Rebalancing the Empire Economy [slow induce]

I have to agree with you. Instead of pumping more rupees into the economy, why not remove things?

Equinox'd

Well as long as we are talking economy and such... what happened to the player shop update?

This is why I:
1) Invite people I know to EMC.
2) Love our Staff.
3) Continue to support.
4) Hope to never leave.

I would definitely think that selling to the empire shop (in limited quantities daily, such as two stacks of any item) is a great and wonderful idea.
I say limited because I would hate for someone to stone gen, mob gen, ingot farm, etc. infinite rupees. (say two stacks of any item daily, or a daily sell rupee cap?) This would solve new players constantly trying to find streams of revenue other than voting.

For the shops, or megamalls, its a tougher nut to crack. I have seen people with great prices but the buy/sell differ greatly and always be out of stock. I have seen shops charge higher than I would ever purchase for. Also shops that have great pricing (some lower than what other malls purchase for).
Much of this comes down to player behavior, and you hit the nail on the head when you said that the 'established' old timers of EMC set much of the pricing (Monopoly) due to their purchasing ability. Deep pockets play a role in the EMC economy as much as supply/demand plays a role.

I know I am a new-ish player compared to many on EMC, but I've been around the block plenty of times.
Thanks! Hope to see you down in the mines with me!
(and seriously, I have dirt walls at my res, and a semi-finished cobblestone building)

I think both sides have valid points that have been given and explained quite clearly. I honestly think we should slowly begin to inflate, just to show everyone a taste of how it would be like. Instead of starting at 5x, maybe 3x or even 2x. Depending on results shown, we'll advance or discontinue the entire thing.

Instead of being completely against it, just open up your mind a little and let it try something new. If it doesn't go well, oh well, it was worth a try, and if it does, than hooray! Better economy for all!

Well i believe that is a great idea but instead of making afk completely gone; maybe we can limit it to an half an hour to an hour. This would help eliminate the people who set up to afk while asleep or at work. This would help the people who go afk for things like to let cows grow, or let things progress that need time to progress. Even a 20 minute proxy that kicked people for afk just to stop those all day farmers. not the ones who need the time off keyboard to do a small task or just this 20min wait halting progression in a project

All day, every day.

I think the shop buying items, if regulated would be a GREAT idea. Question though, would there be a change to the rupee system then? Because I think the shop, like its buy prices would need to be quite schemey to work, not exploitable, but where it helps the economy.

If we inflate the economy 10x, and we don't inflate our rupees we currently have, Faithcaster will soon only have 100,000 worth of rupees.

The economy of EMC is something that needs to be understood first.

Question:

Why is the EMC economy in the current state it is?

Answers:

• Farms. Iron farms, gold farms, emerald farms, glowstone farms, redstone farms, etc,etc

The current MC system is gimped to such a degree that you can make infinite amounts of various supposedly finite resources or minerals that you would normally have to work for. Until farms are killed completely (and the real Minecraft Survival returns) this will never be countered and so iron will always be cheap because a few hours of AFK'ing will bring in stacks of the stuff

• Servers. Ten servers with free access and item movement between each

One server that didn't reset would eventually become harder and harder to mine for resources and thus the price would increase as supply dropped but demand remained constant or climbed. This does not happen on EMC because we have a crapload of servers and sub-worlds within each server to jump onto and gain quick and easy access to resources.
If you want prices to go up, get rid of the Wastelands so there is no easy access to constantly resetting resources. You are supplying players with unlimited resources for minimal work and wonder why prices are so cheap?

• Endertopia. A world where you can get as much Exp as you like for little effort

You go to Endertopia, kill Endermen, level up to the cap, swap servers, enchant, rinse and repeat. Because of this there is no market for Bottles 'O Enchanting which at one point reached 200,000 for a DC. There is also subsequently no market for enchanted tools or weapons within a certain group of EMC players as it's easy enough to do it yourself.

• Competition. Anyone, anywhere can make a shop that you have to compete against

Unlike in the real world where it's relatively complicated to set up a business with a physical outlet, in EMC anyone can do it and ultimately if they do a decent enough job then you have to compete against them. If you want prices to be manipulated higher to drain some Rupees or encourage spending then there needs to be a system in place to control the type of shop you can run.

Want to run a shop on EMC? It'll cost you 10,000r to buy the rights to have up to 10 shop signs. 30,000 to have up to 30 shop signs. 100,000r to have 100 shop signs, and so on. Because of the increase in Rupees per day from voting, etc, it's easy enough for someone to buy into the basic shop level which then drains Rupees and encourages the price of the goods to be set higher than normal due to the initial investment.

This will also encourage new players to sell to existing shops who then have to compete not just on their sale price, but their buy price and this will in turn push their sale price higher creating a balancing effect.

I'll post more as I read through the rest of the thread, however:

Summary:

1. Kill farms and infinite villagers to increase the price of those resources
2. Remove Endertopia to return value to enchanted items and enchanting services
3. Get rid of the Wastelands to remove easy access to vast sums of resources that resets thus increasing value through scarcity
4. Implement a form of Shop Contract that requires the Shopkeeper to buy Shop rights before they can have shop signs on their Res that would then force higher prices to gain return on investment
5. If it really comes to it, implement some form of minimum rate. We have the Empire Shop which sets the top line an item can ever sell for, so if you really wanted to fix it, code something that means 'x' item cannot be placed on a shop sign for sale at a price less than 'x'.

In regard to the actual idea of changing the numbers, it's all a falsehood anyway. It doesn't matter if someone is selling Iron ingots for 2r or 20r. The rate of income needs to stay the same and the prices need to increase in order to see any value or achievement from it.

If people think having 100r and buy an iron ingot for 1r is any different from having 100,000r and buying an iron ingot for 1,000r they're sorely mistaken.

The way the economy should work is:

1. Player A runs a shop both buying and selling
2. Player B runs a shop both buying and selling
3. Both players compete on sell and buy price
4. Player C sells to the player with the highest buy price
5. Players A & B have to compete upwards on the buy price to keep themselves in stock this pushes the sell price up respectively
6. Everyone makes money

What really happens is:

1. Player A runs a shop both buying and selling
2. Player B runs a shop both buying and selling
3. Player A has a high buy price and a sell price to cover it
4. Player B has a low buy price and a sell price to cover it
5. Player C sells to Player A but buys from Player B
6. Player A's chests are full. Player C wants to sell to him but can't because no-one buys from Player A as he's more expensive than Player B, so he sells to Player B instead, keeping him in stock by sheer lack of options
7. Everyone is now shopping at the lowest priced store even though it'd be better if everyone shopped at Player A's store

Which is how consumerism works. You look for the best deal possible at all times.

On a small side note, I'd love to see a list of the top 100 Rupee accounts. No Player names, but just something to let us see what's going on out there.

Thats saying he only has 1 Mil now...

We need to all have open minds about this and a lot of people seem to not have that. We need to let Aikar do his thing and we need to put our trust in Aikar, he has not failed us guys. All the players of EMC need to come together in support and not make a big fuss over this, I am guessing it has not gone into effect yet so we don't know what it will bring us. We need to keep that in mind.

Personally I think people should worry less about the rupees, and move out to the wild were rupees don't really matter since you cant spend them anyways.

Minecraft is about building and surviving the creepers, not rupees.

This is an economy server, that's sort of what it's about :/

Sound like something ICC would love

Sorry. A bad idea is a bad idea, no matter how open a mind I have.
I trust my friends, but if one suggests that I take the drug du jour because "trust me"… I tell him to go piss off.

Aikar's original suggestion was to devalue rupees by 10x or 90%. Someone takes 90% of your rupees away, won't you be upset?

This thread is finally turning in the right direction. The problem is not with prices or money supply. The prices are an outcome of the fact, EMC has infinite resources. Iron farms, gold farms, the Waste. Because resources are so easy to get, why bother mining, buying/selling. Why bother with EMC?

I actually think this IS a necessity for the SMP servers. There are people whoa re selling good quality horses for 200r. It's just people don't know how to put good prices on things. I think that we should agree on default prices for certain basic items, such as iron and cobble and other stuff.

Exactly.

The problems we have now are self-made. Too many resources, too freely available. There is nothing 'Survival' about EMC. You can vote and happily survive on the Rupees that gives you to fund any reasonable project.

I say ditch the Wastelands so it's harder to get resources. Or if you really must, have one, on Utopia, that anyone can access but it only resets once a month or something like that.

You will get no agreement unless it's enforced by the Empire at a code level if you're talking about people voluntarily setting items at a set price.