Your opinions on inflation in the Empire?

I assure you that both of these factors have a direct impact on inflation. It even has a name, it is called "demand-pull inflation" Here is some help if you want to know more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes and http://www.frbsf.org/education/publications/doctor-econ/2002/october/inflation-factors-rise and finally http://useconomy.about.com/od/inflationfaq/f/demand-pull-inflation.htm

I've noticed that before - the problem is in the definition / notion / meaning of "inflation":

A) Inflation is increase in money supply relative to the growth of the economy. Here it means only the relative increase in money supply, not the effects of this increase. Therefore the name "inflation" - the volume of the currency is getting bigger.

B) Inflation is increase in prices, it is the "inflation" that people see and feel. Here it means the effect and not the cause, therefore "inflation causes".

EDIT: I've checked again and the mostly used meaning is B) - I need to adjust my postings...

But, if you say "inflation" for the effects, for meaning B) - what do you call the specific cause, meaning A) ?

The leading cause in the case of EMC is "A" the money supply problem. I think we are both on the same page there. A never-ending money supply, and also the fact that I can buy almost a quarter-mil of game money with a simple $20 will inevitably destroy the economy (as we know it) eventually.

However, increasing prices because of supply and demand is also inflation in terms of definition. An increase in cost because of demand can be healthy, because it makes an item more profitable to supply usually leading to an increase in production. In our case I don't feel like that production is picking up fast enough.

Edit for clarity: Both of these explanations are having a direct impact on the game economy in terms of inflation.

I've found something of interest regarding the /shop prices and the attempt to stop inflation (increase in prices) through government force: Remembering Nixon’s Wage and Price Controls and Price controls

EDIT: and I'd like to repeat this in bold letters:

^^^that^^^

The inflation in the economy is caused by a lot of factors... I'll just go with two for now. Amount of people playing, and supply of goods vs demand. If you look at it by the numbers last month you had almost 20,000 players that's a lot of people, each person receives rupees and can spend them right away. By bringing in this much money you make a massive pool of money to spent in the economy. New players may not want to go out and gather/farm so they turn to a shop and spend all there rupees, creating the supply and demand vacuum. Older players, experienced players and such can see these patterns ( I use them to my advantage) and act upon them. I give this example of I have made a DC of each armor type and a DC of picks all diamond material, now I could flood the market with them all and in a smaller community or IRL it would cause prices to go down because now there is a larger supply. But on EMC there is such a demand for these types of items that I could walk away with a huge payday and not even ding the economy.
As for inflation on goods why diamonds have gone up while iron goes down... It's simply supply and demand. Diamonds are a sought after item thus the more people want it the more shops can charge them for it. Since the demand is there you then get players who make a huge business out of bringing the supply to those that want it ( ex. supply companies, mining groups, farmers). The cycle will continue until the supply exceeds the demand or until the supply is exhausted both of which can't/won't happen on Minecraft/EMC.

Lots of information and there is so much more that can go into this. I gave two easy examples and hopefully they make sense. The economy on EMC will continue inflating while the servers grow and expand in size.

In my opinion to combat the inflation stop giving so many rupees out for sign in bonus ( sounds bad cause i'm a supporter), less for voting, and less for rupees for real money paid. That will cause people to have to go out and find/ gather more materials for themselves. Will it make people upset yes, but it will be just like vanilla minecraft!

I fully agree. In fact it's more profitable to buy currency than it is to buy diamond supporter status. Especially during the time that you could get supporter vouchers for buying currency. . . the amount of currency plus the amount you could get for selling the vouchers was ridiculous.

Thinking a bit further about this issues ...

The poll question in this thread is potentially misleading
The inflation (as increase in prices) is a natural consequence, a reaction of the market, just a symptom. It can not be "bad" nor "good". High inflation just shows that something that's probably not desirable is happening.
The question should be about the cause, not about the consequence.

The excessive rupees supply that causes this high inflation is bad. The poll question should be if the excessive rupee supply is ruining the economy and should be stopped. I think the answer is obvious.

The increase in prices for itself also has good sides
The meaning of the supporter status has shifted, because the supporter income has significantly lost its value. This could be a back door to marginalizing or even removing supporter's free rupees and moving to a supportership that would not damage the economy and would not be of "pay to win" / "pay to go creative" kind.

After that, removing of selling of rupees on the website can be done without big problems.

For the needed money supply, the /shop can start buying items at carefully chosen prices (always under the market level, never competing with player shops) along with well controlled emission of rupees if needed to prevent deflation - for example starter bonus, active members bonus and/or similar. This would be a very good development for EMC - towards a high quality server and fair play.

Wow, this thread got a lot further than I thought it would any other opinions about how inflation is improving or ruining our economy?

I'm going to give my opinion on this.
Being a supporter hasn't really lost it's value so much as the value has shifted. The value of being a supporter is that you gain more residences and access to a res on Utopia, supporters aren't going to ever lose their "free" rupees because that would then be less incentive to be a supporter. Also at no point (that I can see/think of) will the selling of rupees happen, only because that is an additional source for real money that goes towards Starlis LLC. The server isn't free and is truly kept going by those that pay to support and buy the additional items like res increases , vouchers, and etc...

Maybe there needs to be other ways to spend rupees in-game as inflation is only going to happen if the money is there for it, if you find away to get rid of rupees which is not item related boom rupees can be kept under control.
Just my thoughts i might be totally wrong.

You bring up a good point-Taking rupees straight off of the market somehow, rather than having them just go from player to player might be a good idea

Aikar needs to bring the cosmetic rank out, that will be a feature that does not affect the economy as it does not bring any additional rupees into the system. If it came out without the vouchers it would be even better but i doubt it will.

Also, once dragon tombs eventually comes out, the market will fluctuate a great amount due to the sudden increase in supply of Dragon eggs, and any other loot that the tombs provide. This could be a positive or negative effect, I do not know and cannot predict.

I for one have a pretty big vote streak so I completely agree that the bonuses need to be nerfed. I feel that there does not need to be all the diamonds/emeralds along with the rupee bonus itself (you could easily buy the diamonds/emeralds with the rupee bonus provided!). There is still a lot of incentive to vote without the gain of free diamonds as the tools/armour are amazing. I would still vote if I got even half of the rupee bonus that is given out now...

wow i thought id just get slated for the idea haha but i think it would work as a lot of rupees get brought into the game but player would only stay around for a few hours spend there rupees then are like 'cba with this' then leave.

I don't really care about inflation.
If prices rise, the player's earnings should rise.
If the inflation gets too bad, we'll switch to tokens.

Definitely, I for myself have a dragon egg and have paid a very large price for it. The price is only going up right now, in the last month I've seen the price bump from 800k to around 1.1-1.2 million rupees. That is the reason why I am selling now before DT comes out.

When I left the prices 150 days ago they were so much cheaper than today. So when I opened my shop with the prices I was familiar with, people started buying all my stuff like iron and reselling at 4005. The inflation is kinda annoying but I really never had a lot of rupees anyways. Besides the time when i could hand out 8k to anyone I felt like. when I was buying Quartz for my old Quartz palace, they were much more cheaper. With the 70k I have atm, that would be worth at least 110k 150 days ago. But I guess it's good

I agree with the reasoning behind many posts before this. This inflation is what happens when there is a steady generation of currency without a counter sink. To balance this, players must have a compelling reason to give currency back to the system.

This could be done by lowering prices in EMC shop. Each purchase from shop removes currency.

This could be done through additional use-based features. We have eggifying, vault, stable, locked chests. What about locking in the wastelands, vault in the wastelands, frontier/wasteland/town teleportation, consumable items (non-drop Dragon Tomb or Wither required item).

Another suggestion I've heard is to grant diamonds instead of rupees as a standard reward. More items and less currency.

There is the technique of introducing a secondary currency, and allowing one-way conversion. (Or two-way conversion with tax.) Sounds like EMC is pursuing one-way conversion to tokens...and this works because tokens are returned to the system on use.

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As a slightly related topic, I think the insane valuation of promos is contributing to this inflation spike. Due to holiday promos, new players have been arriving with a net worth >40k. Prices are rising to account for this new player buying power. Player who arrive after the promotions have ended will have a much rougher time.

They just raised /shop prices to account for inflation. /shop is meant as an "end of the road" or "I don't care how expensive it is" shop, it should never be a viable contender in the economy.

I like this, and to account for the issue of wastes resets, maybe add an automatic warning sign next to it?

This would make things way too easy, even if it was quite expensive. Too OP.

Again, too OP and makes the game easy. I would do this in a heartbeat in order to ferry my items back to town. But it takes any challenge out of the game.

This would put far too many diamonds into the system, and would just make the sign in/voting less worthwhile. As time goes on, diamonds would lose their value if they were so easy to come by.

Rupees and tokens are in no way related other than that they can be used to purchase items. Rupees are economy, tokens are adventuring. Tokens are also non-transferable between players so it is not a viable alternative currency.

Im going to throw this in here whether you agree with it or not. The day the Empire Economy was murdered was the day they introduced promos.

Before Promos, people we're actually going to mine and get items because that was the ONLY way to make money. There wasn't rare items to sit on and get more later as time progressed. Diamonds could be said as a time investor but it still required work to get and you needed tons of diamonds to make a good profit; Not just 1 rare. So now the Promo Market dominates the economy and people don't even bother to go out for vanilla items anymore because its not as feasible of income as they could get from a Promo or Rare item. I can spend about 2 weeks getting a DC of diamonds if I really tried and yet thats only worth about 340-350k for a month of hard work. Thats no where as good as going to collect a few promos and make 900k in just under a day. Who would want to go gather materials when the income isn't sufficient enough as the clandestine promos that dominate the industry? I knew it from the start that the older seasonal or special event items get, the less materials that would enter the market because nobody would feel that kind of money is even enough anymore to work for. Friday Night Miners/ Any mining event day is the last best chance we have at saving the economy in my eyes. Promos have killed us and we let them in the doors without looking twice.

Edit: A game that solved this crisis at the very beginning was Runescape. Seasonal event items dominated the market at the early stages and they simply made every seasonal item after that UNTRADEABLE. So people wouldn't wait around for every season to make money. They would HAVE to go out and utilize the environment and game mechanics to make money

I remember diamonds at 21 - 27r each, but then I have been around a long time