Economy ideas/thoughts

[Curley]

hey guys.

First off i want comment on the best thing stated here. Timberwolf, you're dead on on what the in game currency should be for. Vanilla minecraft does not have very many things in it, getting them is not hard even on a large scale. As asimov said the only thing scarce was enchanting but with 1.4 changes it's not even that big of a deal anymore. The major point for the in game economy is things that cannot be gotten or quantified in game (plots, player heads, work someone does for you, a portal, etc) and that's what we'll push to implement. Now on to the nitty gritty.

First off, just to clarify, as much as we want to use real world examples for the economy. We do not have a twit bank, the server keeps no collected money, we have no implementation that would be able to handle or need taxes and the such to fund a money pool for projects. This was discussed in length when we brought the idea of the economy up when i built the server. There are many different ways to do all that. Some fantastic plugins exist but, for better or worse, we decided to keep it super simple and implemented just a simple economy plugin that introduced coins. nothing more nothing less. This choice at all was to help people in trading as we have seen on other servers that resort to odd complicated barter systems. For what it's worth the economy is not something we're trying to balance or bolster or pretty much do anything with in any major way. We're not running a economy simulator. We run a minecraft server. The intent was to add a simple addition to have fun with and as long as it's not infringing on anyone's ability to have fun in a minecraft world then at it's base level the economy plugin is working just fine. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss it, I think we have tons of tweaks to make it even better, I'm just saying it's not a crazy world ending dealbreaker and is only one small thing offered from twitcraft. We could rehaul the system and i could start looking into specifically what's available out there but for now this is what we have to work with. The server doesn't need money and we don't have any benefit to taking money out of players hands for no reason. What we need is gold sinks and I'd like to focus on adding those.

So money top and the general knowledge of peoples money. Listening to both sides i don't see why it's a problem. It wasn't added with any intention, it's just part of iconomy. For the request of the top 100 list, i can easily put that together, it's all in an sql database and it's super simple to dump and format but it looks like some more discussion is needed about it. If people want to horde let them horde. It allows for another game within a game and once there's stuff to buy people will either buy them or horde more. As per most things, I'll let the discussion continue before making any changes or posting things.

Twitmart signs. As I mentioned in the paragraph regarding the economy plugin. At the beginning we had no way of introducing coins into the server without just blatantly giving coins to people. We figured this would be the solution. We figured inflation would be an issue but couldn't have anticipated how quickly you guys amassed coins. We figured we'd set the buy signs at such an abysmally crappy number that it would entice players to seek out other player shops to trade with and only if there wasn't someone buying or there was a surplus would it make sense to sell to the twitbuy signs therefore slowly trickling coins in. As stated here the issue is the infinite nature of them along with their location and ease of use. There were discussions of plugins that auto adjust costs of infinite buy and sells signs based on the supply and demand of the server as well as, as stated above, setting up a server bank that actually could run out of money and/or items. Personally I'd like to see it where they are replaced by players which would then negate the need for anymore back-end additions.

Stargates. LETS DO STARGATES! I've been wanting to for such a long time but with these mc releases being so buggy and the looming big api switch has spooked some dev's and the plugin i adore is one of those. incidentally i just checked and the bloody thing is updated soooo yeah. expect those soon. The discussion regarding how we implement them does need to be finalized though. regarding just plain mechanics you should know that they all can be private and locked and also maintain their own network. they function much like the actual tv show stargates with a dialer and whatnot. So work with that. We could do something where people can buy one for their city (or pool together money). We could have it so people that buy them can only allow a group to use it or we can make portals that only go between the other portals you want. we can have one way portals, portals separate for twitcraft proper to bridge some of the major far apart things, while still maintaining other peoples personal portals. And yes we can even have toll costs associated with portal use. Tons of possibilities and not hard to implement. As I've said before tho, i do adore the idea of the rail system and especially the amount of work that's gone into them, But as I've seen mentioned here even with rails, the world being a 10k diameter can be a bit daunting even for the nether rail. gotta find a balance.

ATM's were added specifically as an incentive to get people to come on the server once a day and slightly to increase traffic to the main areas. Their monetary value is not intended to be anything but a reward. We can tweak them to serve other purposes easily.

The most ready to deploy thing coming very soon will be the leo lots and or region expansion/addition. We have the ability now but server stability has always been on a higher priority for me and with this speedy release cycle mojang has gotten into has cause my minecraft time to go to nothing but bug squashing. 1.4 specifically has been a glorious bag of sticks but I'll make do. We all wanted this mystical plugin that met all our requirements but i feel, and I still have to finalize this with mods, we're going to stick with making regions then adding the owner to them as a member manually. It's not THAT time consuming and if priced correctly there shouldn't be so many at anytime. we'll probably do it through modreqs unless i come up with something.

Ok so, I gotta go. Sorry that this post became a jumble word vomit but i'm in a rush to get the house ready for a gingerbread house party. My intent was to not necessarily solve anything, I am not the final word on anything beyond the technical aspect of the server, but to offer my opinion from the standpoint of what is possible and also explain a bit of the reasoning behind the current choices. I hope I've done that. please continue discussing and suggesting things as this is causing some super fun debates behind the scenes and I'll do what i can to add things asap. ^_^

[Curley]

fun fact, started writing that before the last few posts went up. Be civil guys. The forums are for thoughtful discourse.

[asim0v Profile]

Thanks for the input Curley! Gold sinks is exactly the term I was looking for but couldn't find, so I used taxes.

Good to hear improvements are coming soon (TM) [I think Blizzard/Activision owns the trademark on that, actually]! Personally, I can't wait for stargates to be implemented. I have my home set at a remote home I've been working on, so I have to go to spawn and take the rail to Sky5 because its' faster than using the private rail system I built between the two locations.

The rationale for the TWiTMart [Sell] signs is completely understandable, but it has allowed players to amass large amounts of money fairly quickly. The coal/charcoal/redstone signs in particular established a baseline for the economy. Personally, I'm guilty of finding player-made shops selling those three items below $20/stack and re-selling to TWiTMart for a profit. I know that's completely fair within the bounds of any economy, but that doesn't stop me from feeling a bit dirty after doing it. I like the idea of barring players above a certain monetary threshold from using the signs. As funny as it sounds, I would probably start selling coal/charcoal/redstone below the TWiTMart price because of an excess in stock if I was barred from selling at TWiTMart. That doesn't stop others from buying from me and re-selling to TWiTMart, allowing for the generation of wealth for both players, even if it is only a small amount on the re-seller's part. Removing the TWiTMart [Sell] signs entirely would post quite a problem for new players in making money. On the other hand, it would force them to seek out other avenues to make money from players. Of course, that's all dependent on players buying from players via shops, which can't always be counted on as it's an unknown.

The ATMs are not even an issue while you can sell to TWiTMart as far as I am concerned. The amount is small compared to what you can make at TWiTMart and isn't enough that I feel compelled to login every day, whether I have the time or not, to collect my free cash. It's good for new players just starting out that are on a lot.

Lastly, I created a poll and tweeted it out to see where people stood on the top 5 list issue. There are only a handfull of votes so far, so I wouldn't exactly call it an accurate reflection, but keep an eye on it. http://strawpoll.me/5746

[Bahnh0f Profile]

Okay so after reading Curley's post on what is technically possible, and the others who pointed out some technical problems. I must amend my recommendation and ask a few feasibility questions.

I think a job exchange would be an excellent way to create cash flow among players, Dio said he could not find anyone to demolish a building. Would it be possible to set up a sub-forum, bulletin board in world or just a simple classifieds system for jobs? ex: Looking to have a hill leveled will pay 500c contact bahnh0f.

Also why dont we have a list of private shops that buy things? I'm sure it could be tedious to maintain, but if it was self regulated it could work. Just create one thread and have players list the location and what their shop buys --only buys-- this should not be hijacked for advertisement. Then have them edit their post to make changes. This would also help stabilize the price of items and create competition on the demand side.

I am now 100% behind high ticket items, knowing that the money that paid for them would not get recirculated and be high enough to make a dent in the total amount of cash in the game. If high ticket items are available and desirable enough to keep purchasing/renting, then the money that is paid to create them is "destroyed" then the inflation will balance it self out. Just so long as we don't destroy more than is being injected in to the system, at which point you will have a period of decreased purchasing followed by almost exponential deflation that will force everyone hoard or be poor. "Trickle up" economics would work fairly well here, where a lot of small players make money and it works it way up until the top person destroys it by buying his Stargate or what have you.

Im not going to comment on the TWiTmart I stand behind my original idea. As for the atms they do help new players and probably stimulate the economy a tiny bit, think of it as a continual stimulus. asim0v is correct in my opinion, the 55c from the atm is tiny compared to TWiTmart, where lots more coins can be earned in a short time.

If high priced items are introduced and done correctly, from an economics stand point, it could sove most of the inflation issues, without any other changes. The prices on these items can not be fixed, they need to fluctuate and lower as the natural deflation occurs or it will only cause even more hoarding. An example of a way to do this would be to charge a set fraction of percentage of the total cash in the game say.

I'm not die hard against money hoarding as I dont think it hurts the economy too much, however, and this is a big however, if hoarding continues without spending when we go through changes, like the deflation that is so needed through adding high ticket items, the economy will collapse.

If done too quickly deflation is just as dangerous as run away inflation (think bank runs during the great depression) every one will save money and no one will buy anything.

[Timberwolf1777]

Wow thanks again for all the discussion. Thanks Curley, Vantes, Asim0v, Bahnhof for the considered and insightful input.

I know that I have hammered against the top 5 list and I see a straw poll going about it (thanks Asim0v). I don't actually care about the top 5 list's existence that much. If people want to hoard, that's their choice. Removing the list will maybe or maybe not help with hoarding. I don't care that much but I have one last thing to say before I never speak of it again (I promise).

The main issue with the list is that it makes coin accrual a goal. With removing or limiting TWiTMart Sell signs, suddenly there will be a lot of players who will now be forever locked out of ever having the option to get on the top 5 list. That means that the players currently on it will probably be the only players ever on it. Keeping the list after the Sell signs were limited or removed would be a huge "in your face, I won at the money game and you can never beat me" statement from the top 5 players to the rest of the community, whether they mean it or not. (I know how you earned your money Vantes, I know you are different in this) That will upset a LOT of people. By removing the list, we remove that goal, which means that although there will still be uber rich players, it will take away the sting of unfairness to the rest of the community. (Assuming we limit or remove TWiTMart's sell signs)

If we are going to limit or change or remove the TWiTMart signs, the list must go away, for the sake of keeping the community. That's it. Thanks

[Robrotheram Profile]

I am no way wealthy in the server with only about 1-2 k of coins since I play for building stuff rather then making money. I am indifferent with the top 5 list. I think it can incurring and diswade users at the same time.But I like the way of limiting users over a certain amount to use fast money making sceme.

On the subject of Stargates thank god its coming. As atm the only person in DOT. i do have to admit the transport is terrible partly the massive distance between main location such as Stone run, hyrule etc. I am slowing coming up with a new transport plan which is going to take a lot of undertaking. But basically 4 new hubs (instead of the ones that exist now) about ~2000 blacks from spawn connected by both rail and star-gate(for istant travel to the hubs instead of the long rail line). at the hubs they travel to the location. but plan is still being worked on in my mind. This should keep the vinilla aspect of the server we all love but also add faster travel to veruter places.

[Dio Profile]

For the record, I would like to point out that all of my money has come from selling items to players. I even sell things at and below twitmart [iSell] prices because I don't like the idea of these resources being deleted from the world.

So it's plenty possible to make the top 5 without using TwitMart.

[Goobler Profile]

I think we should keep that top 5 list, in event of a revolution we, I mean those commies, know who to come after first.

The economy in my opinion is stagnant but I don't think many players even pay attention to it which is one of the major factors. I personally enjoy spending my monies on building supplies and real estate. I do however, like Bahn's idea of setting up a labor section, and I in another post came up with the idea of a chamber of commerce which could have some pseudo taxes for members and possibly bring newer players into the fold about the economy with easy to see lists and locations of member stores and special buys.

Top 5ers, the People's Liberation Front is always watching