SMP8 is great and you can too!

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Sgt_Pepper4, Aug 31, 2015.

  1. Hi folks. I saw a few threads just go viral in this area of emc website. I felt like maybe we can have a discussion about empire's economy? Maybe I'll kickstart this with my own story on SMP8.

    I started here on EMC a long time ago. I've looked back into my rupee records and saw that the first thing I bought here on emc were iron boots from empire shop. Of course there were player shops back then, however I had no idea about well known places to get minecraft life solved (that was probably my own dumb fault).

    600 days later I've learned a lot about this virtual economy. I see and hear from players that their economies on their smp's are just in ruin. Nothing is in stock, rupees are hard to come by since you have to literally talk to other players and convince them to pay you for your item. Players with the great malls get banned, have real life get in the way, just lose interest in the upkeep, or move on to the staff life(thank you staff for your hard work, hang in there!).

    What causes this lack of economy to persist after the great malls go away? The lack of incentive. There is hardly anywhere to sell anything to anyone. No one takes chances and if they do, they usually try to pay nothing. Everyone tries have the cheapest stuff in stock. I was never quiet sure what made someone else charge less for their exact same product that's worth a lot more (unless good advertising).

    Keep the prices low everyone says, it's easier for the new players. One issue, is that EMC is growing and get tons of new people. Imagine all that new demand everyday that piles up on the same inventories on the same malls something will give. It's extremely hard for new players to even know their way around (trust me, I've explained a lot to new players and I've been a new player and shopped at empire shop a lot), let alone try to hunt down a shop that has something they need and pray it's in stock. If not in stock, you're begging for it in town chat, or facing the tough wild yourself or maybe a friend or 2. Who wants that? It's not easy, it's super hard and hurts all of us.

    I rarely see people change prices. By the laws of supply and demand, if no price change occurs and EMC keeps growing (let's hope), all shops/malls will be wiped out in time. You can't buy anything from a place that has no inventory, and who wants to sell something for nothing? Stuff gets hard to find in these economies and a shop is asking one to part with said item for outdated prices when the server was half the size and half the demand?

    I've been trying my shot at trying to make Empire great. I decided about 200 days ago to open a shop. Since opening I've sold over 12 million rupees in merchandise(thank you everyone!) and I've just about payed all of that back out into the economy. It was really fun and I learned a lot. Tons of work though. Painful mistakes were made along the way too. One thing I've done though whole time though, was listen to supply and demand. My prices usually change on a daily basis (at least on one item or 2). I see the demand rising. You can literally go look at /v +bulk on smp8. I have some "high" prices, yet no one is selling. I have space in my chests and rupees to pay out, yet no one is doing anything about it. So obviously I'm a bit close to fair or slightly under priced myself. I try to find the fair price and create a buy/sell option at that price by the way. That's my goal. It should be everyone's goal. Sellers should be rewarded for gathering the items (sometimes its dangerous), buyers should pay for merchandise (price helps them buy what they need), and market makers should get a cut for providing a nice central place for buyers/sellers to transact and only one person has to be signed on at a time for it to happen and saving everyone time.

    Since starting, I've raised prices on nearly everything to combat the demand. I can say I've doubled a lot of my prices, maybe tripled a few things from my early shop days. Deflators out there can call that treason and me trying rip everyone off. My answer to that: come sell me your stuff and I'll pay about the same rip off price for it. I've got the space in my chests for it and someone will buy it (sounds like a fair deal to me). If it is not fair and it is a ripoff price, my chests will sit there forever and sell nothing ( I try to avoid this, bad for biz you know).

    I've seen my shop help so many people. New players have come to me and thanked me for making EMC easier to adjust to and getting them the stuff they need. They can literally chop down oak tree logs and I'll give them like 200r a stack for them. How easy right? That's big money for new players and they can spend that wherever and improve their experience anyway they want with it.

    Older players have loved my dynamic price finding and low profit margins and have made big money selling stuff to me or have built absolutely HUGE!!! projects. My neighbor recently built a huge redstone clock. I swear it took like 30 dc's of stone which I helped supply, and 5 dc of redstone I feel like, which I also supplied. Go see it. Deceptious's res near mine. 4 players at my shop have spent 200k or more in purchasing materials. 1 player spent 800k. 11 players have sold me over 200k worth of stuff. 1 player sold me 800k worth of stuff. The numbers dont lie, something right is working here.

    In less than a year, I will have made someone else a millionaire if they keep it up. Just think of the growth we're experiencing on smp8. I couldnt even log on sometimes today it was so full, I didnt see that on other smp's. People want to be where they can make rupees, or money in real life (think big cities and jobs). Your smp can do it too!

    Shop owners! New and old! Take chances! DO BUYING AND SELLING AT YOUR SHOP SIGNS!!! Throw away price guides and follow what the actual market you created is telling you! You will lose rupees sometimes, I've lost TONS being foolish, and I WILL lose sometimes guessing wrong in the future. I'm okay with that though. It's part of the business cycle. You WILL have your ups and downs if you have any sort of success. But it's OKAY. You're customers got a great deal, you learned something about how the market works and what the real price should be, and hopefully you fix your mistake and help everyone by playing a role in our economy! SMP8 is becoming great! Your smp can be great too!! Lets discuss this! Let's make a change! Let's make our economies great, EMC great!!!

    Broke players, rich players get into the discussion! I started out with 100k from voting (and various spending to bring me back down to 100k lol). Now you know my numbers and look where I am. Broke players have the new ideas to explore to help us and can become rich if they work hard and do good business. Rich players can make an immediate impact by looking at inventories in shops and adjusting prices to meet market conditions. Perhaps setting up shops for old stuff they have dc's they dont need and charging a fair price for it. Anything and everything helps. We can all do this! Go us!!
    EnderMagic4, ScrObot, whatkom and 2 others like this.
  2. my mall buys things, i just spend my money faster then i make it
  3. That's maybe what I call a little over stretching of your mall? If you go bankrupt often, your rupees maybe a little stretched. Maybe cut back on the number of items you deal with just temporarily until you make more rupees. Then gradually expand back to your current size and beyond. Financial stability is important for healthy businesses :).
  4. not exactly my business model is just poor i try to buy goods for the highest prices i can find but sell also for a high price. so i stay in stock but most people dont put money back into my wallet. this is because i use my stock for builds as well (9 reses are a pain to maintain)
    Sgt_Pepper4 likes this.
  5. Well using inventory for personal use does kind of handicap things lol. 9 res's? Wow nice! I guess there's lots of detail we'd have to go into to see what was high and how high and the fairness of said prices and bla bla bla. But if it's your thing and you're happy with it go for it. If you're unhappy, just give old mr.market a listen. At least you're on the high side of the spectrum. It helps keep inventory around for people who need it badly. And you try to put your money where you mouth is too. :)
    bitemenow15 likes this.
  6. Thanks for participating by the way in the discussion. Maybe we can really convince a lot of people out there that somethings not right.
  7. I love shops that you can sell to. That's how I make all my money ;)
    BlinkyBinky and Sgt_Pepper4 like this.
  8. I'm glad the economy is serving you and I hope it's doing it well. I'm sure we all want more of that. Buy/sell shops really help out a lot and really puts a shop's fairness to the test. If it's full or empty, it maybe a red flag.
  9. I've actually taken all of /v +fs 's rupees twice this month from just selling :p
    Sgt_Pepper4 likes this.
  10. Well hopefully this thread can help make future fs's and really help us a ton.
  11. I'm a broke player! Hi all :D
    Sgt_Pepper4 likes this.
  12. I notice when you say you raise sell prices so that people will bring items in. I usually wait a little bit to try and supply you though because I already have plenty of money. I try to give newer players a chance to earn money, but it seems that some people don't want to put the effort into it. I like the way your shop works though, because you can tell that you pay close attention to how the economy is moving.
    DubChef and Sgt_Pepper4 like this.
  13. Hi Shy. You are part of the untapped potential :). Kaptrix, Im glad you like it. Ideally with more demand, more supply should come. I don't see it happening though. Prices should be more stable, but the sellers want more I guess.
    bitemenow15 likes this.
  14. One suggestion to help sellers out is to put preview signs on sell to chests. That way the player knows what items to spend time gathering to sell. It's disappointing to spend time chopping wood or mining only to find out the sell to chest is full.
    highlancer54 and Sgt_Pepper4 like this.
  15. Ahh good thinking. I forgot about that too. I try to at the very least put in redstone lamps at my place if not preview signs. Visibility of space is an issue that plagues people as well.
  16. When my mall (7500) was open, I had buy prices that were on the high end of malls. With higher prices, I was able to raise the sell prices significantly, almost up to par with what most malls that were selling for. This in turn kept me in stock and kept players happy, since they could make quite a bit from other items to make up for the items that they bought.

    In my experience, low prices usually leads to low stock. Mall owners don't have the time to gather all of their items (most of us have lives), they rely on the community to sell!
    FDNY21 and Sgt_Pepper4 like this.
  17. It was late last night when I wrote the main post. So I guess this is kind of my plea to everyone that the way it's been has not worked great and how my story has been and how it suggest something else can work better. This can be a suggestion thread to current shop/mall owners and future ones on how we can all prosper and get goods to those who need it, the way free markets usually do.

    Small details like preview signs would be great posts. It is something current and future shop owners can all do, super easy. Transparent markets are fantastic markets, if you know the capacity, then that is more transparency. Just any idea that can make life easier with our economy on EMC can be great. More posts means more visibility on the issue and hopefully we get some powerful players to take notice and we get all the smp's rolling, even Utopia.

    I want to end comments from people "Our smp's economy is dead" etc. Anything else I can do let me know. Otherwise help me spread this around and help us put an end to dead economies. Go EMC!