My opinion: When I joined EMC, a diamond was 25r. I was one of the major market influences on diamond price, as I bought up all diamonds I could get for up to 40r, because it was easier to get 40r in other ways than to find a diamond back then. Since then diamond price was getting higher and higher. I thought that the shop's purpose is to give a certain value to rupees. Such that it guarantees 100r will always be worth a diamond. Then suddenly shop changed diamond price to 500r. Back then I thought for myself: "Oh noes, now rupees are about 5 times less worth than before." And today you want to close the shop? I think: "Oh noes, nothing guaratees anymore a worth of a rupee at all." Therefore I ask you Krysyy, Aikar, and others: What do you want to happen with rupees? Should they have a stable worth? If yes, I suggest to continue to sell items (or at least mainly valuable items such as diamonds, etc.) The less items you sell for rupees, the bigger is the chance for a bigger inflation.
I don't think anything will happen at all. No one's going to start charging 1k per diamond. People will go elsewhere. Ya the /shop was raised to 500r but diamond didn't get anywhere near that. It probably raised only a few rupees. Besides /shop was more of a last resort/only if desperate type shop.
Before answering your questions. First some history that everyone might find interesting. When we were creating the new Empire Shop (released February 12th, 2013), have you ever wondered where we got the prices? Truth be told, we went and looked at the current market price at some player shops. Specifically AlexChance's shop (we didn't tell him at the time). Then we did a static mark-up off of that price. While you let that sink in, I also want to point out some other changes that have been made to rupees. Although we have not changed the amount of rupees gained from sign-in bonuses for an extremely long time, voting has since introduced more rupees. The now removed option to BUY rupees injected a ton of extra rupees into the economy. Okay, why have I mentioned these things? First: The idea that the Empire Shop served as a cap to player shop prices is not completely accurate. Technically it is since it would be unprofitable to sell any items for greater than the Empire Shop price, but as mentioned above the Empire Shop prices were created arbitrarily. It would be wrong to say that those prices were any indicator of a true market value of any particular item. Other than increasing the diamond price, there were only a couple of instances where we increase/change the prices in the Empire Shop, so most of the prices were based off of the economy 4 years ago! Second: So, why not just adjust the prices to be a more accurate representation of the true market value of items? Well, where would we get those numbers? We could do what we did 4 years ago and go look at the mega malls on EMC to determine a new number to markup as the new cap on blocks/items. But this would not solve the problem because we would be creating an arbitrary cap based on the market price which is directly effected by the current Empire shop whose prices were created arbitrarily. Yes, that highly confusing sentence was intentional! and I would argue that there is no way to determine a balanced, permanent price cap since pricing should be determined by supply, demand, and the ease to collect. These are non-static figures which would require a dynamic system which would still be flawed at the end of the day. Third: I suppose I didn't fully refute the notion of increasing prices which could last for another four years (in theory). Well, what would happen if we increased the cap? Naturally prices would increase over time (or maybe decrease with people stop going to the Empire Shop for that item). Is it fair that someone loaded up many DC from the Empire Shop, then sold their items half a year later when people have adjusted their prices for the new price cap. This could still happen with the route we chose, but the inability for us to fix the underlying issue that they gained a profit without any effort is a valid argument for swiftly eliminating that avenue of obtaining resources. Overall, shop owners should be considering several factors whether to raise their prices in this post-EmpireShop era: both lack of price cap and if someone purchased from the shop prior to removal so an increased supply. Okay. To finally answer the question. Should rupees have a stable worth? I think yes. If we (the server), stop influencing the rate which rupees are distributed and arbitrarily influencing the market value of literally every item, then I would think that it should have a more sane value over time. Diamonds are fundamental to Minecraft and makes sense to obtain from mining or trading among players. It doesn't make sense for us to give you rupees for you to turn around and spawn in diamonds from the Empire Shop. Large scale inflation is unlikely since we do not have plans to increase the sign-in bonus, so the amount of rupees players have should stay consistent. The final missing piece of information, is that we will continue to sell the promo/special items that take a significant amount of rupees from circulation. The usage of the Empire Shop was also rather low, so we thought it would be good to just take our hands out of the situation. Letting the players work the economy to find the stable prices that should eventually settle.
Haha, thanks! It's in my signature though and not the actual post, so for a future time, I'd suggest posting something like that on the person's profile. Especially because my signature might be changed another time somebody will read this.
Don't listen to this guy. It's propaganda being spread by Tomvan to trick you into giving him your rupees
I think with this development that has taken place we as players and shop owners should use azondria's shop program.
I remember the original Empire shop. A tiny little building next to the spawn with the basic items sold in it. I'll have to jump on to see the new replacement!
If I didn't think it would be blasphemous, I would "Thank the Lord, Thank the Lord!" I'm a little late in this thread, but can I share a big Thank You to staff for making this change. Letting the EMC player market regulate itself is definitely the way to go. I still think there are other adjustments that need to be pursued to reduce rupee influx into the economy, as well as a need for creative ideas to create currency sinks, but this is one very big step in the right direction. I might also remind some players that some things should be hard to obtain. They should take effort, sometimes even prove unattainable for a time. This is one of the Hallmarks of any good game. You can trade one effort for another through currency exchange, but the bottom line is that you don't deserve everything on a silver platter and if you think you do then you are in for a rude awakening. Thanks again for being willing to move forward.
I miss the /shop already.... Everyone else seems to be so under-priced these days. Make /shop great again bring back these prices.
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. If not, I fail to see how eliminating the Empire Shop would make player-run shop prices drop. Or maybe you are having trouble finding a way to spend all your rupees.
