Economy Crisis?

I don't do the emc economy all that much any more, prices are too high and sometimes too low. I'd rather go play the game we all bought for 20$, Minecraft. There's a whole world of things, so go take it because nobody else is going to right now... There's the wastelands so get back to work or you're fired! I'm sorry I just wanted to say that real badly cx. Such a powerful phrase. But yeah, with emc it's basically an expansion of minecraft, so if you go broke, go do some vanilla things in the wastelands. Then come back and do whatever you want with your riches when you come back to town c:.

FTFY

lol Minecraft is only $22.65 (atm) in Europe.

I think there is a presence of what could be called a crisis. I remember my first 75 days on EMC, I made almost 700,000 rupees, simply by running a (very) small shop and selling any Marlix gear I came across. Now, the price of Marlix gear is way down in general, and I feel shop traffic has slowed down a good amount.

I'd agree with the fact that Marlix gear (and Momentus gear included) has definitely gone down in price, but I don't know if that's really enough to say there's a whole big crisis.

There's only certain items that have gone down so much, like the miniboss items and the mending enchantment books, for example. I used to pick up the miniboss items for 100k or so, now I can get most of them for 20k!

There's other items that have gone through the roof since older times... beacons and diamonds, for example! I probably picked up my beacons for under 10k or thereabouts, and could get diamonds for 30r or the like long ago.

It just depends on supply and demand I suppose. There's so many mending books because of villagers, and so many people go out for mini boss drops, so perhaps that's all contributing to why they're all cheaper.

i think the enchant market is garbage potions are stable (i have been stock piling ) and other things are going up in price and down in profit

The fact that I've been voting and not spending any of the rupees, could that be a factor into why the economy is slowing down? (Dare I say that I have over 1,000,000 rupees? [For those with more, it may not sound like much, but not many have that much on them.])

The economy isn't slowing down - and unless something drastic happens, it won't ever. The item-desirability has shifted and the value of the rupee has gone down. I think the most desirable decoration block right now is quartz, followed by obsidian.

I love decorative heads and have many. I also considered it as a business but didn't want to have to mess with changing my name. I guess you have to do that for it to stick.

Dude, start spending. I have this wonderful little shop you will just love.

I know this is oldish but I don't think there's a big problem with the economy. The only problem I've seen, which is only really a problem for people like me who hoard rupees to buy rarer things, is that there are certain players who are using tons of irl money to buy supporter vouchers/rupees and then being able to outbid everyone on every single auction where a rarer item pops up.

I heard someone say that the number of players is down, and new players in particular. Is that correct? It kinda seems to me on my smp there seems to be fewer people on than there used to be. I believe that would be particularly troublesome considering I would expect more activity during the summer with school out. Fewer players wouldn't do anything good for the economy either.

Yeah, the person I'm talking about has been at it a while. I know it's good for the server obviously to put real money into it, it's just kind of annoying to those of us that only use in game money.

that "year ago" most of you are talkign about is right after the price of everything went up, remember when diamonds went up to 120 per?

theres no problem with the economy just stabilization of the previous inflation.

as far as promos go, alot were introduced into the fold. more supply = reduction in cost.
mini-bosses are also more likely to spawn so theres more marlix and momentus items in circulation.

tl;dr we are coming off inflation, theres no problem here

Now I have dealt extensively with the economy on SMP2, most people from SMP2 would diffidently back up the claim that I've been very involved in the SMP2 economy for awhile now. Now that being said, do I think that the "EMC economy is crisis?" Yes and no. From what I've seen lately and what I've been saying on mumble for awhile is that there is an economic slowdown on the demand side. This is from falling "active" membership across the server. Now being on SMP2 I would say our economy is doing alright at the moment. However, I have seen massive shortfalls on the supply side of the equation on some SMP's and demand on others. As the empire as a whole, I feel like there is massive deficits in demand on certain commodities that used to be the cornerstone of major malls and or small player shops. Simply put, stock isn't selling. Now there is something to be said for the necessity to then drop the prices of some commodities however, the supply end of the equation wouldn't really allow it. I have noticed it has become harder for some to make money, even myself I have been plagued with such a deli-ma. From my 4+ years of experience on SMP2 and EMC I saw a similar slowdown prior to "The Great Collapse" of EMC about 2 years ago. From that past experience and my current knowledge of the situation on EMC I make the assessment that EMC is experience and economic slowdown on the demand side of the economy caused by declining attendance among older "active" players and a deficit in total new players combined with a low retention rate of new players.

Now In my opinion, Problems should never be identified without trying to propose some type of solution. In that case, from what I saw EMC do to increase attendance on EMC after "The Great Collapse," which was to hold an (incentivised) voting competition, and active payed advertising on certain sites for top spot banners. One of the problems with the current voting competition compared to the first one was that the first one gave a reward for the whole of EMC in the form of a promo if we held a spot in the top 5 for 1 week. The current voting competition only rewards the top voters which discourages those who know they won't win from voting. In that sense I would like to see staff look into possible server wide rewards to make players more excited about voting. In addition, there should be considerable thought on whether or not to buy top spot banners on Server lists again. This will all lead to a large spike in New players coming to EMC which would solve one of the problems in this equation.

Another problem is the low retention rates of new players, this is caused from my understanding of new players that have joined EMC recently, and discussions with others on mumble to be caused from the tutorial. Now this one is under current change so not much in the way of advice because staff are working on this atm. However, It is in my opinion that the Tutorial is overwhelming to a lot of new players and more information should be placed in /training. /training should be advertised more instead of /help because tbh, I heard about /training for the first time this Sunday. The tutorial should mostly just be based on the Rules of EMC. Everything else should be left to the player to discover. To much too soon overwhelms the player and when they arrive at their plot they feel kinda underwhelmed and become bored.

Another problem that I feel adversely affects player retention is quiet towns. I know that now we have many different forms of communication. All are absolutely useful and great to myself an old experience player that grew up with just town chat. However, I would be lying if I said Mumble and Skype haven't killed town chat. Even emphasises placed on local and group chats (when in town) have slowly killed town chat. It leaves a bad impression to new players if they join EMC and after a few people say "welcome" that chat goes silent for minutes and hours on end. One of the great things about EMC is it community and new players don't get to experience it because to them it dosn't exist. They don't get to be immersed in it like us older players were when we first joined and it's a shame. Now to be honest, I haven't quite figured out how to solve this one other then to say to players, use town chat, strike up an interesting conversation every now and then, try and include new players in on your discussions.

Finally, the declining number of active older members is in my opinion from of course real life necessity, which is of no fault of EMC, and monotony. Monotony after achieving certain goals on EMC sets in and even events can sometimes become redundant. One of the reasons why many players that have achieved their goals stick around is because of the community. EMC has been blessed with such a diverse and wonderful community but it is slowly overtime shrinking. Increasing the amount of new players joining and the retention rate will greatly improve the community and insure it grows which will lead to older players being more engaged with the community and the economy. The stronger the economy the more fun things older players can do that they hadn't done before such as open a restaurant or start a hotel. So in order to stop the bleeding from the loss of older players we must first attract new members into EMC and make sure to keep them on.

Hopefully I have thoroughly explained why I have made the assessment that EMC is experiencing an economic slowdown on the demand side of the economy caused by declining attendance among older "active" players and a deficit in total new players combined with a low retention rate of new players. In addition, I hope that the community finds my solutions a good talking point from which a discussion can be based focusing on how to solve these problems. I hope everyone thinks carefully about my assessment and I hope this helps other understand how I see things given my background, experiences and knowledge on this situation.

You will always have ups and downs, and I think that's the only thing you're seeing here. And guess what? I got pictures to proof some of this too

In May 2016 I posted this screenshot where SMP2 was only populated by a very selective crowd:
https://empireminecraft.com/threads/that-moment-when.54499/page-35#post-1176589

Looks very troublesome, right? Only 3 players on an entire server!

So let's go back a year. To be exact: February 2015:
https://empireminecraft.com/threads/random-screenshot-thread.21875/page-72#post-881151

There's really nothing new here. Sometimes there's not much activity in town, and this is especially true during the day (local time for me, that would be early in the morning EMC time). Same with vacations and their endings: then you'll see the player amount dropping a bit.

I have been thinking about this. I play quite a bit and see new players get through the tutorial and then seem to log off pretty quickly. No matter how many 'welcomes' they get. I agree with SSRC about getting dropped on your res and wondering what now. I suggest including in the items they start with some building supplies. Maybe a couple stacks of wood, some cobble, some stone and maybe a little glowstone. Enough items that they can at least do something for a little while to make an initial home. A base to make them feel comfortable enough that then they can start to figure out how the server works and where to go from there.