[POLL] chickeneer fixes the economy thread

I know this shop world update theory was proposed once a couple years ago. I am racking my brain trying to find it, because I think linking it might be helpful. I know it got a Krysyy response, that I believe basically sounded like "someone make a list of blocks and prices and I'll consider it". If anyone finds it I'd love to reread it.

To start, I think EMC shop should have never been removed. It was the one thing that seemed to hold everying together. A last resort for some but also kept prices from dying like most items are now. Many of us pleaded for it's return and were turned down every time. Might be too late for it now anyways but who knows. At this point though, it's not the only reason. There's just not enough people buying or playing anymore really. The only real money that moves is buying vouchers to sell for rupees and promos. Most everything else is who can sell this for cheaper today.

I think the shop coming back on it's own now might not do anything but adding on other ways for people to make money, could help. Doesn't need to be free money for all but ways to encourage actually playing. Mine this many blocks get, X amount. Higher you go the higher the rewards. Or something like daily challanges with low to high difficulty in exchange for rupees.

It would be nice to get back to how it was but it will not be easy, that's for sure.

And ya Enraged Ghasts lol The sole reason I keep spawns off

EDIT: Just to add one more thing. This game is made with single player in mind, not at all for multiplayer so why they make things availible the way they do, it's for the people that play alone mostly. Have they ever done any changes with multiplayer in mind? Can't think of any personally.

i dont play much at all anymore since ive found other servers that i play on and enjoy that are much smaller, but i joined back in- oh wow, i joined literally 9 years ago today. so yeah i joined back in 2013, and i made a pretty big name for myself with my little shop "over at /v 18606 on smp9" - it was made of oak planks and it looked *terrible* but it was my little place. i even made bank on horses when those were first added by making a choose your own horse shop and stuff. i dont know how much i made, but i eventually made enough that i didnt really need to have my shop anymore, and so i basically wiped my res and made an aquarium since i didnt need money. i dont really see many of those little shops anymore, and if i do see them, they dont seem to be thriving as mine once did.
but i digress. even though i dont play much anymore, i do see that the economy has been suffering, which is why i opened my "buy ancient debris here" shop, with Dras' help, since i had *truly so much money* and nothing to do with it. I wanted to give back my millions of rupees (mostly gotten by selling my old promos that ive had for so long) to the economy, since i knew other people needed it, and clearly my handouts (my original idea of just giving out rupees to new players, and then later buying supporter vouchers and giving them out to new players) were a bad idea and weren't working. i wanted to reward players for going out to mine ancient debris, since basically everyone normally just smelts and crafts it up and doesnt bother keeping the block.
anyways, this is all just to say that while i dont play anymore really, i do think that having an empire store that buys items to guarantee that players have a place to sell might help

Is this what you are talking about?

Exactly that one. Thank you

ok i’ve caught up in the thread..

hot take:

i’d like to point out how chicken is the only one of the 3 admins replying to everyone. that says a lot about him and how valuable and lucky EMC is to still have him— just imagine what EMC would be (or wouldnt be)… EMC has a lot of history and happy memories but its simply been neglected in many ways (with nothing to do with chicken, in fact he is the one that i’d argue is the man under the gigantic, ancient rock of EMC and it’s tattered community) and its been clear for sometime for many of us but its arguably more mainstream now.

this being said, minecraft has obviously changed as a game and EMC has largely failed to keep up even the existing niche community engaged over the years. now i know someone is going to say “well faded, irl comes first and people’s interests change” and i have to say mind as well say “f it” EMC has died and is just a server slowly developing into nothingness. damn it, its been largely the inaction and failure of.. ahem individuals who shall not be named.. and yet nothing can be done cause there’s no transparency nor care in the world to change it around except chicken.

my point is the issue is waaaaay larger than chicken and while his efforts are a great sight and exciting, its hard to keep hope and frankly ive been avoiding emc largely lately as the server is a literal shell of its former self.

tl;dr - chicken is one of us and people need to cut him some slack - read the damn rant above

theres a crap ton of more i have to say that im trying to not rant further about becuase no one will care or most likely see this lol

Is anyone criticising chickeneer? I've read this thread over the past two days and have seen almost exclusively helpful advice. Answers to questions that chickeneer asked, and some questions in return... but no blaming of chickeneer, for sure.

We hear you, to be honest it feels like Chickeneer is the new owner of EMC, probably not just feels that way. Certainly apears to be on his own, even if he is not, I think Aikar silence and lack of visibility does not help the server.

Perhaps Maxarias need to return

Here is my suggestion on how to handle players selling items to the server to earn money.

Things to keep in mind:
1. Avoid items which can be easily afk-able
2. Choose interesting items to sell, so that player is engaged in actually playing

I would suggest a rotation based system, where a player can only sell those specific items during that day.
-This would prevent creating farms, and would engage the player in different activities each day: Selection of 50-100 items to rotate on sell list.

Supportership
Quartz: 2 random items
Iron: 3 random items
Gold: 5 random items
Diamond: 10 random items

Prices would have variability, lets say you could sell Copper Ore for amounts between 5-15 rupees, and this amount is randomly selected at the beginning of the day.

Should all players have the same item each day, probably not, but don't see an issue to create daily demand for everyone.

For Diamond Supporters, and vote rewards, you can lock in on of your items with the specific price you rolled once a month for 2 whole weeks. This way these lock-items will be highly coveted, and supportership will hopefully increase and players can choose some sort of stable income for the 2-week timeframe. There could even be an option to sell the locker items for 100k tokens or so.

Example

Stone 10-15r/stack
Smooth Stone 11-16r/stack
Iron Ore 2-4r / unit
Iron Chunks 1-2r / unit
Netherite Scraps 100-300r / unit
Enchanting Tables 100-300r /stack
Sea Lanterns 100-300r / stack

I'm not familiar with all the new farms and what is rare and what isn't, so take these prices with a grain of salt hehe

So we have Tom who doesn't have a rank.
They login and do /emcshop and they see 2 blocks available to be sold today, which are

Stone: 11 rupees per stack
Iron Ore: 4 rupees

11r for stone, not the best roll, but he got the best roll for Iron Ore, so decides to go mining! and do the work in order earn a few thousand rupees

Then there Sam who is an Iron supporter so they see
Stone: 14r per stack
Iron Ore: 2r
Sea Lanterns: 250r / stack

They also recently hit 100 vote bonus so they received a Locker-item which can lock a /emcshop trade for 2 whole weeks! Since they got incredibly lucky with the Sea Lantern at 250r per stack, they decide to lock it in. They are friends of Tim, so they went to the mine together and got stone and iron, but for the rest of the week Sam is going to be hunting and making Sea lanterns to take advantage of rolling a high rupee amount in one of the best items.

Ehh this is my idea, seems complicated, but if you get the essence of the idea and give a lot of thought to the prices, I feel like it will definitely help EMC. Will it inflate the economy, probably, but once the transition period ends, I think the economy will be healthier overall and it could become one trivial feature of supportership swell

Edit: Thorough thought-out version of idea https://empireminecraft.com/threads/suggestion-adventuring-update.86466/

This would handcuff new players as these would be easier for them to get vs. the more valuable items that are usually much harder to get. An easy fix is to still allow all items and include a sell limit; either daily, weekly, whatever. This way people can still get a bit of money but not handing out bags of it.

I didn't read everything so please forgive me if I am repeating someone. It used to be that with supporter you would get rupees. The removal of all those rupees in circulation certainly hasn't helped the economy. It was done back when the EULA was a big thing and some servers had gotten shut down. Currently I don't see that happening and there are a lot of servers that do much worse than give a few rupees and don't get shut down. Not sure if this is something we could revisit or not. I know it's a touchy subject. Just bringing this up, please don't shoot me.

Even if EMC wants to keep its hands clean, increasing the daily allowance for all players could also help. The type of players who struggle most to acquire rupees currently are the least likely to purchase supporter subscriptions, and giving them an actual somewhat useable daily allowance might encourage them to stick around.

I wonder what the community thinks about bringing back the Empire Shop? 🤔

Welp, I’m pretty sure I emptied most if not all stores of copper with less than 150k r, which led to me going for a mining trip which was ok/fun hut would have preferred to be purely building. I guess the issue is that there are more builders than resource gatherers in EMC, which should increase the general price of goods. But if MC in general continues to get less and less players, the supply for general items will eventually cease to exist. The purpose of any economy is the exchange of goods, so that both parties in a transaction end up happy, which reinforces the play-your-way style of EMC (those who want only to build, and those who only want to reaource gather), however since (from what I’ve seen, that there are more buyers than sellers who engage in the economy, and wellthat means to “unhappy buyers” since the good they want aren’t available)


The easy way to fix the discrepancy between the demand and “low” supply would be bring backthe EMC shop and create infinite supply, but that will be a slippery slope.

I believe it best to:
1. Incentivate players to play MC via /quest or /sell systems discussed above (with the goal to encourage the gathering of items)

AND

2. Increase the visibility of shops, possibly as you mentioned a few years ago to be able to to search for (player-supplied) items virtually through a command. I think, if this is feasable will, it will help quite a bit. It doesnt make sense to waste 20 minutes of gameplay while doing /v +mall trying to find a shop that has what you are looking for


And yes, Im interested to see if there are any other goals Joy wants to tackle by bringing back the emc shop

I like the idea of a limited EMC Shop that sells consumable items. Main purpose would be to remove rupees from circulation.

Have it sell enchanted gear, weapons, potions, food that'll be consumed. The enchantments could be above the current ones but still worse than Promo items, nothing OP, just an upgrade to vanilla. Going a level above current enchantments so they're better think (Efficiency 6, Unbreaking 3, Final Pickaxe / Or potions that last longer time, Full hunger bar foods)

Downside of this is well, that it'll create the Meta for the 'best' gear/food/potions that's not a promo. Being only available through the store.

Enchanting will still exist but for lesser enchantments and of course, cheaper.

I agree with the Shop Visibility
Having search around with the Mall and Shop tags a lot... You'll find most aren't stocked.

Removing rupees from circulation solves nothing, the problem is a lack of demand and an over supply of resources

Wanted to add a tiny addition to when you retouch this thread in the fall. I've mentioned this before, not sure of the staff response/feedback to it, might have said it through non-suggestion channels. anyways...

I see the supporter auction forum section as a semi failure, yes it has some activity every now and then, but I feel the reason why many people don't use it is because it has "a different market" It has a very limited amount of potential customers compared the real EMC marketplace. I'm suggesting you tweak this perk so that it can be reintegrated into the real marketplace, and have a real impact of the economy. Otherwise, posting a second auction on an alt or friend posting for you, will always be better than posting on the supporter forums.

Suggested changes:
What we have right now

Regular Auction: Supporters and Quartz members have Read and write permissions + enforced limit of active threads of 1 by moderators.
Supporter Auction: Supporters have Read and Write permissions, with an enforced limit of active threads by staff

Option 1:
Regular Auction: Stays the same
Supporter Auction: Quartz members gain "Reply to thread permissions", similar to Empire news, where staff have Create perms, and all others have reply perms

Option 2:
Delete the supporter auction section, and write it into the guidelines that supporters have an extra amount to the limit of active auctions + requirement to write within the auction info (initial post, with item, quantity, end time, etc) that auction created while being a supporter. That way you have "on paper" a record of why they have more auctions or such

Not sure if there are xenforo limits, or just not part of the vision for supporter auctions, but I'd say it would help quite a bit balance things out, and improve possible ways to earn rupees

So before playing MC on EMC I came from playing EVE Online for years. Its hard to compare another in-game economy to theirs (its almost pure player-driven, and thus functions much like IRL economy)...but it is the standard I will always compare any other games to: there is no beating it.

In EMC:
Aside from the fact that there isn't an api to be able to track daily averaged prices for items bought/sold: I see a giant issue with the economy that purples could easily assist in improving: public farms.

Don't get me wrong, I use several, but I also use many of my own to get supplies: that or I trade my own items/build skills for stuff. (not being political) but socialist stuff like free-use public farms are IMO the single worst thing for the 'health' of the economy. So much can nowadays be farmed, and after each big update it take maybe 2months tops before there is 1-3 public versions of any given farm (and there are farms for most things people would want). Too much supply means it waters down the value of the goods infinitely. 2-3yrs ago DCs of iron/gold had value: today its <1/10th the value cuz of the farms.

How exactly would the best approach to take to handle 'nerfing' existing big public farms...that is something I don't have the answer to (to compromise and meet in middle with the group of players making these, so everybody is still mostly happy).
I will say I DO NOT believe in nerfing open barter/trading as that is just a bad idea all around. I also don't believe in nerfing how much somebody buys from a single shop/player; if they can afford to, and want to buy a ton of something, they should be able to.

Perhaps nerfing public farms and AFK at them?
-What about a EMC item for public farms: basically akin to a parking meter. If somebody wants to AFK at them, they have to buy meter tickets from either EMC shop or the player(s) who made the farm. (the tickets would be shop-specific). The meter item themselves would be cheap-ish (maybe 20-50k to so making a public farm is affordable, but not so cheap that it is free to do).
*private farms at outposts would still be kosher for others to use: or maybe if Empires provides way to track player established outpost/empire membership, limit it to only them.

- just require a new EMC shop sign tag that needs to be put down in proximity of a given public farm: basically the sign would work to identify if somebody is nearby and afk (IE using the farm): if time goes beyond say 1-2hrs they get kicked for inactivity. trying to just start using it again wouldn't work (if its possible to track which sign has kicked who in a given 24hr period)

- limit public farms to ones only on town reses or within a certain range past the protected zone of the EMC outposts (IE a square around EMC outpost that extends 4 chunks in each direction past the protected zone). This would limit the ability to get so far away from other farms, and thus for mob-based public farms slow them down due to mob spawning mechanics.

- limit shop signs on a given res (mixed feelings about this): basically your res would be limited to say 30-50 shop signs. Yes, a single 'choose' sign could have multiple items, but the idea would be to 'bust up' the big malls and incentivize both new/veteran players to make shops to fill the given groups of items not being regularly stocked (since a megamall can't just have DCs of each item). Not that malls have a monopoly on shop sales, but this could be a +1 to the solution.

just some ideas off top of head on a friday night. Some may not sound the best tomorrow. Your thoughts are appreciated

Grimm,
Lord of Pantaloons