Hoping EMC gets to 1.13

In all seriousness though, i would say the main raw resources used in either building or crafting of other resources.

I agree the pricing can easily be figured out. The shop should not serve as an arbitrary price cap. We NEED it to serve as a last resort for stock (shopping). In addition, anyone who "participates in the economy" knows you have to do research to keep a mall functioning and with mods like EMC shop finder it is easier than ever to find the prices of goods. So making an EMC shop with say 200% of the average item price and updating it bi-annually should not be treated as a monumental task as some individuals argue it is.

(The following a little push for the shop)
I mean if EMC want's to survive stop ignoring the players who dedicate so much time and energy into it. I spent 7 years playing on EMC and I was never staff, nor mod, I was always and still am involved in the mall economy. That is my expertise, I learned from the masters on SMP2 like Alexchance and Kryssy and I continue that legacy but ignoring an issue will not make it go away, pushing the responsibility onto the player will not make it go away, repeating the same meaningless promises will not make it go away. The only thing that will go "away" is the players which we've already seen.

Honestly guys... I do not see why this is so difficult. Maybe a staff member could explain simply and concisely why today, not last year, not last month, but today, why maintaining the Empire shop bi-annually is such a chore it's worth losing all but the auction and promo economy for? Or is it EMC's future goal to just become another mini-game survival server?

The Empire shop coming back would allow new players to play alone on an SMP temporary why more and more people come on and see a person on they might stay. But I can tell you to the 3% of players who even try once they look around and find out the only things they can buy are logs, grass, seeds, and a few food items then they quit. I can literally swear on everything I have ever done, worked on, and learned on EMC on the fact we need the Empire Shop back. This isn't a hypothetical or a moral debate, it's just the truth. If my 7+ years experience is not enough or the evidence and testimony of the declining player base than well I guess well idk.... Let's hope it does not get that point and we can actually get somewhere on this issue. I respect a lot of staff members and their opinions on many things but regarding the necessity of the Empire shop today, it's just wrong.

And in regards that having an Empire Shop will hurt the players shops I have these remaining counter-arguments.

• Most player shops sell food items and plants. There are very few shops that sell blocks and actural things people would spend their money on.
• Making mega-malls is very difficult, most players will never do it. Yet most players still need a place to buy. Honestly, it's kinda rude for the staff to put the responsibility of keeping the economy running on the backs of players looking to just have fun. Restocking is VERY difficult for people who are in college or have careers. Most of the players that the Empire shop would "wrongly accuse to hurt" do not or cannot stock their own shops or malls. And as they say, no stock, no money. So if they were not in stock how could they be losing money to the Empire shop?
• I own a mega-mall. I have tracked statistics from my shops and mega-malls throughout the years using EMCshopkeeper. The truth is, I only make money when my shop is stocked. I still made money when the Empire shop existed. In fact, I made my first million back than. Guess what, sales are reflective of stock and advertising it has nothing to do with the Empire shop that argument is just wrong. I'm sorry.
• Finally, playing devils advocate if the argument regrading the Empire shop being so terrible for the players why was it not removed sooner?

If there is anything you need from to prove this fact please pm me or tell me what you need from me. I stake everything I have on this. Please, for the love of EMC and all that is good on this server, try. Just try. If it really ruins the economy so much than you can simply remove it again in a month congrats you win. However, I doubt that will happen because something tells me we all know that it will work and it will help.

Yes, regarding a bare-bones EMC shop it would mostly be building blocks. No tools, no decorations, no redstone items, or functional items like chests, furnaces, etc. , pretty much the things that people never have in stock or that take a lot of time farm or get like beacons. I will 100% agree there were many parts of the Empire shop that noone went into like the food or nature location. I would gladly compile of list of no more than about 100 items that are never in stock or hard to stock that would take a lot of pressure off of players and would make EMC fun again. Could I have a week to compile this list max? (Only because I literally start classes tomorrow and I want to give you accurate data). One again, thank you in advance for hearing me out.

I'm sorry, but I don't really see any arguments as to why you would like the empire shop back. Could you give some, I'm curious.

Could I also please get this list? I'd like to try to provide as many of these items you list as possible, I just need to know what it is people really want.

Alot of the argument I already gave. One of the most striking I think is just the complete decimation of what players call "good shops." A "good shop" being one with a decent variety (but not always) that is fair prices and is in stock. There are soooo many ghost malls and shops, or shops that sell useless nonsense. A reason to bring back the Empire shop is a supply crisis.

In building or anything you have the triangle

You can build something fast + cheap = but it most likely not be good (Ex. A dirt shack).
You can build something cheap + good = but it will not be fast.
You can build something fast + good = but it will not be cheap.

The argument I am making is that as a lot of the player base ages the one commodity we all seem to be lacking is time. So I focus on the last two of the triangle because that is usually the two most common ways of building anything on EMC or MC.

You can build a Castle for example by spending almost no rupees, you just got to get all the materials yourself. That takes ALOT of time. Or you could build it fast and good by buying the materials if you have the money. Well currently both options are becoming more and more unrealistic for a lot of the remaining player base.

If I am a new player and have no money I am forced into the upper two options. However, many people do not have the time and consequently after not being able to really have an option to buy items since nearly nothing is in stock anywhere most people quit because no one has the time to spend days, weeks, months. No I do not necessary like this fact but it is the harsh reality. If EMC wants to compete it has to balance fun with reward and currently there is no fun in the daunting and intimidating task of building anything on EMC if you are a newish player.

Regarding the later, the complete apocalyptic almost reality of the economy means that someone like myself who has the money and not the time would usually go for the last option. Yet when you narrow down all the shops that sell the building block for example that you need, than narrow down those in stock there ends up being maybe 1 if you are lucky. If you happen to buy them out than congrats you have officially run out of options. Faced with this reality a player like myself has two choices. Grind and watch my GPA sink, my life and responsibilities get away from me and play EMC or quit.

I do not know how many people realize how important builders are to EMC. They drive the economy. The economy allows for creativity. It allows for people to just hangout and participate in groups, to then participate in events or parties or anything. The builders are the blue-collar workers of EMC. When they leave, the town dies.

The Shop is always and will be a last resort. I can't explain how desperate at times me and my friends have been for materials that I have to resort to almost begging and that's just not fun. Even when I have spare time I can build a little but we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the new players. They do not have the materials, or money, or even tools that I do. They lack even the most basic knowledge of most commands and without the Empire shop and anywhere to buy items from than EMC ceases to be an economy server and is simply a regular survival game that you might as well play in creative single player because it will waste much less of your time.

Hopefully that explains a little better the rationale behind bringing back the Empire Shop even if it is in a limited capacity.

Thank you! This is diffidently a start and anything I can do to help. We are going to make EMC great again!

You know I will make my own list but I might just make a Thread where people can post and suggest an item that they have not been able to find in stock anywhere and or that is very difficult to get in bulk that hinders them. To make sure that I do not miss anything for example.

What i've found being here for so long is that EMC always takes a long time with most updates. And unfortunately I feel it will only get worse with time since they have so much custom lines of code here and there. Each time Minecraft updates to fix old bugs and introduce more new features they change up the code and they have been doing that for a long time. In some cases they have to rewrite huge portions of code or rearrange it at times which makes trying to put the custom stuff back into the updated minecraft code very difficult I suspect for the developers of EMC.

If unfortunately they have no idea how long it will take or how far they have gone because even with finding where they can put the custom mods back into the updated new minecraft code for EMC they have to test it and see if there are any bugs not to mention game breaking ones. I remember though the past few minecraft updates ago there was mention of Mojang (minecraft) making it easier for servers/players to add mods in some form or another. Idk how well this works for EMC but kinda curious about it. But anyways, if they were to put some info about when they think the server will update all it will do is cause people to ...... complain because the deadline passed and thus still on the old minecraft version. This could be because they ran into something they didn't see, or the people who are working on this (for free mind you) either got sick, or had family problems or something and thus had to take time off.

Also I would think they would get tired of having to go back through and update the same old mods into EMC each time for a server they might not even get much time to play on so I can understand them taking a while (though I too don't like waiting who knows how long to try out the new versions) since it's pretty much a full time job in a way and a lot of these people I think are doing it on their free time.

The sad fact is most players rush the tutorial and try to get past it (cause no matter what most tutorials are boring no matter where or what they are for. And most will just try to get by with learning the least amount to get into. I believe the first time I joined WAY back a long time ago I basically just followed the person in front of me with the old style tutorial (the sandstone one for the old players that remember). Over time I just learned the tips and tricks of the server by playing and learning from others and stuff. But I have seen many players get on after a tutorial and ask how to get to frontier and then after being told how they make it out there die (sometimes to the custom mobs) and then ask for help finding their stuff or how to get back to town etc. Unfortunately it will almost always be like that cause some people don't like to read or just come here and want to play right away. Most players who even know how to play on the server I've come across that don't know about the website and how you can get rupees or that there is a wiki on here even though im guessing it probably has been posted in the chat by the server numerous times.

Even had a person I knew join back before this latest tutorial who just wanted to check out some of my builds on the server who then was a bit annoyed they had to go through a tutorial which took forever (the one that showed the custom mobs etc. I had to go into the tutorial to kinda walk them through it cause they had no intention of playing on the server they just wanted to see my builds etc. And even I a veteran player had to take some time to figure out how to get through it. :S Though again that was the tutorial before this latest one I believe.

I have had this problem before too. Shortly after it came out I tried using it at one point only to find a few shops that either didn't exist or were out of stock. Though it is better then having to go on each server and ask "does anyone sell bla bla bla" then getting a few people "I sell bla bla bla come here!" "I sell bla bla at a better price here!" "Bla bla get your bla bla!" etc. I have had an idea or two how to get this to work a bit better but just haven't suggested it because then it takes more time out for updating the server so yeah.

Plus not sure if my ideas would be feasible cause idk the limitations of the software they use to search within the server for shops. But there was only one time I remember empire shop being a good option and that was back when diamond prices were so high and so difficult to find shops that had diamonds a few players would go to the shop and buy the diamond blocks even though they seemed high, they were actually slightly cheaper then most other shops offering the same thing and you could get unlimited amounts of those diamonds from the empire shop. So I knew a few players that did this regularly. Some who still have a stock pile from those days.

If they were to introduce the empire shop again I know what would happen (again) new players would go there instead of looking at other shops because it's the "Empire shop!" thus should be the best one right? And always stocked right? So for convenience or lack of knowledge they will go there waste all their rupees on basic items they could have gotten for far cheaper at another shop that rarely gets business then complain they don't have any rupees left. Then either realize they have to start their own shop selling things (which there are already LOTS of shops that sell the basic stuff for sometimes dirt cheap) or they would get frustrated not being able to get any rupees to buy blocks they want to build stuff instead of going out and getting it and then quit the server after awhile.

Sorry for the long ranty post.

IDK if anyone has said this but gravel because there is soo much demand that is it is insane and there never seems to be any in all the shops that sell it

That would be my only request

The big man is back again. All the little henchman start to come out of the graves of quartz and diamond...

It also doesn't help that some "shops" will ban you from accessing the residence if you buy more than like 4 stacks of something. What kind of build only takes 4 stacks of blocks?

I agree.
Stone. Sand. Logs. Maybe ores? Basically all the raw materials that you can get normally mining/gathering and that are used for crafting and/or building. Dont sell anything that is crafted/smelted with the exception of regular smooth stone.

XD I love you sometime lol

Hey guys big news Krysyy announced the resurrection of a Bare minimum EMPIRE SHOP! Good things to come in the future of building for sure! Im super excited to see what is in store for a bigger well built EMC!

1.13 and how its perceived might not be good for the update but I do think with 1.14 it might get a bit better after that.