Rebalancing the Empire Economy [slow induce]

If we were allowed to sell to /Shop people would be scrambling to change signs before their stock was bought out to sell there if it were higher. If that were done though it would be nice to have the prices fluctuate according to the amount of items sold to it or bought from it like I've seen in other games, which I expect would involve code.

I swear this thread has been growing faster than I can read through it. I really appreciate how much time everyone is putting into this discussion. Seeing how pretty much all of my opinion has already been stated, I'm just going to second everything that Pab10s, M4nic, and Highlancer said. I'm someone who hoards rupees, and never spends them, so the risk of those hoarded rupees loosing value doesn't sit well with me. I think that a larger tutorial bonus is a great idea, gives new players much more spending power. I also don't think that having to go mining in the wastelands because of lack of rupees is a bad thing. While I'm often too lazy, I think that that getting materials yourself is a great thing, and part of what makes Minecraft fun. I voted to Leave it Alone, but I trust that the end decision will be what's best for everyone.

There most certainly is still stuff Survival about EMC. While everything you said is 100% true, they are also 100% optional.

I know of people who NEVER claimed a res on EMC, went straight to the wild, and stayed there building. EMC for them is definitely Survival. We give you the option to also have a town and do stuff if you wish...however if you want PURE only survival, you can easily do it.

Here is what I think:
If this happens, people who invest in items such as gold and iron will become richer than people who store up Rupees.
For example, let's say I have 20k r and I blow it all in iron blocks.
Because iron blocks are about 50r where I buy, I get 400 blocks of iron.
Suddenly, the worth of a single r increases by 10.
Iron blocks are now worth 500r, so I now have 200k r if I sell.

Let's say I did not sell.
I would still have 20k r, but 20k r is worth less now, and this could make a large gap between the rich and the poor.
I think the rupee inflation should be gradually, maybe the rupees per vote or login is now 110, then next month, 120 and so on.

But it takes rupees to lock chests and it will cost rupees plus a dragon egg to claim land. There's is basically no way you'll ever escape from needing rupees.

Competition? What kind of competition?
Look at all the shops like mine which started when many big shops were already around. I didn't have supporter status nor any bonuses nor donations. There is more than enough room if you're wise and industrious.

Are you saying let's start all new from 1/10th, from almost zero? That would almost mean (90%) throwing away the EMC economy.

Just imagine a new player buying diamond supporter and getting 13,000 rupees each day! If it is not 13,000 but less and with gradual increase, it isn't that crass but basically the same.

I guess the basic idea here is to give supporters substantially more financial power over non-supporters.
This wouldn't help EMC economy, but would only destabilize it and demotivate people.

Yes, the shops would increase the margin to protect themselves, but that means that the ability to exchange goods for the majority of people would be hampered. This would not make more competition, but less competition.

Inflation - measured in the rise of prices over 35% in less than a year is slowly?
It's very fast, unhealthy fast!

You mean more (?) It was more.

This is demand and supply. There are many new industrious players who collect stuff, there is production, so the prices didn't continue to rise, but they stayed quite stable over few months. This is good, this is a sign of healthy economy!

It would as a side effect. But that is not needed, and it would cause harm.

Not for the honest people. Only for ones who would like to have customers confused and would like to (try to) make high profits (and effectively steal from others) in an unstable economic situation.

Range in prices?
You mean stable prices across servers? If that is so, it is good.
You mean shops with low margin? Yes, and that means that people can exchange stuff without high costs. This is good, this is healthy economy.

But Aikar is not talking about multiplying everything by 10. Just about giving supporters higher income.
A bit more granularity in rupees wouldn't harm, but the idea to get there through inflation, through motivating people to buy supporter with high income would be hurting the economy, it would cause far too high harm than benefit which finer granularity of rupees would bring.

As it is obvious: yes. We would lose value of rupees slowly instead of quickly?
Wouldn't work. As soon as people would notice, well, as soon as they would know about losing - and believe me, nobody sane likes losing - they would take action to prevent losing. That would mean trying to get rid of rupees ASAP. That would mean empty shops and fast rise in prices. So the fast ones would lose less, and the slower and uninformed ones would lose more. In the end: the economy is hurt, people are not happy.

People feel rich if they have loads of worthless money, just because 1,000 sounds like much? And than would complain about diamond price of 600r because in US$ 600 is (or sounds) much?

People feel good getting high income without effort? They somehow manage to forget that high income without effort is effectively stealing?

There would be turbulence and harm, but the last stage would be precisely where we are now.
Granularity of rupees would change, but if that is needed, than it is possible through redenomination and without high inflation etc - where everything, but really everything including players balances and shop signs gets multiplied by 10.
But it is not really needed, we did well when the prices were much lower (over 35% difference) than now.

After a 12 page read all I can say is wow.

What I see are several very different play styles all with valid points. I may miss one or two here but I think this will hopefully make some logic to what I have read. There are 4 basic groups that I have seen:

1 Producers - make/farm/mine product to use and sell
2 Resellers - buy from producers and sell for a small but steady profit margin over all - money is made in volume of sales not the individual purchase
3 Buyers - Need a ton of resources and are not willing to take the time to go and get them from the wasteland for many reasons. Example: need iron for 1000 hoppers or 400 blocks of redstone or 20dc of something and it would take weeks to mine or farm.
4 People like me - I go collect what I need and have only bought a tiny amount because it was hard to find in the wastes.

Producers want to sell for a good profit because time is money and if you spend 4 hours to make 300r you are not happy.

Resellers want a descent margin to play with because as stated if you have to lower a price from 2 to 1 to undercut the competition you lost 50% of your profit.

Buyers want it cheap as they can get it. Zero loyalty to a shop only loyal to the lowest price (nothing out of the ordinary here - since every block is identical to every other block of its kind there is no quality difference)

People like me - don't care about rupees other then to put locked signs up at my wild base, not interested in being the richest on the server. Just want to play mc and have fun doing it.

Raise the daily rupee vote bonus - I'm all for that means I can lock more chests faster on my wild base
Raise the daily login bonus - same thing more locked chests for me at the wild base

There is no easy answer and most times playing with a games economy is a very, very bad thing. No matter what you decide to do it wont effect me at all because of the way I play the game - though it will cause some issues for buyers and sellers with resellers taking the brunt of the damage in the price change fiasco that will follow. Think feeding frenzy in a tank of piranha.

I was a new player to this server about a month ago - started like everyone else. I went to the wastes and within an hour had diamonds and iron and gold etc to take back to my res along with the basic building supplies. Within a day I had a solid start and was producing everything I needed in abundance. Now a month later I am comfortable and have tons of resources to use (if I ever get back to my res from the wild) to continue construction of my town res. For me part of the fun of minecraft is starting with nothing and actually working to get what you need, not just letting rupees build up and buying it.

Now for the most important piece of information everyone has over looked about supply and demand in minecraft.
There is demand but there is an unlimited amount of every resource to be had in the wastelands especially if they are reset on a regular basis (every month or so if I remember right). Why pick on iron golem farms or gold farms when I can just go mine it if I need some. It's all there if you are willing to go mine for it. Remember this game is called MINEcraft not economycraft or get rich off a shopcraft.

{Why yes I know I can build a golem farm and make 1100 iron bars an hour from it /yawn. There is no fun in that for me because its way to easy to do. I can build a gold farm and have silly amounts of gold as well again there is no challenge in that at all, but if someone else wants to play that way and enjoys it then why stop them. Its a game and is supposed to be fun for everyone not just me. }

Does it ruin the economy - not really - there will always be buyers and sellers and money will change hands the only difference is the volume of currency. Volume of currency exchanged does not equal a healthy economy - volume of goods exchanged is the true measure.

This should now be renamed EMPIRE MONEYCRAFT

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I'm interested in economy myself. Experimental, unstable economic situation is a challenge for me, a challenge I think I can meet and master. But for the vast majority of EMC members, stable prices is what they need. They need to exchange stuff and services easily and without high cost. They need stable economy, with basically stable or slowly rising prices.

I'm personally already quite prepared for inflation - I've anticipated it, and I would be able to profit from it short term. But with further destabilization of EMC economy we would all lose.

There is that Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.
It is an imprecation / execration.

Having a shop with high overall quality, with happy customers. Providing good service for a fair price.

So there are efficient farms - we can get iron without much effort. Would inflation change that?

And they do.

I think the prices are stable because production meets demand - because there are enough players who sell to the shops. This is not "economy reaching bottom", but a healthy situation.

You're talking about iron, but the low price of iron is clearly caused by overproduction. So no economic measure can "cure" that (where no cure is probably needed anyway), and by all means not inflation.

As you've said yourself: supply and demand. Can't change that natural thing with inflation.

EMC is obviously saturated with iron, there is plenty for everyone. It's simply cheap to produce.

They sell/buy 10 by 10 in the shops and soon have not 300 but 3000 ingots if they like. Average good player can make like 4,000r per hour, so within 20-30 hours of play he/she has enough to start almost any business on EMC.

I agree - finer granularity of rupees would be good.
This can be achieved by redenomination - multiplying everything by 10.
Doing this through inflation would be causing unnecessary harm.

You could generate statistics from the database and let us analyze - but it needs to be per active player (I'd say plays at least 2 hours per week) and per played hours in the period (week and month). I believe we would see strong correlation with these figures.

Yes! And that's because, fortunately, people who came here do collect materials and sell to the shops. This is good. With many new players, you need rupees in the system, so influx of the players has balanced the inflation per player of the 2013. More rupees and more players - that's perfectly fine. More rupees per player is a problem.

In RL, everyone (who can) tries to manipulate - legally and illegally. Recently, a group of banks in Europe was fined with billions of EUR high fine because of (illegaly) manipulating exchange rates and prices. States do it on daily basis. And yes, some manipulations destroyed whole economies and have led to wars...

Well, it's Rule 1: you can't take without giving.
But the economy would be harmed, because people would produce stuff that is not really needed. As soon as the price rises enough you sell that one or few items and move to next. The people who did invest in farms and start production do not profit as planned but lose - there is now overproduction and overstock and they have farms for items they can not sell.

True! Rule 1 again. It probably will balance back out, but it hurts everyone.

PS: There is the story of Joseph in Egypt (Book of Genesis). What did he really do? He (with pharaohs money) bought all grain and has created artificial demand and empty shops. In the end, almost all the people of Egypt were forced to sell all they had (livestock and land) to survive and they become pharaohs slaves. Was this wise? Well...

OK, Read up to page 6 and honestly the debate is getting circular. Thank you Aikar for full explaining exactly how you'd implement this change. I was shocked at the thread title, but now understand how it'd work.

I am not an expert in economics, but I understand marketing and human nature. I think this is a good idea, but I leave the exact amount of increase up to you, or some expert in economics. The amount doesn't matter to me, I'll continue to be rich regardless.

There appears to be 2-3 reasons or effects you want to achieve with this. You summed up the entire thing best with this post:

1. There will be more room to price competitively by raising the value of all items by x10 (or whatever). And competition is good, and fun - Agreed!
2. If you calculate every players wealth as a 'ratio' of total money in EMC. This change will cause currently wealthy players 'ratio' to drop, and newer players 'ratio' to increase. Bringing players very slightly closer together in available cash. Anyone with a business will profit with more new players spending more rupees.

One thing I have noticed in just a few weeks of running a mall. LOTS of new players want to buy from me, but do not have any money. They ask for jobs and such, but i have no 'job' to give them that would be worth me spending the time to 'train' them in. I tell them, go chop trees and sell me the wood. Their answer "But it's too dangerous, and I don't have any gear, and no money to buy any gear. And if i'm going to go get resources anyway, i'll just do that instead of buying them.."
Suffice to say: giving new players more starting rupees, and more daily bonus means more money for me. They will spend that money on buying tools, and starting resources. then go off and gather more resources to sell to me, which I can then sell to other people.

3. By ever so slightly reducing the gap in players available cash, you balance out the economy and trade/exchange of money/resources increases. Which in turn also increases productivity and competitive pricing.

... I dunno if that makes any sense to people.

This whole topic is beyond most peoples understanding I think, and I understand peoples shock and wrong assumptions of it's effect. I'm no economic expert, and this was hard for me to understand at first. But I see that as always, Aikar is brilliant and dead-on right. And have 100% confidence this will benefit the server.

I support it, in any level of increase Aikar deems fitting.

I see many new players who make thousands of rupees per day. Easily.
That's not low income.

They can not afford to invest 20 minutes to type /waste, go to the next desert or mesa biome and collect a DC of sand or hard clay and sell it for 3500r or more? Or cut wood on their res in the town and sell for 100r per stack? How comes?
People, there is room in my chests, there are rupees waiting! Income for everyone!

Save and spend wisely, learn how things work. Isn't that the game, isn't that good?

I see it as an eco system where people can specialize on few things they can do well (like strip-mining, farming, running a shop etc.) and they can sell the stuff they produce or the service and buy what they need to build and develop.

That balance is established naturally, no need to mess with that.
(Communists had that "planned economy" (5-years plans) where they tried to force people to work according to their plan. It failed.)

Instant gratification like in spoiled game?

Exactly - far too easy to be desirable.

Would that really help them? What is wrong with starting with dirt shack and developing? That is the game of survival.

Yes - keeping good manners, healthy community. And healthy economy is an important part of that.

Heh? You could solve the very same "problem" by both inflation or deflation? Such problem does not exist.

Don't forget that this is the lesser evil and lesser loss than to have loads of rupees that could be worth fraction of current value in the future. Diamond will most probably be diamond, and even if you lose 15% on diamonds, you did well in the situation where you would lose 35%+ on rupees.

Buy where? In the /shop? Really?
But who will mine and sell them if it is better to buy then to mine?

Empty shop. No one mining and selling if it is easier to buy then to mine. No one buying any more because of empty shop.

Did happen - increase in prices.

Again, you need to divide per active player and total online hours in the relevant period.

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Interesting but still somewhat dangerous idea with a loophole.
Frantically trying to find? It's easy: /server smp6 /v +mm

Very interesting ideas. I've proposed a sketch of a stable and natural system with /shop buying and selling stuff with flexible price (not fixed) that is calculated based on average price of some items and amount of stock that /shop would have. Could work very well, but there is one big problem: selling rupees on the website and through supporter free rupees. EMC would need to get rid of that and provide rupees to people through selling to /shop.

+ Like

Is IMO not really a problem on a survival server. Starting from dirt shack is a Good Thing!

Isn't it just one item?
This can be solved by redenomination if really necessary.

This is far better idea than massive (even if gradual) inflation.
But why to spoil the fun of starting with a dirt shack and surviving?

But still, you're playing with fire!
Any artificial intervention into the natural economy is dangerous and most probably harmful.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz - - - - - - Money is so boring - - - - To vaguely quote Napoleon "A nation of shopkeepers"

• New Player buying power: Good idea to rise a bit, but not too much.
• The second problem is not a problem at all in my eyes. If you cannot sell 1 iron between 1r and 2r, then you can sell 2 iron for 3r. Or 20 iron for 33r if you want it to be 1.65r per.
  
  
• I think a real problem is that EMC Shop system is not a good enough stock market. My Suggestion: Focus on EMC Shop System instead trying to change economy. Why? Because:
  • Current shop system fails bigtime to match buyers and sellers. Because I don't know the 10 players that would like to pay more for that item than my shop sign sells it. And they don't know that I'd like to sell it for that price. As a result tons of cheap shops on stock are not found by buyers. And if sellers don't sell items, what they do? Make it even cheaper, and this leads then to too low prices and shops out of stock.
  • New Minecraft versions change the basis of the economy every time. (When iron farms make iron cheaper than stone, so be it. Then the game has too few usages for big iron amounts. This may change in future but so be it for now. It would not make much sense to try to change this, This is how MC currently is. In fact if you start fixing these things, you create/adjust custom code for every MC version to adjust economy in a way that you think is better. But is it really?)
  • EMC Shop buying items to set a lower end limit to economy? I would like it from a player perspective. But if I was Admin, I'd not like it because of the risks: Players could generate infinite rupees from farming. Admins also need to keep an eye on the price, and adjust it every now and then. It would just be an easy approach, but better would be to change the shop system into a stock market.
• Please try to write the anti AFK code in a way that in-game-legit workarounds are not possible or very difficult. Please do not make it punishable to use in-game-legit workarounds for afk'ing(rails, water streams etc.) Ofc hacking and unallowed mods stay punishable. Why? Every in game building should be legit. Btw me personally I dislike the idea of EMC where no one can be afk.

Are there any vanilla things you can't do without rupees?

Joseph was wise, yes, but I do not think that has much to do with this.

Could we just hide the minecraft AFK client and play some other game in the background? Or do we have to be on the AFK client moving around or whatever?