As Shell has just said above, We're the ones who keep town chat alive, we're the ones who provide something for others to do, we're the ones who will go out of our way to help out the new players, we're the ones who throw newbies a bone sometimes (and now STAY on your res. you hear me? That's a good newb! (please don't kill me! )) and we're the ones who keep other players motivated to actually play and continue playing. I for 1 can attest to this. I have worked hard to welcome new players, Heck smp2 averages 2 a day, new players. I've seen as many as 6 to 8 join in just a few hours. No not all stay long. It is up to us to work hard to keep players around. We can make a difference by encouraging players and helping with simple questions. I too have helped players with tools and stuff. Some have stayed on long enough to lose starter stuff and had no R. I donated some stuff I had around. This keeps on even longer knowing someone will help them in time of need. I done rupee giveaways at random times, I've done quizes, Guessing games all to keep chat alive and fun. If we all work together we can get the new players to stay. We just can't ignore them, not all want the help but a warm welcome and answer questions goes a long ways.
I see two main sources for different opinions and arguing here - a) quite a few misconceptions Thanks to Aikar and big thanks and applause to Winfield_Hancock for brilliant explanations. For "EMC Economic Forum" - re-read this thread and note common misconceptions - to include them and explain in "An introduction to EMC Economy" which I hope we will be able to produce. b) the economy on EMC is not (that) simple and nothing is black-vs-white There is truth in what EmpireMall is writing even if there were some misconceptions. Thank you, EmpireMall for sharing your opinions and discussing! One of my main motive for proposing creation of the "EMC Economic Forum" (please allow) is to gain knowledge about what is happening to us, make some forecasts and be prepared - considering really many topics that are mentioned in this thread. I'd like to underline few things that I think are important. Pay-to-win As Aikar wrote, there is quite a difference between buying rupees for out-of-game money and buying items for out-of-game money. Nevertheless, at this point in EMC economy, buying items for RL money is still a kind of "pay-to-win". We can discuss in-depth and share opinions about to what extent it is acceptable (or perhaps even welcome) in our community, but let's try to see what it really means, what is the deal. In an ideal setting, most of us would support EMC with few US$ per month, and we would gladly accept to pay a bit more than a necessary share to be able to invite players who don't (yet) support to join for free and play with us. All members would have equal "rank": the very same rules for every player. All in-game resources, including e.g. number of residences would belong to the in-game economy. I guess everyone who really likes EMC and what Aikar does (I do!), would even support with a little extra, to make Aikar really happy with his choice to run EMC. Imagine! (You may say I'm a dreamer ... ♪♪ ♩ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♩) Obviously, we're not there. (... yet ) Who gets what? A member "V" buys a voucher, sells it to "B" for rupees, and then buys stuff in players buy-and-sell mall "M". This upsets player "F" who sees it as less than fair. EMC - gets the donation - provides the service - strives to make the players happy V - gets in-game stuff without in-game effort, there's the "pay-to-win" aspect - gives RL money which requires some effort, but obviously less than in-game - V thinks that's a good deal for him/her - might ruin his/her own game experience and fun and end up unhappy, but for many experienced players this danger is minimal - they know what they're doing, for them it's "play my way" - hopes that his/her behavior and in-game achievements will be accepted and valued among peers - unhappy if seen as "slightly-less-than-fair" player B - decides about the subjectively acceptable in-game price - possibly forced to pay high price (long and tedious in-game work!) - unhappy if otherwise unable to purchase perks - feels it's not fair - still (kind of) happy to be able to get the perks F - is upset because of the "pay-to-win" aspect - would like more fair game, where only in-game effort counts - probably feels that V has got the stuff way too cheap M - does not know where the rupees came from - is interested in a stable economy - fears sudden changes in demand / supply Generally - few are happy about the opportunity to get in-game stuff for cheap - "ranks" in the game divide the community - supporters might feel privileged and "higher class" than "commoners" - some don't care - some ask themselves if this whole concept is sustainable - some think this is just one smaller unfairness among many unfair things - some say "welcome to the (dirty) world of online gaming" - some say "other servers are worse" - some think that a more fair-play setting will attract more and better players - some think that more perks which can be sold are needed - some give up hope - "they'll do what they want anyway" - some lose interest Mojang - Minecraft is low-violence game, socially broadly acceptable - does not want their game to be associated mainly with socially despicable practices - probably think that fair play can attract more players - "video games" already generally have questionable reputation The big thing ... is that now we, the community, decide what we want to pay for the perks in-game. So the in-game price of perks will follow the supply and demand, same as other in-game stuff. At the moment $20 voucher is around 300k, I estimate that's worth around 20-25 hours of in-game work. That makes an in-game hour worth $0.8 - $1 which I think is too low, but approaching an acceptable range. The low rupee value is still a remnant of past high inflation. It is slowly rising and I expect that it will continue to slowly rise - so the prices of vouchers might fall, depending on the demand from players who are forced to buy them in-game. One more thing - Running a shop ... is by no means easy money! Especially in an unstable economy. It requires huge initial effort, huge capital and constant maintenance. If it would be easy then everyone would have a good shop. It's not just coincidence that most shops either lack reasonable prices or stock - or both. Shops do not make money "for nothing" - they provide a very valuable service. Thank you very much, Raayyn for starting and patiently contributing to this thread - this is a thing that moves the EMC community forward!
This is also missing the aspect of my drive portion of the economy though. I am the end user of the blocks I buy. Noone else would buy "my" blocks and build "my" builds. Thus more of these blocks are needed to be harvested to be sold for the required demand then would be needed if I was not here buying them to use. It is because I am "end" user that my participation helps drive the economy. that's all.
You are still missing the point. The people who buy vouchers are certainly building something too, but they choose to farm those blocks rather than buy them, because they rather save the money to buy the voucher. If they couldn't buy vouchers, they could buy the blocks. So then it would be them buying blocks and you farming. So the economy would be just as driven as it is now, just different people buying and farming. You might say: "I don't have the time to farm those blocks." Whatever, then you wouldn't farm blocks you yourself consume. That changes nothing for the rest of the people.
... yes... or they would still just farm the blocks they use for building themselves.. and have no connection to the economy whatsoever... depends on the player, as does everything else.
That is also possibility, but one you can never prove unless you can see alternate reality. The most likely outcome is that there would be whole bunch of new transactions taking place, replacing some transactions which exist now. In a long run it would be the same. You don't drive the economy, but you increase something economists call utility (which is a subjective feeling of satisfaction from consumption), because the people buying vouchers value them more than anything else they can get. To put it simply, you don't make people richer or poorer, but you make them happier.
We now interrupt this thread for a small Shell vent (that would be a first! ) (disclaimer up there) I'll just leave this here for all of you to see: As you were
How about some real historical data! Google Trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&q=minecraft survival,minecraft servers Yes, Minecraft _IS_ on the decline! All those spikes? Winter Holidays period. In which we always see large jumps in activity. Our own numbers follow this exact trend! I actually collect long term statistics on EMC, so here's the online player counts for the entire past 2 years: 2016-2017 2015-2016 - showing that giant surge in winter period where the above Trends graph also spiked. We're pretty much exactly where we were last year. Far from "Dying".... We simply follow the trend of Minecraft popularity. Honestly, I feel our trend line has done better than the Google Trends results. Something I accepted years ago, and members of the community have to learn to accept - we ARE a fringe server type. We do not attract the majority. We lose 70% of new players not because we suck, but because we are not the gameplay style people want. Everyone who hears about minecraft and watches youtube.... See's minigames and PVP. So they learn all about MC based on YouTube and what Mojang pushes on the site with Realms and Minigames, and then we don't fit. For our style, we are doing fine. All we can do is try our best to retain the ones who DO want to do this play style. Our new player counts have dropped significantly, because as you should expect, removing rupees from the supporter store devastated us financially. We're still in ok shape, but we lost upwards to half our monthly income.... Yes, advertising takes a hit. We've also been hit by slowing voting ranks. We use to hold around 10-13 on TopG, and now we're 27. We are working on more incentives to vote specifically on TopG (one of our biggest voting sites...), to get us back closer to < 15 in rank. Want to help emc? VOTE!!! But overall, the downward trend is mostly related to downward trends in MC in general. People are getting bored of it. Nothing we do is going to change the overall path unless we change what EMC is and turn into a pvp/minigame server, and I'm not doing that.
Just curious if vote bonus items past 300 will ever be a thing. The rupees, diamonds, and vouchers are nice, but for people like me, I like displaying/collecting things.
We've had PLENTY of discussions, just gotta take the time to plan things, but throwing in new cosmetic voting rewards is possible like the thank you note.
The only small critical comment I'll make about that: if you wait too long then you also risk long time players to lose interest. No offense intended here but... this isn't the first time we heard this. When I mentioned a starter shield to help new players get more easily going in 1.9+ it was also mentioned that it should be quite easy to add. Well... we're at 1.12 now and I don't think it has become a thing so far
So would it be logical to say that EMC will continue to receive the traffic amount like now, or will it continue to decrease, orr?
I have been a strong supporter for voting but I think the issue is the longer term base has all the items and more rupees add little incentive to keep voting beyond. Some may vote to keep a streak alive or some do chose to do it to support the server. I know there is no way to help it but the voting IP issue is a real killer for my home where we have 6 accounts. I have also stated in several of my posts that MC is on a downward trend, but its not all doom and gloom. I only started playing minecraft about 7 months ago. I'm sure there are millions more like me, but in the end all games will run a full life cycle.
So much this. That is exactly what so many people ignore and/or overlook. Most don't look beyond their direct surroundings, they only see their friends or peers also lose interest and then draw the general conclusions. For the record: still think it's awesome to have you onboard Mjnoe! (edit): This is just my 2 cents obviously but I think it'll continue on for a while. Ever since I started frequenting the Minecraft forums more often I became aware of a quite a few more things: people getting bored of Minecraft and people getting bored of mini-games. As well as people getting into Minecraft of course. EMC's disadvantage (niche market) is also one of its major advantages. Many people grow bored of Minecraft after some time, and some try other things. But just as many of those also try to give Minecraft a try again. Often in single player, and sometimes multi player. And once they do you see a trend where those people specifically start to look for survival servers. Mini games are fun, as long as the people you play with are fun. Survival can go either way. You can have just as much fun on your own (and simply chatting for example) as when you're in a group and mining all together. And because there is no direct competition you also have less risk that one player might upset the other because "they cheat". This is just speculation on my part, but I think in the end survival servers will last the longest. Heck; sporadic players who come back after an upgrade to "see what it's about". Which kind of servers would they visit first?
I agree that survival last longest in terms of per-player retention, just look at us, many players been here for years. But, for those that do get bored of MC/gamestyle (those that didn't choose Survival play style), I feel like a very strong majority of them move into modpacks, rather than go down to survival. Minigames add so much 'customness' to EMC, and then when they THINK survival, they think 'vanilla', so ultimately, a bored player is VERY unlikely to go look at vanilla style servers. They look towards FTB and such, to add even more content to the game. Our main audience are those new to minecraft, who haven't been "tainted" by the Minigames style, so that is why new player experience does need to be a strong focus to keep a healthy income of new players coming in as we unfortunately lose people. But then we also have to balance the long term features to maintain the veterans too. I wish I could work both at the same time, but time is always our enemy. Between day job and family, We just go as fast as we can to get the things done. Like on the topic of voting, we fully understand a large part of our decline is the loss in voting rank, so right now i'm working on new voting rewards, something that will cover us into the 1000's+, and theres still even more items planned beyond what i'm working on now, that heck, we might get in the next week or 2 too. Let's just say that voting on TopG is about to get much more interesting New concepts are coming into play that give specific benefits to voting on TopG, as well as the new higher end tier rewards. I've just knocked out so many tiny things that's been on my todo list this past 2 weeks. I just upped advertising, as well as improved the derelict which had huge flaws in the code, so now our new players will be losing their residence less, which gives us more possibility of keeping them if they logged in for a few days, then stopped for 2 weeks, to come back to find their res gone. As well as upping that voting reward.. All of this combined should give us a health boost.
I think the chances are high that EMC will get a smaller player base in the future, with the decline of interest in the Java edition of Minecraft. However, I also think/hope that EMC will relatively get a larger player base in the future, where more of the people still playing Minecraft Java Edition will find and stay with EMC.
Disagreed. There's already plenty of special content and optimalisation to be enjoyed on EMC. In fact, it sometimes seems like it's too much to take in for some new people.
