getting them such as a stone generator, enderman farms, or silk touched ores.

    As for access to /i and rollback powers, that's completely necessary... without those commands then the mods can't do anything to help if there is damage to property or items stolen.

    Yes, there has been abuse of these powers but in most cases BIGUNMAN has been made aware of them but there is no division in the staff, and if there was I would hope that because of the age and maturity of the current staff members, they would be easily able to sort such problems out.

    The staff are not terrible at their jobs and its unfair that people keep looking for problems with the team since they're volunteers. As far as minecraft servers go, we've got a pretty just team...

    Sincerely
    -Zeeph​
    There might've been once or twice but that's cause we have fun, no critical damage has been done, by far all I know our team and I have not abused our powers but only gained our money by working, As a pass team member I thought you would understand, We treat you like any casual person, why try to attack us? The staff team are well trusted and shouldn't be underestimated, The thing I'm incredibly puzzled about is the following,
    - You came back maybe 5 days ago? A little suspicious if you ask me...
    - Pass staff team member, You know the rules, you know the team are not abusive,
    - How you know this so well but actually know so little.
    In my opinion I believe this shouldn't be discussed, I'm free for more replies but, Why is this so appealing to people? Many things go by but you seem to take notice in the smallest detail.
     

    BiGUNMAN

    Citizen
    Ultimate
    Hi, I'll keep my post short. The goal is to maintain a balanced economy. We recently implemented mcMMO but did not make adjustments to the economy for it. More adjustments will occur as we find more unbalanced functions. As for Moderator abuse it seems a few upset players which feel as if they were dealt with unjustly feel this way. There's absolutely no proof being provided and I'll tell you now that no moderators have /I.
     

    DreadySemicolon

    Bishop of the umi order
    I definitely can agree the moderator abuse is happening, and has been happeing. And yes, some people are in relationships making it unjust. I agree that this can be very unfair to people, I think that the moderators should be banned from using their commands to give themselves or other players free money or items.
    Speaking from past experiences, not from actual up-to-date factual knowledge:
    While unfair usage of administrative commands, such as "/i", should be forbidden AND its corresponding rule should be enforced with regular inspections and eventual punishments, I do not think commands themself should be removed, unless useless for moderating purposes.

    Also, I can see your mention of the concept of "banning", which is the main reason for me to write all of this. Let's start from the basis: banning someone, or, more formally, preventing any direct connection to the server to a certain person's UUID, is a safety measure used by forum and videogame server administrative entities, not a punishment, which seems to be the common definition. This prevents a player (whom was caught somehow damaging the related community) from misbehaving further.
    Now, leaving a hypotetical misbehaving staffee without its potentially dangerous clearances, will fix the main problem; a punishment, if needed, would be stripping the user of some of his possessions, or doing so repeated times if he/she doesn't have enough to pay for his "crimes" with. In other words, cutting someone's access to the server is basically the auto-tuning of moderating: it may be the easiest way to get the job done, but not always THE one, and certainly NOT the BEST one. Imagine banning like exile: would you rather kill a thief, whom stole a pair of vegetals from a random dude, with exile or a fee/fine/whateveryoucallitintheunitedstatesofmurica (plus eventual prison sentence and such)?

    To make my view more clear, I'll make a comparison between two ideal cases.
    Case 1:
    Occurrence:
    The player "Genoveffo_1999" stole some milk from the neighbor because he was too lazy to buy it from the store.

    Problem solution:
    The neighbor is given back the stole milk (...other bottles of it).

    Punishment:
    Genoveffo is charged with a ...I don't know, 20€ fee?
    Case 2:
    Occurrence:
    The player "Rosalindo_best_player_PvP_MlG_pr0" starts headbutting people in a mall in Turin, judging them as "n00bz" and smashing together some flint and steel next to the victims.

    Problem solution:
    Confinement to a mental rehabilitation facility.
    (plus a water + HCl solution. That is always a good solution :D not to drink though.)

    Punishment:
    A knife inside both eyes. At the same time, right through the nose cavity. A dented, rusty knife. (possibly not the peak of my family-friendly postings *^*)

    I personally feel like banning-obsessed people are not really mature, and I'm sorry if it is offensive, but I also feel like it has to be said.

    Hi, I'll keep my post short. The goal is to maintain a balanced economy. We recently implemented mcMMO but did not make adjustments to the economy for it. More adjustments will occur as we find more unbalanced functions. As for Moderator abuse it seems a few upset players which feel as if they were dealt with unjustly feel this way. There's absolutely no proof being provided and I'll tell you now that no moderators have /I.
    I want to enforce his argument, simplifying (and kinda... enhancing?) it.
    Players are supposed to have the complete freedom of getting rich by legit means, right? That means I can dedicate my life (which implies skipping school, saying "pffft who needs a job?" and eating chocolate bars to avoid cooking) to mine stone/mycelium/whateveronium for the only purpose of buying off every item I see being auctioned or buying off every rare item from every seller at higher prices than everyone, in order to make the server bow and kneel before me as they get close to starving to death due to every living entity being killed by my personal army of iron golems. I have that right, don't I? Why would balancing incomes be a good thing for the server? Who cares about people who don't have ranks, anyway...
    (got emotionally sarcastic, but I am very convinced of everything I meant to say)

    Post-Scriptum: I edited this thread answer quite a lot of times, due to me being stupid >.<
     
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    TabbyCatt26

    Formerly
    Ultimate
    The rules say that role playing is not allowed, and that you shouldn't say "I love you" or place signs all over the place if you are in a relationship; that books are okay. (/rules chat, I think). Most people don't know that the two moderators are in a relationship and IT SHOULDNT MATTER. They are NOT breaking rules and they are NOT broadcasting their relationship. What, exactly, is the problem here? The economy is fixed to make it more entertaining. It isn't fun if getting money is easy. Yeah, I have a lot of money. And it was a ton of fun getting it with Sykes. And it was even more fun to help whoever needed it. I like that the mycelium price range changed. As BiG said, there is no mod with /i. Moderators need /rollback to help other players. It is their JOB. As Maxxi and Sykes mentioned, moderators "abuse" the system. But what does that mean, really? Because if you look at the balances, the mods don't have the most money. i mean, just look at Fatey's balance XD. No two people are the same, so of course there will be disagreement. How a non-moderator knows this is beyond me, unless he still has his chat-spying privilege.
    And yeah, BiG is busy, and we still love him for it anyway. Really, there shouldn't be a problem here. The moderators get a bad rep when they shouldn't. They aren't extensively breaking any rules. They are not affecting anyone's fun by what they do—they actually help people have more fun. They keep the server running and yes, they even reduce the copious amounts of lag we get. I remember going through moderators and if we keep dissing them then I wouldn't blame them if they quit (like many have). The server is supposed to be fun, not some contest of who can get the most money. So as you once so eloquently put it, "You do you" and give them a break, please, Burger.
     

    PsyberTech

    Colossus
    The sell price of Mycelium went up to $26.25 this morning from the $10.00 low point last night. Considering Dirt replacement costs of $2.00 per block, any Mycelium Farmer should still be quite happy with their profit of $1,552.00 per stack after Dirt replacement costs whilst using environmentally friendly farming. Sure beats my $192.00 stack of Sugar Cane.

    Following this point in the economy shall be paramount for me over the foreseeable future. I may have to convert my 10,000 blocks of Sugar Cane over to Mycelium. But you will not see me doing that until this situation is fully resolved.

    /me *HUGS* the Mods and thanks them for hanging in there.
     

    PsyberTech

    Colossus
    @PsyberTech

    It appears that the price of Mycelium is still at it's original 7.5 selling point.

    Are you positive there was a change made?

    I am 100% sure that the sell price for Mycelium was lowered to $10.00 per block last night. Hence all the math in my earlier posts.

    What I am not positive of was the original sell price. ( I mentioned that I was not positive in my first post) I thought it was $35.00, but I had questionable math on the profit margin in the $2k range based on the $35.00 sell price. Today my calculations on profit based upon the $25.25 had a sell price exactly what I thought I was getting last night before the price change. That along with your comment makes me believe that I may have had the Buy price in memory and not the Sell price.

    So with this in mind, all Mycelium Farmers should take advantage of the sell price while it is available. You might want to start by putting some (at least 1/4) of your new cobble layer into production to take advantage as quickly as possible before your expansion to the full 25,500 square block farm.

    As for me, I want to grab some quick cash just to have a small cushion for a while before having to go back to Sugar Cane.

    Thank you for the heads up MrMcBurger!
     
    Hey guys. I know I'm a newer member here and don't have a rank or anything, but I did make money in the server pretty quickly, so I hope I'm permitted to say something about this.

    I'd like to start with Burger's first point.
    1. Two of the Moderators are in a romantic relationship with eachother in this present time.
    I'm in a relationship with Dannelboyz who plays Aspiria sometimes. We used to run a forum of 5,000 members together as head admins. Dating allowed us better communication, the benefit of the other person's perspective, and ideas to be bounced off each other efficiency. It made us a better team. You can like people being in a relationship, and you can dislike the same thing, but jumping to the assumption that it makes them bad at their jobs or somehow morally disabled is unfair.

    But sure, Aspiria isn't our forum. I have around 1.75 million on Aspiria. Dannelboyz has 17k (and heck if he isn't proud of it). He can't spawn things in, and he's never had much money to give me (though he did give me it all when we were starting out). However, I'm the builder of us two. I use money to make us homes to live in, so to me, having money matters more. He doesn't care if he's dirt poor, he's just playing the game for fun.

    Next!
    That each member, including you, be well-informed on what is happening in Aspiria, and keep an eye on the /baltop. It is one of the best ways to detect Mod-economy abuse, as it is near impossible given the current market prices, for any person's account to go up drastically. The members also have the right and responsibility to remind these staff members of their responsibility, and tell the owner likewise to assure that this server is the best of them all, and the safest of them all.
    Absolutely agree it's great to be informed. However, I disagree with much of what followed. It is not impossible to gain money quickly. I've been on the server for a month at most, and in the last few (one or two) weeks, gained most of my money.

    To avoid accusations, most of my starter wealth was gained silk-touch mining. Later I started using enderman and guardian farms more, which let my balance grow quite a bit more. But your accusations did not take into account that two people working together can make a great deal of wealth. I gained about a third of my money from a bet with yat3s. This means the fastest way to make money is off other players. If you're going to watch whose money goes up, it doesn't mean a whole lot if you're not seeing if anyone's went down. But above all of what I just listed? I'm not currently in school, and I don't have a job. I spend a lot of time on Aspiria, and that's why I got so much money so fast.

    Now back to what I was saying, information is good, but when that leads to paranoia and accusations of members or staff, I take issue. Because being displaced from baltop doesn't mean you lost money. I was on baltop last week. I'm not right now, and I have more money than I did then. And that's okay. If you care so much about being the richest that you stop caring about other people, treating them like cheaters because surely nobody else could have as much money as you, then I'd argue that if anyone has been morally unsound, it's you. (Please notice this is an 'if' statement. I am not calling anyone morally unsound.)

    I do agree that if there is abuse, it is a problem, but so far all I've seen is a bias against specific staff members and no proof. I don't have any real opinion on shop price changes, as they haven't affected me any. I just didn't want to stand by and watch people (moderators or new members alike) get accused unjustly. It's already happened to me, and I'd hate for that to become the server policy. It's such a nice place when we're not playing "who dun it."

    This post has turned out rather long, but I want to finish it with a shout out to the staff team.

    The moderators I have interacted with have been kind, helpful, and quick to respond when I've needed help. I had questions regarding the forums, and Ali helped me out despite being in a conversation with someone else. When I first joined I asked a lot of forums about the gamerules on Aspiria, and I always got quick and helpful replies. I asked for help regarding something in hub, and TransparentFate went out of his way to mention it to BiG for me, when he could have told me to ask him myself. DiCape has been very generous, hosting regular drop parties and making use of her wealth to help others. And BiGUNMAN has been surprisingly approachable and friendly, despite his undoubtedly busy schedule. The mods I haven't listed are lovely too, I'm sure (sorry guys, we haven't interacted a whole lot!).

    Having been on other servers and different game communities, I think the staff here are uniquely friendly and I commend you guys for your grace under pressure and accusations. Please keep doing what you're doing, and thank you for making Aspiria the place it is.
     

    DreadySemicolon

    Bishop of the umi order
    There something I disagree with Zoz's argument: she hasn't been "offensive" enough. If used correctly, aggressiveness can make your argument better :3 I love heated topics.
     
    Why not everyone be on the same team, team aspiria. :) If you're unhappy with everything, press the disconnect button and go join another server or go watch funny cat videos. Aspiria was meant to be a place for fun.. this is not school or a mandatory task. Go save your drama for earth, aka the world of sad society and leave aspiria to be its own world full of peace, joy, and friendliness among each other. :)

    I will be honest, I have been a lot more inactive on the server than I used to when I would play the server every time I was not at school, eating, sleeping, doing homework, or not at home. I literally played it every second possible (my 'Time Played' score will tell you that as well as my involvement with the forums.) Aspiria is changing unfortunately. It's becoming more like the everyday servers you can find anywhere (I'm not talking about the actual server itself but the community). Players left and right demanding for things, being rude, ignoring people, starting issues like this one and then going to war about it, etc. It would literally be an unbelievable, incredible miracle if everyone got along with each other regardless of the circumstances. (By this I mean that if someone starts a conflict, the most typical person would fight back, start fussing, threatening to report them, hold grudges, /ignore, etc. Regardless of whether you are perfectly justified for doing it, it doesn't help bring the community together it just pulls you apart and creates 1 more bad relationship (people confuse this word too much) with someone in your life, the more of those, the sadder life is tbh.

    For those of you nice people out there that would never do something like that, well why not help spread the word to help end all of this mess. :D

    For those who are on burger's side and for those that are on the no-burger side, WHY ARE THERE EVEN SIDES! We shouldn't be having a civil war! How about we do like aspiria vs mineplex not aspiria vs aspiria : PP

    For those reporting of moderator abuse, well why not send bigunman the screenshots and reasons why they are being so disruptive to the server (If they are being disruptive. Usually its over something silly.) Another thing, rollba(c)ks have been used to dupe things in order to restore items that have been destroyed in a non-legitimate way. This is usually because bigunman, the one with the proper ability to restore items, is usually unavailable doing things to maintain the server and add new features that everyone enjoys so don't flip if a staff attempts to speed up the waiting. Back to being a team, the staff team is simply a group of voluntary people here to help regulate the server so don't hate us for helping people and getting rid of those that join for the sake of disrupting the server. Also, I personally do not believe that we lazily ban people without reason. I am one of the active people checking applications and the bans seem pretty fair.

    So anyways, the bottom line is that we all need to come together and be a friendly community without having 'sides' against each other even if the person is your worst enemy, it will only stay that way unless you make a change. The more of this hate toward everyone I see, the more I begin to think my words are meaningless and I should go die a hole.

    So anyways, thanks for reading and eat more bird seed :D