EMC shop -- Helpful or Harmful?

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by Soybeen, Jul 30, 2013.

  1. Long ago back in 2011 when I first set foot in EMC, the EMC shop was where I collected most of my goodies. They were still pretty expensive, and unfortunately buying in bulk was not an option, so 90% of my Rupees were spent there day to day.

    I accumulated enough materials from the shop to create a large wheat farm in mid 2012 after screwing around a lot before the new year, and decided to take entrepreneuring in EMC to a whole new level. I soon became the public wheat guy, who gave away stacks for no cost.

    As this evolved, I realized how much more expensive purchasing from the Shop would be, as opposed to coming to my farm to gain dozens of wheat for no cost at all.

    So while the EMC shop is a good way of purchasing items when there are no vendors, it's also scarcely used, and I feel it has a lot of potential to assist the community, with some minor adjustments:

    I feel like the prices are just too high. Obviously there is some math to this, those who absolutely need items who don't much care about their cash will buy from the shop.
    However, if these prices were reduced by as little as 25%, I feel like the EMC shop would be a better place for new users, and veteran users alike, to gain the materials they need to create their own shop.

    This price reduction would not cut into the trading businesses of other users, as I often see user-run markets sell items for over 500% less than the EMC shop.

    This could potentially mean all the difference in places like SMP 9 where users are scarce, shops are few and far between, and new users rely on their day-to-day Rupee stipend to purchase items from the shop, and would save them a lot of time searching for particular items from third party vendors.
  2. The prices are intentionally high to encourage player to player trading, as well as setting a price cap. :)
  3. the shop is meant to be a price cap you can buy materials to build your own farm or shop can be gotten from other players shops and you can go to other servers and buy materials there and transfer them over to the players home server
    edit: ninja'd by a hamster
  4. But new players don't know that. The number of new players I've seen leave because all of their cash was blown on /shop before they knew about anything else. Typically on other servers /shop has the average price so most players assume that and spend their cash there.. At least a warning when you teleport there that you shouldn't waste money unless you really need to would be nice.
  5. of course the existence of players shops in shown in the guide and if new players aren't reading the guide why should we help them?
    RainbowChin likes this.
  6. I usually would disagree with something like this, but it is true. Many players come and buy some materials and are off put by how little your money can get you in the shop. I suggest the welcome message include what Jack mentioned:
    Jeanzl2000 likes this.
  7. Even after reading the guide..

    If I was a new player to a new server (not EMC) and they had a player shop feature that was introduced to you when you first joined, I wouldn't bother looking for other player's shops the first thing I'd do is type /shop. If I see something I want I don't care I just buy it and think the economy is terrible, I'm not going to as a new player; search around for a shop to buy from in a 'foreign' server.

    AT LEAST give a warning when sometimes types /shop stating the actual purpose of it and that it is not recommended to spend your starter money there.
  8. We should help because NOWHERE in the guide does it mention the price increases of the shop.
  9. We have a recent thread about that, check -> http://empireminecraft.com/threads/empire-shop-prices.27293/page-2#post-542507

    To repeat here:

    * Adjusting the empire shop prices so that it actually would make sense to go there and buy everyday items would mean damaging the EMC economy - or even ruining it, depending on the difference in prices.

    * Empire shop function as "price cap" does not make much sense, because the economy would be ruined before the market prices would actually reach that cap.

    You can't find a good, stocked shop?
    Try 12162 :)
    Baby_Cookies likes this.
  10. ;3 a bit conflicted on this...
  11. The shop is ok for some items, and for some other items, too expensive, but what is the worst priced item in /shop?
    My answer: Cake. 1=1000r
    Gadget_AD likes this.
  12. Way back when it was beta, and there was only one server, alot of the player run shops were advertised in spawn, on a wall that you were looking at when you /town. Maybe bringing this back would be beneficial?
  13. That is true, but when i first joined, I thought the empire shop was REALLY cheap because the guide mentioned nothing about it.
    I'd say adding something in the tutoral that mentions the Empire shop is REALLY high priced.
    And where does the rupees go anyway when someone buys from the Empire shop?

    Horse eggs are like 35k
    Soybeen likes this.
  14. The land of nothingness. :)
    Gadget_AD likes this.
  15. I wonder how much r is in there o.o
    I'z swimmin in rupeez! :D
  16. Well, to be quite honest, where do we get our daily bonuses?
    If we reuse rupees, then what rupees were there in the first place?
  17. Good idea.
    I'd add that the shop owners would have to pay a monthly fee for this ad.
    Perhaps more visible places would cost more.
    The ad would be removed on 15th of the moth if the shop owner did not pay for that month.
    This would prevent from having outdated ads leading to inactive shops.
    rock00888 likes this.
  18. Rupees are created out of thin air, they are "free", meaning not bound to anything, no guarantees. (Instead of being backed by accumulation of mined goods.)
    Empire shop items are created out of even thinner air, they are "spawned" like zombies in the dark.
    Then, the free blocks out of the empire shop back the free rupees in a way, so you have a kind of "last resort" way to use the free rupees. But that's not economy.
    Everything else is basically people that want to give you stuff and services just for pleasure of playing. (Or isn't it? See the questions below...)

    Depending on how you look at that, it is "oh, well, that's how it "works", it's a game" to "a kind of cheating".
    (EDIT: the same kind of cheating is going on in the RL, even (much) worse.)
    It's an inherent fault of the EMC economy system, it makes it instable.

    But to answer this more precisely, we would need to know:
    What is EMC economy actually?
    Why do we need it anyway?
    ZBSDKryten likes this.
  19. in the land of nothingness, ironically there is everything. An literal infinite amount of rupees. The interesting thing about "infinity" is that it is so large that no matter what you add or subtract from it; it is still an infinite number. In other words, you would be swimmin in rupeez but when you come up for air. There is none. Because in all directions, is nothing but rupees. Forever.
  20. and thats the problem i see coming from bitcoins :D

    also /shop prices are fine their should be a warning when you tp to it tho that says something along the lines of: remember most player shops are cheaper then empireshop make some friends and buy from them!