I am quite curious what makes a good skyblock economy? I know there are three basic materials that a skyblock needs: dirt, tree and bedrock. Without these three basic materials a skyblock world will not work. Everything outside of this is optional. How does one set the value of the resources? Well bedrock will have a value of 0 since there is no way to move it and nothing useful can be placed on it. That leaves two materials dirt and tree. What should the value of dirt be set up? What should the value of tree be set up to be? Is the gold standard an option for game play? Is there a way to make the currency to not be worthless when inflation happens? Does the economy every go into hyper inflation? What should be used as currency? Any advice guys?
A literal gold standard would be infeasible due to gold farms. Plus backing a currency with a limited (useless) mineral wont help with anything. IRL it was designed only to stop financial panic and give people false trust is a monetary system. This contradicts the very definition and result of currency inflation. There are ways to attempt to stop inflation before it happens, and there are ways to curb it after it has occurred. Best way is to release currency out of the system, in hopes to limit its trade and it going back to a sustainable price. Any economy with currency can go into hyper inflation. If one day a person decides to spend their life’s savings in the Skyblock store and purchase tons of beacons, keys and other rares and decides to sell the items in-game. Due to the now large supply of rares their prices go down, and would mostly likely weaken the currency significantly. Depending on how the devs decide to solve this issue, they could help it or worsen it. Pretty much anything can be used as currency, all of which will inflate in the future. Pegging the currency or swapping it out won’t aid the economy in the long run. I personally like grass as currency: you can’t silk touch it, can be worth 0 (if placed) and players have a decision of either using it as currency or island expansion. Hope this helps answer your question! PS. Sorry for any spelling or grammatical mistakes, typed up on my phone.
The problem with releasing the currency through a sink, is players will always be adding more grass into the economy or diamonds into the economy at a greater rate then the sinks can handle sinking it out. By itself sinks do help the economy but when the economy is in inflation mode you need to tighten up control of the amount of grass in the economy by not printing more grass into the economy. When you use real money to anchor the in game currency you are setting a limit that it can't drop below. The problem in the real world is the real world tends to break all the rules. In a game world such as runescape, or virtual games a gold standard can in fact work. Its a solution that is added with sinks. It is pointed out by extra credits on youtube about inflation and hyperinflation videos on ways to curb both of these problems. The problem with grass is its easy to grow and if shovels can pick it up again then you get an influx of grass. Coal and charcoal are harder currency to use as one it requires the planting of a tree, two it requires planks, and three it require cobblestone, and four it requires burning. Nether portals are harder to acquire as a currency due to lava and needing diamonds to mine. These two would slow down the rate of currency fluxating into the economy, but it might be two slow. Your right about the beacons. But couldn't a player just sell tons of elytras for 2 grass and tank the economy that way if they wanted to? An economy is a complex beast, to put it bluntly. I do like the ideas and thoughts you provided. I eventually have to figure out how I want to tackle my own. I have a lot to think about.
Not always true, the goal of the sink is to release some currency not all incoming currency. So its not a problem if incoming is greater than outgoing (to a certain extent), as some inflation is healthy for an economy. Unfortunately, there will always be that 'printing money' effect as players can buy grass on the store and more importantly from /vote. Personally I don't like currency pegging or major currency control in IRL and in pretty much any currency. Yes a 'gold standard' is feasible where you peg grass at a fixed rate to $ (right now the player eco has it at $1=64), and I've played on other servers where this is the case. Those severs were so boring, farming the same method , sell to server shop, get cash, repeat. On this player eco prices shift regularly making it engaging, you must consistently monitor prices and change your prices otherwise your in a a huge loss. An example is the price of diamonds, as more players join the server and buy ranks they have access to more diamonds, this flood has lowered the diamond price to about 4 grass as oppose to their earlier 10ish grass. This is terrible for older players who stockpiled diamonds and stopped playing, and since most old returning players are wealthy this price drop helps the grass imbalance. This would not be possible with a pegged currency or mineral control. Also a pegged grass would be a lot of work to implement and maintain for server staff. The skyblock economy is not currently in hyperinflation or inflation for that matter. Prices across the server are dropping not increasing. The currency is weakened as there is so much in the economy. I don't think changing the currency will help, it will just confuse people and kick the problem bucket down the road. Yes they can, in my original post I said they could do it with beacons 'and other rates', I meant to say 'other rares' (now corrected). Defo!
