I don't really think there's a crisis as such. Just change. There's always change, and some items will always be more in demand than others, and some items will have a lot more supply than other ones too. This will change from time to time... I can't personally say that there's a "crisis", I am not seeing much myself, but I guess that doesn't mean other people aren't having problems. I'll watch the thread and see what other people have to say about it, though.
My diagnosis: winter. It's cheaper to travel and no one(okay... most of us, especially me) wants to stay where it is cold. Business always booms around the holidays so more work time. Kids are back in school and college. Basically... there is a smaller pool of players to contribute as much time to the game. This restricts demand and as we all know, there is no shortage of supply on EMC in almost any market save for the old promos/special items. even obsidian seems to be well in abundance lately. The gold farm rush(come on, you break our ender farms and think this wouldn't happen?)is dying off but people are still mining a ton of obsidian. Expect a slump in obsidian prices if it hasn't happened already(perhaps not, haven't been here a whole lot lately in game) Another side effect of people going on vacation is that our unofficial retention officers (as I self appointed myself and several others) aren't here to show the new players the server or a good time on the server. From other posts it seems that staff activity is even down, which again I haven't been here and can only speculate. Christmas break is over, superbowl just happened(perhaps expect more activity now? who watches nascar anyways, ewww) and valentines day is coming up. Catholics have their lent rituals... which I'm still in the dark about but I would guess that could even effect player turn out. The economy is based on supply and demand and demand is based almost exclusively on activity. Less activity, less demand, less economic shifting. Tl;dr less people, wait a couple weeks I guess?
As for the promo market, I suspect it's that promos are being continually rereleased on many occasions, causing people that have the old (and now extremely exclusive) versions to hoard them endlessly. Ever noticed how many collectors there are now versus a year ago? And the thing is, collectors now are not trading their collection. This results in the exclusive promos remaining stagnant in their places since nobody wants to trade them, and the new one that get rereleased are dime-a-dozen and they're nearly everywhere since people know they can expect a new release of them every year. Why has 100k gear shot up from 10k/piece to 60k/piece in a mere 4 months? It took over a year for 60k gear to do that! Certain markets are being overinflated, others remaining stagnant (both in supply and demand), and others are experiencing affection from people selling enchantment books for only a few hundred rupees each for a maxed book. This manifests as some promos having the same price for literally years since there's basically a constantly influx of them, some promos shooting up in price by a stupid amount of money in very little time (promos that get released that aren't expected to release again start out at literally 50k because people know they'll be one that goes up), enchantment books crashing, the value of the rupee being constantly fluctuating. I also agree with @ToddV that it's mostly supporter vouchers that are jacking with the value of the rupee since they trade rupees in and out of the 'local' economy and bring in a whole new metric and a sub-currency (real money).
I don't think theres anything wrong with the economy to be quite honest. I consider myself a fairly old player on the empire. Trust me I've seen a lot. At least once a year everything will just drop and I mean DROP. Diamonds for 40r Beacons for 10,000r it's mainly all because of us. We're all competing with eacher for the lowest anf fairest prices. However some people are trying to drive the prices back up. Thus the pricing on 50% of all items sold on EMC will constantly fluctuate. If we really want this to stop we could but with all these farms and hard working players it's hard to drive the prices to a level everyone can enjoy. As for promos well we all know that as time goes on they increase in value [unless they are re released] you saw with these 100k promos. As soon as they came out people were buying DC's upon DC's of them as they know ehat happened to the 60K promos. At the end of the day it's all down to us
The dropping prices are a concern of a dwindling economy? Lol non-sense! If you look at the greater scheme of things...almost ALL items have risen in price (gradually or otherwise) since I started, over 3 years ago. I remember diamonds for 20-25r a pop etc. However, you will notice certain items fluctuating in price. This depends not only on supply/demand, but you must consider what new items Mojang is putting out in it's updates. For example, roses (aka poppies) used to produce 2 red inks. With an update, they went down to 1 ink each. This will negatively affect the price/value. Same thing goes with many enchant books that now you can easily get thru village trading. Overall, you should consider yourself lucky that general pricing has went down a bit, because it will never stay that way. With as much easy money being produced thru voting etc, and all the new players bringing new money into the economy, that only drives inflation up along with prices. Lastly, don't hold the big shop owners accountable for this, nor demand their stores to temporarily close. Remember, if it wasn't for stocked stores, your building project would take longer; new players would have a hard time cashing in on item farming without creating their own stores; and item values would vary greatly and rise/fall much faster. Don't stress, you don't have to be a millionaire to fully enjoy EMC! Although it is nice...
I think these are all good comments but I recognize another factor and that is the sophistication of the players. The players on this server are getting smarter. How many farms have each of you made in the last year? I've made dozens. How many more farms do you think there are on this server, both public and private, than there were a year ago? A lot? Each new farm decreases demand and/or increases supply. And this affects anything when the production of the commodity can be automated or an input necessary for the production of the commodity can be automated. Think of how many things this includes. Someone said diamonds have gone up in price. Diamonds can't be farmed (short of an illegal mod). Someone said obby has gone up in price. How do you farm obby? I believe this increase in farms and automation has more than offset any increase in player base. Someone else mentioned the seasonality affect related to commodity prices. I believe that is also true for short term fluctuations. More players playing more when school is out in the summer.
Personally I see earning rupees as something neat to do. but there is nothing (short of maybe beacons) I am not farming myself after a full month and a few days in emc. What would change that would be a means to land claim with rupees, but since that will end up being tokens...no biggie. I do think the prices are too low on average though, there is a thread I've seen where a price book was updated at some point and it has a lot of the prices lower. The reason I think its low is because I think prices should reflect effort. Thats just my opinion though, and keeping in mind effort is subjective. (i.e. the 1% that have auto farms and res's/alts coming out their tails... see it different than the person walking their crops or mining iron). The persons with the giant iron farm doesn't seem to think the iron they produce cost much effort ( albeit they don't equate the time and materials to make such a farm ). There is of course many public farms as well once you get to know where they are, assuming they are working at the time. Its fine though, I have a small set of shops with ducky and I can tell you the prices are about 4 times any one elses. (minimum). I do that for 2 reasons...#1 those shops are actually just a decorative storage system for us....however at the same time I'm willing to make my surplus available...but not at a price that would see it disappear because I use those materials too #2 I know that the effort and time it would take for me to purposely stock those is worth more to me than what the big stores efforts seem to be ( or at least what they value their time and materials at ). I'm okay with this as I don't play to make rupees, or collect a bunch of things I'll never use in an item frame. Last night I killed my first momentus and marlix, got a marlix bow and the first thing I did was equip it and start using it. Thats just how I play though So, while prices are lower than I'd set, I don't think this means there is a crisis, having rupees or not hasn't prevented me from playing the game...having some rupees however has accelerated some builds...but thats it. Personally, I'm here for me and the longer term...I dont need to be able to build it all in a day, and enjoying the journey is worth more than having everything fast. Cheers
I must say I agree with sirtah. I do feel the economy is not doing so great here. Similar to the U.s., but instead of oil I feel we have too much supply of items and not enough people buying them. One thing I think the economy could really work on is out token exchange rate though. Only 15-20k for a avalauncher that cost 10,000 tokens just doesn't seem right considering the work it takes to make ruppes versus the work it takes to make tokens. I'm constantly spending ruppes between a 24 res project and a huge factory producing base and every time I try to sell my items, every megamall I try is full (for the most part)
The economy is far from weak. A strong economy is one where money is constantly changing hands, price has nothing to do with it. In fact, the constantly changing prices is a good thing. It shows that the economy is thriving, constantly adapting to new scenarios. Rupees aren't difficult to make, it just takes a little bit of effort.
You can't since you need lava to produce and its consumed in the process ( having helped fill a 60x60 lake to make a DC of obby..... ) Its a manual process.
Increase in the spawn rate of Marlix that Aikar initiated about 4 months ago has caused the supply to increase significantly. Same thing has happened to Momentus toothpick and helmet.
My opinion is that before voting streaks and their perks were a thing, I had something to spend money on. These days, now that I have voting gear, now that I have more diamonds than I know what do with, the only time I have a need to buy something is if I have a sudden urge to build something extravagant and I don't want to mine/make whatever it is I need to build it. Also, because of how the economy is now I have no need to run a shop of my own. I found that when I was running a shop I also spent more money because I would buy things to then sell in my shop. None of this is necessarily a bad thing though. To me it seems that EMC is becoming what it really wants to be which is a "play your own way" server. I have fun on this server and I play minecraft the way I want to play minecraft. If I *want* to own a shop and participate heavily in the economy, I can. If I just want to participate in events, then I can. If I want to mine from time to time and every once in awhile build something big in the wild, I can.
Technically true, but it's not as manual as other activities. You can fully automate the mixing of the lava with water. Once you've filled the contraption, the only manual part is holding down left click. Even that, as long as you're at your desk, could be automated by setting a paper weight on your mouse button.
