Economy Fix - Opinions/Criticism Welcome!

I think we still need that market type thing to the server, otherwise it would take a few days of mining digging, etc to get enough money for an actual economy.

 

There's nothing to fix about it. When you have 5 people with crates full of elytras selling them, sooner or later everyone's gonna have one. So nobody wants one or pays a higher price for it.

You can replace elytra with anything and it'll work the same way.
Refer to this chart below:


Not trying to be a smart ass. I think the issue here is that there's no easy way for noobs to "catch up" to the experienced folk. I earned my livin' with crate keys.

 

I fail to see the relevance of the supply demand curve for what my post was talking about. Note that supply and demand is a really valid explanation for a few things here, but the heart of the matter is that with a market dictating the prices of goods and services, it limits the ability for a player-driven economy to form, which is something that has been, time and again, stated as something that people want to have. You can't just go quoting supply and demand when it subverts the issues that I'm talking about.

Lets use your example of 5 people with crates of elytra. For one, Elytra isn't a limited good. There can theoretically be infinite amounts of them. Secondly, players can lose their gear, or their gear can break, creating a source for wanting multiple of certain items. That is just how that works, and it works like that in the real world for the most part too. The argument that there will be no market for them once everyone has one is foolish, and if that isn't what you're arguing then I can't really see what point you're trying to make.

Minecraft is a game where demand is constant and supply is constant. There is literally no cap to the ability of the player to obtain anything. (Note that there are exceptions, which should and are being looked at.)

Can you please be a little more clear in your point? What about my system doesn't fix the inability for noobs to catch up? How is that not an issue that this fixes?

Edit: Yatty says what I'm saying better than I did.

 

As someone taking Microeconomics, you're right and wrong lol

 

I really don't see any issues then if you're wanting a player driven economy. People pay for things based on what they think its worth, not what the seller wants it to be worth :/

I won't be paying 35K for an elytra in the market if I can get one for 2K in an auction though. Is that the point you're making?

 

My issue is what we have is just floating money, it's not going anywhere. We just use it up and we have to farm for it again. What a waste of resources in a sever with limited area.

 

Maybe all you rich folk could become mafia bosses and place hits on peoples heads.

 

+1, I think the steps drawn out in the OP are necessary steps to take in order to have a more balanced economy long-term.

 

I disagree I worked for my money and I don't care that there are people more rich than me. In the first place money is made from nothing with jobs, voting, crates and selling at the market. Limiting money making method just makes things unfun. Nothing stop you from using /market listings and selling a bit above the market sell price. Fixed market sell price is good and if anything more things should be able to sell at the market like farmable and stuff. I'm in favor of buffing jobs and adding more to the market.

 

I will respond to this section by section.

First of all, this system is not about making everyone more equal in terms of their wealth. In fact, this system will work just like our current one in terms of how people can get money by making smart choices and finding new ways to gain physical wealth. There will be no change to the fact that others will be richer or poorer than you are.

Regarding your comment about how money is made through nothing, you're correct that money is made from nothing through all those sources, but that doesn't really mean anything. Money needs to come from somewhere, and it makes more sense to have money come from time instead of have money come from resources. I'll explain it here. If we were to keep the way we have it now, where money comes from what you have and can sell to the market, it would get to the point where the person who builds the biggest iron golem afk farm would just have the most money, because they can just sit afk at the farm and have a machine they build generate money for you. This sounds pretty horrible for the health of the dollar. In this instance, there would be no practical value to the money that we use, because of the nature of Minecraft of having people build machines that produce things for them, eventually there would just be no reason to have money when you have machines literally printing it for you with iron, gold, ender pearl, leather, emerald, sugar cane, etc farms. My system steps away from this. It makes it so that actively playing the game one way or another through the /jobs plugin is the only way to make money. Premium crates would have no money, voting wouldn't have money, and selling wouldn't have money. The income would come through a players active input on the server, and the value of the dollar therefore would be based in time spent, and not in resources. At this point, players have the ability to trade with one another, and then set prices for themselves, instead of make choices based on what a central market tells them things are worth.

Your comment about using /market listings and selling through there doesn't make much sense to me, as it really isn't relevant to the point that I'm trying to make.

Making more things sellable through the store makes no sense. In fact, I'd argue that it would make things worse, as it would just add to the ways that people can make the value of the money meaningless.

The goal of my system is to make it so that the money that we use has value and has longevity and seeks out a player-driven market, the current system we use, as well as a system that makes it so more things are sellable to the market, will do the opposite of this, and instead just create larger problems down the line that will be harder to address.

 

You're silly if you think for a second they'll reset everyone's money. That's not going to happen, and if it did, the rich would lose everything because knowing this dev team it barely would even be announced.

 

While I agree with everythimg you're saying @Graze , I really doubt they're going to reset anything until the server is considered completely dead. They've already shown reluctance to reset in the past, regardless of how much would've helped.

I'd like to estimate that unless a big change happens soon, the server will likely go belly up within a month. Then they'll probably (hopefully) do a reset to essentially reset peoples interest.

We'll see.

 

The rich wouldn't lose anything though Amatsu. That's the thing. They would spend it before the change happens.

 

This assumes the admins would even bother to tell us or give suitable warning to spend, though, which from my observations is a bit hit or miss if they would.

 

Although it will seem a bit stretched, I suggest to remove Auctions and make the market bigger.
Why?
The auction system has been the cause for the incontrollable deflation of the economy, where most things are now worthless, because the supply-demand relation doesnt work in a game like Minecraft where most resources are endless. You see, people keep auctioning and listing stuff for incredibly low prices because, well, they can! It works irl because distributers get the product from providers, which get it from manufacturers, and it goes deeper , and resources are limited and take time and workforce to get. Thats why theres competition and supply demand works in a modern society. In MC resources are pathetically easy to get for most harcore players, and so they sell them for a very low price (not because they want to but because of competition.). Money is really easy to get atm since prices are dictated by people who either dont understand how the model works or just dont care, because as @Silent Artemis was once saying, they sell for super low prices and disrupt the economy completely. Prices in the market are massive compare to street prices (so to speak). The market has turned useless in terms of buying stuff (apart from spawners) have high demand but ridiculously high supply too (way more than the demand). Auctions and listings have made economy a mess, and even though its a nice concept, it doenst work with this game and its mechanics. I am semi-rich now, with almost 40k in my bank, and everything I got from selling on listings for really low prices because I CAN. Get the point?

Whats the solution?
Remove auctions and listings and instead expand the market options, so that the only direct trader is the market itself. You can still trade directly with players, but since the only parallel is the market, they will stay at least relatively true to those fixed prices. Thats the problem, that there are no fixed prices at all. Make the market not just bigger but with more options like e.g. Make it so I can sell a perfect Elytra to the market itself or some other stuff that you cant sell.
But I dont mean to remove them completely, instead make it so you can only sell unique stuff like heads or enchanted armor and weapons and such. That would keep it away from the main market but still keep it stable.
I wanted to also propose some other changes like replacing mob spawners with eggs,mbut that will be a different post.

Im sorry if I couldnt explain myself well, its a really difficult topic to discuss and im really tired. I hope I showed my point right. Welp, cya around -Kyle

 

The auction is there for a reason, it's an auction. A quick way to make a few $ by supposedly selling items for less than they are worth and having people bid on them till they sell for more or less. The only reason that it's not actually serving it's purpose is because players really don't have another way to get their items out there to others which is why you always see a bunch of random auctions that either don't sell or sell for a lot.

 

This idea is interesting, but I don't think that I agree with you in that the auction system is to blame for low prices. I'd say that the only factor of the system that goes to that is the anti-snipe bug where people can just get away with low prices for the sake of low prices due to a break in the system. If something is put up for cheap, and people want it, the bidding system will force the price up. If it's too expensive nobody will buy it. Auctions will extend past these rules a little bit, but they always do that. They are currently the easiest system for transfer between players, something that I think is needed when face to face is risky. Nonetheless you have a point about the economy of Minecraft servers that I don't think that I can contest.

I do not agree with taking the player to player trade system out at all though. Remember that my goal is a player-driven economy. The changes you suggest go in the entirely opposite direction from that and take the power away from the player to make decisions. The market is your plan will also set the value of the dollar on whichever resource is the most efficient to gather and sell. It takes these materials out of the game, or makes materials appear in the game out of nowhere if someone for some reason decides to purchase from it.

If you want to sell a perfect elytra to the market, my stance is pretty firm that you need to be selling that to other players and not an entity that takes it out of the game. The only way to make that want to happen though is to go and make money worth more so you feel like you're getting something out of what you're selling.

Overall though I still don't agree with you, what you suggest is a decent way to make the economy more market-based and far less player to player based, but that's just not the type of economy that I want to see or play in. I want trade to be dictated by player to player interactions, and not an entity that just comes up with prices for these things that players work off of. As I said, we don't know how much gold is going to be floating around in 2 months when people have automated gold farms running. We can't possibly balance for that as new stuff comes out all the time to increase productivity. It's an area that's too abusable, and too impersonal for my tastes.

I'd write a more to-the-point post that doesn't jump around everywhere if I was less tired. Its late for me rn and I'm just not in the mood to dissect an argument and give my own.

 

I wont respond to every argument here, mainly because im in class and tired af, and also because I now agree with you on some points.

What I wante dto point out right now though, is that I also intend for a player driven economy, but with the game market being the highest entity in it. I pointed out that im for player to player trading, and I didnt express myself well when I said that auctions are the problem. What I meant was more that listings are the problem, but not the listings themselves, instead the abundance of easy to get resources that sink the economy. Player to player should be allowed completely, but The market should include more items so that they serve as a stable lead for the street prices. The main problem for me, again, is the abundance of stuff that makes anything cheap and easy to get. If this continues like this, players will get bored relaly quickly, because there isnt much sense of achievement or progression. Then the server will be dry in a few months. If you want a langlasting server you also need a stable economy, and the economy rn has too much supply for not that much demand, so the value of everything is ridiculous. Either the official market price is adapted to the listings/auction price of stuff, or these are removed and the market is expanded. Because right now, Elytras for example are selling for less than 10% of the market price, which makes anyone able to buy them. You think that its still stable because market and street are two different things and if the prices are low, players also get less money to buy other stuff. But the big problem there is that you can sell stuff for high prices in the market and get super rich. So nothing fits as it is right now. Again, just my view, and im open for criticism.

 

First off, apologies for the multiple redundancies/awkwardness of this post, it was 6am in the morning for me when I typed this, and I hadn't slept
I agree with nearly everything Graze is proposing in this, even if I have slightly different reasons.
I am one of the few people to have obtained a villager spawner before it was taken off the market. If I had the inclination, I could generate more wealth in just a few hours time than most people could make all week through almost any other method, and if I didn't spend every dollar I have on spawners, I would arguably be one of the, if not the richest person on the server. I make and spend almost 100k daily right now, while most players are lucky to get a tenth of that. And it is all because I thought to use villagers to get emeralds before almost anyone else.
Removing the sell option in the market would force me to stop using an inherently broken system and actually go out and play the game. Right now, I can just sit in my tower and gather ridiculous amounts of money all day by harvesting crops while watching anime in the background. Money has no standard of value because the only way to make it is through mining, which is unsupportive of diverse gameplay, and nets a comparably small amount compared to people with lots of villagers.

By making Jobs the only source of income, you incentive the players to play the game how they want, and let them adopt a more roleplay like aspect for a survival game, giving the server a more immersive survival experience (at least for how minecraft goes). Players with a smart sense for trade will still be able to rise, but it won't be an artificial 1% brought about by abused game mechanics. I still provide money for a relatively large portion of players, making massive profits off of their work just because of my villagers. I barely even play the game properly anymore.

So long as new money comes from the server market, there will always be a massive imbalance favoring an exclusive handful of playstyles. Jobs are the only way to make money balanced, with the economy sprouting naturally from that.

 

Just had had someone buy a few premium keys from auction for $15K each, so yeah, things need a change XD/.