It's simple loot crate mechanics:
[INDENT]a. Loot crates must have some great loot
[INDENT]Just like the lottery, someone is far more interested in a risky, extremely valuable prize then a safe, low risk prize. If this were not the case, people would put their money into savings instead of lotteries.[/INDENT]
b. The player is rewarded every time
[INDENT]There's a reason not everyone likes solitaire: people don't like losing. Instead of losing, you always get some sort of interesting prize, exciting particles, a song, firworks, messages in chat, and a rotating wheel of fortune.[/INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT]c. Loot boxes are skinner boxes
[INDENT]A Skinner box is a system where someone or something is rewarded for completing a task, but only randomly. If someone is given satisfaction for completing that task every time, they would stop doing the task at some point. Instead, making it so completing the task only provides satisfaction at random makes it more interesting.[/INDENT]
This all means that the vote crates must have disguise notes or an equivalent value item, or they don't function correctly. The system is meant to reward every time while not allowing the player to be content with their rewards, preventing boredom.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]If you want disguise notes replaced, you need to come up with a same value replacement.[/INDENT]
Second note: vote crates are not ruining the economy.
[INDENT]If I am correct, @KlutchDecals has been in charge of the economy. If you have been watching the economy for the last year, you'll notice a rise and fall with v-shop prices, usually with diamonds being the center of price fluctuations. Diamonds are the most important resource to Minecraft players so they are most subject to affecting the value of all other items. Over time, the value of diamonds in the v-shop drops until reaching the cheapest chest shops at pwarps. After this, a second good has the same trend occur in the v-shop.
Interestingly enough, the drop in v-shop prices compared to chestshops correlates with a large addition of new pwarps and shops (theorizing can be done separately on this later). This time also becomes a mad rush on the v-shop as huge quantities of items change hands at lower-than-average v-shop prices.
The v-shop eventual moves back to its mostly dormant state after a rich player buys out all cheap diamonds in the v-shop to dramatically raise the value of diamonds. As for the pwarp chestshops, they either live on being tended for or die out as players stop keeping watch over their shop.
This cycle creates diversity, excitement, and refreshes pwarps. Raising the amount of money in the economy inflates prices, which makes old prices appear to be much cheaper to the average player. Thus, the vote crate system's rewards were greatly increased to spur another one of these cycles. It worked. The number of new pwarps increased by 20-30%. The inflation on diamonds created excitement for large amounts of diamond trading.
It should be noted that this inflation wasn't harmful to the abilities of the players. The value of diamonds moved from being 140 meebles per diamond to 165 meebles per diamond and dropping. This is an increase of 18% for the value of diamonds, yet players on average are recieving over 20% more meebles from the changed system than they would have had before.
Also, it's generally accepted that inflation leads to more money circulation. It's not the solution I would have gone for, but if the staff were wanting a quick reboot to the cycle, this was one surefire way to so so.[/INDENT]
