The Economy Is Collapsing

So in the last few days I've noticed a huge decline in the economy. Important money making items that people mine for like diamond and Iron have dropped in price significantly while all other materials are staying constant. It's making it very hard for players to sell what they mine to buy any sort of materials that we shop keepers provide at reasonable prices. the way i see it we have 2 choices we can either come up with a nice mid ranged number not to drop below, i was thinking [ 17 per diamond][3 per iron ingot], that can get players to sell and buy to shops more frequently or we need to drop the prices of all other materials in order to make the game more enjoyable for the people on this great server. were losing a lot of business and making the game too much like single player minecraft by keeping things the way they are going

 

Friend, give it a week and prices will probably jump back up. People were most likely trying to get gold and such for money to get a shop and ended up with more than everyone needed atm, but that will change like the normal economy

 

Yeah, the mall auctions will screw it up for a bit

 

Yeah you should look up stuff on economies as a flux in something will bring prices down and since the mall spaces are being sold people are doing all they can in order to buy a booth. When you mine for gold unless you mining at 29 y you will see some diamonds so they will drop as the influx of diamonds will flood the market. After this cools down diamonds will return to its normal price. I would advise hording diamonds until the mall auctions die down and people start asking for Diamonds again and then you make more money. Stock market for the win

 

very true it normally does go down then back up. the only thing that worried me is the fact that it went down a week before the auctions started and its stayed there the whole time. but other prices keep going up

 

probs cus people were selling the diamonds and junk and not getting any of the other stuff because the others are known for selling for more, thus it got over stimulated with diamonds and iron

*edit* also because people were starting to save up sense the last shop auction, so prices should go back up, than dip in a week again because another shop sale is in two weeks

 

To be honest, I don't think prices will go up too much anymore. As with the new OP enchanting, it is much easier to get Fortune III pickaxes, meaning it is easier to get diamonds and other fortune-able ores. As long as it is easier to get Fortune pickaxes, it will be easier to get diamonds and because of that, prices will stay lower as they are. I think getting the shop merchants together to set a "standard" price is a nice idea and I hope it will work, but there will always be that one person who sets their prices lower so they can be "the cheapest on the server". With that in mind, I think supply v demand will sort itself out eventually.

 

The economy isnt collapsing, the economy is just fluctuating, driven by demand and supply. Iron used to be sold for about 1 dei Der ingot about 2 years ago, and diamonds were as cheap as 10-12 Dei per just before the map reset. Plus, the more merchants on the market, the lower price for all goods in shops. Competition is always good for retail customers.

That said, earning those 40-60k bids back will take some time and need some hard labor.

 

There is a market in the kingdoms, HOWEVER extremely hard at times to predict, while i'd say 15% of time is the easier part, if watched carefully, can be predicted. This report is from observation in last month.
For instance, there was a high, everywhere need and reasonable sale for glass, so i flooded the market, making 1200 or so off of 3 or so shops. There had been other opportunities as well, not as many as the harder times as mentioned.
Otherwise, it has been rough.
Just An Observation Peoples, Opinions may/will Vary lol

Wilderness is seemly tempting to some in poverty.

Lets Hope For Diamond Block Protect? lol ;o) jk

 

Diamonds will be 9 dei sooner or later. They basically have the almost useless utility of emeralds since sponsors get them (tools) for free. The entire town of Doha can run off my own spare tools..

Also, the value of any item will probably decrease slowly over time as more and more are introduced to the main world economy. Players just change ownership of unessential/non-buildable items over and over.

Unless.... There is a time limit per day for each player to be in the mining world, increasing with every rank in the craftsman class specifically. But, this is too radical of an idea for us.

 

nah the shops control everything if we just agreed to keep the price somewhere then it would fix everything. its only based off of who's more greedy

 

....a bunch of people gave you actual thought economics from both a real world and server perspective and you're bent on thinking setting a standard price is a good idea because of what exactly? And it's hardly greedy, it's an economy, as long as there are price fluxes it means it's healthy

 

We could always delete all the shops and make a big admin shop if you want dscarbon.

 

1. The Shops don't control everything, much of the market is held by people who mine and sell the stuff they mine. Sometimes they sell directly to the buyer, sometimes they sell to the shops.
2. This is a somewhat free market economy, meaning if a resource is not needed it drops in value. If you want to keep the value of these items high, tell me why? Why those items and not other, like dirt, or seeds or cobblestone? Why don't we all agree to make cobblestone 100 Dei/stack worth? You can not agree to put value to something that everybody finds useless.

 

its the value that its a hard to find resource. Most players cant afford to donate and are stuck in poverty but then go mining for a day. Come back with 40 gold can can just buy everything they need. So what's the point in playing if you can buy everything in 1 or 2 days and you finish building. It just turns this server into 1 big creative server with no point instead of a fun economy based realistic server with objectives and goals to work towards. If everything is dirt cheap and you can get everything you could ever want in a day or 2 what's the point. Why not just play on a creative server where youre given the items for free anyways

im not saying just raise those prices. They were just examples

 

It seems to me that you don't understand the mall. If someone wants to buy building material that is easy to get why would they pay outrageous prices. Suply and damand plays a big part in how things sell even in a virtual world.

You got two types of people in normal minecraft servers ones who want to do all the work themselves and ones that want things handed to them or bought. If I was to buy building materials I myself wouldn't want to pay much over 10 die for a couple of stacks of cobble that would take me at most a minute to mine. Same way with anything else that is why prices will end out were they seem to be today. Anyway if someone wants to spend the time mining for gold in order to buy material go ahead but why not spend that time getting the material themselves and not paying anything.

 

See, the supply and access to mining world is unlimited. For that reason there is constant deflation.

 

How much shops control me:

I needed stacks of hard clay for a building so I went to the /mall and noticed they cost 50 Dei per stack. Although I had the money, I thought it was too much for an item I could get on my own that easily, I left the shop and typed /mine. Ta da
At a second occasion I found that a few players were mining a mesa biome because their town was next to it so, instead of going to the almighty shops that control everything, I messaged them and got a price 20% lower for each stack.

(No matter how greedy shop owners are, customers can be even more)

'Its the value that its a hard to find resource' you said, so, if diamonds were really a hard to find resource they would accumulate value on their own.

It is basic economy: Offer and demand.
The value of something is not determined by its price tag, its usefulness vs scarcity/rarity is what makes people be willing to spend more money for that item.

- In the moment we have many active players trying to raise money to get their towns/buildings/shops going, that leads them to /mine where they will mine more and, therefore, increase the Offer of their favorite trade-items. Diamonds and iron are on most people's top 10.
- At the same time, we have more players saving for their projects and actively playing donors claiming their diamond kits more than ever, reducing the Demand for diamonds.

With both high offer and reduced demand, it is obvious that prices will go down.

Anchoring diamond prices would not make them harder to find (reduce offer) nor make them more useful (increase demand). That would lead players to feel that the price offered by the shops cartel is not a good price and would probably act in the same way I did in my 'Tale of the Hardened Clay'.

tl;dr: You can increase an item's price just by typing a higher number, but you can't increase its real value. Artificial prices increase would lead to a decline on customers.

Also (sorry, I know this is already too long), diamonds being cheap doesn't mean the economy is collapsing or that there is no point in the game because 'we are almost in creative mode here'. It just means that you are picking your favorite trade-item as indicator of the entire server's economy.
Dirt, for example, is being sold for 10 Dei a stack at /mall, which is the highest price I have ever seen lol...

Now the question is: Would you pay 10 Dei on a stack of Dirt because that is the only price /mall offers you?

 

you could also look at it this way. If diamonds cost 13 die per and at one point they cost 25 die per that means that your die value essentially doubled. You may think that diamonds costing more means you make more money but in reality it means you money value is less which in turn means that you are not gaining anything.

 

Although the topic is pretty much over, i would like to comment on few parts put together:

If some merchants would try to make a cartel to keep prices "somewhere" then i would be the first one to fight against this cartel by competitive pricing. Thats for the first part.

But for the second part, i am sure there would be more merchants doing the same thing. And that makes this server "fun economy based realistic server" regardless if you like it or not.