I'm in the middle of coding a new voting plugin, and wanted to get some input on this. Is there a reason you'd favour crates as rewards, over simply just receiving items? My plugin works by automatically giving you the item when you vote (or next log in), so there's no claiming you have to do. Was wondering if the crates is still something that's desired?
If I'm coding this, I might as well make it the way you all want it. Give me ideas!
Here's my POV on the matter:
1: Crates/Crate Keys, are a tradable commodity, as opposed to just voting rewards that are handed out. This has some interesting effects economically.
2: Something common across crate plugins I've seen is a animation of sorts when you open a crate & if you get something cool it tends to get announced. This makes the voting process more interesting and can help incentivize players beyond simply receiving the rewards.
And now a suggestion:
A system that I've seen work on a few other servers is as follows:
1: There are two crates, a vote crate and a "high" crate(name subject to change)
2: Voting gets keys for vote crate.
3: Vote crate has keys to high crate, though very rare.
4: You can also buy high crate keys using IRL money.
I think adopting a system similar to this would be an interesting idea, and could help bring additional revenue to the server. As for making the server "pay to win", I would like to make a few points.
Firstly: What, exactly, is the win condition for minecraft? how do you win at villagecraft?
Secondly: Not all forms of monetization are pay to win. There are a few notable examples in certain games, but a well crafted system can avoid pay to win. One possibility: make high crate rewards not affect pvp, meaning no Prot V armor/Sharp VI swords or what not. I think if one is careful in putting together a system, it can be decidedly not pay-to-win.