Perhaps more money being spent on better marketing could be a start to get more players in. There is a stream team; Perhaps use them to create more weekly videos about the server itself, the content it provides and teaser trailers for upcoming content to keep older and new players around to play. This was something I wanted to experiment with while leading build team but lets be real, I have no idea how to edit a video. So my answer to this is not the economy needing more money or a shop but simply something to generate more user interest to join here and the forums. Though this has to start at the top to set the direction of the advertisement campaign. Let your volunteers at stream team what you want to be shown off or filmed, what kinds of angles you want to ensure highest levels of eye candy for those who either play on here and would now be excited to see more video content or capture the interest of someone browsing YouTube who isn't apart of the server already and wants to see what these videos are all about. I can somewhat guarantee if there is enough video/visual content created for here, random users are bound to see it and check it out for themselves. Important Tags are also helpful for targeted searches. EDIT: As for spending money on 'better marketing', I am not suggesting paying stream team as their position is volunteer so that's their contract with the server. #RiseOfTheSteamTeam
Eh? An item has worth because players want to pay for it. Items don't have inherent worth. If nobody wants to buy diamonds anymore, diamonds are worthless. In fact, if nobody wants rupees anymore, rupees are worthless.
No, not one bit. After all, the concept of Economy is dynamic ... and ebbs and flows as the population does with supply and demand in step behind them. My perception of this is as follows: Rupees - What is a Rupee? Do you need them? If you answered yes, what do you need them for? Other than Vault access, going across Servers, and perhaps Egging a Mob or two, is there really another need? There isn't a single thing you can't acquire (other than Promos) in EMC that you can't collect for yourself with some effort. I've never found myself in "need", but I do remember the early days of hitting the 100r jackpot just for logging in. For me, my Shop runs under the Formula : Effort (by me) + Laziness (by you) = Rupees. The Server Economy is a very sensitive issue that has ruined many a Server, and you can be certain that will not happen here. Shops - This concept is a choice for some, and a convenience for others. I started mine because "What am I going to do with all of this Stuff?". There are many, some have 6 Chests, some 606. Building one is a project in itself, to some. The Mega Malls out there now are all-inclusive, massive Builds ....that both create a Market for Items to be sold, but can also create Work for some (materials collections to buy) and through Buying signs, provide Rupee acquisition to those who need that. That Azoundria deserves much credit in the creation of the EMC Market page, where Shops and prices are listed across all Servers, that has not only provided "advertisement" for all Shops there, but has also been responsible for equalizing the Market and putting Items in their place in Value. I'm so old, I remember the days when Diamonds sold for 40r here ! Updates - With each Sever update, new items become available, as does the Work Orders. This most recent has me making Lists of what to do next, instead of "uggh, what do I feel like doing today?" type of mindset. In this instance, New Players flood the Servers, new materials and Mobs become available for Shops, and a sort of breath of Fresh Air permeates the Server (and its Economy) and things change dynamically. The re-setting of the Waste is a terrific concept, as I remember having to negotiate the Frontier (because that's all there was) and the minefield that area was, just to collect resources. At the end of the day, those responsible for running EMC are wicked smart, truly vested in the undertaking they've chosen to endure, and clearly have their finger on the pulse of the EMC crowd .... as well as having the foresight to keep a Server like this running since the days there were <30 multiplayer Servers out there. The custom Mobs, custom level of Play, Custom promo Items .... those concepts don't just appear out of thin air. It takes a collaborative Team of special Individuals, each with different skill sets, to create such a unique Product. And to this Subject, how many Servers do you play where there is NO Server Shop? There used to be one, where Items were severely inflated (which is typical) and there was no selling to it, to now .....where it doesn't exist anymore? There's no need for it, as Player Shops are more abundant than ever. Consider that for a moment .... compared to other Servers you've played on. No Server Shop?! Wow! And yet, this Team chose to remove that headache from their Duties to focus on other things. So, in the spirit of this Thread, what does that mean? It means WE run the Economy!! How about that?!! A Server where the Players dictate the Economy. Does that mean that "We" are getting stale or dying? Or does it mean that our Economy is just where it needs to be, with balanced supply and demand on each side?
You sort of loss me and my interest with the constant exclamation points and patriotic speeches you gave there. You're suggesting everything is fine and nothing to worry about; And on your last point "shops are abundant'; There is countless derelict player shops that have been out of stock for years. I hope you don't mean those because thats where /v +shop/mall takes me to them the most. You can even /res list +shop/mall and go to these manually and same result. There is MANY shops but more DEAD shops than active shops with dust settling in their entrances.
I'll say this much, the economy feels "alive" because we have more active Minecraft players on EMC in the past month than it has had for the past couple years. No one knows how long this wave of activity will last before we revert to how things were before 1.15 came out. Enjoy it while you can.
Wow didn't expect the thread to blow up after a month! It seem to me alot of player rather get the stuff themselves, unless we're talking about promos!
I'd say the Gross Domestic Product, that is, the total value of goods produced and services provided by EMC players during one year is doing well. If you were to calculate, you may ask the following questions: How much of the wild is dug up over the course of a year? How much of it goes into builds? How much money goes into the hands of people you hire to dig up whatever? I'd say we're doing pretty well.
There are ways that EMC can help boost the economy but remember it's only help, not a total fix. The player shops (that tag needs updating) pretty much set the market prices. Yes you have shops that sell high or shops that sell too low. But for the most part, most shops prices are competitive . There will always be things/shops that are outside the normal bell curve and those will "learn" their price(s) are too low or too high. This would help those new shop onwers to increase their inventory. Gone are the days where one could auction off DCs of logs to increase their stores. From my long IRL experiences and the years with EMC, I see three quick and easy things EMC can do to help (not fix) the economy: The Wastes - Get the waste to be more utilized. How many times have you gone to the waste and have to get around all the dangerous mining done right next to the outpost? By not resetting the waste as often as it is now, it will force players to go further out to gather resources maximizing all areas of the waste. Think how many wastes are available to players? 10 if you're a supporter, 9 if not. That's a lot of material available and for making other items to sell. Resetting a waste when it hasn't been depleted is like driving a car on a long trip and stopping for gas every 50 miles when you have a 20 gallon tank and getting 15 miles to the gallon. Your gas gauge is still pointing near full. How does this affect the economy? Buy making items more scarce. Now shops come into play to supplement those scarcities. Derelict Residences - This one could not only help the economy but solve an issue that is constantly being brought up in Suggestions. found here: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/question-derelict-not-working.82380/#post-1552435 So a residence can be forced claimed after 30 days leaving those builds on that residence open until the owner logs back in or another player force claims it. Sounds good but the issue is that there are derelict residences exceeding 2 years. The only time a derelict residence is reset is when a block on 16 residences are needed on a server/SMP for more open plots. Which is rare due to the number of currents players on EMC. Keep the existing rule/policy on derelict residences but add another rule/code. If a residence goes derelict after 60 days (maybe 90) then reset that residence period. This would solve the /v shop and going to empty shops. If the residence isn't there anymore, nor is the shop tag. How does this help the economy? If that player, who hasn't voted, signed in, or became a supporter within 60 (maybe 90) days, loses what they have built, then so be it. Yes that sounds harsh but it forces the non-dedicated player (since they let their residence go derelict) to either go and gather resources (see #1 above) or purchase from a shop. Version Updates - OK first off I'm a retired developer and know how long (Coding, QA, issue, etc.) but when Mojang has a new release, it takes sometime before EMC can do their tweaks, testing, etc. and get it to us the users. AND it's not all on EMC. Open up a test server and advertise it (home page and message in game) where all players can go to play the latest released version of Minecraft. It would operate a bit like the waste does but different that it would be subject to reset at anytime. The Devs control the reset and it could happen in 5 days, a month or in hours. Whenever the Devs need to push something. There are players that would love to go out there and play around in a test environment regardless if they could be booted anytime for a new push from the Devs. You could even put in a procedure to strip any items from the players that are version specific to the latest version being coded on by the Devs. So if I went there to gather items from the nether forest (1.16) but EMC is currently running 1.15.2 I couldn't bring them back to SMP5. Those items would be stripped but items that are part of 1.15.2 would be allowed come back with me. Two birds, one stone. Another waste and basic users reporting issues, not staff or Devs...you know, those users that will do something you never thought would/could be done And how does this benefit the economy? New and old players alike want to play the latest version with others online. EMC would have the latest release version. I believe the first two could be easily implement and would help the economy. The third would help a bit but it could bring new players into the EMC world. More players, more consumers.
In my opinion, yes. But, is the way EMC runs to blame? Simple economic theory states that if price = marginal cost (the change in cost to produce an additional unit of output), an economy is allocatively efficient (operating at the socially optimal quantity and price.) Before the integration of villagers and mending marginal cost was high due to the inability to mend tools and get gear easily. New redstone technology makes mass farming extremely easy. Marginal cost has fallen to nearly zero. With the upcoming integration of bartering, farming has become far too easy. This is one of the reasons I have recently found Minecraft increasingly uninteresting. When marginal cost equals to zero, this also causes a shift in supply. Again, simple economics states that a shifter of the product market supply curve is input prices. Input prices, being at an all-time low, lowers the socially optimal price immensely. TL;DR: new Minecraft mechanics have caused EMC's economy to collapsed. But, what can EMC do to solve this issue? Answer: scarcity. When items are less readily available, they will be in higher demand and lower supply. This will shift the supply curve back to the right, returning the economy to the equilibrium it once was in. But I do not yet have an idea as to how to implement scarcity... Economics for the win!
As long as vouchers are not handed out at drop parties anymore, then I agree with the idea of scarcity. I also believe that the number of active players contributes to the economy's current state. Let's be real here, EMC does not have the same number of active players it did back in 2014, or even 2015. Less people to be active in the economy can lead to stagnation. People have simply moved on from Minecraft altogether, or are too busy to play like they did about a decade ago.
I totally agreed that the only option to help (again it's only help, does not completely solve the issue) is scarcity. This is why #1 and 2 help the scarcity concept. Number 3 is all about getting new players to see and check out EMC, even if only a 10% of them stay. One big issue, that all Minecraft servers/environments face, is Mojang itself. It seems every new major release either makes a previous item obsolete or way to easy to obtain. I can remember when horses were the rage b/c you could move around more quickly then came the Elytra. Or Llamas so that one could gather more resources in one trip then came the shulkers. And it seems with the latest upgrade to 1.15.2 mining ores is easier than before. Ores are now more abundant. How do we solve the issue? We can't. The economy won't return to the hey days of 6, 8, 10 years ago but the economy can survive. Survive at lower prices, not stock any abundant or easily obtained items, and get some new blood/members into EMC (applying the new releases quicker). And now pass me the defibrillator paddles to revive the economy. Clear!
The only thing that can help the economy is new players. The fact that EMC is usually 1 update behind Mojang, makes this really hard. Another thing that has hurt the economy are the numerous public works. Couple those with the waste and why would you ever have to buy anything?
Agreed ErrantKnight. I only joined EMC in January 2015, but I've heard tales of when diamonds used to be in the "double digit" price range.
I must have joined about the same I must have joined about the same time as you and I remember paying over 200 for them. I made a fortune selling armor and weapons. Not much market for that now days.
'Tis a shame, mending has hurt the market when it came out years ago. I remember when buying armor from shops used to be what everyone did, almost all the time. Now it's just "where can I get x and y enchanted books."
Oh, the amount in rupees paid for one diamond on average actually lowered again? It's interesting that people seem to have an issue with this, while I seem to recall people being worried about rupee inflation because diamonds cost four times as many rupees as they used to.
Okay, reading through all of this, I feel like I should, first and foremost, add some things about the words to use about a Minecraft economy. This is quite a long one, it doesn't even fit in a single post. Luckly enough, there is a lot of content in it, with a quite meaningfull and ellegant conclusion, I think I was planning to post something like this in a separate thread, and you can maybe expect a polished version of it to appear in one, but, for now, this less structured version will do in this thread: You see, the words and phrases, and with that, the concepts, traditionally used to analyse economies do not make sense in a Minecraft world. A phrase like “Gross domestic product,” for example, is, though theoretically still a calculable number, hinging on a theory of economy that just doesn’t apply to Minecraft. In the real world, there are people. People need food, and shelter and mobile phones to live, and have no other option to get them than to buy it, or get it from someone. It is impossible to be fully self-sustaining as a person, without participating in markets, and jet still be an active member of modern society. You just cannot make a smartphone yourself, you cannot get food without buying land, and I don’t think anyone is fully capable of making a modern house, let alone the tools and “raw” materials required to even start with a project like that. In addition to the fact that, in the real world, people need to buy stuff to live, the amount of stuff they are able to buy, neoliberalism argues, roughly equates their quality of life, which is what the phrase “Gross domestic product” references. As you can clearly see: none of that is true in Minecraft. In this virtual world, you are able to explore a terra nullius, an uninhabited, unclaimed, hell, ungenerated land, from which the average player is able to create an amazing base, all on their own, with all the technology possible in the game. You don’t need to participate in the economy. So, on to a new theory of the economy of vanilla items. I’ve based this on three main observations. The entire explanation of the theory is a slightly darker colour, so you can skip parts if you understand it. This theory does not apply to promos, about which I could make another post, similar in length. Here is my theory in three observations: (1) Generating a product, in the real world, generally costs four things: Capital, Labour, Nature, and Entrepreneurship, as is taught in every high school. In Minecraft, it seems to make sense analysing it in three: Time, Ability and Capital, but I would argue you only need one: Time. How to do something, Ability, can usually be found on YouTube, which makes learning it a matter of time, and capital isn’t really required as much as it is in the real world. You can, for most farms, just spend a week getting it yourself. Additionally: looking at the economy, time seems to be the only thing people ever worry about, with the exception of gold farms that require the capital of obsidian. In general, though, I think it will work just looking at it from the perspective of time. There, of course, are exceptions to these rules. The Ability factor I talked about earlier is definitely still relevant to something like aesthetic design, as my build-service wealth shows. Additionally: there are things that can be done faster with better redstone equipment, though that is never necessary to gather the item. The first is an exception that is, I’d argue, not really relevant, the second is something that, though important when developing mathematical models, is probably not relevant to my analysis. This brings me to the first important point: people buy something in Minecraft when the amount of time spent finding a shop and getting the rupees needed to buy it is more enjoyable than the time spent getting the materials themselves. The economy is all about time. Malls and shops fit within this picture. There are two types: There are small shops, usually run by newer players, which sell small amounts of goods unreliably. Those will usually be bought out either never, because the price is too high, or immediately, as soon as someone finds it a really cheap shop, and decides they can make money off of it. But, more importantly, there are larger malls, which succeed in selling materials to people who need them for projects, the thing all shops attempt to do. These malls, I’d argue, don’t just sell goods, they sell the ability to buy goods. In other words: the guarantee of stock. Gathering stock, making sure everything is well filled, takes time, especially when there are a lot of different materials, making it that, for a mall, you don’t just buy the item, you also buy the time needed to stock the item, which increases the price. The “mall part” of the equation of price is derived from the time needed to stock a mall. (2) Secondly, I think we need to make a critical distinction between types of players: (yes, this is copied from another older post of mine) When I look at the culture of this server, I see two distinct and mostly separated groups. They don’t just play Minecraft differently, they seem to disagree on what a good time playing a game is. The first group is the “casual” group, the people who play primarily because it’s fun. Their actions in the world are directly related to what they think would be the most fun to do next. These are mostly, but not exclusively, the younger players, and usually the people who first joined relatively recently. Economically, they have a small amount rupees, which for them is enough for the smaller building projects they take up. They might own a small shop, or casually collect promos. The second group is far smaller, but all the more influential to the economy of the server and its discourse. They seem to care less about whether an action is fun now, and more about if an action is going to make them achieve their long-term goals, or if it’s going to result in an interesting experience, none of which necessarily needs to be fun. I am, for a lack of a better word, going to call this the “serious” group. These are usually the people who have been playing on this server for five or more years, they own gigantic farms or large malls, and their wealth is a lot larger because of that. Traditionally, they are the ones who spent a lot of time on the forums. One more note about the “serious” players: They like to overproduce. They make large farms, not because they need the items, but because they like large farms. For an economy server, that creates this system at first: The casual players have a small amount of money, which is fine because the serious group drives all the prices of directly farmable materials to the ground, (at first) becoming extremely rich, and using that money to work on the large projects they want to work on. The small group can just work on their small projects, whilst not having to worry about the small amount of farmables that they need, collecting the other materials themselves. It gets more interesting: the casual players could live completely independently from the “serious” players: Many servers even outlaw the “serious,” something EMC is also arguably slowly doing. This would create a “casual server,” a server where, though trading does happen, it is often either ceremonial or something that only happens in very specific scenarios. Most people gather their materials themselves. I know that this isn’t the way the economy of EMC is structured now, but I do think it is the baseline that shows the directions the trades are going in. I’d argue that this is the most basic structure of a Minecraft economy. (This post contignues on the next page)
