Rebalancing the Empire Economy [slow induce]

Allow me to offer another example:
Scruffy spends about 20hrs gathering resources and building a 16 village iron farm that has an output of approximately 560 iron ingots per hour. over 24 hrs, a max of 13,440 ingots, or 1493 blocks (23 stacks) (NB: it'll be much less as no one spends 24hrs at a farm.. right?) <-Scruffy's alt doesn't get 'bored'. Scruffy spends 3 mins going to collect resource, and bring to town. Scruffy spends about 10 mins clicking 1493 times to sell Iron blocks to server for 9r per Iron block (1r per iron ingot). And earns 13,437r for his 15 mins of work.

13,437r daily for 15mins of work.
Over 1 month, that is 40k or so.

I'm pretty sure that's more than you can get doing anything else for 15mins a day. Imagine the income from gold farms etc, also fully auto, and not restricted in size like iron farms?

Now imagine these are built in an area frequented by players. They are duplicated in different places, and always active. With the resource collected by one player. I've done this very successfully, so I know it's possible.

Automaticaly, dynamicaly changing /shop price based on quantity over time might be a good idea. There are plugins that do this already, and I'm sure Aikar could code up a better one.
There is avenue to 'exploit' this system, by stockpiling until prices change etc, or 'controlling' the /shop price by mass buy/sell of particular block etc. This has been done on other servers, and they abandoned the system of altering server shop price. But it IS possible with some seriously clever programming.

Scruffy,
FYI - you can hold down the right-mouse button when selling. Todd_Vinton knows as I have sold stacks of leather to him, 1 leather at a time

Didn't know that Thanks I guess

This is old news to me. If you investigate further, you will find that holding down the button is slower than repeat clicking. Try it.

Good example, let's see what happens:

Let's say Sruffy will not sell only to the /shop, but also to 3-4 big player shops.
Let's say, as in previous example, that 3-4 big shops need like 4,000 ingots per day together.
So, 62 stacks of ingots go to shops, 148 stacks to Empire /shop. Buy-price is dynamically updated with every sold stack of ingots.
- starting avg price: 18r / stack, /shop buys for 9r / stack
- starting volume is 1,500 stacks of ingots (demand of 3 weeks)
- shop price = 0.5 * ∑ r / ∑ stacks
- Scruffy first sells to player shops and gets 62 * 18 = 1,116 r
- now ∑ r = 1,500 * 18 + 62 * 18 = 28,116 and ∑ stacks = 1,500 + 62 = 1,562
- so /shop price is still 0.5 * 28,116 / 1,562 = 9 r / stack
- after he sells the first stack, the shop price would be 0.5 * 28,125 / 1,563 = 8.99712 r
- the shop has to round the price, and Scruffy keeps selling to player shops, so Scruffy can sell 327 stacks (to both /shop and players) and get total of 4,059 r before /shop price goes to 8 r / stack
- during the 5th day, price goes to 7 r / stack, Scruffy has sold 1,203 stacks and has got 13,548 r
- at the end of 14th day, price falls to 6 r / stack, Scruffy has sold 3,127 stacks and has got 33,155 r
- after 30 days, Scruffy has sold 6,500 Stacks and has earned 65,378 r, that's cca. like free rupees of one Diamond supporter and one Gold supporter together
- after 45 days, buy-price of the /shop drops to 5r /stack
- if Scruffy continues that business during following weeks and months, he will have income of around 25k per month - much less than that of a diamond supporter free income of 39k per month

Did Scruffy get incredibly rich?
No.

What if Scruffy2, Scruffy3 and Scruffy4 join the business?
The price in the /shop will plunge faster, they will probably earn like 10k per month each.

I guess it's a must-have.

Won't work. The price changes with every sold stack and it is still better to sell to players.

Shouldn't work, as the shop algorithm would detect it and/or would remove outliers when calculating the sums and averages.

yes, I think it is

I love the Capitalist Economy that EMC has. I feel if you wanna make a R, than you do what you need to do to get that R.
I think inflating or deflating the R with prices "suited" to a new standard isn't right at all. If someone wants to buy a diamond for 75r than so be it, if someone wants to sell a diamond for 35r than so be it. Price adjusting is natural in an environment like this. Also, if it wasn't already clear enough, the EMC's Shop prices are used almost like a bar and most take that and figure about what prices SHOULD be compared to that. Everyone knows that prices can be lower for some and higher for others, but at the same time, the people who run the server have way more info than the players. You all know how many specific items are in the servers and what not and I think is the players knew that, than the prices would change over night. I think if you told us that there are 1 million diamonds in EMC and we have 100k player, well that means it is a more valuable resource to iron which there is 10 million of them.
Some times, simple stuff like that helps all of us, instead of having a giant guessing game.
But leave the system as is or reset it and let it work out on it's own.
Thank you.

I think for a week or so /shop needs to buy iron ingots/blocks at .5r/1r/ingot just to take some iron out of the economy, after that, and with the new no AFK mob systems Aikar is making iron prices should, in theory, go up if we take a decent amount out.

ATM, that won't make alot of difference with 1.8 changes coming. people aren't selling iron at all. lol

I know I will stockpile many DC's of iron blocks for future projects. Just in case 1.8 changes do end up breaking iron farms. As I really dislike mining being 50% of my game time. Does not interest me. I'm a builder, not a miner.

But could try introducing some other block to /shop, like cobble. for testing purposes. *shrug*

If we are concerned about new players joining and going to the empire shop to blow their initial wad of rupees, why not help them out and interact with them???
I hardly see any experienced players interact with new players at all!
I myself, make it a point to not only say HELLO to new players, but to be sure and encourage them to visit player shops and give them res numbers as well. I Also tell them if they need something, basic supplies, tools, to ask me! (yes, I give away free stuff, and no, do not try taking advantage of me)

Then there are the new players that never get onto the forums, and have NO IDEA what voting is. Easy thing to do, is to look up the 'new voting methods' thread, and send them the link to the EMC forum thread on this!

Yes, all these things are in the tutorial, but so much information for new people, it often gets glazed over.

If you posed that new players have a rough time, ask yourself this question.
What have you done to help them?

Back to the empire shop:
Goal should be to convert work to rupees. Modifications to shop buy/sell needs to be done in a very controlled method, otherwise people could will game the system and repetitive tasks and bulk selling would prevent players from having shops, other than for 'high end items'.

If the number of items were limited daily that could be sold to the shop, then it would equate to:
1) players will still have an excess of materials (no infinite item sink holes).
2) encourages shops to still keep stock of more common materials.
3) Even if player shops purchased for LESS than the sell price of the empire shop, people would have the propensity to sell to player shops, as they can only sell so many items to the 'infinite' EMC shop.
4) Player shops will still sell materials as their sell prices are better than the Empire Shop sell price.
5) If a shop owner has excess materials, the can still sell it for more than what they paid for it, but also under the empire shop purchase price. More players would be required to 'mass sell' items to the EMC shop.

Overall there are more rupees to be gotten, but not crazy amounts, and it still encourages player shops.
This would be a win/win situation, as it provides additional rupees for work, and also stimulates player shops as rupees for miners does not solely depend on player shops. Will the economy inflate? Yes, but at the same rate as work is willing to be done to sell to the shop.

Now, what the item limit should be, really depends on the empire buy/sell costs. And, this can easily be adjusted as required.
If a new miner goes out into the world and goes mining... they can easily get around 5 stacks cobble, 2 stacks coal, 1 stack iron ore, 15 gold ore, 32 redstone, and maybe some diamonds. (using this as an average example) Players would have their choice what to sell to the empire shop, and what to try and sell at other shops.

A solution similar to what I have written, will be better than handing out additional rupee bonuses. (Now, I am all for adding additional funds for new players to begin with, however even if you have a 'large' initial balance, the 'spender' vs 'saver' syndrome still rules them -- and once people spend their rupees, without being sustainable, there will be shell shock)

1) This will allow people who never want to go mining, to be able to stay in town and buy/sell for rupee profit, but not in infinite quantities.
2) This will allow people who DO want to go mining the ability to make rupees, as they have the Empire shop, and players that never mine to buy/sell to.
3) This also encourages shop owners to take a more active role in what they do, as not only do they adjust their high end cost, they will also have to deal with their low end purchase cost.

There is much more to this, however dynamic players will figure it out, and should not take much time for players to adjust.
(*hint**think player auctions...)
I will not beat a dead horse anymore, as this information should be sufficient to help.
If more is needed, or if there are questions, please start a conversation with me.

This guy has amazing ideas! He on fire!

The main goal is to exchange with other players, to be able to specialize and to develop faster.
Of course, some peoples goal will be to try to "game the system" - but as long as it goes with natural and legal methods, I guess that's fine. They will learn about Rule 1

What is the role of the Empire Shop now? And what could it be if it would buy items?

To answer this, I guess one would have to answer two big questions:
- where do / shall the rupees come from; selling of rupees for US$?
- manipulating the economy, "gaming the system"?

The Empire Shop could be
- basic source of rupees, but always giving less than player shops (as in the example with iron)
- set up in a way that does not interfere with natural development of the economy

Who would support EMC without free rupees?
I would.

In the first big question, did you make a typo or is this what you mean?

i think if we are going to be able to sell things to /shop perhaps players should have a say what can get sold? maybe some of the bigger shops put together a list of some kind, of things that would empty out the /shop of cash and the majority vote on whichever list is best is which items can be sold to shop? i hope that made sense i havent slept yet....

its actually really easy to make a buck in eve (6 year player here) just gotta know what your doing. you can run raids with three trial accounts in destroyers and make 100k each an hour then alpha your allies at the right moment and bam 300k in an hour and you probly just got the bounty's on them too which will be close to a mill, congrats you can now afford a command ship even if you cant fly it for a year

but eve is an entirely different playing style then here. there has never been a ccp market its always been player run and driven and prices have remained somewhat constant (aside from a few jumps in bpos that came with patches), empire on the otherhand has always had a /shop to atleast buy from which is needed because unlike eve there are items that are really hard to get your hands on without putting in weeks of work for a stack (circlestone ring a bell?). eve also is hedonistically cronocapitalist place unlike emc where we all work together as a community to make it a better place (or atleast most of us

also i love eve online
also banana

When I said 'gaming' the system, I mean more of people calculating the subtle loopholes to create vast amounts of wealth in short periods of time, or with little effort.
Whether intended or unintended, if there is no rule specific to say "don't do this", I doubt much punishment can occur, people claim ignorance, and no rules against it. If staff sees the loophole, they would stop it, rather than have a rule against it.

Rupees come from the same place that they always have. Voting, Daily Login, and $. Created out of nothing.

Manipulating the economy is standard practice, although the proper tools should be created to ensure indirect methods to stimulate.

Empire shop does not necessarily have to give less than player shops when you are limited to the items sold, for the reasons stated above. This has the two fold effect of what was mentioned above, and also limiting 'damage' for any convergence points for people 'gaming' the system.

Now we all need to keep in mind, that any of this situation is very easy to talk about, however the programming behind it would be the 'real' challenge. Whether any of this is useful to them, is really up to them, and what they wish to implement.