(Note: I am not nor will not pretend as if I am skilled in economics in any way, however I do firmly believe that despite my lack of knowledge on the subject this idea may help with player retention and increasing demand - if my logic is flawed please don't scream at me :P)
Hello all and Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were spent well.
Like all of you, I too was definitely saddened by the news of Meepcraft's hacking / mess-up or whatever it was. However, with the server back up and running, and with a brand new economy that isn't heavily inflated by /warp shop, I am very happy to be here writing this first post of the New Year. Now this had been dwelling in my mind for awhile beforehand, but I figured the economy had already been too badly mangled and the people too divided for any real economic policy to have consensus. So, onto the idea. I propose that we begin the process of monitoring the economy in terms of inflation and the cost of items, and from there change the amount of money civilians get when entering Meepcraft ($2500 right now). Why? Well, there are many reasons, which I will try to explain below:
- As the economy inflates, newly-joined citizens' purchasing power decreases. This is because the price of items slowly increases over time, so their money doesn't go as far. This means that while their $2500 now is sufficient, as the cost of resources rise (such as is the case of diamonds) they get less and less as time goes on.
- However, that first reason assumes that the price of items rises, which isn't necessarily the case here on Meepcraft (it does happen, but not quite so drastically). Because of our semi-stagnant population, all the economy really does at this point is add more money, but keeps the prices stable because no new demand is created. This makes a very daunting situation for new-comers, who will come in and be increasingly less interested in trying as hard if the money they have continually represents a smaller and smaller amount of the server total. This is one reason I believe people leave before even giving Meepcraft a chance.
- The above also represents a problem for both new-comers and the already established. This is because if the prices don't rise, any additional wealth they receive from selling products and services will represent a gradually smaller amount of their total over time. Take this example. TheLegend27 comes onto Meepcraft, receives her $2500, and starts her journey to become the richest Meeper of them all. She decides diamond mining is her best bet. And, because she is terrible at mining, she only finds a diamond per day, and does this for a month. Assuming we take a diamond price of, say, $500 a piece, she would make $15000. Now, when she found her first diamond on day one, that new diamond represented 1/6 of her total money. However, by day 30, her diamond only represented 1/34 . The problem becomes even more profound the richer and richer a person gets (of course, this is to be expected, however being able to control this gradual decrease in relative wealth is important). By raising the amount of money given to new-coming civilians periodically, the amount of civilians who quit the server without even playing 10 minutes would go down drastically, in turn creating demand, which raises prices and helps both the newbies and "middle-class" meepers.
Therefore, I believe that staff should begin the process of raising that bar every so often. I know in the past it has been, but I do not believe it's frequent enough to outweigh the negative effects of not doing so. Of course, doing so too often would bring about worries of rampant inflation, which, as we saw with /warp shop, is no good either unless accompanied by a massive influx of people. I do not personally know how often the changes would be made (the decision should really be left up to staff, who would analyse the economic factors in play) , all I know is that it certainly needs to be done more often.
(And yes, I know I contradict myself because of the fact that if prices go up the problem for the poor would continue, however I do still believe that this would be effective, simply given the person's ability to make more money).
Please feel free to comment your opinions down below. Also remember I am not an economist (nor a mathematician - my numbers are probably all wrong lmao) and therefore could be extremely off with my assumptions of economic systems. So, just be nice! :) Wishing everyone success and the works in 2017 .
