Economy

I'm using @kcschmidt format because it seems to work usually.

Background
The economy in alpha, beta, and now Gamma are officially dead. With complete removal of the "Sell" option in shop, there are no decent ways to make money as a new player. (The rich will get richer)

Issue
With the remodeling done to /warp shop today, there are currently no ways for a new player to have fun and make money. I was talking about this in shout and a player suggested that there are still these ways to make money: Minigames, voting, and jobs. These money making oppurtunities do not help "player to player transactions" or "fix the economy" as so many people have been crying about lately.
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Minigames: No one plays minigames. Simply put, skywars and halo are only used for boosting. SkyWars kits are extremely unbalances and so are chests. With 1k prize, and games lasting up to 5 mins, no one uses SkyWars to legit make money. SkyWars was never intended to make players money.

Voting: Voting helps the server and you get a little money for helping out. Voting every single day, on the exact minute will make you 40k a week. This is barely enough money to pay for pwarp upkeep and towns. Voting isn't a subsantial way to obtain money.

On top of that, a new player playing on MeepCraft for the first time will most likely not vote. If a player has to grind for 6 hours just to make 10k+ they won't have enough fun to stay and vote in the future.

Jobs: Once people become intelligent again and start using jobs for money, the economy will be ruined. Jobs are also unbalanced, as new players (citizens) only start with ONE job. No player wants to grind at a farm all day, or go mining, or cut wood, or the other jobs.

- Jobs will be nerfed once admins realize they're abuseable, so start making money before they do.

Ranked shops
Another perk is gone. A reason to donate in Gamma was for use of the shop. The shop gave items a base price. I'm not saying these prices were good whatsoever, but it stimulated the economy in one way or another. The problem was not only for sell, but also for buy. Buy gave prices a ceiling ( @PseudoPlatonic ). Buy should have been removed, and sell should have been reduced. Also, buying polar bear eggs and mushroom cow eggs removes the rarity of these animals. It is the same as using a spawner, once you get 2 mushroom cow eggs/other animal, it allows you to infinitely have food.

Buy prices currently/ Donor shop
The "Donor shop" carries a ton - and I mean a ton - of useless items. On top of that, all the shop prices are trash. No one will spend 75k for a villager egg. No one will spend 250k for bedrock, no one will spend 350k for ONE end portal. Adding dragons breathe and wither skulls only lowers the prices of these two items, and also the rarity.
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Modification
To start off, I never LEGIT wanted the shop to be removed. I wanted the sell price on items to be reduced, not removed.

Add sell back to items. Except this time, reduce the prices of all items. Emerald and diamond ore should sell for no more than 250 per, all other ores should have their price cut by 3/4ths. Farmable items should be removed completely. Add items that need to be crafted manually or need work to be obtained. (chiseled stone brick, coarse dirt, podzol, mossystonebrick, crackedstonebrick, etc). Items found normally, stone, dirt, grass... should not be on shop at all. Wood has its' own market, so it should be removed. Add back ranked shops, it was the only useful perk the donors had. Cut down the prices of gadgets, bedrock, end portal.

Staff encourage Player to player transactions, but with the buy option, you are better off spending a few more meebles on a beacon than advertise and buy one from a player. Completely remove the buy option, it's the main problem. Not sell.



I've explained the benefits thoroughly, IMO.​

 

The solution imo:

Add back different shops for each rank, like you said good donation incentive. Thereafter keep the citizen and lower ranks shops sell only, and for the higher rank shops (supreme ultimate) add buy options for 'rare' things, but at fairly high prices. The sell prices in the lower ranks and citizen shops needs to be lowered a ton, and like you said no farmable items. This provides a way for new players to make money, adds back the donation incentive, and for the higher ranks, removes money from the economy. It also doesn't add too much in, because of how low the sell prices will be. Obviously not so low they're worthless, but low enough that no one will bother abusing anything while new players can still make money. As an example, giving 250 meebles per diamond sounds like a good idea.


//edit
However, Next time for the love of god don't rush in and change everything. I'd rather wait a little longer and have the shop be done thoroughly to ensure balanced prices. The "new" shops prices are just all over the place. It's a joke.

 

Actually removing the sell option will decrease player transactions in the future, you see most rich players (most active players are rich) are worried about one thing, inflation. Many players think that when money starts being removed from the economy faster than it is put in, their money will be safe so, their idea is simply remove most forms of making large sums of money off the server and let players resort to having to trade with other players for money. This creates a HUGE problem. It's called deflation. Deflation is when money gains value over time and at first glance, that may seem good. But it is not! Deflation rases the value of liquid assets but not illiquid assets so if the value of meebles deflates by 10%, an apple worth $5 is now worth $4.50. This will lead to a decrease in shop prices which means less money will be moved to players per purchase. Not only that but why buy items when their value is constantly decreasing? Continuing, this will lead to a a virtual halt in the economy for trading cause why buy items today when they will be cheaper tommorow? Or next week?

In real life, deflation has been seen as a result in economical crisis, and it definitely doesn't help them. People want to turn all their illiquid assets into liquid assets (sell one potato today and own the value of 2 potatoes in a month) and also to hold onto their liquid assets so this will make an economical crisis work. Shops lose tones of money (@Photoave12) because they have 1000's (or even millions) of dollars in illiquid assets and are forced to sell them for less than they bought them. The head and God armour market would disappear! As soon as people realized what was happening, they would try to sell as much of it as possible! This is why disasters like the Great Depression got so bad! Considering meep staff have less control over the economy than the 1930's American treasury! Something like this would be quite a disaster.

Deflation can be good, but it needs to be slow and controlled. Selling can not be removed! No! Bad staff! The economy can be controlled by having a slowly lowered sell price, not a removed one! Though it seems like the gamma economy is inflating at an extremely high rate, it's only because of how little money is in the economy at the moment.

 

Wait a minute wasn't mattisaperson in favor of doing this? I'm really confused...

 

Oh woops

 

Re-add some of the items which you could sell earlier but reduce selling price by 2/3rds
Either remove the BUY option from most obtainable items entirely so that there is no price ceiling, (Btw with new shop the price ceiling is just there, but now there's not even a lower limit so prices can sink even further than before), or fluctuate the BUY price randomly and add a buyers tax to shop to remove more meebles and to make investing in the price cap harder.

In shop's current state the economy is going to stagnate and will provide the opposite effect than what it was meant to do: stimulate player-to-player trades.

 

Why are we sacrificing the fun in meepcraft on the altar of arbitrary numbers

 

Because if we go into an economic depression (I notice today less than mil has been added to the Eco vs 8 mil yesterday) then everyone loses out (read my earlier post for more details)

 

The shop serves to stimulate the economy, set minimum prices, and increase player retention by allowing new players to make money and establish themselves in towns. Removing the sell option from shop is a boneheaded move however you look at it. And to add insult to injury, they've shot their player retention in the head while spending money on advertisements.

 

Exactly

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 14, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 14, 2016 ---

That's why I'm worried about a recession

 

It's not as much of a recession as much as everyone isn't going to be buying things. If you have you have no money, you won't be spending it on items when you can go out and get them yourself. Minecraft is a game with infinite resources, where anyone can get those resources for themselves. In a real economy, most people rely on buying things (mostly food) from other sources to obtain them. Additionally, those items are finite. Therefore, when there are 1000 units of something and only 500 people with enough money to buy one, only 500 can be sold, and the price will be lowered in order to allow 500 more people to buy that product. Now, say, that the price is low enough that 1500 people can buy one of those 1000 units. Now, the price will increase until only 1000 people are able to afford the item. As a result, when you pump more of a currency into a finite economy, the prices rise to reflect it in an event called inflation. However, when you're in an infinite economy like minecraft, the units are near infinite. To make it palatable, let's say there are 100,000 diamonds for sale. Because of /warp shop, the price would be locked between 600 and 900 per unit, 600 being when under 100k diamonds are in demand, and 900 (the buy price) when well over 100k are in demand. However, the units are not locked at 100k like a finite economy, and as more money is pumped into the economy, more people buy the diamonds, and therefore more player trades occur. When there is no available money in the economy to purchase those units, the player transactions halt. The reason the sell button was removed was to increase player to player trades and reduce the money in the economy, however, by reducing the total number of meebles you also significantly hinder your player trades, as anyone is able to go out and get those materials instead of paying their scarce meebles for. Another point I want to make is that buy options in the shop are what kept inflation from happening in alpha and beta. Most players had money easily accessible and in abundance, however, the prices of items and services didn't skyrocket. Instead, people bought more items more frequently. As you see in both finite and infinite economies, when people have an abundance of money, they tend to buy more opulent, high quality goods. For example, in meepcraft, for weeks I had mined up ~2000 Quartz or ~500 blocks. Although it was decently priced and it was the only Quartz for sale, it sat on the shop for weeks, never being sold in an abundance of one stack per person. However, in the alphabeta economy, that same Quartz would have been gone in days. The simple fact behind this is that when people had an excess of money, they started to build more mansions, which allowed my Quartz to be sold rapidly, therefore allowing me to buy items I wanted, such as my own town, more tools and ebooks, ect. In gamma, people don't have that kind of excess money and therefore my Quartz (don't quote me I haven't checked yet) is still sitting on the shop.
Before I run out of letters
Tl;dr
1. Wealth is communal. More money means more player transactions in an infinite resource economy
2. Buy prices make sure items never exceed a certain price because of inflation, sell prices make sure items don't become worthless because of deflation
3. When people don't have access to much money in an infinite resource economy, they stop buying items and instead go get them themselves
4. When people have easy money in abundance, an infinite resource economy, because of #2, does not experience dramatic inflation, and instead sees the rapid transfer of goods for reasonable prices
5. For an infinite economy to thrive, the /warp shop needs high sell prices and low buy prices. Although the shop does need to leave a margin between the two for players to decide the price via competition, the shop must provide both of these options at reasonable prices. If the buy price is too high, the amount of meebles introduced into the economy makes specific goods increase prices beyond affordability. If the sell price is too low, items are no longer worth acquiring by players in the hopes of making money.

Most important thing to keep in mind, the numbers in /Baltop are arbitrary. It doesn't matter if it says 1 million or 10 billion. What matters is economic stimulation; the player's ability to make money, buy the things they want, sell the things they have, and have enough fun to stick around and donate.
@Deinen

 

Yes which is why I was talking about the nature of deflation, (recession was the wrong word,) and how inflation would be far better. In fact I think it would be best if gamma's economy would inflate for a bit.

 

The best thing for gamma is to keep introducing money to stimulate the economy

 

Worthless:Sell 0

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 15, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 15, 2016 ---

This is called deflation, this would happen when there is a lack of money, not an excess money in the economy

@n00bslayer_99 this is from a previous thread

 

Ill be making a post later with the ideas and suggestions we took into account.

 

I too was disappointed in the new market and the inability to sell items. The Vshop should be more point and click to make it more accessible to new players. However that could get in the way of player shops. The player shops are some kind of secret? I see no list like at least in SB you can understand there are Islands and some have shops but in Towns how are new players to find these Pwarps? The regular Pwarps are listed like /warp bank , / warp mobs.

If the server is having difficulty with reseting the market why not take a page out of history and that are currency resets where everyone in a collapsed eco has to convert their old currency into a high valued newer currency. Could be hated bu older players but maybe if it becomes something accepted like the wild reset, people will anticipate the coming change.

I mentioned this in an other post. Items that are easy to get should not have a Server General Market sell option. They can be sold in the Vshop but if no one buys it the taxes of buying and selling will limit that. Items that require someone to actually find items to craft could be sold to SGM but maybe at a limit daily like Villagers do. Another limitation could be that the more you sell the less money you get according to how many were sold into the SGM similar to stocks and bonds. The server can easily calculate the supply and advice players that certain items are over supplied. The Buy option can act as the opposite and people with specific jobs can get notices that the SGM requires certain products and it offering extra income in collection of these items. Job level should also be a factor in the sell prices. Maybe they could have the ability to supply the SGM at a high rate when supply gets lower than usual.

Basically when items are out of stock that would tell us the price sold is too low or the price in purchasing these items from players are too low or requires a message over the chat to get more supply.

The SGM should act like a supplier that is limited in resources to get a more connected feel with the ambitions of some players and the apathy of others. eg. If the price for certain items are profitable this week the interest of the players to supply the SGM will increase (The dailey limit to prevent players from gaining the system) and decrease as the supply is replenished.

Basically people need a goal and an opportunity, if that goal is to be rich then the option should be there but they should realize their part of the economy not the exception. The player that gets free items usually becomes tired and leaves anyways. The player that is lazy will not earn as much as a player that actually engages the economy.

There are a great deal of ways to control the market but it has to be done in a way to incentivies players and keep ambitious players at a different standard. This will keep them interested and shows they have a unique skill.

On a side note I'm starting to see player created loto's, although it seems ok but I believe this is a sign of a distressed eco one of the first and usually that last gasp of a free market. As it does engage the players. Loto's only damage economies and they do nothing good and foster lazy thinking.

As for the money supply when it becomes where there are players with large sums of money and no where to spend. There should be things like the purchasing of the towns. Maybe businesses where you can offer special employment (i dunno) maybe not. There should be something for RICH players to spend their money that will require UPKEEP costs. This will remove excess money from the market and it usually targets larger pocket players.

The Towns should have a tax rate controlled by the server and it should be according to population of the town.

Thank you.

 

This has been suggested many times, and it is simply impossible. There are hundreds of pwarps out there, making it next to impossible to list every single one.

So, you want to soft reset again? Gamma was only released a month ago, after all. If we "reset" again, it will only discourage people from trying again.

I like the idea of incorporating jobs into the server shop. I'll do some consideration into expanding that idea.

I agree completely. This is an economy (capitalist) server, not a socialist market. People complain about some people always being rich, but that's because those people are the ones who make the smartest business decisions.

So, you want to penalize towns for getting residents? This just doesn't work, logically. Doing this encourages people to stay in thousands of small towns, which divides the community. A better way to limit wealth is provide conveniences for people through upkeep costs. One example of this, would be "renting" more /chests (not actually suggesting this, but using it as an example). It's useful, but it costs Meebles to keep that convenience.

 

Oh I was never under the impression that having too many towns was a concern. Noted

However It could be a very small difference, not enough to sway opinion on where to set up house. After all there are other reasons why people join new towns.
I do need to know the reason why the option not to charge taxes by the mayor was allowed and would that not change someones mind on choosing a new town? The mayor could used that decision to gain new players to move in. I believe that would have the same unwanted behavior.

If taxes were all the same and older towns that would have a more established players with local shops and conveniences would be able to retain players better.

I will say this can not be an easy thing to fix, as we are now going into social planning.

I'm glad you found my Jobs Idea something you're going to consider.