Just because it isn't labeled an economy server, doesn't mean there is no economy and it isn't an issue to focus on. One of the most attractive features of the server is the economy so..

 

Prices went messy

 

I regret not hoarding beacons when they were 5-7 diamonds.

 

Is this the thread where broken speculators can complain? Asking for a friend

No seriously, I'm so angry I didn't buy Gold IRL back in 2003, when I kinda felt like it would rise. But things are like they are. The Price for Diamonds will eventually rise again. Maybe it will drop further Prior to rising. You never know. You cannot Change it unless you are THE Diamond Tycoon (like OPEC lowering oil production rate to higher the Price).

But I agree to the fact that there should be more usages for Diamonds. Maybe they will once get cheap enough for People to craft them. They will then be used and Prices will rise again. If we don't want it to get that far we must create new usages, hence enable Players to trade them in at /warp grass. But if value is so volatile, what would be the Exchange value there?

 

It has dropped dramatically and one thing I'd like to see is more villagers in warp donor or warp grass which take in diamonds.

 

Let's just see the server as a country. If the government (admins) are constantly changing rules for the economy, the economy will get worse. You can help the economy to get out of a depression or save money for the next crisis, but if you change too much, the economy will not do very well in the future. Also this has been suggested several times already and it's still the same answer: No. The system works and if you hate that people are paying more and more (or less) you shouldn't play on the server. Items WILL get lost because many people get inactive someday with all the diamonds. Sometimes you even loose it forever (in the void). The only people who are raising the prices are the wealthy players. If you want to change prices you have to convince most of them to pay less for an item. The poor players are only controlling a small part of the items, but the REALLY expensive ones (beacons etc.) are controlled by rich players.
Even if you invent a whole new currency the result will be the exact same, just a year or two later.

 

I don't think this is necessary

 

You have put quite some efforts in this spreadsheet and it's pretty interesting. I think you are aware however of how theoretical this is. How could you otherwise explane the huge gap between your results and reality. Pointing out that gap is exactly what you wanted to, right?

You cannot constrict every value to the time it took to create it. Of course we want to be paid for the trouble of creating that value. But also for the raw material (pickaxe, grass we had to convert to dirt for crops etc...). And for the rarity (offer / demand). And for our reputation / trustworthness (a customer will agree to pay a higher price for being 100% sure not to be scammed). And we want a margin, wich is usually proportional to the pice of the product / service, so we can make a benefit we can reinvest.

You brake everything down to the value of grass and diamonds. However the major difference between those two and the other items is that you don't have to work for them, sometime not even to be online. So you cannot say 34 grass "costs" 24 hours then check how much logs can harvest in 24 hours non-stop-work and divide it by the grass amount. Noone works 24/7. That makes them rarer, thus more expensive than the pricing in your spreadsheet. Also you cannot do anything else while producing those items, while grass is just spawning without you Intervention.

You must also consider the possible outcomes of the products. Whereas grass is used for buying things and terraforming, Diamonds are barely used to craft anything and only occasionally used to buy things (compared to grass). They are mainly used to hoard up wealth (though it's a bad idea IMHO). Since they are almost useless, yet multiplying, the price had to drop.

Minor remarks:

The bulk part of the smooth Stone produced in the economy is generated, not smelted. So it's cheaper than cobble, because faster to mine.
You take into consideration crop growth but not the harvesting. It's a bigger Trouble to harvest Acacia than it is to harvest Birch. Other example: even with the biggset automated farm, noone will ever sell 50 stacks (almost a DC!) of potatoes for one single grass. Ever.

 

Just cause you said that, im going to farm a dc of potatos and sell it for 1 grass
This is Coming from the guy who paid 1k for a stick on org.



Anyways (general message, not toward anyone) no, the economy is as the economy does. If youd like prices back up, start a movement and try to get people to follow. A few can influence many if you try. Dont start huge, just slight increases.
Get people to catch on.

 

rip

 

The economy is genuinely dead, people used to care so much more about the basics and the game used to be about actually making a good skyblock, not just donating and hoarding.

 

Yes, I totally agree. I have been a long time player of the server and have gradually seen the economy fall into chaos as donation ranks give you more stuff and hoarding, like you said.

 

Edited. Thank you for your opinions and views on this topic.

 

Each day I get
/Kit Wood
/Kit Wool
/Kit Iron
/Kit Donor100
/Kit Donor250

And to that the other kits (/kit Spawner, /kit donor10, /kit donor25, /kit donor50) and that's quite a haul of stuff.
I dont build much so the majority of this stuff just sits there waiting for me to get inspiration.
Now if there was something that you could feed all of this stuff into (like Klein Stars or the transmutation tablet in Tekkit) it would redistribute the wealth a bit better.
Do I want endless chests of redstone blocks, iron blocks, wood & wool? Not really.
Do I want power? Yes
A bigger island? Yes
If I'm feeding an entity that will give me these then that's a good way to spend all of the above tat that I get each day.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the kits but it does get to the point where I dont use a lot of what I get.

A bigger concern from my point of view is the Donor rank maxing out at 400. Im not sure of the current split between ranks but as time goes on more people will reach Donor400. Theoretically everyone would eventually get to Donor400 and be pulling in 4 dias a day, lots of materials etc. For free.

Where would the donations come from? It needs to be addressed.
I'd suggest a Donor600 rank, maybe with a Custom Head as the reward. I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. I'd like to be able to convert my existing placed heads back to unplaced. I'd like to be able to give my items custom names in colour. I'd like to have banners like there are at Warp Spawn on my Island. I'd like access to higher level mobs as pets. I'd like to have access to other mobs. I'd like access to the nether. I'm sure all these things could happen.
I'm wittering now so I'll stop but it's something that's worth considering.

 

Why so formal? Call me Fred

Yeah, the costs. But you don't just want to cover your costs. You want more. You don't take a loan to invest in a company just to pay it back so you can say "ok well I'm done here"

Exactly, ROI for instance. Though I would call it operative income, as there are no investors involved. Yes it's true in some way, the producers get shortchanged. But according to your spreadsheet, on many items, buyers are as well. Noone gets 30 stacks of cobble for one grass.

Excuse me if I don't get the comparison, I'm not in any other similar game right now.

Yes there might always be one player gathering each item. But there are also always (almost) every player "gathering" grass. So it cannot be compared, even on a macro scale. That's my point.

Inflation and deflation are mainly triggered through interest rates and how easily banks lend money. This is something that doesn't come up here. Prices fluctuate either because someone says "hey I can sell that cheaper! let's do this" (keep in mind everything can be produced infinitely) or because suddenly all trade chests with that item are empty. As for now, it's mainly the first thing that happens, that's why people think the economy is "messed up". I haven't seen the "glorious thirties" of skyblock as I am quite new, and I find the economy quite okay. Getting along quite well with it at least.

Yes almost anything will do. Just get rid of these diamonds, which for now are just cheaper heads (understand: just as useless).

Donors with enchanted pickaxes and massive generators sell massive amounts to non-donors (right KhalDrogo ?). I'm still not a donor. I've smelted maybe 10 stacks of stone in 4 months playing time, not more. Now I'm selling it by the double chest. Non-Donors eventually also get access to godded pickaxes. That's why this cannot be accurate.

Ähm no, well, I think... at least it's not explained in the comments, and the price seems to confirm. Seriously, 50 stacks for one grass? How could this be? You also cannot harvest each potato as soon as it is ripe. You harvest your whole field when about 80% is ripe. And if it is 100% ripe, then because you just forgot to harvest.

If people knew how their money was really backed during Bretton-Woods, I'm sure they would have

However is Grass really a constant? Noone could "place" a goldbar so it would be lost forever.

Oh yes this is interesting, though I wish we could have this conversation in French or German. Had to look for "shortchanged" lol

 

That’s probably where my linguistic abilities came short. I got “shortchanged” wrong. I’m saying cobble is worth much more. Drogo already came to an extreme as he admits himself by selling 4,5 Stacks for a grass.

But it’s the same for the items. You have stated the potential maximum for many items per 24 hours yourself in your spreadsheet.

When I’m lowering the price of an item below the price I could see on other islands (since there is no stock exchange, I can only compare with samples, I will explain the outcome later on), it’s because I expect to earn more by selling more while I’m sure that I can keep up with the growing demand.


BTW the skyblock economy is as far from Keynes as a bacteria is from rocket science. It’s more Adam Smith, but even then, the invisible hand is more of an invisible octopus where one hand doesn’t know what the other does.

Buying the tools, like everyone else. That’s reinvestment. Best bargain in fact. The first thing a greenie should do when earning its first grasses is buy godded tools. I’ve waited too long to do this, but I think everyone eventually comes to this conclusion. Now I pay donors to god me double chests full of tools. Some even do it for free.

No one does this. Even in an automated farm. Even with a small 5x5 farmland, you don’t stand on it looking at it, ready to jump on each crop that is ripe and replanting it. Because it’s far from efficient use of time. You plant your whole farmland, and if you want a good rendement, hence the highest crop / time ratio, you don’t wait for all of it to be ripe. You harvest when most of it is ripe, because waiting for the rest to ripe is cutting down the time left for the next crop to grow. And while it grows, you can handle another farmland, another plant, or stone, using your time efficiently. But even then, it cannot come down to 50 stacks a grass. There must be a flaw, I must find some time to search it. But for now, I find this discussion more interesting

I admit I didn’t think of that. But anyhow, how can you be sure something is a constant? If the relation between two values varies, is it because only one varies or because both of them vary? How would you know without a central stock exchange?



Getting deeper theoretical.


We think of grass like money. You even think of Grass as a constant exchange value for 24 hours, backed by the gross domestic product per 24 hours. Because every product needs an equivalent amount of money to be trade with. However, we do not have a central bank regulating the money production relatively to the amount of goods and services (G&S) produced (or said in another way, according to the money demand). Grass is produced (I insist it’s the right word) unequally depending of the “grade” of each player and his activities (voting, asking for his kit, etc.…). You don’t necessary have to be online to produce it and you can even produce it while producing other goods and services. It’s like if you where farmer and a giant seedless pear tree grows on your farmland. You can farm and every now and then a pear falls in your basket. You have nothing to do. But some tree yield higher amounts than others. You cannot bring in the fact you can buy additional pears with RWT because as you said it’s a closed system and RWT must be considered as an external factor. The pear is still a product of yours, as it came from your means of production (island / account).


For this reason I think skyblock is not a monetary economy, but more a barter economy. Not a plain barter, since there is no need to wait for a "double coincidence of wants" as there is some agreement on a common “currency”, the grass (pear). However, we can see in many trade shops that goods are also traded for many other things than Grass. We trade G&S for G&S, and even grass is a good that isn’t issued by a bank. You could say the server is the bank with the regal prerogative but since he can issue any good this is putting grass on a goods level. And the server does regulate nothing. There’s no monitoring of economy at all. It’s like a bank printing your money on demand, but also depending on your social rank. But mainly on demand.


The specific of a barter economy is that you don’t have G&S on one side and the money representing it on the other side (which isn’t even the case in today economics but that’s another subject). You have only G&S exchanged for each other. In this barter economy we do not have a stock exchange. So everyone has to estimate for himself the price adequate to come up for his trouble. Higgling and d***ering, selfish profiteering (Adam Smith). Each economic actor will always try to be cheaper than his neighbor as long as he can keep up with the demand, but not necessarily knowing what his neighbor’s neighbor is asking. This “inflation” lasts until offer and demand are balancing, but there are still high differences, no fix price. Drogo sells his Stone for 2 nuggets a Stack, but Stone is 2 nuggets a Stack only to those who know Drogo. To others, it’s 1 or even 2 grass per Stack, or whatever.


You must think of the skyblock economy like the Bonze Age economy. People barter when they eventually meet.


How does this all influence the diamond price? Let’s assume there’s a seedless pear tree on everyone’s land, but also a “bottle of coke tree” (reference to “The Gods Must Be Crazy” Jamie Uys 1980 ) on very few’s lands. Nothing can be done with an empty bottle of coke. Yet every now an then, some fall on the land of few economic actors. Their neighbor see it , get jealous and fancy it. The first bottles that fell, the lucky owners could sell them at horrendous prices. Because everyone wanted them. Eventually, they became a new currency, as the pears. But those trees kept on dropping empty coke bottles. And although they where very demanded, they couldn’t be eaten as the pears, and they wouldn’t rot. So they were hoarded. Bottles kept on falling. Much less than pears, but they did. And with time, people didn’t even know where to put them. Prices dropped further and further. Eventually, the price will drop so low people will deem them worth to be melted and crafted into more useful things.


And this is what will happen with diamonds. It’s not a bad thing in my eyes. Of course I can understand the people who bought the diamonds for 64 grass are angry. But they were speculating. And for now they have lost. Of course, if someone decides to enable diamond trade at warp grass they might win again. But that’s speculation. Again. For now all they have are empty bottles of coke they might end up being condemned to smelt.




P.S. (OT): I’m in an association that promotes the economic model of negative to zero interest rates as developed by the Swiss economic Silvio Gesell. If you’re interested in economy, I can only recommend to have a look at this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiwirtschaft. If you’re interested with more informations, PM me.

 

You’re doing utterly well

Not only some goods, I stumble upon trade chests with about any good as change value: logs, stone, redstone whatever… That’s another reason to consider it barter. Barter where some goods have a higher exchange rate.

If you please, Sir

Ok that’s miscommunication from my side. I didn’t consider the fact of going online for like 10 seconds, type in /kit donor250 and going offline again as been effectively online. Because you cannot do this to get logs for instance. You must get online and actually work. Work hard.

This is maybe one of the causes of the prices you get as result. You under evaluate grass because your initial position is that everyone gets 34 grass, although it’s the smallest minority that actually gets that. The vast majority gets between 2 and 4 grass per day. What if you put in your spreadsheet an average income for, let’s say, 5 grass per day? (can’t edit the spreadsheet myself).

Ok, let’s follow you on your position that time is needed to produce these items. Again, the vast majority cannot collect that much. The average must here be closer to zero than for grass, as only donors get them.

Hey let’s actually suggest that: /warp exchange Where signs show the amount of goods traded and their average price. The only problem I see is for the reference value, as IMHO even grass or iron have no fix value – even in $, as you pay one time $ 250 to be enabled to use /kit donor250 for your whole life if you wish. Best proof is the variation in relative value between iron / grass. So it would have to be some theoretical value points: if one grass is actually worth 250 points and iron 500, then 2 iron = 1 grass. Of course manual trade cannot be taken into consideration, I think. But I don’t thinks that’s the bulk of all trades.

Yep it’s time consuming, but so much interesting. Thank you very much for this conversation!

 

Very interesting point.

 

I remember when diamond were really hard to get. 1 diamond was 64 grass then dropped to 32 grass then dropped to 20 - 22 grass. Now its very easy to get.