I have a stick.

 

As demand increases price increases, as demand decreases price decreases.

I believe that is part of an economy.

 

Net for reset

 

Oh is that so? Where do offer and demand meet on skyblock.net? How are offer and demand actually measured? I dare you to tell me how many beacons, set aside how much cobble is on sale at this very moment, and how much is asked for!

We have here a barter economy where one buyer meets one seller "by chance". The price is almost random. One Grass (which is a commodity, not a currency!! Replace it with anything else if you wish) can buy you one item or a DC of the same item, it depends on both buyer and seller and their respective connections to other buyers and sellers and the informations they get from them.

The seller sets his minimum price depending on what he needs and what he thinks it's worth. Because he cannot know the demand (NO, no one can!), and he cannot know the competing offer.

Likewise, the buyer sets his maximum price depending on what he has and what he thinks it’s worth. Like the seller, he has so few information that one can also say he has no information at all. Someone he trusts said to him a beacon is worth 180 Diamonds and the seller is asking 170 diamonds. Of course for him it’s a deal, because he cannot know other than by chance that there is someone selling beacons for 160. There is no central stock exchange telling him or anyone else the true Price, offer and demand for anything.

You see, it’s not that much the fact that a commodity is used as the main exchange good that makes it a very basic, archaic barter economy. It’s the total lack of trustworthy information. Setting up a price is a matter of guts, not brains.

One example: I set a price for snow blocks on my island, 1,5 Stacks for one Grass (through the means of intermediate Gold trade). Why? Because I see most people setting trades for one stack per Grass and I want to be competitive. I also have much to sell and they are easy to harvest. I have no idea whether other sellers actually sell anything at their price. I advertise this offer when I am online. This means, only potential customers that are online at the same time and look at the chat will know of that offer. I have this offer on for two months now and I haven’t sold a single stack of them. Until yesterday. Someone emptied the whole chest in one go.

Any attempt of explanation for this happening is futile. Could I have met this demand earlier by advertising at other times? Was I still too expensive to most, yet this one customer deemed my price correct? Was there no demand for this product until then? I have no Information, only theories I made up and theories some fellows made up. All I can do is fill up the chest and wait again. I don’t know if there is an offer and how it looks like, I don’t know either if there is a demand and how to reach it. I may once be like the old native south.americans who gave the conquistadors pure Gold in Exchange for glass items, because they didn't know the true value of glass.

It is and always will be foggy, although Myrmidous has set up a quite nice concrete way to estimate the costs of all commodities based on the IRL time needed to retrieve it, it remains theoretical as it cannot be empirically observed ingame. It can only be a guide to set your own, personal Price.

Yes it's an economy, since goods and Services are exchanged. But not an economy how we understand it nowadays. It's the most archaic barter economy, a Little bit like we had it IRL in very, very ancient times.

 

an economy is an economy, whether it be based on ancient or modern standards, no dancing around it.

and keep in mind, there is multiple forms of economy even today.
not just a normal "oh heres the set price" economy, but there is barter economy (pawnshops, etc) and goods/services economy (cut my hair, ill fix your laptop) which may not be well known or thought about, but exists.


as it does have warp grass and donor, a few prices are set in stone.
as it has tradeshops and players drop trading, theres the second form.
as some players do trade work "build me a stone gen, ill build you a house" theres the third form.

it all qualifies as a form of economy.

back to being afk

 

Never said there was no economy. I was replying to Youngy who pretended to have knowledge of the demand and seen it rise and fall. Which I highly doubt

The Prices on warp grass are set in Stone only if the commodity can only be bought there. This applies, AFAIK, to Gold. But not to saplings and such. I bought them there as a noob as I didn't know where else to buy them. But now I know it's way overpriced. Again, it's all about Information.

 

That's sensible but silly. Youngy has been a player since 2012, and was an active trader for the first half (if not more) of that time. It is for this reason that I can relate to him, and understand what he means by supply and demand.

Firstly, you seem to be fixed around numbers--actual quantities. It's quite possible to quantitatively measure the supply of certain items on this server. While I will yield on beacons and cobblestone, I will not on items such as heads. Every drop party, for instance, Cyp drops exactly 50 heads--unplaced at the time. Then, over time, people lose the heads--dropping them into the void, fire, lava, you name it--or placing them, making a head lose its original unplaced name and lore. As this happens over time, the supply of a certain unplaced head diminishes, typically accompanied by an increase in the demand of the head in its unplaced form (let's say that 1 new person felt the desire to purchase an unplaced head every 2 days--that could afford it . . . with more of them in the economy, that 1 person might be placated within the 2 days, but as the supply decreases, this would no longer be the case, and an increasing amount of players would want the head, whereas a decreasing amount of players would actually get it).

Although, I have not yet touched on the quantitative piece: let's say that you are a very active trader, and are able to find the owner of nearly every, if not every, head, out of the 50 dropped in the DP (call this unrealistic if you must, but I used to do this when I was active on net XD -- and now, it's even easier as with the new DP plugin, you can tell who got each head). You will then be able to keep tabs on the exact quantity of placed and unplaced heads, who owns them, and if you're active enough, you can even see who and how many people want them. This will leave you with exact numerical figures of the demand of a head, and a numerical estimate of its supply.

Realistically, I doubt many people do that earsofjoy:. However, if you're an old enough player who actively engages in trading, you are able to understand the supply and demand trends in a given item. Given, for most items, the supply is always physically static. I don't see any beacons coming to the economy at the moment (ignoring the newly implemented rare crate keys). But if you consider the supply of an item among players who are willing to trade it, then a trend can be deduced. Take your beacons, for example. Before islandprotect was implemented, a lot more beacons were being traded--not a lot of people placed/used them, because they could be easily griefed; naturally, no one wanted to spend 50 diamonds (their value at the time) on an item that someone else could easily steal. Consequently, more beacons were in circulation. Nowadays, this is not the case. Some islands have over 10 beacons placed on them--and as these beacons are being placed, they are being taken out of circulation, reducing the supply of the item as they aren't being traded. Of course, the addition of islandprotect also caused the demand in beacons to increase. People wanted to buy them as they knew that they could place them safely. With an increased demand and a decrease in supply, what happened? Prices increased. It's through situations such as these that Youngy was able to make his comment about supply and demand.
--
oh and, lol, I'm pretty sure some epic grave-digging took place in this thread...

 

And this was all made based off of my own observations... Youngy joined the server two years before I did, so he has undoubtedly had more opportunities to know the demand of items and see them rise and fall.

 

Back in 2012 -2014 the demand for stone was high. i was only the person who was able to mass produce quantitiy of stone to my buyers in auction.

And thats how i got rich. (If you had seen my island)

 

You are so rich I only have 2 diamonds

 

Still waiting on a refund

Why was this gravedigged?

 

PEPE Wont refund you sorry..

A pro grave digger ^

 

It's called barter economy. Just thought I'd give my input here : >

Edit: Didn't realise there were more pages with people already throwing around that same statement. My bad.

 

To the economists in this thread -
1) Correct, this is a barter economy. Nicely layed-out theoretical explanation from Frederic. Kudos.
2) Do not mistake dropped heads for normal goods with regularly shifting demand and supply curves as they are initially luxury goods. KingDG.
3) Nice natural monopoly you had there, m8. Shame, that the competition caught up to you. MikaMelody.
4) Economists unite! Proceed with the banter.

 

My beacons was never intended to be kept as a rare item, I brought it to be used as a building block. Beacons was much cheaper back in the days

Now I keep beacons as a luxury block

 

Well... I think I need to play on .net a little more (as in 24/7)

 

Is this the year of hating Nika? Darn, I got my zodiac sign wrong.

 

Honestly even then we probably didn't even have a fraction of what some other players own xD

 

LOL.