anyone gonna bring this ridiculous thing with empty reses not getting cleared of Tags such as +shop and +mall. This making it hard to actually find new shops. Also while talking about Tags. How about the "/v random" command get fixed. Tired of typing it and getting TPed 3 times back to back to the same res.
Ok, let me get this straight. I don't operate a shop but I do buy things at shops. But if I did and change it to a mall I will do better? It must be malls I go to because I buy a lot of stuff from other players. You said it's not about buying and selling things. Sounds a bit odd to me considering you are talking about economics but I will try to follow. And you also say So the problem is not something I can observe. It transcends the observable world. Because what I observe is someone auctioning 64 shulker shells for 97K, a DC of iron ingots for 9K, 45 gold horse armor for 6K, etc... And of course I observe me buying stuff. Ok. And then if I don't agree that the economy is unhealthy? Interesting. I think I'm probably both. I usually am. Enjoy the thread.
You gonna respond to this one bud? I'd certainly hope you weren't accusing me of ever doing that, since then you'd have to give proof. You wouldn't make a false claim would you? If it isn't an accusation, I would love to know what you're trying to say.
Then I think that shows that the economy on EMC isn't "dead", as some other people like to call it (as far as I can see you didn't, so that's good ). I'm not sure I agree. I think that my own experience is different, but that could be due to the way I play the game. I sometimes struggle with finding what I want to find, especially if I want to pay (what I think is) the right price for it. There maybe are a lot more shops than it seems there are, but I often just can't find them. I do think I agree with both of those things. There is one specific thing that does make it somewhat easier to get rupees, which is voting. Still, living off of voting generally isn't enough. I just though of another thing: the wastelands. They make it much easier for anyone to gather the items that aren't easily farmed, like quartz, sand, and special mob drops. They've been around for a while, but I still remember the times when they weren't and you basically had to dig a 5000 block nether tunnel to even get to see quartz. This sounds like you think many shops stopped functioning after the economy changed (which is quite a vague concept)? If so, I ask, have they really? I personally haven't seen this much. What I have seen, however, is a good amount of shops becoming inactive due to the owners not being online enough anymore. That is still certainly an issue, but I think that issue lies more within people staying on EMC in general. Generally true indeed. I just figured I'd point it out. - though I can say that there have been numerous times when that would in fact have helped me buy/sell more. I wonder, have iron ingots really ever been in high demand? Hmm, yeah, perhaps more than now indeed. Theory: there are now more public farms and they are advertised more, so more people have an own source of iron. Theory: due to the decline in active players, more people started AFKing for stuff like iron instead of actively playing. Agreed, more and more things become farmable. Fun fact: the packed ice prices don't seem to have dropped much yet, as far as I've seen. Using ice to craft packed ice is fun and all, but ice was much more expensive than 1/9th of packed ice before the update, so people will have to find innovative and efficient ways to farm ice in massive amounts before those prices start sinking. - In fact, I found packed ice to already be quite cheap before 1.15.2. Certainly! We just don't know how it will turn out yet. That, to me, sounds like a good (but expected) thing. Definitely, that's why I never buy the new items until the prices have become reasonable. & Ah, now (finally ) I see your point! I agree, for many (not all) farmables it is hard to enter the market. In such cases for large shops, it would, I think, be wise to either have a price slightly above market price, or to find a supplier who can supply you and then sell that supply. For newer players this is indeed hard. I do wonder though, has this ever been very different? I thought it was much the same in 2015, when you joined. As soon as automatic farms started being possible, they were created. I very clearly remember talking about whether a friend and I would pay someone to build us a gold farm, way back in 2012. We ended up not doing it because it was too much effort and some other reasons. The thing that made this more widespread, is the enormous increase in possible farms. Everything that is easily farmable, will end up being farmed. That is not an "issue" per say, and it's also not an "issue" specific to EMC, instead it has to do with Minecraft itself. They implemented these extra farming measures, and we players just do what we've always done! Building a farm and then getting bulk items for little effort? Sign me up! Now, if the players who create all these farms are a large part of the group that stays when the server becomes more quiet, then that indeed leads to more overstocking than before, due to simple supply and demands reasons. An update like 1.15.2 should bring people back, but should also cause a larger amount of new players, which means that the overstocking can decrease slightly. For new players it's amazing that they can buy cheap iron, gold, and beacons. For selling, indeed, they will generally have to resort to finding something different to sell. Promos are a good thing in that regard! Lots of rupees quickly! That is when the oldies start spending, when they see promos.
Let's be honest, so far he's contributed almost infinitely more to this thread than you have. If you're one of giving proof, then please prove the things you accuse people of in this post: Thanks. ---- It doesn't seem to be done much, but you can report the residence (I believe by reporting the owner?) to ask for the +shop (and similar) tags to be cleared. Regarding /v random, I recommend reporting that either in a different thread or in a PM.
Yeah just ignore the fact that this discussion was started by Tucker debating with me on the other thread, that's cool. Let's also ignore the fact that he is accusing me of getting people banned for disagreeing with me, whilst I'm accusing people of being dishonest in a debate. Very different things here Tom, don't you think? You want proof? I have specifically stated in previous posts, even before the one he decided to quote in the OP, that I do not believe any of these things - but sure he's not blatantly ignoring what I'm saying I'm just seeing things. The second paragraph that brings up the economic cycle - which I did not say anything about - has nothing to do with my point and is instead preaching about something no one has talked about. No one is saying an economy following the usual boom and bust cycle is a problem with how it's set up. This is pulled out of thin air. This, once again, has nothing to do with my post. I stated that the players (suppliers) are mismanaging their control over supply and as such are damaging the economy. Then he preaches about the free economy. He's making out, yet again, that I'm demanding change to the economy, which I have never done. Stating that many players on EMC have not managed their supply of goods into the economy in a good way isn't even an opinion. That is a fact. Players on EMC mass dump products onto the market - substantially lowering their value from where the market had determined them to be, provide free services to other players (such as public gold farms) which messes up supply chains drastically, and have engaged in price wars in the past forcing prices to all time lows (a practice which is very frowned upon in any stable economy). This is hostile behaviour in a market place and does not lead to a healthy economy. Trying to preach to me about how the free economy works has nothing to do with what I said. Once again, completely skates around my point. My point is that prices for mass-farmed goods cannot rise back up as all prices should do in a healthy economy. He then proceeds to give me an example of a good that cannot be mass-farmed, and instead must be gathered manually. His second point also agrees with what I've been trying to say, but I'm not quite sure he realises that. I have been saying - and you check my other posts - if prices for older items fall slowly overtime, as is natural, that is a good thing. This is not what I'm arguing against. When prices suddenly fall from where they have been for years, to values much lower than that because people suddenly introduce massive amounts of those items into the economy all at once (mismanaging their control over supply), there IS a problem. It is factually incorrect to try to say this isn't an issue. Here it is, the worst offense. He uses the word tweaking three times in this little snippet. His entire conclusion is based on the arguments he's made against me - he is implying that I am for tweaking the economy to fix it. He is preaching the free economy here, whilst blatantly lying about what I'm saying to make his argument look like it makes sense. If I was arguing for tweaking in the economy - this would make sense. I didn't. End of story. His entire post is littered with examples of him skating around my points and blatantly strawmanning my arguments. https://pastebin.com/pU11XgEC there is my original post. I do not want to take any further part in this "discussion", because it is clear to me that the cult-like mentality of several players who believe there are never any problems with anything on EMC cannot be changed. I cannot convince people who refuse to believe facts. I cannot convince people who refuse to look at more than just their perspective.
I don't know nor care about the other thread. But sure, I'll look at the other thread. -- None of Tuckers posts there seem to be hostile to you, while some of yours are hostile to him. He isn't accusing you of getting people banned for disagreeing with you, Runder, instead, he's making a (perhaps poorly worded and placed, and perhaps rude) joke. Considering you're accusing people of being dishonest in a debate, then yes, I do think these are very different things, Runder. Just because you think you're right doesn't mean you're right. Just because you think your points were clear doesn't mean that they were clear to other people. Like I said, I reread the post that was quoted by M4ster, and he doesn't seem to have skipped anything. He might have missed your points, sure, but that is to be expected in a discussion, especially between "opposing parties". Then just answer the questions: "no". The previous thread has passed, we are in this one now. Not everyone will remember what you said in page one of a previous thread, I certainly won't. I would be interested to see your answers here, so I, or someone else, can respond to them. So what? This is a new thought from the writer of the post to adress what he thinks. People are allowed to bring in new points in new posts. He isn't making out that you're demanding change to the economy, please reread the piece if you think that's true. I have no clue what you mean with: Anyways, I think M4ster somehow misinterpreted that part of your post, or accidentally went on a tangent while replying to it. I agree that it doesn't have to do much with what you quoted. I agree that that seems to go around your point - but your point of it being about mass-produced items wasn't clear, I think. A misunderstanding isn't weird, in that regard. I disagree that that is factually incorrect, but I agree that that [the first part of the quote] is often an issue. I think this conclusion is a general conclusion, not a conclusion based on your post. This is a new thread, titled "Healthy Economy", to which that conclusion seems fitting. Perhaps a line between the replies to your post and this conclusion would have been clearer. I read/skimmed (bit of both) through this. There isn't much for me to reply to that, apart from these things: Sure, many prices don't change much, but there also are many prices that do change (examples are diamonds, wood, stone). I get that you're angry that he's missed your point, but I don't think that insults help with that. Instead, I think you should repeat/explain your point more clearly. Like I said, missing the point of a piece of text is easy. That's much better! It could be a tad more friendly, but this is very useful. That's a good way of rephrasing the point. --- I hope this helps you.
Being sarcastic often does come across as hostile, so for that I apologise. However there are points where I am legitimately annoyed that simple concepts are being ignored, so I'm not going to respond with a nice attitude. Like I said, if it isn't, I want an explanation. I see that as an accusation, so if it is I want proof, and if it isn't then I want that being stated too. I'm not going to say I'm right just because I think I am, I am perfectly willing to accept that I'm wrong, and have done so in the past. This however, is not one of those cases. The logical jumps that are being made to try and justify the economy being "healthy" are insane. Before I posted my messages I checked with several people to make sure my points are as clear as possible, to avoid this exact issue. There is nothing more I can do to solve that one I'm afraid. We're going to have to agree to disagree on the skipping points issue. I'm assuming you typed this out before reading my original reply, where I did say no to all of those things, so I'll let this one pass. If it is a new point, then it should be in a seperate section, not part of a response to something else. The reason I called it out here isn't because it's a different point, he can argue that point all he wants. I do not care. I called it out because he was using it in an argument against what I was saying, where it had no reason being and had nothing to do with that point. I'm not going to argue against bringing in new points into a post, that's just stupid. Once again, terrible word choice on my behalf. He is making out that I keep trying to push for changes and that I'm advocating for change, which is untrue. It's explained in the next line. All of these things that I listed are terrible ways to manage supply in an economy. It is a fact that all of these things have happened on EMC. I don't really know a better way to explain this. EMC players are terrible are maintaining healthy supply. That's been one of my main points in most of my posts - if he jumped halfway into the debate without catching up on what has already been discussed I cannot help him. Yes, and it is an issue on EMC, making it factually incorrect to say it isn't. C'mon. This is exactly the same issue I had with the point earlier. He posted them as a response to me directly, instead of making any effort to distance them. When the entire OP is based on debating my post, the conclusion is going to be assumed to be based off of that. I wouldn't have as much of an issue if they were shown to be detatched from the points I was making. Prices for items very rarely change, that's my point. How often do those prices actually change? Many items can never go back up in price and cannot feasibly go any lower, so those items certainly don't need changing. Price changes on EMC are not at all common, I'm not going to try and say prices don't change, that'd be stupid. Is that where I called him delusional.. Yes it is. He's missed that point more than once, which is why I'm more than annoyed in that section in particular. The critical lack of understanding of this one particular issue is so infuriating, since it's literally everywhere. I do believe I've explained that point multiple different ways by now, I cannot keep explaining it, it's going to kill me. As you can tell, by this point I was getting very fed up the complete logical jumps that were being made to try and justify his arguments - and the attitude in this part reflects that. I admit my wording on that part was wrong, and any failed understanding of my point that stemmed from that is entirely my fault.
Please accept my apologies for any offense, it was / is not intended. You're investing effort to explain, I'll put some effort as well, I think I kind of understand your point but not completely. AFAICU, you are writing about the economy in the sense of chances and social impact on the (new) people while I was talking about the setup, about the rules and tools. Your interest seems to be that the people feel good and stable, my interest is that they can make decisions freely and that there is freedom of contract, and that they can conveniently and at low cost exchange goods and services. So it seems to me that some of the misunderstandings come from those differences in the point of view. That stunned me. Big question marks appeared all around me. Because IRL we have many discussions and actions around on limiting the freedom of contract and imposing regulations to shape the economy (which are many times valid and sound and sometimes not so), because I've seen several calls for "fixing" the economy, even for reintroducing the "/shop" from others and because I, it seems, misunderstood your comment about "mismanaged supply", I assumed that you might (also) mean "tweak" the economy or somehow establish supply management like for example OPEC IRL. I apologize for that assumption of mine to all extent it was / is wrong. It seems to me that you see the economy as not healthy (you say "dead") if the prices are not stable, if the items don't hold value. But it is normal and healthy both that the prices change and that the value if items changes. Do I understand correctly that you hold a position that everyone participating in the EMC economy should (ideally) think of the community as a whole and think about the impact of their actions on the whole economy? From that viewpoint, "mismanaged" can be understood as "they've made a change that has affected them in a negative way" (which was probably not the intention). I have to remember a recent theoretical (!) conversation about building a giant farm. To my "why" question, the answer was "to crash the price of emerald, to crash it to zero". (Which isn't possible but anyway...) You're viewing at the economy from a different perspective and I have impression that you're assuming and expecting too much and that this is the reason why some of your points and conclusions are not clear / not understandable for me and few other here. For some of them you've also got answers and criticism (positive and negative). Details: The value is on one side the needed skill, effort and time to produce and on the other side the usability and/or some special emotional value (e.g. museum items). The value changes over time and this is, of course. normal. So stock in the shops, the availability, does not significantly change neither the production costs nor usability and therefore the count of items in the economy alone does not change the value. (Probably you didn't mean that it directly does change it, I'm not saying you did(?)) This made me worry about potentially thinking about "fixing" the economy. Currency (rupees) are a tool to make the exchange of goods and services and holding of value convenient and cheap. There is a problem only if there are too few rupees, so people don't have the tool they need or if there are too many "active" rupees - in hands of people who want to buy more stuff and services than what is offered on the market. Since EULA, neither is the case on EMC, so your facts here are incorrect. Auctions are indicator of economic activity. Fluctuations of the prices do not change that, they are normal. Also, fluctuation of prices does not mean that the economy is not healthy. The "dead" there is not an adequate word. Perhaps "not healthy". (I argue that it is healthy). The word "killing" is not adequate there. The market is there, the price will naturally drop and stay low as long as there is high supply. This is normal and healthy, not "killed" nor "dead". No. Some items have lost the value because they can now be produced in an easy way. Some have lost value because they are obsolete for distinct uses, because they were replaced by better options. Items never loose value because of the inflation. Their price changes, the currency might lose or gain value, but not items. Only for people who produce those items, and it is also a problem some of them create themselves, it is their mismanagement. The others profit from it. It is not a problem for the economy as a whole. A miner collecting iron loses that part of the job due to farming, yes, but that's normal, life changes, we have to adapt. There is real competition, I can tell. The count of less than good shops doesn't matter. (More about that in a different post later.) We actually effectively have a slight deflation since some months. The value of rupees has increased and is still slightly increasing. It is not excessive, so it is still in the "green" range. You're missing an important fact here. There is scarcity, always: the time, the needed effort and the skill. What requires that has value. It isn't "dead" as long as people are active, as long as they are putting effort into projects, cooperating and echanging. And they are, i can tell, so it isn't "dead". The evidence on that is clear. Bottom line: Because people might lose interest. But they didn't (yet) on EMC. And there is new stuff and more is coming. So, not dead yet. They work on projects, they exchange, they compete. At least those aspects of the economy are healthy. That's what I'm saying.
This seems to be one of the major points in your interpretation. How do you think people could better manage their own (!) supply of produced stuff? How could that work?
Depending on what is meant under "something" that we could do, this is a hot topic, because of so many failed attempts IRL to "fix" the economy. I disagree. Too many rupees solves itself naturally, no action is needed. Prices get higher, rupee value decreases, it's done. Introducing rupee sinks would apparently and temporary alleviate the problem, but would create more severe problems as side effect. Same for the opposite. Giving rupees to some people is taking value from others, especially from those who hoard rupees and those who don't adjust the prices in time. If it is minor as it is now it is tolerated, but excessive printing of money and p2w as it was before severely impacts or even kills the game. We need to distinguish between different types of the shops to discuss and see what is going on here. i'm thinking about opening a new thread for discussion about shop types, perhaps also as a reference to new potential shop owners. Generally, it is normal and nothing special to quit running a shop and do something else. It is not easy, it is tedious and I understand very well how easy can a shop fail. One of the sections would be "how to fail when running a shop". That's not the case. Perhaps quite contrary to that, running a farm will distract the owner from running the shop. it might be so that you don't have much farm maintenance between updates, but with more frequent updates (I hope) this is also a lot of work - as now for example with iron. For a shop owner it is far better to close deals with producers and concentrate on maintaining the shop. This is also the best solution for the producers, except perhaps for running a farm outlet and selling in bulk. For example, I don't run any big farms. Currently I only have an active investment in a small drowned farm a friend runs, we share the output. (That's why tridents and nautilus shells are sell-only.) That's true, but at the same time this is good for new players. And we all want new members to join and participate, and we all want new stuff and new challenges, new life in the game. So I see this as a positive development although it does impact myself severely, as I have a big stock in the shop that partially has lost its value. Customers value their time. If the shop is a labyrinth where they lose minutes to find what they need this adds too much cost and they'll rather go to a shop which will save their time. Shops that are more expensive but more reliable and easier to use get significantly more customers. For bulk deals there are only few options anyway.
- you're of course entirely within your right to be sarcastic and/or respond with a not nice attitude, but I personally think that in a healthy discussion it is generally wiser to just respond in a nice way (even if you think the other person is a dork), as that generally has a more positive influence on the discussion as opposed to reacting "rudely". That's understandable, you made your post so you know its intentions much better than I do. Correct. I see your point. It would indeed have been more clear to specify that this was a new thought, instead of putting it within quotes. I'm not sure if that is what he's doing, to me it seems like he's asking in general if anyone has any ideas, which, again, could be a bit confusing within all the other quotes. In general, to me it seems like the post was a new line of thought based on your quotes, but also often diverting from them to what the author found interesting. Agreed. Ah, it is (genuinely) interesting how we can interpret the same sentence in different ways. I interpreted it as "always an issue", but I now also understand your interpretation. I don't think expressing your anger in such a way is the best way to handle it, but I understand your anger. I think you understand what I tried to get across, so I'm happy. Thanks for your response!
It seems like whether or not we like the idea of farming that we all agree it is here to stay? There also seems to be majority agreement that EMC shouldn't interfere with or regulate the economy? We also seem to agree that having lots of active players is the best solution? So maybe the big underlying issue is actually player recruitment and retention? I've seen lots of people have some good ideas (eg improving the tutorial). I think the +shop tag is basically abused by some players. I remember many years ago working with staff with them removing it from residences where it was being misused but it was such a widespread problem and so much work we basically gave up. There could be a staff-approved shop tag system? Similar to how there is a rule that staff must approve parkour with prizes, casinos etc? Whenever a new player is told to use +shop it is always with a big caveat/warning.
I have to say that there's a lot of misuse of economic terminology going on. I'm not going to pull out quotes because I don't want to upset anyone. Inflation isn't really an applicable concept to the EMC rupee as it has to do with the way currency works and currency in one national market compared to other nations. We are just one "nation", a closed-off system so it doesn't apply. What it looks like in real life when taken to the extreme is instead of taking a dollar bill (or whatever currency unit) to a shop and using that to buy a loaf of bread you have to pay 1000 dollars for the same loaf of bread. (There are times in history where people literally shopped with wheelbarrow loads of money). Prices of commodities skyrocket and the value of money gets lower and lower. The "correct" price of a good or service is just what a seller and buyer agree to in each transaction (with the exception of scamming). There are more factors than what the market average happens to be - convenience, urgency, mood/generosity, relationship, etc, etc. Some items people will happily buy at a range of prices (price elasticity). Some people will happily pay a lot for convenience, some would rather gather a resource or do the work themselves. And individual players aren't making their activity decisions based on opportunity cost necessarily (ie spending their time doing what would make them the most money), most will spend their time doing what is most enjoyable because it is a game and entertainment after all, not real industry despite how industrious some players are. I am starting to wonder if there are some players who want to be single-handedly responsible for tanking the price of an item for some kind of personal achievement....? The more you analyse it the more real life economic principles just do not apply. Supply and demand applies, but it doesn't look anything like real life. With farming and wasteland resets there are infinite resources. Promos and special items are an exception. Labour is probably the biggest limiting factor. Which all comes back to the fact that having more active players makes it better for everyone.
This is still being talked about? Well, I'm glad that Mrz. Midnight's thread didn't cause more drama fallout like in late 2019 (or even what happened in 2017...) Kudos to those of you who have kept the conversation on the economy off of her thread and in this one instead.
Inflation generally means that average prices increase overall, so it applies to EMC as well, especially when we analyze the EMC history. There are many possible reasons for inflation, but the most interesting ones for EMC are: - reckless printing of money and selling it for cheap (in the past) - minor to moderate printing and distribution of money ("free rupees") - login bonus, voting, supporter free rupees (in the past) - lack of supply of many goods (recession) at some times in EMC history Deflation on EMC (overall average decrease of prices): - hoarding of rupees (despite of the risk and loss for the hoarders from lack of trading and in case of inflation) - farming, overproduction - changes in the game (villager trading, mending) Inflation and deflation are usually measured with a "consumers' basket" which mainly includes the basic needed equipment and stuff, on EMC it would include armor, tools, weapons, utilities, some consumables and a mix of building material. If there is interest for it we can agree what the basket should contain and compute the price index and inflation / deflation. There is distinction between minor or moderate inflation which is healthy because it is a penalty for money hoarders and is an incentive for economic activity - and major inflation, hyperinflation, where the currency loses its fundamental properties and becomes useless. It's not that much closed-off because of voting, and in the past you could buy rupees for US$ on the website. Fortunately that's not the case any more. Many play with such ideas, some do try, above all try to corner a market, some did produce some effects, but most (if not all) failed overall. This is normal and to be expected in a game economy. Mainly because you don't have running costs. You don't have to pay monthly bills just to survive and be able to continue your business. With the universe around us we also have virtually infinite resources, it's only question of the needed effort to get them. Exactly. Time, effort and skill. Yes, EMC needs a minimum of crowd and activity to make the game really interesting, otherwise it reduces to kind of a distributed LAN-party with few friends.
Wow, I didn't know that. That must have been some time ago? I also am glad that is no longer the case. Although people buying vouchers and selling them in game kind of achieves the same thing. Do you think hoarding rupees or blocks is a good or bad thing? I can't decide. I know personally I'd rather see a bunch of blocks built into a community asset that just sitting in a chest. And we have a single market, a single currency, no taxation, no government spending, no investment or loaning and no interest rates, etc etc. Technically yeah, but the cost of harvesting them makes the ROI prohibitive so unless and until there is new technology to make it worth it, they might as well not exist. You could say that innovation is infinite and we do put a lot of value on information systems. I'd love to see graphs of the average cost of certain blocks/items over time. Especially things that aren't mass-producible like diamonds. New updates/items do create temporary inflation but it seems to settle very quickly, within a week or two. I'm not sure it shifts the value of the rupee in any ongoing way?
While I am by no means an economical expert nor am I good with proper terminology, I'd like to just throw my two cents and hope I don't make anyone mad here . Inflation is most definitely a thing that can/has occurred on EMC. Now whether or not that is the technical right term or not is really irrelevant. The rupee value of 2020 is much MUCH less than it was back in say 2015 or even when I joined in 2012. I often joke and honestly miss the old value of the rupee. As an example from M4ster's shop back in the olden days, he used to sell diamonds at the price of 35r per diamond. This was slightly cheaper than the median market value. That would mean with your daily login bonus of 100r, you could almost get a diamond pickaxe. However, with diamonds being roughly 120-140r (unless it changed again) you can't even buy a single diamond with the daily login of 100r. The fact that rupees can just poof into existence will inevitably lead to inflation. [This is pure speculation but,] I believe the best method to combat this inflation would be for EMC itself to create something of value (new item, new feature, whatever) that would take rupees. This would remove rupees from the system permanently rather than just player to player. The consumer (players) would be happy with the product/service they received and the economy would benefit from a lessened amount of rupees in the market. I completely think that we can/should compare the economy of EMC to real-world scenarios/markets. This would help people figure out how/why their shops are failing and how to better the economy as a whole. Thinking EMC is an isolated market while is correct, isn't the whole picture. This market doesn't interact with other markets, but it is an economic market that is ran just like any other market (without a government dictating taxes/fees). While you can't outright buy rupees anymore [which I do remember. Good times.] there can still be translation of $s to Rupees. With the average going-price of a perm-derelict voucher is 1.5 million, you can see that EMC is selling this item for $125. With simple division, you find that roughly $1 = 12,000 rupees. As for rupee hoarding, what's the point in hoarding a ton rupees? The value will/has always been on a steep decline for rupee to value. Might as well spend your money on blocks, promos, or items to help further builds or collections before the price will inevitably go up. Now, I'm not saying blow all your money. I am simply saying there is no need to hoard millions upon millions of rupees just for the sake of having them. They are worthless in their own right just "sitting in the bank." Put them rupees to some use, buy some blocks and go build something. Go fund a project, go donate to lesser players, join/fund an outpost. There are so many uses for rupees, I feel it's a waste to just have them all sitting in a people's pockets. [This is gonna open a can of worms, but I feel like this hasn't been said yet] [THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK ON ANYONE] While I am a very firm believer in free market and player ran economy, I think the power of the economy is in the hands of just a few individuals/groups. There is one player who has literally the same shop on every single server, always in stock. While the prices of said shop are way higher and immorally priced, they are consistent with the stock. Consistency is a major part in returning customers. While one player has (for example let's say Blaze Rods), for 32r for a stack, I go and buy them all up and am happy. A week later I come back for more only to see that they haven't restocked. Disappointed, I go to said larger shop, and see that they have Blaze Rods for 60r a stack. While this is nearly double what the original player had, I buy it out of necessity/convenience. This larger shop will always have its stock prepared, devouring all the little shops that can't keep up with its competition. While this may be the fault of the little shop owner for not keeping up with the stock, the example still stands even for medium sized shops. Large economic empires dwarf and destroy all competition. Without a solid base of which something should be priced, these larger corporations can charge whatever amount they want and people will hand over the money due to lack of options. While it never reached this level back in the olden-days, the Empire Shop was always the Maximum an item would sell for, cause if you charged higher, why buy from there? Empire Shop had it cheaper. The Empire Shop set a base value for every item and also gave a huge perk of being again a money-sinkhole. The rupees would simply vanish once the player purchased something. Supply and demand are the main driving forces in an economy. Despite this, EMC has a terrible track-record of people suddenly thrusting huge supplies of product tanking the price, only to demand the most weird/random items causing outrageous increase in price. Eventually, the price does settle back out, but the fact that there is no safeguards in place so the price of certain items doesn't roller-coaster everywhere is a bit worrying. That's just my hot-take on it all...
Changes in Price of Diamonds Please note that I didn't always update the price of diamonds on a regular basis, I was several times absent for several months. The shop 12221 has 4 chests for diamonds, so the price is changed "automatically" with the supply and demand, but only within the given range. The price of diamonds alone does not reflect the real inflation and deflation, but it gives a hint where it might be. The biggest changes in the price are - due to hyperinflation in 2014 - due to mending - the demand drops - due to villager trading - becomes obsolete as material for tools, swords and armor which are now bought with emeralds More detailed analysis is required to objectively show what happened, but the data I see and my experience already tells me - the EULA has saved the EMC economy and therefore probably the EMC community as we know it. Of course we don't know what would have happened without EULA, how the hyperinflation would got handled, but knowing what has happened IRL in such situations, we can take educated guess that using rupees and the EMC economy as we know it would become ridiculous and practically cease to exist. For the scenario where rupees become unusable, I had prepared a barter shop which you can see on res 12163. I'm glad that we didn't have to switch to barter.
