Archived The Economic Stability Of Massive Craft

[Asomira]

Hello everyone, for a brief preface my name is Asomira and I've been on MassiveCraft for four years now, and I've seen the economic stability of the player ran market decline. Now I will recognize and acknowledge that these are just ideas in which I have seen prior to on this server or have thought up. But all are ways to help the secure the economic stability of MassiveCrafts ever changing market.

To start off I believe that through minute changes that in the long term would not only help the amount of Regals to deflate but as well as the amount of resources to deflate as well. Now I'd first like to focus on Factions as well as the non-material Regal. When I first started playing on MassiveCraft Factions cost 300 Silver, now in today's economy the currency is based in Regals and we can find the difference from Silver to Regals by multiplying the amount in Silver by 10, so in today's currency the original faction cost would be 3,000 Regals. Which is highly unlikely that there will be very many factions to appear at that price. But I stand in firm affirmation that MassiveCraft should increase the cost to create a faction from 100 Regals to about 10 times that at 1,000 Regals. Now I understand that with MassiveRestore one of the big worries is that newer players won't be able to save their starting base, but with what I suggest is that MassiveCraft highly advises players to join a Faction because MassiveCraft has very unique Plugins and people should be introduced to them gradually through a preexisting faction. Another change in which I believe that could be applied to factions to reduce the amount of Regals in circulation is double the faction tax. Of course I believe that the preexisting factions should be grandfathered in to the creation price, but would have to conform the faction tax price.

Another way in which MassiveCraft is unique is that the cost of 1 diamond is the same as 1 Regal respectfully, and that is comparable to how most modern currency is represented in its value of gold. But, there is a problem here in this, when I first started the price of diamonds was about 10 Silver each which comparing that to a sizable 100 Regals a diamond. Between MassiveRestore as well as just the implementation of new worlds the price of diamonds has plummeted. Now one way in which I suggest that we can gradually increase the price of diamonds while supplying some more Regals to the economy to compensate for the faction taxation cost as well as creation cost increases, is to Re-open a shop in Regalia that would buy diamonds at a fixed price, now to offer a price as well as the one I would offer as the actual price would be a running rate of 7 Regals per diamond block. And the justification for this is because diamonds are everywhere and have the same value as killing a mob per say. Another way in which I suggest we try to recover the base price of diamonds is to revert the diamond armor durability changes that were made. Now I know that they were made for a reason, that people with axes break armor, simple as that, but that is exactly what we need in order to not only to increase the price of diamonds but also the price of the products made from them.

Those are the ideas in which I have to help secure the stability of MassiveCraft economy. Let me know what you guys think, I am eager to not only read what you guys have to say but also to discuss it in an open mind to fix the economy.

 

[65jes89]

I don't think there should be admin shops on massive. Ever. I like the fully player run economy and think it should stay that way. There are much easier ways to fix diamond inflation, most notably removing /fix, which would keep the completely player run aspect.

Also, 300 silver would be equal to 3,000 regals, not 300,000.

 

[Asomira]

Thank you for your input, I think that a /fix nerf would be a good thing, I don't know about the removal all together of it. On the topic of the admin run shop the idea was to have it buy diamonds, not sell them in order to help purge some of the diamonds out of the economy, to clarify my intent. And this has empirically been proven to work when the SilverEdge bank bought diamonds and help sustain a stable economy.

 

[Mecharic]

With all due respect to the server staff and to the unique player-only economy... it's not really a player only economy anymore is it? MassiveRestore, a server function, adds an infinite amount of resources and materials into the game continuously - even more so than the addition of new worlds. With /fix and with premiums not dropping armor (I approve of both of those btw) there is even less of a diamond market. These are all interventions by the server/staff that devalue items in-game. Voting adds Lore Items into the game that have nothing to do with 'player only' activities. The point is that this server hasn't been running a Player-Only economy for a while, so adding more staff/server drains for assorted goods won't suddenly make the economy a staff-run economy.

Now, on to the actual idea. I've suggested this in the past - that "Regalia" (staff shops) purchase large quantities of materials every so often for expeditions to new worlds, to supply conflicts like the old Qadir-Regalia war, and to supply the Regalian Fleet and Armed forces. Using entirely in-character methods the server could set up shops that buy anything from diamond and other minerals to armor pieces and finished products. Now, the question is "should they" and I think that they should. As the OP states, it would give a minimum wage of sorts that would help new players make money which would in turn help support faction growth and expansion. It would also help roleplayers rent houses in Regalia by making it easier to make money. Lastly, it would force shops in the marketplace to raise their buy/sale prices for assorted products in order to compete, which has the potential to make people a lot of money - but also the risk of costing a lot of money.

I would suggest a trial run - a month long period where the server buys an assortment of materials/finished products/ext from players. Lets see how it effects the overall server and then run a poll on it when the buying ends to see what the players overall think. If it helps the economy and players like it, it would either become a regular thing or be continuously open. If it doesn't help the economy or players don't like it, the shops don't re-open. Seems fairly simple to me.

 

[Asomira]

I believe that it would be tough to pinpoint in the event of 1 month if the implementations of any economy driven change will be apparent tot that of an unseen eye, it would take a sizable amount of side work to keep accurate numbers. But I definitely agree with your idea and the introduction to more "admin shops" that help purge off resources.

 

[65jes89]

Problem with this is, it would just transfer diamond inflation over to regal inflation, and I think that since there are multiple available options which would reduce diamond inflation without increasing regal inflation, we should look into those more instead of just spreading out the diamond inflation over the entire economy.

 

[FireFan96]

One idea is to change the Repair McMMO config. A server I played on made it so that at level 1250, repair function like /fix, except you still pay diamonds to repair on the anvil. This might be a good idea, since most items here don't exceed vanilla enchants, making people more apt to repair on the anvil.

(I have no idea if this is a feature already. I'm just assuming that mcmmo is on default settings.)

 

[AgentLew]

With all due respect to the server staff and to the unique player-only economy... it's not really a player only economy anymore is it? MassiveRestore, a server function, adds an infinite amount of resources and materials into the game continuously - even more so than the addition of new worlds. With /fix and with premiums not dropping armor (I approve of both of those btw) there is even less of a diamond market. These are all interventions by the server/staff that devalue items in-game. Voting adds Lore Items into the game that have nothing to do with 'player only' activities. The point is that this server hasn't been running a Player-Only economy for a while, so adding more staff/server drains for assorted goods won't suddenly make the economy a staff-run economy.

Now, on to the actual idea. I've suggested this in the past - that "Regalia" (staff shops) purchase large quantities of materials every so often for expeditions to new worlds, to supply conflicts like the old Qadir-Regalia war, and to supply the Regalian Fleet and Armed forces. Using entirely in-character methods the server could set up shops that buy anything from diamond and other minerals to armor pieces and finished products. Now, the question is "should they" and I think that they should. As the OP states, it would give a minimum wage of sorts that would help new players make money which would in turn help support faction growth and expansion. It would also help roleplayers rent houses in Regalia by making it easier to make money. Lastly, it would force shops in the marketplace to raise their buy/sale prices for assorted products in order to compete, which has the potential to make people a lot of money - but also the risk of costing a lot of money.

I would suggest a trial run - a month long period where the server buys an assortment of materials/finished products/ext from players. Lets see how it effects the overall server and then run a poll on it when the buying ends to see what the players overall think. If it helps the economy and players like it, it would either become a regular thing or be continuously open. If it doesn't help the economy or players don't like it, the shops don't re-open. Seems fairly simple to me.

Click to shrink...

Mech, you've basically presented some of the ideas that have been bugging me for quite a long time now, and in all honesty, when I first joined the server I had expected to see a true player based economy in full functionality, what I saw instead is what I now refer to as a "Void Economy". The basis behind a Void Economy is that money comes from an infinite source and eventually ends up being discarded in a "void"; it's essentially what the majority of Minecraft servers' economies are, though they're plagued with server shops that draw materials and money from nowhere and also put materials and money in a "void".

To put it into simple terms for Massivecraft's features: Money is made from an infinite source when a player kills a mob or votes for the server, money also disappears into a "void" when faction taxes are done or a player buys an item through a quest. Now the only issue that we're coming to is the fact that it's rather simple and easy to make a large amount of money, and the money's only way to end up in the "void" is through faction taxes or quests which don't drain nearly as much money as they maybe should to keep inflation in check. I'm not saying to not give people regals for voting or for killing mobs, there has to be a way for every economy to "print" their money and distribute it accordingly, but as I stated before: currently there's more money being printed than being voided and thus we have the inflation of the regal.

Of course, they're many ways to fix the inflation, one way includes changing the system by which the current economy follows for a more fluid circular flow of regals throughout the server rather than the linear flow that the current economy follows(I have a specific idea for how this would work, though I'm not gonna rant about it now). But of course the fixing of the economy would involve not only the inflation of regals but also fixing the inflation of materials. Mech, you've mentioned one of the wonderful ideas that I had thought the server was using when I had first joined: Materialistic trading to the capital city, aka Regalia. Well that's the underlying basis that I'm seeing in the idea anyways, and I'm not really seeing where I can touch on more, without delving into a rant about the "perfect" Minecraft economy, since you explained the idea in such a way that'd work with Massive's current economy.

 

[Mecharic]

Why did this thread die so quickly... lol