Allow me to preface this thread that these ideas are highly experimental and will require tweaking and suggestions for change from the community. With that out of the way, I am sure everyone is aware of the announcements regarding permanent magic by now. I feel it is necessary for us to begin to probe what this will mean for our economy and ECC, and what should be done moving forward. A lot of people are of the impression that these large changes and overarching economic ideas can not be easily influenced by the player, but that is somewhat inaccurate. In fact, it has been known that a single player, with a large enough wallet, has in the past been capable of drastically influencing the market. This leads me to believe with right incentive gains, ingenuity, and collaboration, things can change on large scales on ECC. I have heard some opinions that if you don't like these changes to magic then don't play. Well, I present the counter argument, you can decide to not like or agree with the changes, and do something about it and play. What ultimately drives the economy is the playerbase. The functions of the server are something that we will, that we must, adapt to. There is a lot of people that are for magic being active all the time, a lot that are against magic altogether, and everything in between. I would like to ask, what can those against magic do in this situation if we the players truly drive the economy? In real economic environments, there are multiple things you can do as a business owner. You could decide not to do business within certain markets and groups. You could also be creative in how you compete with other businesses. To compare with how this would look like on ECC, you could blacklist certain players from a town region/ shop that do certain things or use magic primarily. This would cause an overwhelming affect, but the question becomes, don't you lose money and lose to competitors like that? The answer is more complicated than at first glance. Not only are less people purchasing from you which is a negative, but this action will cause a competitive shift in perspective as well as influence supply and demand. So what if a bunch of major players that are proponents of anti-magic decided to blacklist known users of magic and try to promote the use of traditional methods? Could these players collaborate and compete with those who prefer magic at what appears to be a disadvantage? I don't know, but my point still stands, the playerbase has more control and capacity to take risks and influence the market than we may initially notice with a simple lookover. So at this I will leave it to open discussion, how will we prepare to coexist with these changes moving forward? Are we able to give more value to star tools and traditional methods and less value to magic on a community level? Let me know what you all think, because as far as we know, magic is here to stay.
Seems like a really fun idea that will really unite the community! Separating people into two groups based on their opinions has always worked perfectly in the past. Why try to find new ways to improve the economy and gaming experience for everyone, when instead we can try to block out those who didn't agree with us and try to ruin their experience?
@ChefCraft19 Honestly I agree with what your saying, its a bad example, stemming from thinking of ways to utilize town controls on top of marketing and economic ideas, but ultimately this would be divisive and seperate people and cause tension. I didn't write this up bringing "an answer" but as a way to get started on thinking about the change and that the playerbase can influence the economy and adapt to the environment. I did preface the disclaimer at the top as honestly, I don't know a whole lot about the economy and if there is "one answer or solution", its primarily to get an open exchange of ideas to make the most of the situation.
I have had some time to think on the subject and I realized while yes, your sarcastic comment pointed out the worst aspects of an idea when taken to the extremes, it falls into a black and white fallacy and potentially a straw man. Competitors in the market should have a right to control who they do business with without it being taken personally, as ultimately that means if not, they should allow their shops to be taken advantage of. An example, someone who spent days with a L3 Rod grinding multiple double chests decides to sell all their fish to a single person. This person would prefer to have their shop more equally shared among players as their chest shops will get clogged up fast like that and if they are at work or not around it means no one else will be able to shop when they run out of space or money in balance. The act of controlling who can readily access the shops would be a natural response and not a personal one, as they realize that they are not the only shop the person they limit can choose. It would be a rather practical and strategic use of the existing features they already have. ECC has tolerated the existence of /ignore for the longest time, although begrudgingly to some, and the use of limiting people from accessing regions is a similar concept and should not be discouraged, even if it may seem rude. The issue stems from whether you think the act becomes discriminatory or not based on your views on magic, and I'd argue that no, thats not what it has to or should be about, it should be about a player wanting to play the game the way they want to play it, and if they think they can help the economy or improve their shops by doing these things, then they should be able to do so. Again, this method is probably only one of many small things we as a community can start doing more to help the economy not go completely off the rails, but there is still many more creative things I believe we will come up with and should think of in the coming months, even if some of the ideas we come up with are complete busts, as this one may well be.
Well, I see both sides of the coin here, yes players could go the way of a combine and simply choose to make their own non-gmo peanut butter and fertilize using the bucket from an outhouse to give farmers using fossil fuel and using yield increasing bumper crops using manufactured chemicals to play god among the soil down to a science calculated to the single cent whilst laughing from their John Deere or Massey Ferguson and choose the stores that carry either of their goods, though the economy within ECC is very straight-forward and overall, prices depend on what the stores are willing to pay, thus already creating a divide between which stores overall end up with their grain in hand. I honestly do wish there was more singularity with the farm to fork methods on here, using normal tools is a lost art within the game, prices drop according to the fastest tools available and in my 10 years, it's recession worthy. though the fork is Schrodinger's Cat when it comes to the EcoDollar. though prestige is not easily obtained, when profit is involved the speedy bounty gets the short end of the stick. but that's how the big pharma of ECC wants it. chase a bigger, better, faster tool to literally drive prices down to the same profit per hour margins as the vanilla ones in their hay day. now even the tools are priced on what the holding player feels they are worth instead of their honest value to a normal, casual player. no bad point of view, just my 2 cents of why new builders are hitting a brick wall of a stalemate. Niche markets are the only way to survive and it takes a player that knows what's going on within the economy even for that to prosper into anything worth pushing forward for. I read though the entire thread, and simply couldn't resist throwing my 2 cents at it. I highly enjoy the community here, and will always be eager to see what is up the road as each day unfolds. perhaps it's the challenge I enjoy, though to this very day I've never owned a star or magic tool of my own. hopefully someday I will though, as my time could have been better spent the 10 years I've played the struggle path. So, there is that, and I honestly regret nothing. ^.^
