# **Concerning Pearl Costs.**
*This was made in the hopes of finding a solution for a problem, compromises have to be made -RedDevel*

## **The present.**
As it currently stands the amount of players 1 person could perma exile pearl is at a max of 8, with prison pearl standing at 1.
This means that if a person logged in every day to collect their mana eventually they would generate enough mana to be able to permanently keep either 8 players exile pearled, or 1 player prison pearled.

Incase you forgot or simply didn't know. Exile pearl allows the pearled player to play in the overworld with certain limiting factors. These factors are:
1. Can not be within 1000 blocks of their pearl
2. Can not be inside of a bastion field unless allowed
3. Can't pvp
4. Can't use potions
5. Can't damage bastions
6. Can't damage reinforcements
7. Can't place snitches

Most of these are perfectly fine and merely prevent the player from committing any possible crimes. However one of these is a little more severe than that.
They can't pvp, at first glance this makes perfect sense. However when thought about a bit longer you quickly realise that this means that 1 person can incapacitate 8 players, and prevent them from ever fighting back again. If you have a nation with around 5 people you can incapacitate 40 player or 80 with 10. Basically the entire server. Sure they can still "play" but they are completely defenceless.

There is an other issue, Here is the config file:
According to the config, a pearl decays 2 health every 15 minutes. However when a person doesn't log in for a week the pearl stops decaying. This is blatantly only good for perma pearling.
Also pearls do not cost more to maintain with activity. They either cost 2 hp per 15 minutes, or nothing at all.

## **D A T A**
*Now I am not the only person on this server, so let's take a look at what the divide actually is on this issue.*

On 08/01/2020 I posted a poll with various questions about what should be done with pearl costs. Here are the results:
### **Increase or Decrease?**
**First question** was whether pearl costs should be increased, decreased or stay the same. I also included an I don't know option.
The poll had a total of **80** votes.
**56** Were for a increase in pearls costs.
**9** Were for a decrease in pearls costs.
**11** Were for pearl costs staying the same
**4** Didn't know.

*In the next graph I have taken out the IDK votes.*
This clearly shows that almost **3/4** of the server support increasing pearl costs. Most people agree that there is a problem with the current configuration of pearling costs.
Now let us see what these people actually want.(Which costs should be altered)
### **Increase pearl costs.**
First the 56 people who voted for an increase in pearl costs:

The first question these people got was: **How many players should 1 person be able to keep exile pearled?**
It is quite clear that a vast majority is of the opinion that 1 person should not be able to permanently exile pearl more than 4 players at once. This means doubling exile pearl costs.


The second question these people got was: **How many players should 1 person be able to keep prison pearled?**
These results honestly suprised me. I did not expect people to support increasing prison pearl costs, let alone double it or more. Doing this means that you'd need at least 2 people to permanently prison pearl 1 player.
### **Decrease pearl costs.**
There were ofcourse people who were of the opinion that pearl costs should actually be decreased. So let us take a look at what they would like the costs to be.


The questions for this group was the same as the other, first: **How many players should 1 person be able to keep exile pearled?**
The choices however were not the same. They could have chosen between: 20, 16, 12, 10, and 8. But none of the 9 people who thought it should get decreased chose either 16 or 12.
Now I put in 20 expecting maybe 1 or 2 people to choose it as a joke, thinking that everyone would think it way to high. But I was mistaken. perhaps these people would like there to be no limit, or maybe they were actually just joke votes. I can't say.


Same happened with this poll, same question different awnsers: **How many players should 1 person be able to keep prison pearled?**
Again like with the previous, only 2 options were chosen out of 6, the max and the minimum. So perhaps I should have put in a "no limit" option.
### **Totals.**
In these graphs I put all the question results of Exile and Prison together. and added in the 11 people who voted for keeping it the same. To see how things really stack up to each other. (this does of course not include the 4 votes who said IDK)

Even when putting all the exile pearl results together, (76 votes) The majority 66% still agrees that exile pearl costs should at least be doubled.

This graph shows that 59% agrees prison costs should be doubled or more. With 33% stating that they are fine with the current costs.

## **The Future.**

It is quite clear that there is more than enough support to justify a change, so here is my proposal:
**half the repair rate on exile pearls.**
**Add a 1hp per 30 min cost for inactive pearled players**
This would effectively double the costs of exile pearls, but would lower the cost of inactive pearls 4 times compared to exile pearls (instead of no cost at all). And would mean that more dedication will be needed both to maintain the exile pearls, and prison pearls by proxy of not having enough mana to maintain them all. But would also make pearl holders reevaluate which people are really worth holding on to. Hopefully resulting in the release of less valuable pearls.
It's a change that lies in the middle, a compromise. Prison pearl costs won't change, but exile pearls will no longer be as powerful a tool.
not everyone can get what they want, I am not involved in any conflicts, this is not a ploy to disadvantage either side of it. This is to improve the server, which is to everybody's advantage.

Also note that this is not the end all be all. if this change is either not enough, or too much. it can always be altered again. It's fine tuning as one would call it.

## **Side notes.**
Since I have not done a poll on the inactive pearl costs, I will state that it should be considered an extra recommendation by myself.

Here are the numbers I used for the graphs if you're looking for clarification:

The config for the prisonpearl plugin is located here:
https://github.com/CivClassic/Configs/blob/master/ExilePearl/config.yml#L254

I received some justified critisism about the increase prison pearl question not having enough choices. I agree, I'm sorry. Like I said I did not anticipate so many people to be for an increase in prison pearl costs.

Please remain civil in your critisism.
Thank you for reading.

-RedDevel, Iria's finest council member.