I've chosen both yes and no, because I think no, EMC is not in a small economy crisis, and at the same time yes, EMC economy has long term problems. The inflation (overall increase in prices) is not extreme but is quite high - high enough to cause problems to shop owners who constantly need to adjust almost all prices, and to all people who hold some amounts of rupees and hope that they will hold value. If you see drops in prices this is almost certainly because the production got easier or interest in the particular production increased or most probably both at the same time - having effect of high supply / overproduction. As soon as the interest of the farmers shifts to something else, the price will rise again as it happened already with iron and gold. It is very easy to make rupees, much easier than last year or in 2014. Big shops compete with prices and have quite low margin. If you farm wood efficiently you can make around 30k per hour. If you mine obsidian, you can approach 60k per hour. Compared to the current rupee price on the website (cca. 1.7M for $100), that would be $1.75 per hour for wood farming and $3.5 per hour for obsidian. This is still low (IMO), but I think it is approaching average wages of EMC players. I expect that the prices will continue to rise until it will become obviously unprofitable to buy rupees on the website. This is a natural process, natural healing of the EMC economy. There is no need for any intervention. Shops just need to follow the demand and supply and adjust prices accordingly. BTW, I'm thinking of a shop system that could overcome the problems caused by the inflation. The basic idea is that if each user of the shop keeps her / his buy / sell rupee balance near zero, then the absolute value of rupees doesn't matter. If you want to buy something from such shop, you need to sell something else to it first, and, vice versa, if you want to sell something, you need to buy something else from the shop first - so that in the sum, you leave the shop with (almost) the same rupee balance as before trading. Actually, you don't need rupees to use any good buy-and-sell shop. Exchange between shops would have to follow the same pattern - and so reselling and bulk business would be welcome in each such shop and would not be banned or frowned upon as it is the case now in many (most?) shops. What do you think of that idea?
It's not affecting me much, but I can definitely tell that it's much easier to make rupees today than it was a long time ago (around three years ago), especially since there are more items in the game. The reason enchanted books are cheaper now is because they are so easy to obtain. Today, I can see that some players have a lot of rupees. I remember when I had 400,000 rupees --no one had that many rupees on SMP8, but today, a lot of players have more than that... I have also noticed that a lot of prices are rising. New players means more rupees. The economy will always change due to supply and demand levels, though. EDIT: Participating in the promotional items market is always risky because players who are in that market need to make smart investments in order to make rupees by reselling the items.
I've once seen a shop that sells a single diamond for 1k. I know this is overpriced because the empire shop sells a single diamond for half that price. And the empire shop is the one supposed to be ripping us off. This would be evidence of an economic crisis.
No it wouldn't. Joke shops mean nothing. A price is only valid if people CONSISTENTLY pay that price and it's generally accepted by the populous that it's an acceptable price. (3 people buying it 'for the lols' doesn't validate the price) It's EXACTLY the opposite of that. Rupee purchases inflate the economy as it brings in an influx of rupees at mass scale. This causes players to be more willing to pay higher prices for items instead of "shopping around", causing inflation. The OP is complaining about the opposite. It's a problem of more supply than demand. Not enough players 'depend' on the economy vs earning items themselves to create the needed demand. The solution is for players to curb the supply. Only generate enough supply to keep prices stable, but many people do not understand the impact of their massive farms, and keep pumping out items even when supply is massively outweighing demand. Therefor, prices continue to plummet. suppliers need to learn to spread out more, cover more areas, switch on demand to what the current demand is, and reap higher prices due to the demand. When demand ends, stop working that supply, and switch to something else in demand. Diamonds are always high demand. While their price rising seems 'undesirable', it is healthy. That market is controllable, unlike others where supply destroys demand. The only way I cleanly see helping the supply and demand problem is to create an official EMC exchange, where players exchange the mass items for ... something else that is high demand. Maybe even something like an "Economy Score", that shop owners can 'use' to advertise their shop some way, and that EMC gives bonus score for 'donating' bulk items. so the mass suppliers, instead of flooding the economy, could pump them into score, giving them a competitive edge on score, without destroying the economies prices. I think something like this would be AWESOME for the economy if executed correctly, basically a town form of tokens. Just finding the time would be the tricky part.... A long time ago we held a poll about the prices in EMC, and my desire to inflate the economy intentionally. I think we did a semi good job, but the impact was too small. the oversupply is the main problem. I can boost new players rupees a bit more to encourage more spending, but I think this economy score option is the best bet for balancing supply and demand.
The fact that we are having a conversation about the economy means the economy is quite fine. The extreme - give everyone creative - or - disallow shops... we are somewhere in the middle and I find that quite ok. Disregarding the 'time factor' - /waste = cheapest ever.
Did you just come up with that idea off the top of your head or had you been thinking about it for awhile Aikar?
I would encourage new users to visit /waste and remember 'the game' is about gathering resources (for some). Perhaps offer rups for gathering X materials from a generated test area.
I just try to be bedrock for the economy and sell the primary ingredients for everything else in large quantities. So others can build large projects, or open their own store, or just see an example how prices on everyday stuff are like. I hope it helps everyone, and I hope to keep improving.
Your shop is great sgt_pepper4! Since it's high volume for both buy and sell I would say it's a great market price indicator for all of EMC. Could you do one of your magic economy queries? My experience has been the opposite. I don't think prices overall are plummeting. Some prices are rising steeply to adjust for changes in how easy/hard they are to obtain. I think -- wood is up, farm goods are still about the same, sand/sandstone up, ores up. I agree that the price rise is healthy, though I dislike that we give out created diamonds to "control" that market. This is one item that can't be auto-farmed and is popular enough to represent a baseline for the market. If today's diamonds were genuinely farmed I think they would be in a better place. 120 for a diamond is too low for the effort required. (That said, I don't think diamond prices affect the overall economy much, so meh.) But also...diamonds are cosmetic in a villager driven economy. The price of diamond gear should follow the price of the emerald.
Ok, um, let me see. The economy cannot really be in crisis. The monetary system (that is, the rupee), however, can be, under one of two conditions. There are not enough rupees (i.e. the rupee is too valuable). This makes it impractical for day-to-day trade, meaning people resort to trading items (barter) instead. Which is inefficient, and therefore bad. There are too many rupees, or the number of rupees is rising too rapidly (hyperinflation). Shopkeepers have to keep updating their prices to keep selling and to ensure they don't buy too much and run out of money. Again, this scenario leads to barter as the predominant form of trade. In this post, you appear to be discussing one particular market for an item, or set of items. Not the entire economy. Virtual game markets are wonderful in that, if a player finds a get-rich-quick strategy where they can easily get an item and sell it for a disproportionate amount of rupees, soon enough others will catch wind of it, and a supply glut will emerge, causing the market to re-adjust to reduce income for the original player. This is not a crisis. Well, for you, it might be, if you're that used to this way of making money. But I'm sure you'll find another way to make rupees. But really, this is a market adjustment. Your goods are more plentiful than they were, and not as valuable. Find something else to sell. On the topic of players having less rupees, you can't really know that for sure. You need statistics, yo.
Inflation has been really heavy. I miss the days where I could get a stack of diamonds for less than 5k. It has slowed down but inflation has gone way up. There is a problem, but it's not what you describe.
You say economic crisis and then the staff takes action and put up auctions to soak up the extra money with these auctions it seems. http://empireminecraft.com/threads/auction-dc-of-chinbrokeit-sticks.61953/ http://empireminecraft.com/threads/auction-5imons-b4d-m3n.61956/ http://empireminecraft.com/threads/auction-roast-duck.61954/ http://empireminecraft.com/threads/auction-dwights-pebbles.61955/ http://empireminecraft.com/threads/auction-aikars-paper-money.61950/
The inflation is not as high as it used to be, but still a bit too high. At the same time some items are quite underpriced. Inflation will heal the economy. The best we can do is no interventions. No medicine needed - it will heal naturaly. I need to stress that - any intervetion would probably just destabilize the economy. The good thing about EMC economy is that it is part of the community, and not a part of the game. On EMC, the economy naturaly follows the needs of the community. Please let it stay this way. This makes it interesting, because it reflects the life of the community - in contrast to any "real" "economy server" where it is just the set-up game. I'm not sure where all these diamonds are coming from, but something's not right. Can it be just voting? Or is the demand for diamonds really so low?
