I have not been around EcoCityCraft for terribly long, about 2 months now, but there have been a number of price changes. All have been reductions in prices offered by the server in an effort to keep away inflation. I don't mind these changes, and think the economy should fluctuate, but it seems like, in an effort to keep away inflation, ECC has been a deflationary economy. What is a deflationary economy? It is an economy where items lose value compared to cash. You can buy more pumpkins today for $50 than you could have bought two months ago. This carries over to most (but not all) purchases, based on anecdotal evidence, where pumpkin axes and efficiency 5 tools used to be worth far more, as did all farming goods. I have not gathered any data on mining goods. Some of these changes were brought about by a change in supply (anvil donation became available, raising the supply of eff 5 tools). Others were directly a concern over the amount of money being made available (farming goods price drop). Why is a deflationary economy bad? In the real world, if you can buy more of something tomorrow for the same money, people tend to not buy items. When people stop buying items, stores compete even harder for the dollars that are available, dropping prices, causing further deflation. It can spiral downward, and cause the economy to grind to a halt. This is why governments actually try to have some inflation. Why hasn't the deflationary economy crashed in ECC? An economy is a complex thing, based not only on math, but on the people that make up the economy. If people spend despite deflation then deflation won't spiral into a crash. We play the game for fun, not full rationality. If I know I can get more money tomorrow (even if not as much), and it would be fun to have this item today, then I'll buy it, and worry about stocking my balance later. If deflation hasn't hurt ECC so far, why consider inflation? Inflation and deflation hurt different types of people. Inflation hurts people that hoard money, keeping all their assets liquid, while deflation hurts people that hoard items (basically anything not in their balance). Someone new to ECC is still starting at the same point, and will have the same struggles no matter which way the economy changes. If they have to save 15K, $0.50 at a time, or save 18K, $0.60 at a time, it works out exactly the same. An economy is about more than just the money coming in from the server and leaving the server. It is about money and goods changing hands. People are more willing to buy goods and services in an inflationary economy, as for the same effort later they can get more money. Even people wanting to have fun will only act against pure rationally for so long (or have a limit to how irrational they will behave). If there is concern about the money coming into the server then consider raising some of the costs meant to take money out of the server. Don't limit it to only lowering prices on items to reduce the income, just so you can make the claim that you have no inflation. Yes, extreme inflation can be a huge problem. I think prices lowering are not all bad, but please keep in mind that there are options besides reducing prices.
There have been two major things that have lead to inflation of money and therefor, Andrew lowering value in order to keep money down. 1. Pvp in the mining world. This has been a horribly long debate. With many good points on both sides. But the truth is, the overflow of people in the mining world is due to no pvp. With more people in there, mining goods are easier to get. Meaning that prices have dived. Diamonds used to be $50-$60 when I joined ECC. Now $35 is a high price. So tell me ECC, either item prices will lower and lower or the Mining world will have Pvp, and drive prices up again. 2. Eff V items, and now Eff VII items. With these enchanted items it has made everything extremely easier to obtain. Therefor prices have to lower. All farming prices will lower and lower with more Eff V items. This also lowers mining prices due to the new Eff VII Pickaxes To fix this I propose we remove the Eff tools from the shop, and put PVP in the mining world. Eff items will become rare things. Then new people who come into the picture won't be able to obtain them. To keep builder rage down, make the mining world resident+ Less people will mine there, and residents will hopefully realize it's PVP. It'll cause problems, people will disagree, but the way it sits, the Ecodollar will either keep losing value, and items will keep losing value, or we lose a few people from rage.
The eff 7 tools actually don't affect farming, only mining. And the eff7 shovel is only great when you're excavating underwater.
I was mentioning the Eff 7's and the Eff 5's in the same context. You really didn't argue against my post or agree with it but instead tended to point out paragraph structure mistakes?
Well, it seemed like incorrect information from what I've read. So I decided to mention it. But you meant it correctly, so all is good.
I can give you a point of view from the neoclassical school of economics. Low inflation is good for economic output. The inflation figure is often quoted as 2% in real life, it's likely similar in a Minecraft economy. 2% is low enough to prevent everyone's money becoming worthless too quickly, preventing shop owners having to continually raise the prices of their goods, but high enough to encourage people to invest their money into something which will maintain or increase the value of their money. The investment driven by the inflation allows those who need start-up capital to get it, creating economic activity.
But AndrewKM keeps putting driving forces behind it's downhill-ness. He just added Eff VII Pickaxes/shovels/axes less then a week ago. Therefor driving mining prices down again. If he keeps doing this, it will get very close to the bottom, and stay there.
I agree that the high efficiency items do provide a way to gather large amounts of goods quickly, which will increase supply. I think adding enchanted repairs and anvil services to make these tools easily obtainable, and rarely breaking, was a mistake economy-wise, but good fun-wise. I can't say that I would still be playing if I couldn't repair an item I spent 100K+ on, even if it drives the economy of tools into the ground. Removing the efficiency 7 tools after a bit seems like a good idea, to keep them rare. I think efficiency 5 is a lost cause though, as donors can make the tools fairly easily, and I don't see anvils as so game breaking as to take them away after a donation has been made. PVP in the mining world - I don't feel strongly about either way. It has it's good points, and it's bad points. As a builder I started out mining for my seed money. Taking that away by making it resident+ I doubt would improve the server. Maybe have a builder only mining world that is no PVP, and a resident+ mining world that has PVP? I think that would cause more confusion than the single mining world, but would make the fans of open PVP happier, and still allow new players to get their seed money. Not a great suggestion, but something that might be the starting point of a better suggestion.
To counteract the higher-efficiency pickaxes, perhaps he could increase the aggregate price level of all goods by the percentage of money expended on pickaxes?
No one would go in the mining world if it had pvp and they could go in the non-pvp one. And a it may not improve the server, but if the economy runs into the ground, we'll have bigger problems. Problem is, there are almost always two prices on something. Anything of any value has two prices. The server price, which is found using /worth. And the market price. Which is what everyone will pay for it. Gold is worth $10 to the server, but all the spawnshops sell it at $20, every shop under $20 per bar was sold out.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most real life economy things don't really apply to ECC. ECC is only a small economy that's partly controlled by a central instance* The only way money can get into the economy is through that central instance and it's also the only way it can leave the economy. The money that comes into the economy circulates into the economy until something takes it out again.** Most people strive to play the lottery or buy things from the server (ranks and cheap blocks). This practically limits the user to user economy, but, users need expensive or bulk cheap materials. This is where the user-user economy is. Most of these things are limited between 2 set prices. The price the servershop sells them at, and the price at which the server buys them at. Nearly no one is willing to buy crops*** in bulk, so these aren't included into this economy. The enchanting market is controlled by repair and anvils, which means this, too, has a low demand, but no set serverprice, so they're cheap, but not completely out of the picture. Now the only tools that are worth something are the eff7 tools and melonswords, these have a set buyprice (1500nstars) and nstars have a base price of $150, that means the base price of these tools are 225k. No one will go below that, because they would be losing money, so the farmingtool economy takes only a small hit, especially seeing as the melons are kept valuable for this reason. And the fact that the eff7 tools keep the nstar market alive in the end makes the melonsword more valuable, too. The only thing that really affects the user to user economy would be lowering the prices of mining materials, because this is the main thing that's being sold to each other here. Then there are some other things, like exp and emeralds, that can't be sold to the server, items completely controlled by the user to user market. emeralds are fairly rare items only used for trading villagers (rarely) and for building blocks, this market fluctuates slightly and the prices move around a little. Exp is another one of those examples, this price is completely controlled by a small group of people with spawnshops, this market is kept alive by the great demand for exp, it's used for anvil combinations, enchanting, etc. Which is tied to making money. To make money you need good tools, to make good tools you need experience. When you have good tools, you either go farming, or you go mining. When you go mining you again contribute to the experience market. Now to the point I'm trying to make.. (finally) A deflationary ecoonomy will only happen when the user to user economy receives a big hit, which will only happen when the supply exceeds the demand. And in most of those cases people will end up using /sell on the excess materials. The only market that could potentially take a big hit is the exp market, but the demand for exp is so high that that's very unlikely to happen. *(/sell, shops at spawn, lottery, sg, applications, voting, etc) **(Mostly Lottery, Shops and applications) *** (melons, pumpkins, carrots, potatoes, wheat, etc) Excuse my rambling, I hope I made sense. .-.
Excuse my rambling as well I'm still having trouble grasping this all in my head. But the problem is, supply is starting to exceed the demand. This doesn't mean that everything suddenly drops down to free, but in layers. Diamonds have dropped in half in the last six months. Exp has been dropping for ages and ages. And since no pvp in the mining world, everything found there has dropped in value gigantically. All the farming worth's have dropped too, because of the Eff tools. The thing with farming is, the faster you can farm, the less the farming is worth. People complain about farming but the truth is they're still making the same amount of money they've always made. If pumpkins were $2 it wouldn't be a problem without Eff tools, fly, or speed potions. But if they were $2 with fly, eff tools, and speed potions, we'd be in trouble. All the nerfs have been to balance out the new tools.
A crash that halts the economy won't happen because the server sets a price floor on most materials. That doesn't mean deflation can't occur, just that it's effects are controllable. If goods cost less today (whether sold to (or bought from) a player or the server, whichever is done more often) than they did a year ago deflation is likely occurring. There also doesn't need to be a big hit to anything for there to be deflation/inflation. It can be slow and gradual. There are many things about a real world economy that aren't simulated on ECC, but there are enough that some comparisons can be made. Because of the ability for items to change value over time inflation/deflation and supply/demand both are available. I've referred to faucets and sinks before, as this terminology is used in MMO economy development. Faucets insert money (selling to the server, prizes), while sinks remove money (lotto tax, rank purchases). Both are adjustable, and this is where inflation/deflation is likely to occur. If the faucets insert too much money, there is too much money. When the faucets are reduced deflation starts to occur. If the sinks don't remove enough money, there is too much money as well. If the sinks are increased then inflation starts to occur. It seem counter-intuitive, but both inflation and deflation can be used to address the same problem of too much money (this seems to apply to the small controlled game environment, not to the real world). With simple deflation, you keep your sinks the same, but income is reduced. This causes people to stop throwing money around as they become concerned with how much they will be able to make. This reduces player to player purchases, but sinks will still take out about the same amount of money. With simple inflation you increase the costs of the server items, but income remains the same. This causes people to try to acquire those server items before the price rises again, resulting in more spending, even on player to player trades. Both sinks and faucets can change at the same time, which will effect the amount of inflation/deflation, and will effect different people differently (I may not care about the price of wheat, while another person may have made that their sole income). The best is finding the balance between faucets and sinks that keep money moving, not keeping money steady. If you perfectly balance your faucets and sinks then you run into a problem of rich people being able to hoard, while poor people get little to no gain. That isn't fun. In this case inflation can be your friend. It causes money hoarders to lose value, creating incentive to buy items, and keep the money moving. An example of a market that I think was positively effected by recent changes is the nstar market. New items were introduced, and an old item had it's price increased. These drove up demand for nstars, despite the price floor (server price) dropping. I see far more people trading nstars than I have since the melon prices dropped, and at higher prices. While the change was increased demand, it was driven mostly by the introduction of a new sink, efficiency 7 tools.
What I would like to add is that I think that that doing too much at once can be counterproductive. Instead of changing the price of nstars, putting in eff7 tools and drastically dropping farming prices all within a couple of week, shouldn't one do one of those things and see what happens over the next few weeks/month? The cause for changes that happen now are going to be contaminated because of the amount of changes that were made in such a short period. Like the OP said, I haven't been around very long, and I'm sure that Andrew and Kuke know what they are doing. But from a layman's perspective, making a lot of changes all at once (even if it fixes "the problem" is made less productive than making small changes over a longer period of time. BTW I really love this thread. Mad props to OP for starting such an engaging discussion.
Makes sense on paper, but I really don't want to wait another 6 months for things to switch around. If only one change had to be made, or we were starting with something, it would be pvp in the mining world. This would lower the use of high Eff tools.
You want to isolate variables when you care about what fixes the problem. If you just want the problem fixed, this way is fine. Besides there are still metrics that they can look at to see how much is made farming what crop, how many nstars are spent on the new tools, and how many nstars are sold to the server. The time it takes to fix the problem is important, as an unfun game will lose players rapidly. I have a feeling the nstar server price won't really matter again for a while though, even if they had left it alone. Thanks. Hopefully even the people who don't comment find the discussion worthwhile.
That is a terrible idea. (Yes I know this is an old post) Pvp in mining world would cause: Nether to be almost useless Pvp arena to be useless Spawn campers Builders wouldn't be able to get the resources to create armor and a sword to be able to stay and fight in the mining world. This would form an endless cycle of terror. Resident+ mining world would cause: Builders to not be able to make a profit If you think they could just buy a plot and farm, think again. Where would they get the money to buy a plot? That would lead to plots having to be free Leading to mayor - president a much larger gap
