Your opinions on inflation in the Empire?

Hello all!

I rarely post longer forum threads, but I guess I'm gonna right now

Inflation has had a great effect on me and possibly (and probably) many other players out there. When I first joined the empire, having 300k was insane, if you had 300k or more, that was an unbelievable amount of money. As I read in a recent thread about dragon eggs, the price of an original dragon egg, back in the old days, could go for around 2 million rupees. Now, they go from anywhere between 10 million and 30 million rupees, and are very rare. From my research, there is 7 in existence, which makes them a super rare item. Now, my question is, when did the jump from 2 million rupees to 30 million rupees happen? The number of original dragon eggs did not increase nor decrease as far as I know, and the most probable cause of this is inflation. For certain people (who owns items that the prices of have inflated by a lot over the years) inflation is a good thing. But those people are the 1%. What can we do to stop inflation, is it a good thing or a bad thing? Can it be controlled and tampered with just depending on how much of an item there is? Please post your opinions below

Thanks to all,
Caden

Some inflation is good but what drives me nuts is the fact some rare items are no long rare for example ender pearls or iron Ingot for the reason of some mob farms or iron farms but that's my opinion but what do I know I'm still a minecraft noob been playing minecraft as a whole since September so ya still a noob ok enough of babbling this is my opinion

Anyone else remember 40r diamonds? I think the rise in price is a sign of a good economy. Some things such as iron farms have destroyed the value of certain items, decreasing their value but as a whole i think the rupee is in good shape.

Good days... I don't get why diamonds have nearly doubled in price when now you can get them from enraged mobs and such. Makes no sense that they are 3/4 of /shop prices.

pshhh, I remember 25r diamonds.

Inflation is great. I do almost nothing other than sit on my stockpile of goods, and they rise in value every day lol.

As long as we don't go for Russia style inflation, it's probably a good thing

Or Zimbabwe style I have a 10 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe

Inflation is a good thing as long as it is not Artificial inflation. Items prices should fluxuate depending on Supply and Demand. What I am trying to say is if an item (lets use the Ore Buster as an example) goes for 150k one day, The next day, It Should Not be going for 200k, that is just such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time, Honestly that would just be greed. I'm not trying to offend anyone by stating my opinion here, but I find that has been happening a lot recently in the Promo industry. Prices for a lot of the promos have beyond doubled in the last month or two. It is very unnecessary and In My Opinion is almost a form of scam, as well as being very greedy.

But hey. I'm sorry if you got offended. That's just my 2 cents.

Thank you for putting this out there, I think that a huge factor of inflation is supply and demand, and I will take for example here my predictions about dragon eggs when DT (dragon tombs) comes out. As it was confirmed by krysyyjane9191 in a thread, there will be more dragon eggs coming out when dragon tombs comes out, therefore increasing supply and lowering demand, which is why right before DT comes out, I will be selling my dragon egg, as there will probably be a huge price drop

Inflation (corrected to avoid confusion)
Primary cause of inflation on EMC is increase in the amount of currency (rupees) in relation to the available goods on the market
Increase in prices is a natural consequence of that.
The sources of the inflation on EMC are free rupees (daily / log in) and selling of rupees on the website (around 102k for $10 to around 7.3M for $300 plus supporter vouchers).
There are several forces besides free rupees supply that have appreciable influence on prices.

It is better to measure the increase in prices of the most useful items / items with the highest trade volume like wood, stone and diamonds. One can construct a representative "basket of goods" and then see how the price has changed.

Behavior patterns
The market forces and behavior patterns here on EMC are the very same as IRL -
just some of them have somewhat more or somewhat less weightiness.

This is what makes this game interesting - that you can slip into one or several roles in the community and economy and experience the same behavior patterns and forces as IRL. My impression is that many people think like "this is a game, it is different." It is not.

Of course, there are people here who actually play single player and do not, or do only marginally participate in the community. For example they might want to jump around a bit and kill some monsters. And then do it again until they are bored. But if they only marginally influence the community / economy then this is not important.

The behavior not only of the players here but very much of the former and the present EMC owners has strong parallels with, and follows the same patterns as in economies IRL. I guess that only very few of the people here understand this, as the most do not know (and did not experience) how different economies IRL work and/or fail and damage the respective communities.

Damage
Now, one may think - "what damage can tweaked, skewed and drained community / economy in on-line gaming do?"

The short term damage is ruined gameplay. This is simple to understand. One starts a survival game. But, at some point, one's weaker self takes over and switches to creative ... just for this one bit. Most probably, the game is ruined. Once the one is on that path, the pattern will repeat... By allowing players to "go creative" and "pay to win", even if just bit by bit, we actually allow them and in fact stimulate them to ruin their game.

The lasting damage is through learned patterns and habits. To repeat, all those patterns exist IRL, they are not alien, not reserved for on-line gameplay, they are very well known and happen on daily basis. There are dozens of IRL economies including US that "go creative" over and over, print money and struggle around inflation and related problems.
When young players slip into roles here, they learn and practice behavior patterns and acquire habits through the game. This makes lasting damage.

-> Why can you not print more money?

Community
Community is about exchange and this exchange is the economy. It is a tight and inseparable bond. In a broader sense, the community equals the economy if you widen the notions of goods and exchange. When you harm the economy you harm the community. My impression is that just few people here realize that, but I might be wrong on this (which would be a good thing).

So yes, definitely, the hyperinflation on EMC, the free rupees and the selling of rupees for out-of-game currency (US$) is harming the gameplay, it is heavily draining from the economy / the community.

Questions
Two questions arise here naturally:

Why? Why is it this way?
I'd like to hear your opinions - besides "This is how it is, welcome to the world of on-line gaming." (Nothing is "how it is", every "why" has a "because" - even if you perhaps don't yet know what it is.)
Why would EMC owners want to stimulate members to ruin the game?
Why would "survival server" owners let people buy in-game goods for out-of-game money?
The answers are all but simple, but there are answers.

Where to go from here? What change is possible?
I see few possible but by no means equally probable scenarios:

A) The EMC owners decide to change their politics and go for quality gameplay including in-game economy and community.

B) The EMC community matures, people like cadenman2002 get together and initiate a change, so the change comes from the community. (I was writing about this problems in 2012, but it mostly fell on deaf ears.)

C) The situation becomes unbearable and it becomes obvious both to EMC owners and most players that this system is flawed and then both work on a change together.

D) The community / economy is drained to absurdity, people leave and EMC community disintegrates.

E) There is a steady supply of new, uninformed and uneducated new players who at one point or the other become ready to "go creative" for just this bit. As long as this is so and as long as it can generate income for EMC owners, nothing changes.

40r?! That was a rip off back in my day. 30r a diamond (maybe even less). Not even joking.

I think inflation has occurred simply because now you can have plenty of rupees, plenty of diamonds, and you don't have to mine or own a shop. All you have to do is vote and you'll get enough of both without having to do anything extra. I haven't even used any of the diamonds I get from voting or fighting the special mobs in months because I just use the gear I get from voting so I'm not sure why diamonds would be getting more expensive honestly but the fact is more players have more rupees now and thus they're more willing to spend those rupees because it's a smaller percentage of their total rupee count and yet more rupees than the items previously went for.

please, please dont introduce tax xD

Some inflation is good, but not dramatically large inflation in such a short amount of time, like Bro has stated.

I think the main problem with this is that everyone wants one. As soon as someone advertises it for sale, it's going to be purchased pretty quickly, even for a high price because it is such a sought after item. Therefore, the large demand on this item is increasing the price, but here's the catch - it's not increasing steadily. The prices are just jumping like Bro says, and that's what can make buying a bit dodgy for some players. Promos and all items in Minecraft, when inflating, need to inflate steadily, so that the economy does not jump ahead of itself.

So what is the solution to remove (or at least contain) the "bad" inflation and use the "good" inflation to our advantage?

I think almost all of this can be sourced back to voting bonuses... As mentioned above, it's all supply and demand, and the extra 100,000+ rupees entering the economy on a daily basis creates a lot more demand than supply, running up prices. Just how I see it

That's the reason - loads of rupees cheap to get makes rupees cheap, that is, not worth much.

Would make diamonds cheap.

Becauseof the demand. I've increased the diamond price step by step from 78r to 85r now, but my chest-shop got emptied in short time all the same.

That's how a "survival" game can end.

That's it I guess ... so they like voting more than collecting stuff?

Everything was cheaper... The demand grew higher because of the increase of population of EMC. Less and less people started to actually sell diamonds that they had mined themselves. Many people including myself, just buy items. Instead of getting armour, tools etc. we pay X amount of rupees so we dont have to go through that.

at this rate EMC may have to up the price of diamonds in /shop