[Feature Discussion] Empire Shop Update v2

Like an option to split or not split an order so you don't have to go to more than one place to pick it up. One "Like" for you, good sir.

As learning into more of buisness things, I am ALOT more confeident in how this will work, and why it will. Though, I still have to say, there is always the people who are gonna undercut. This isnt a major problem, but I can see it become really annoying when when a noob starts selling 20r diamonds, when he has two stacks. and when people ask for diamonds, there all like, sell them at 20r. That guy did. Also, on a different note, hate how most mall owners buy all the stock from small shops, yet the ban you for "reselling", which is the main way the profit. And dont deny it, this is the way of many a major mall owner.

Hi,

I'll try to sum up my point of view first and then address some details.
If any of the thread readers are interested in more details - please ask.

* If you want to prevent a problem, get rid of its source. Stop printing money excessively.

It is possible to keep economy in check with artificial measures, but then you are hurting development and gameplay (and people in the end).

* Keeping prices low artificially will not even out the wealth and help circulation of money.
It will have opposite effect - it will make rich get richer, and the poor stay poor.
It will increase the difference and latent problems. A spiral of problems is very likely to begin.

* Prices shall and can be safely governed by supply and demand.
No problems are to be expected that can be solved anyway.
In other words, the problems that still remain are natural and are not solvable
by changing or artificially influencing the economy system.

* EMC can have an excellent straightforward, stable, simple and natural economy system,
that encourages development, circulation of money, availability of goods and fair and active gameplay.
One that also encourages industriousness and has very positive effect on children playing.
I'll try to give the outline and rules in few sentences everyone can understand
(I'm thinking about the younger among us).

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Same here
When developing the new system or the changes, you need to think it through,
think even further and write it down. It is not enough to think (and say) "I know."
You are a genius, but that is not enough. (Ask me ...)
I invite you to post and discuss the thoughts, scenarios, hypothesis and details.
You need to write them down anyway.

Unfortunately it is really the opposite and it is source of a great range of problems.
Not only that many states (including US) print money like mad, the banks are using
(legal!) hacks and cheats to effectively multiply the money and create virtual money!
Like cheating in MC, duplicating sand or diamonds or whatever. (Ask me or the Web for details if you're interested.)
This is the cause of the global economic crisis of 2008-present. But, we don't want to go into politics, far from that.
So in the real world, there is massive cheating. Do we need that in the game, in EMC?

No. You need to stop printing the money (or reduce it to a minimum where it does not hurt).
And you can - in EMC.

If you keep printing the money and at the same time try to keep prices low artificially,
the catastrophe is imminent.

I'll try to add examples to make this more understandable for the younger.

We have two main type of resources in EMC
1) the "natural" goods than can be collected and
2) the time of the players collecting it.

While 1) is practically unlimited, the 2) is very limited.

The price of a resource is naturally established according to
A) usability - and therefore demand for it and
B) time and resources needed to get it - and therefore supply of it.

So if there is demand for a resource, the price will reflect the time needed to collect it.

So, it is hard to get glowstone and and glowstone is very usable - the price will be high.
The dirt is everywhere, it is easy to get, so if there is demand and there are players willing to get it, the price will reflect the time needed to collect it, if not - it will be offered for free.

Etc.

Generally, if there is demand and there are suppliers, the price will reflect the needed time and skill.

If you keep printing the money excessively, and there is limited availability of goods,
the prices must rise. When they reach the /shop level (or the more subtle level
artificially held by other means like taxes), the economy dies.
Supporters will buy from /shop, and / or the other won't sell mined stuff, because they won't be
able to get fair price for the effort of collecting it, it won't pay off.
If things go well, it is likely that the two classes will separate and that they won't trade much
between each other. If not, the gameplay dies.

And it would not be bad, but very good!

A) It would immediately make rich players less rich, because they money isn't worth that much any more.

B) It would make poor richer, because they can dig diamonds and sell them for a good price.

C) It would reduce the unfair advantage of the supporters, bought with the (parents) real money.

Isn't that an excellent development? Can you see how it is naturally regulated?

By giving high amount of game money (that is worth a lot) to supporters, you create two classes of players:
1) The ones that have to use their wit, to learn and develop in the game to succeed and
2) the others that can get stuff without effort.

Well if you ask me, the option 2) is buying the in-game stuff for (parents) real money.
Simply, this is cheating.
"If my parents are rich, I'll be rich in the game. No need for effort, persistence and wit.
Just wait a week or two, doing nothing but annoying other players and you'll have 5k to 18k rupees."
In the last few weeks I've seen conversations like "I might get diamond" several times.

What do kids learn from that, how does it effect their development?

I'll continue in the next post.

Have fun!
MM

PS: (check Wikipedia articles in other languages you understand too! They differ!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy
etc.

So, nine pages eh? Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to read all that right now. Ha! Especially considering the post above me is almost a page in itself.

I just wanted to say that based on Aikar's original post I really like this idea. I think it is a great improvement to the current shop system without getting rid of it altogether. Good work

M4nic_M1ner is making a lot of sense.

Aikar, however, just seems determined to change things because they can; because it's "new" - regardless of the fact that many very experienced players are convinced it will spoil a large part of the game.

EMC can have an excellent straightforward, stable, simple and natural economy system,
that encourages development, circulation of money, availability of goods and fair and active gameplay.
One that also encourages industriousness and has very positive effect on children playing.
I'll try to give the outline and rules in few sentences as simple as I can
(I'm thinking about the younger among us).

1) Players start with little money or no money and some tools. It is survival mode.
There is no option to buy rupees for real money from empireminecraft.com, no cheating, fair play.
All players are equal in the terms of gameplay.

2) Value of rupees is loosely bound to coal, because coal is most useful.
This happens through the /shop, which buys coal in the exchange market fashion.
(See the ground floor in the excellent Leowaste shop, 3456@smp2 for example).

3) The amount that shop buys at a distinct price is limited by a formula depending on number
of active players, giving approximately like 1 ,000,000 rupees per player. In this way, the rupees
are there just to simplify the trade and help growth and development, so people do not have to exchange
goods directly. No artificial manipulations, no financial crisis.

4) The shop is empty at the start, so players first have to deposit coal to create money.
The shop does not create coal out of nothing, all has to be collected and deposited.

5) For the start of the new system, coal price is fixed to the current average price for a
distinct period. The /shop has just one stand (shop) for coal.
This allows players to convert money to coal or coal to money as they wish.
After that, more stands become available, so coal price is not fixed any more.

Young players learn about market and economy in a healthy, natural system
that encourages industriousness and fair play.
I'd advise every parent to get MC for the kids and become supporter of EMC.
I'd support myself as well. (A lot of parents ask me about that...)

That's all. Please review and comment.

Have fun,
MM

PS: For RL aspects, check "Nixon Shock" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock)
In short, in 1971, president Nixon has canceled direct convertibility of the US$ to gold to try to address problems that have risen due to Vietnam War. Since then, the Federal Reserve is not obliged to tie the dollar to anything. It can print as much or as little money as it deems appropriate. Furthermore - as I've written in the previous posting - the banks are legally multiplying money and creating virtual money - far faster than the FR is able to print it, creating a spiral of inflation and other problems and World economical crisis like 2008-present (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis, and related articles).

You mean a handful of people, who haven't used it yet, are making a huge deal out of a new feature that hasn't even been around yet to create these magical issues that are being thought up. We have just as many 'experienced' and non-experienced players who can't wait for the update. Please don't bash Aikar because you're afraid that the change might not suit you 100%. He's doing nothing but working hard WITH the community to make this feature what they want by giving up a HUGEEEEE part of his original idea, which as you can imagine was hard for him (or anyone) to do.

All I can say to everyone, is just hold your horses, and let's try it out first when it's ready. If it causes all these magical problems that are being invented, of course we can change/remove it.

I'm sure most won't admit it, but I see this all the time and to me it's SO silly when running a shop. I don't get it. Never will, haha.

I will admit I've done it. It was mostly when I had just started and I didn't feel like I had a big enough safety net to help me if the person continued to sell the way they did. I unbanned most of the people, but then closed completely a few weeks after the diamond dupe thing. I thought it was over.. alas there were a lot more diamonds still in the market than I had expected. 170k rupee loss in 2 hours.. and my time as a shop owner was done. That's fine though. I now have 9 stacks (approx) of diamond blocks plus many more materials, so I can't complain.

PT and I have said it many times, we will never ban any one for buy or selling to our shop, But most of the time we hire suppliers to get stock for us,

Please distinguish two different issues.

A) "The Shop Update v2"
To be able to search for price and quantity in game is a good thing, I think almost all agree to that.
Quickbuy is probably ok as well. No big deal.
I support the idea!

B) The issue about money "printing" (creating rupees out of nothing in order to feed supporters), about taxes and fees to drain that rupees away from all players, then keeping the prices low in order for supporters feed to be worth anything and reducing taxes for supporters to give them even more unfair advantage.
This is a Bad Thing (TM), this is cheating, this destroys community.
This is a major problem that needs to be addressed properly.
I'm strongly against.
(And I'm positive that it will be regulated in the way how Nature regulates things in the end -
if people are not able too do it in a more pleasant way in advance.)

So true
My shop 12162@smp6 is open to every buyer from the first day on.

Big shops, please come and buy, buy, buy!

Additional idea for the Coal-Rupees-System.

There is no need for the exchange in the /shop.

Each player can open the "coal exchange" and put coal in (to get rupees)
or take it out (to get coal).

It shows the current best price and available quantity (to buy or sell) and
automatically choses the best price when exchanging.
So no need to go to /shop...

To better understand the whole idea, think as if there were no rupees at all
and we would all agree to pay with coal.
(Like early economies did with gold. For EMC I think coal is better because
it is more useful than gold, but gold might serve the purpose as well...)

Have fun!
MM

I think this is great as well. However, the "big shops" are giving the most greif about this option as it will give more exposure to the people who aren't as popular. As someone who would run a big shop myself if I had time to play, I would probably see the negative of this as well, however I would welcome it as it does have more good than bad.

I do agree (see USA) that money printing can be a bad thing without enough money sinks to take away from it. We are having discussions right now about introducing more features down the line that will be very costly but attractive enough to purchase. We don't have enough rupee drains in place now, but it's something that can easily be fixed over time. In the real world, printing money is a bad thing. In the game world, it CAN be bad, but is more required than it is in the real world if not dealt with properly. I can promise you it's in our sights and we know it's something we need to deal with, and will.

Yeah. The Empire shop is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy too EXPENCIVE!!!

The Real Bad Thing (TM) is when people try to go against the nature and natural laws, some will say against God, it is the same ... failure is inevitable.

The problem is, it would extremely difficult format players of we didn't have a daily bonus. Some supporters would likely drop, which would hurt them. So, you a proposing a problem that all virtual money games have, almost, and can't be fixed. And it is t as bad as you think. If we have enough sinks, then that would even it out. I am afraid though, no matter what the staff does, eventually, it will become inflated. Not anywhere near now, like in a year maybe. Also, you could add that feature to fill your res with water, or clear it of dirt. A lot of people would do that.

No worries. We will keep a close eye on it, now and a year from now to make sure everything is running as smooth as we can control.

If I understand correctly, there is a concern, that there wouldn't be enough
supporters without rupee feed, without "legal cheating."
That may be in the short run, but I don't think that it holds in the long run.

A quality, fair play game server will attract quality players and supporters.
Build it, and they will come ...

Aren't there enough quality players on EMC?
What about a server for them?
I'd support and invite others, recommend the server to parents.
No rupee-feed needed - no rupee-feed wanted.

I assume the ones who pay are parents for most of the current supporters.
I'd suggest advertising to them, promoting fair play and education (and
perhaps even upbringing) in the game. They have a strong interest here.

So ... the ill-bred, spoiled, lazy kid does not want to play without cheating?
How about a special super-duper ultra-cool server with loads of free daily TNT and stuff just for them?