Rebalancing the Empire Economy [slow induce]

First - i'm going to edit the original post to make something clear - the 10/25x options does not mean instant, it also means gradual, but the third option was more so 'no hard number to shoot for'.

This is where I have a fundamental disagreement with you. I see stagnant prices as a bad thing and "boring".

What fun is running a shop and selling iron ingots when your locked to 1-2 rupee price differences even on bulk orders?

Also, I use iron ingots as its a good example of a useful item thats at bottomed out pricing.

Supply and Demand is not static. Prices should change based on the current economic desires.

Right now, I believe you are seeing price stability solely due to the economy reaching a hard bottom. Prices are hitting the lowest points that players feel comfortable even selling an item for, as if they go lower, that items value starts to be the same as another item that clearly isnt as useful.

What if diamonds were overstocked? Should diamond prices be forced to 5r range, costing the same as another less useful item.

Overstock should control the fluxuations in a general area, not bottom out an entire item.

You say you can sell 10 ingots for 19r instead, but what about new players who don't have 300 ingots? They have very low stock and need that ability to sell in smaller increments... What about a simple flint and steel?

Theirs so many problems when you ride the bottom line of an economy that would be "simpler" if it wasnt like that.

I believe its the exact opposite of what you said. I believe it will be much easier for the younger players, as right now you are FORCED to price items off of bulk purchases for many cases. It would be much simpler if prices were based off a single item.

1 Dirt = 1R, well everyone now knows 64 Dirt = 64R base! I'll sell for 60R for a bulk buy discount.

as said above, the inflation would not be instant.

There is no data to back this up. The rupee base has been 100R for so long, with supporting up to 1300R...

However... You mention "Become more stable in the past few months". Well the past few months is actually when the inflation really started, increased tutorial bonuses and up to now 7x in growth of the new player base.

There is A LOT more rupees entering the economy the past 3 months. To repeat above, I would blame stabilization on a bottomed out theory instead, that players just do not consider it possible to sell an item cheaper to be worth their time.

I did this in other games, which is back to my original post of playing economics. Manipulating markets like this can be an inconvenience to some, but not totally destroying.

So if you did buy up EVERYTHING, and raised price 4x, it would be rough the first few days as stock is low, but then every other player would start farming their own and selling.

IF you buy their stuff, now they have benefited from your manipulation. Eventually, your profit margins will turn non existant as your buying items for the price you rose it to, and if you continue to try manipulate it higher, people will simply stop buying it them farm it themselves.

You then get stuck with tons of stock you can't sell, and get bored of it.

You eventually will be depleted of rupees because you have too much stock you cant sell, and then other shops will take back over. The economy would then be inflated higher through manipulation, but would eventually balance back out.

EVERYTHING I just typed in this section is real experience I have with in game economics - I've done all of this, minus doing it for the sake of harming an economy.

Buying out all the competition, selling higher, causing the trend to be higher, others then make profit off my work but not to my scale, only to then get stuck with stock from others who are now playing my game or farming and undercutting me.

In WoW I was churning through thousands of gold a day as a non max level when many max levels didn't even have that much.

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EMC has always had massive inflation due to having barely any sinks. If inflation was truely a problem, everything would be going up naturally anyways. I see the problem being that we have the prices we have today, but the income to players is simply too low. If we give more buying power to all these new players, then their will be more demand, giving a more healthy economy.

Right now, our demand is limited to veteran players, because free players simply can not afford anything!

100 rupees... Yet people buy things for 5k rupees, 10k, 35k, or even 200k~ now for vouchers. If someone starts, and has no clue how to make money yet, and they see a measily 100R when the scale on other things is higher, no-one will want to buy things, theyd rather save it for the important things such as food to "live".

We have an eco system where players feel its more effecient to mine resources than it is to buy them, and that is the problem. There needs to be more of a balance there. More players to buy resources to save time and get instant gratification.

With more cash on hand, you feel more in control of doing this. If I'm a new player, I receive 1K + say 3K for voting (to raise it also some), At todays prices, They can get a nice set of stone, wood, glass, animal eggs, etc.

They are able to start to see their construction much quicker, instead of a dirt shack.

What's EMC's strongest point? Our community! Letting new players be able to get something built that actually looks quality, quicker, added into their servers community, to then show it off to others, will form a much stronger bond for them to this server.

The opposite of inflation to solve this problem would be deflation.... Except the economy is bottomed out, we can't do that!

Plus that would furthur increase the problems we have mentioned here. We do not need to make items cheaper, we need to solve the income problems that restricts newer players from the market.

And in doing this, the veteran players benefit strongly as they have even more buyers and suppliers, and helps EMC as a whole.

That is exactly what this thread is proposing, a gradual increase.

New ways to get rupees have slowly been added to EMC and has not caused concern in the past. In theory this inflation has gone on since adding voting bonuses, which has been a while. Now were simply talking about adding a bit more, but more so to the extent of how large.

as I responded to manic above - since this has been going on for a while with no evidence to say its harmed anyone, what reasoning would you have to say another increase would be different?

No-ones rupee values would go down in value over a single day. We would see people who have current wealth, be able to grow it even faster:

1. By their own daily income being higher
2. By more demand
3. By playing economics of buy low sell high

We are a community based survival server. Our main 'gameplay' is about building and surviving (when in the wild). We have a strong economy, but it is designed to ASSIST players, not be our main focus.

But as the many problems i've detailed in this thread, the economy does not provide as much benefit to the newer players, as they can not afford much.

So, in turn, they turn around and go to the wastelands to mine.... and.... sell some items in a shop to make some money that they then can buy other things with.

The goal here is to make it so players feel like they can just buy resources instead of having to mine them, to reduce the amount of supply, and increase demand.

We have support for this now. Simply visit the page and hit Pay Now, input price of the package you want, and then PM ICC with the receipt/transaction ID (You don't even need to log in to paypal).

Prepaid cards work for that process.