Rebalancing the Empire Economy [slow induce]

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by Aikar, Jan 22, 2014.

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Thoughts on stimulating the economy (Note: Decision made, see post)

Leave it alone (please provide evidence/reasoning) 63 vote(s) 25.2%
Gradual increase until 10x lift 37 vote(s) 14.8%
Gradual increase until 25x lift 22 vote(s) 8.8%
Gradual increase until things are healthy and stable 105 vote(s) 42.0%
Don't care either way. 23 vote(s) 9.2%
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  1. I believe davie has said as long as you react to stimuli (or whatever the equivalent is in minecraft) it's ok.
    E.x. Responding to a PM or jumping if asked to move, stuff like that.
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  2. If I were to have headphones on and listen for a PM bing whilst playing another game and having MC afk, as long as I reacted to the PM would I be fine? Could someone confirm that :O
    Equinox_Boss, bitemenow15 and 607 like this.
  3. I believe so.
    Also, have a small gap where you can see chat in case a staff TP's and does local.
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  4. This ^

    Number of items in the economy, in my opinion, is having a large impact on prices than other things. Supply v demand - there's still a generally high demand for items, but there's a gigantic supply now. Bring that supply down, and we'll see a massive pricing boom.
    Equinox_Boss and Haerhitman like this.
  5. I had another thought, increasing income hoping to cause players to buy more does not really affect supply, sure it will affect the supply of the person/shop they bought it from but the items are still there and can be easily resold (not talking about resellers looking for profit, just the average player buying goods to build). So supply would not really change. The biggest supply affecter is the new players that buy what they need and never play EMC again, causing their res to become derelict and reset, eventually. There needs to be a way to remove the supply from EMC. The Empire sell shop would be good as it does remove the supply from the players. As someone else stated, there's too much supply, especially with the wastelands being available and reset each update. maybe we should go back to just having the wilds that would decrease the available supply greatly? (and the wilds does need a reset, as aikar posted in another thread, most of it is still version 1.2)

    In summary, I think maybe it's best to raise income only slightly maybe 5x and allow the EMC shop to buy goods from players. This will reduce supply and increase demand at same time.
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  6. The Wastelands was added so that there was more resources. Removing them would be back to a horrible experience to new players. Its not fun to join a server, and then have to travel through the wild 2k blocks out just to find fresh resources, only to die because you are not well equipped yet.

    The balance I was more looking for was to say give time a value.

    You need X amount of blocks to finish a build, you can either decide to buy them, or mine them. But mining still has a cost to you. You could of been doing something else, like managing a shop, playing the market, etc, that makes even more money. You also have added risk. These things have an invisible cost to them. Goods you mined are not free.

    My goal was to find a better balance that you can make a decision on which path to obtaining your blocks was more efficient to you at the current time.

    Shop runs out of stock? then you mine. The blocks would always be available, but the mechanism varies of obtaining them.

    Making mining inconvenient is not the solution. It should not be frustrating to do the basic element of minecraft just as a means to keep the economy more balanced.

    I think with Empire Shop buying it, we can get closer to doing it. New players will know they have a guaranteed payer for their goods if they cant find a player to buy them, which will keep the supply lower.

    The people who do not care about rupees as much will gladly take the lower payment just to get some rupees and offload unneeded goods.

    but before we would do something like this - we would add code that starts to build statistical data on prices, and then figure out empire shop prices from there.

    Then we can even look into automating the empire shop so that it always has a -/+20% range on player prices (I envision the Empire Shop will only buy items in their max stack size).

    Even if the price is the same as players - it would not be that big of a deal. Sure some shops may sell out quick, but that was their intent - to sell goods. And once they raise the price of how much they pay for an item, they will then restock that item.

    Also since Shop would not buy single items, it would still give player shops the advantage there.
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  7. My primary objection to inflation is that it is punishing existing players, players who have saved rupees or actually paid real money$ to buy rupees. Inflation is also BORING.

    If I was the God-King of EMC... to solve the over-supply of iron. I would mandate the construction of a monument to me made entirely of iron. Players have 1 month to construct this monumental project to my satisfaction, or I will rain lightning (increase the likelihood of lightning) and baby zombies on them in the wild/waste.
  8. We will be flooded with rupees and 500k will be worth 50k.
    I don't think this is a good idea but after reading some of the posts I don't want to get into anything big.
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  9. How do you mean, "BORING"?
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  10. This thread has now become unreadable due to the sheer size of it, but I'm all for the Empire Shop buying items.

    It already sets the maximum price, no reason why it can't set the minimum price and yeah, it could be set to monitor the prices, etc,etc, but you know what? Just set a base price and let the economy adjust to it.

    Of course, it shouldn't be able to buy items that can be farmed or we'll just provide one massive loophole for people to become crazy rich just by AFK'ing at a farm then selling it to EMC.

    It's the easiest fix available.

    • EMC Shop buys Wood at 50r per stack
    • Shop owner needs to match or beat that or, quite simply, go out of business
    • Everyone wins
  11. Trouble is that almost any item can be farmed.
    I would limit the 'daily' amount gained by the shop. Reason being is that the empire shop has infinite resources.
    If there was no limit, I would game the system and be a millionaire overnight.

    Limiting the amount of rupees that can be made off of the shop does a couple things.
    1) Additional rupees enters the economy. Will not be 'free' rupees as work was put into gaining them. Limit can be set and adjusted easily if set up for a 'max cap'.
    2) Halts or way slows farm selling to make huge amounts of rupees.
    3) Gives shops the ability to purchase for LESS than what empire shops would buy for. (yes, you read that correctly)
    4) For farms, if they sell just under the empire shop 'buy' shops sell more and have more rupees, and other players will make a profit selling to the empire.

    Of course this is playing with fire, as the huge shop owners will farm tons of materials, sell loads of inventory, make huge profits from nothing, and the new players will gain minimal rupees purchasing items to resell to the empire.

    This scenario, creates a totally artificial (and infinite) demand (well as infinite as limited by the number of players in this behavior) , however this is still much better than re-valuating the rupees for the simple fact that players have to put in their TIME to get these rupees.

    Of course, should only be implemented when there is a good AFK policy in place.
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  12. The idea of the shop buying items is genius.
    To be honest, the whole thread is frying my head a bit and confusing me, I think I'm more suited to real life economics than Minecraft economics.
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  13. But I thought that's what the periodic reset area was for? Maybe extend that a little more to say 500 or 1k blocks? For those that do not know, it's currently 250 blocks. But in my almost 2 years here, I don't remember the last time it was reset.

    I understand. But remember, 90% (guessing, but I know it's a majority) of the players would rather sit in town trying to buy something, or jump from server to server to do the same, than spend hours or days out in the wastelands, especially if they are looking for a large quantity.

    Agree 100% with that.

    This is assuming that they will raise the price. For example, everyone knows the iron shop on smp4, at one point it was selling 1 ingot for 2r (sold by the block) but was usually out of stock. This would imply that demand was higher than supply, but he had lowered the price to 1.5r/ingot and it was still usually out of stock. (Recently the shop has decided not to sell anymore and is only buying ore and ingots. Probably due to expected changes in 1.8)

    For big shop owners, it's usually all about the R, not about how much time they took to get the goods to sell. They try to get as many customers as possible whether or not they can keep up with demand. Most offer a way to buy goods from other players to help keep up with the demand, whether through sell signs or hiring suppliers who are paid by the amount they bring to the shop.
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  14. Frontier is 1.2 world gen though. Wastelands was created so players were always able to access CURRENT minecraft materials, especially with 1.7/1.8 new terrain.

    Also, the PRA implementation is very bad... its a manual process for us. Wastelands is a much nicer system.

    Thats sort of what I was looking at. Many would, but don't have the funds. The goal was to give them more funds, so their can be a balance.

    Have funds and dont want to mine? Buy.
    Have funds and dont want to mine, but no stock? Mine
    Rather Mine? Mine

    That would balance the economy around supply and demand a lot more. those who prefer working, work, those who dont, don't. Those who find ways to make money in other means feel as if they can build anything without even going to the wild.
    Equinox_Boss, Pab10S and highlancer54 like this.
  15. If we devalue rupees, my best guess of what will happen is that players will stop using rupees. They will hoard diamonds and other things that do not lose value. The economy will then be really broken and EMC will become unplayable and boring. Instead of MegaMalls, we will have swap meets where players barter. I don't see how this adds to anyone's enjoyment of EMC.
    M4nic_M1ner and highlancer54 like this.
  16. I was around for the wastelands to be reset once. This happened shortly after 1.7 came out with the new blocks. I would hate for wastelands to be gone, for the simple fact that for new (and younger) players, seems vastly superior to tell them to mine there, rather than have them attempt to sort out the waste wild (thanks pug) which is for 'builds not mining'. Wastelands can be wrecked without much consequence, as its meant for resource collecting (wish the players would be more cautious around spawn points though as just outside of the spawn points, some are really torn up and dangerous).

    Keep in mind too, that for the economics, Aikar I am sure is privy to much more data and statistics than we could imagine. The thought process though is what is critical for overall rupee control, sinks and drains. Just because we bring up differing points, does not mean that one is correct or incorrect. It is about making the best decisions based upon the most logical conclusions, and desired end results.
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  17. But why would you mine when you don't want to mine?
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  18. because its your only option.
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  19. Why play on a survival server, if you rather play creative or PVP?
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  20. I don't know, it just sounded weird:p
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