Found this video when browsing through some Minecraft video's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?annota...&feature=iv&src_vid=pqmilXJlElY&v=aGU4oe60Qss Fun fact: The claimed 600 per second he mentions on good computers would happen on ECC regardless of the computer due to it being multiplayer, so long as the server isn't lagging, like on off-peak. (generally people would leave their account with a macro of /sell cactus and sleep overnight, so they get the off peak bonus.) This means that at 1 cent per cactus, you'd make $6 per second for standing still, which is the equivalent of about 3.5-4 miners mining obsidian with Eff V Diamond Pickaxes non-stop. (Assuming the $10 price.) Doing this overnight would gain you 3.5-4 times the profit of mining obsidian for ~12 hours, (~2.5-3 times the amount for farming.) and you literally did it while asleep. (Mining obsidian makes about 10k at the very least with a Eff V Pick after an hour. That's an easy 420-480k overnight for doing no work period with the cactus farm. After about a year or so of getting about 450k on average each night, you would have made about 164250k, or 164.25 mil, for doing nothing but spending about probably a total of a few hours of setting up the macro each night/teleporting there, etc.) I know this farm is pretty much impossible to build legitimately on ECC due to it's sheer size, even if cactus wasn't 'banned', but still, those are some pretty insane numbers.
Placing cactus is not possible, it will just say insufficient permissions to place this block or something similar.
The thing that is not be noticed here is that if cactus were unable to be sold to the server, this wouldn't happen. I mean seriously, who would invest time and resources to construct something when the product will net you $0.00 each.
Even if the price was lowered to zero, some people may still make giant farms and leave them running. As a result of this, thousands of entities would be on the ground, causing extreme lag to the server.
I don't think that is a very good argument. Take the Aether for example. There is nothing stopping players from griefing in there other than the threat of being banned, and the fact that it wouldn't be profitable. Cactus could be the same. No profit and abuse results in a ban. Players are not going to do this. In your example, you saying that a much desired feature is being removed and causing suffrage for 1000's of players to combat a hypothetical situation that maybe one person ever would do. Another example may be extcreations where players can build gates and bridges. This feature can be abused to cause lag, however, I don't see many bans from this and doesn't appear to really happen. I will also add that I understand and in ECC's past, someone did do this and caused havoc on the server. From the best I can tell, this happened because cactus were worth money and it gave them an unfair advantage. This is not the same as someone who would do it maliciously.
People would do it at $0.00 for a number of reasons, one such being that people will do it maliciously. Trust me, you'd be surprised how many people do it maliciously. Not to mention the possibility that the greed dye could be missed on accident and people make a huge profit building them just to smelt them and sell the dyes, etc. People will find a way to make profit on them, such as if someone wanted mass green dye and a user made a farm to sell it. Bridges/gates can only be used by donors - people who likely won't abuse it. Cactus farming is available to everyone, including those who want to do it maliciously. But more importantly - if someone griefs in the Aether, as long as the owner doesn't file a report, it doesn't matter. However, a cactus farm cannot easily be located and will cause extreme lag issues until found by someone who doesn't already know the location. A cleverly hidden one could sit there for months before someone finds it. There is no easy way to just magically find a cactus farm, and unlike grief, it actually causes huge issues, even if unknown. Generally, all that cactus is for besides farming is decoration. I very rarely find someone who actually plans on using it for decoration, so I don't think it's worth adding back when it's going to cause the staff more time tracking it down than it will cause users to be glad it's able to be placed and used for decoration. Even threads where people wanted it back for decoration were mostly supported by people who admitted they would likely never use it themselves anyway.
Why don't they just stop the growth of cactus? That would actually increase its real worth on the player economy. It has no point now but to sell to server but if somebody needed to find or buy from other people all the cactus parts to make their decorations, that would actually give a person a reason to buy them from another player. A great example of how cactus is used as decoration can be found in the current spawn PVP arena. Not only does it look nice but it adds a little strategy.
I made a suggestion a little while ago about cactus. I still think that if the growing ability and damage properties were removed, cactus could be used as a decoration block only. This would 1. Prevent lag from huge farms, and 2. Give it an actual fun, good use. If there was no damage and no growing, it would be perfect! It could be sold in spawn-shop, so if people needed large quantities, they could get them. I might bump or make a new suggestion sometime, but until then, we most likely won't have cactus
Actually, if cactus grew only when you are near the chunk it is in like other things that grow, that would be OK, except for the auto-farming aspect issue. There IS a use for cactus besides placing it. It is how you get cactus (dark) green dye. green dye is necessary to make lime green or cyan dye, too. So, there is a fairly legitimate use for cacti. I would suggest that there be a legitimate way to get green dye other than from cacti. Options would from vines, grass or leaves.
