Ign CobaltX0
aka Blue

Part 1: The problem

First it's important to understand the economy isn't crashing, it's changing. The value of the skybuck is decreasing, noobs have more money, and the value of wealthy player's /bal is decreasing while their commodities and rares increase in value.

Iron prices are now about 500 an ingot. About 2 months ago, they went for 200. Grass and redstone have seen similar rise.

The reason is pumpkin farms. The old pumpkin farm design was based on long rows that channel pumpkins to a single collection point. This made them easy to loot and so they were kept somewhat secret by those who had them.

I designed a better one that solved several key problems. Less space, harder to loot (owner is now benefited by limited looting) and less redstone per piston which means less lag per pumpkin. Because this design lacked the flaw that made it totally lootable, it didn't need to be hidden. I put a public grinder in it to draw people while I was offline, so many saw it and began to duplicate it. I anticipate that in the next few weeks iron and grass should stabilize at 400 and 350 respectively.

It's important to consider that iron enters the system by active donors collecting kits and should thus be measured in time, not stacks. A highroller gets a stack a month if they collect twice a week. My new farm has about 2.7 highroller years of iron and counting. Anyone who builds a farm is contributing to the shortage.

The real problem wasn't created by me. Actually, it was WebMansDad. He was the first to come up with the idea of feeding his pumpkins into a sign shop. This starts to effect the economy when you have a farm like mine that generates over 6 stacks per minute and you sell them for half price. The amount of currency in circulation rises rapidly and the value of the skybuck falls accordingly. The skybuck by definition is a fiat currency, meaning that it represents economic robustness. If the amount in circulation increases but the amount of commodities do not, it will experience inflation.

The other notable change is that the poor are less poor and the rich are less rich. A new user got almost 20k from my farm in one day and bought a spawner. This is because rich users can't be bothered with selling pumpkins while greenbeans don't get kits and have to scrape for money, but now they get money from my farm.

If people took the time to understand redstone basics, this bubble never would have been possible. I'm not special and my design is actually quite simple. It all started because of players not taking an interest in the limitless possibilities of redstone. I simply obseved a weak spot and put my elbow on it.

Part 2: The solution

There is a simple yet elegant solution to this. There needs to be a bleed-off for excess currency in the system. If redsand was added, sandstone was disabled, and sand became uncookable, glass would be legalized and there would be a way to equalize the currency. It would also provide a much called for resource for the server and prevent numerous unnecessesary bans/problems. It would also discourage island farming. Legal ice would also be excelent for it's numerous practical applications, especially item transport, but would be more difficult to implement.


Frankly, any server shop would help the problem. If nothing is done, the curency will still equalize, but the value of the skybuck will drop and the economic focus will shift to comodities. This will decrease the benifit recieved from voting and will thus discourage it since 5 seconds at my farm is more profitable and 100 skybucks won't go as far as it used to, but that's not that substantial.

Anything I missed? Please comment.

EDIT: Commodities are iron, grass, and redstone. In other words, the renewable rares that provide the REAL economic fuel.

 

As I said in-game, a Minecraft server can't have a stable economy. This is because the ammount of items beeing brought in by people playing the game is too big. People will always be gaining money by farming items and then selling them. After a while the ammount of money in the system will be too big (Anyone can afford anything).

Adding a source of "sucking money and giving out items" will be an easy fix to the problem, but only for a limited time period. Yes, a part of the item will be spent crafting other things, and therefor disappear, but a big ammount of the items will be sold to the next player. The next player will demand a lower price than in the infinite source, as else he could just buy it from the infinite source. So, in the end the price of the item would also sink, so that anyone can afford anything.

Short: Yes, this will stabilize the shortage for iron, but it will not last forever.

Give me feedback if this didn't make any sense at all, or if something I said was wrong.
Support.

 

Somthing not that related to this.
If an infinite source of items, lets say iron, gets added, it's best to keep your valuables in currency instead of items. This is because if he does add the source, you'll get the iron cheaper there than you can get it from players now. However, if everyone would know that, everyone would try to sell their iron, but noone would want to buy it. Then some would get stuck with their iron which they could have gotten much cheaper later.

The same affect happens in a finance crisis. Everyone would like to take their money out of the bank, since it is in dept and the people's money isn't secure in it. When everyone take thei money out, the bank can't get out of dept, and they are basicly never stabilizing again.
At least I believe that's how it works.

 

If Noobs have a ton of $$$ then they are not noobs....

 

The economy is not crashing. Just because gas prices go up, does that mean the national economy is crashing? xD No. I doubt that they will make sand unsmeltable and glass legal. Sorry but that's my opinion.

 

at bryan

A rich noob is still a noob.

at bdark

Actually the high price of gas in the US is directly linked to our current economic crash. See hurricane katrina when gas prices rose from $1.30/gal to $4.00/gal and stayed. The housing market bubble of 07 is another excellent example. Commodities provide the backing for fiat currencies. If the commodity suffers, so does the currency and the economy it backs. As a cook I can tell you that food cost, especially beef, is through the roof. If you think we aren't in an economic crash, you must not have been in the working world since before 04. Things weren't always this expensive. It's been a long... cold... winter...

Also, the question is what SHOULD be changed, not what WILL be. I agree cyp probably won't change anything, but it would totally help if he did.

 

Blue... you make no sense.

Its a game, and the economy will always be changing. For now, it is best to be patient

 

I agree the economy is changing.
Last year when I used to play .org more than .net I got 6k worth of money. I remember that I was so happy with myself when I bought a lava block from the shop because I lost mine and had to buy a new one for 1.5k. The amount of time I had to put in just to get that was ridiculous. Now that I have went on a year later, my 6k is worth barely anything and I can get 1.5k easily from pumpkin farms.
The economy on .org is messed up and is why I haven't gone on .org much even though I started a new island with a coop.

 

What he says does make sense.
The ammount of iron which is needed is way bigger than the ammount of iron getting into the game. This means that iron will get more expencive since there's such a high demand for it. The iron prices going up isn't a good thing, becuase then it'll be nearly impossible to build anything that only requires a small ammount of iron.

He suggests putting in an infinite source of iron, which will lower the prices since demand compared to the amount of iron there is will go down. However, as I said before, this won't work in the long run, because after a while there will be too much iron in the system, so that anyone can buy massive amounts of it. So, it's an easy fix.

The ideal would to get more iron into the system, but only in regulated ammounts. This is what the people selling diamonds in real life are doing. They are only digging out enough dimonds to satisfy the demand for it, but they aren't digging out too much so that it's a common item.

 

I really think this is the way to go about stabelizing the economy.

 

Is there a warp for your pumpkin farm

 

The farm is at warp 5050.

Chris, as a non-mod, my suggestion doesn't go very far.

 

WebMansDad definitely did not come up with the pumpkin farm idea, it started about May 2013 when a player called jonathanandsarah created one and had about 500k more than anyone else on the server, back then that was about 5 mil haha. The word got out and by October, even people who just started had 50k on their first day. I remember having 2.6 million and even then pushing for 5 million. Back then, a stack of pumpkins was 200 each and the rich payed the noobs for each stack sold on their island. Then prices changed and no one knew what to do, Then prices went back down and we are probably not to see the market crash for another couple of months yet.

 

Good history lesson.

I've been playing since the end of march/early april, and in that time, webmansdad was the first I saw to make his farm public.

 

Thread is kinda old but if more iron needs to be added in a regulated fashion why not just add more iron into Donor kits? They are as regulated as they come. I understand it may be complicated, but just a suggestion of a way to add more iron into the economy.

 

This thread is getting a bit long and old, and I'm just fine with both of those. It illustrates the relevance of the issue.

I have a few more observations to share.

A number of other profit farms have sprung up to compete with me, and so the shortage peaked. Iron has started to loosen up as these users started to realize it takes twice as much grass as iron to make an effective farm (after the base). By my assessment, grass is now more sought after than iron, and will remain so for a while. Redstone is also on the rise, but it's not affected as badly as the redstone required for the farm is relatively small compared to what is gained from a kit.

Several new users have financed their own small farms, and even upgrades, solely off the use of my farm.

The amount of currency in circulation continues to increase, and commodities as well as even basic building blocks such as cobble and wood decrease. Why would a new user create a shop to sell these basic items when they can just use my farm to earn money?

Another issue is perceived value. Users still believe cobble is 20/stk despite the fact that a skybuck is worth much less than it used to be. If users understood the way currency is changing, the prices of these items would rise, it would be profitable to produce them again, and they would begin to flow back into circulation.

Much of the trade on skyblock equates to lazyness or time vs reward. I haven't grown my own trees or produced my own cobble since the second week I was here. It simply wasn't worth my time. There's good income for a savvy new player who will grind these out and advertise well, provided we can all deal with how their cost has increased.

To restate my original suggestion: Glass. Add redsand to the shop, make sand uncookable, and sandstone uncraftable. This will provide a much needed outlet to drain off the excess currency and provide the users with a much demanded resource.

 

I remember when the price of iron was 200, and even less at some warps. Grass was about 250.

But think about it, if noobs before had little money, and iron, grass, and redstone were cheap. It worked out.

But now, noobs like me, earn up to 10k a day, at automatic pumpkin farms. And the price of those said items, are raised, it still works,

Basically, the value of money has gone down, because of the shortage of iron, redstone, and grass. So the current problem is still because of those items. Adding sand, and/or glass does not fix the problem regarding iron, and grass. The increased value of iron, results in a decreased value of money, meaning there is no real problem with the economy, other than the shortage of iron. Add more ways to get iron, and the value of iron goes down. Problemo Solvedo.

But what I said probably doesn't relate to the thread because. I am a 15 year old, who doesn't understand the economy, or what you people said

 

I love reading threads like these.

 

Akrill

If you love reading threads like this, there's a button for that

XDisguyawesome

Your input is quite valid, and age is irrelevant. It often relates to what you bring to the table, but it's not set in stone. I judge people by the merit of their ideas. Although I'm 31, I've never taken an economics class and I'm basically learning this as I go.

For simplicity, I've been calling grass, iron, and redstone commodities. They are the most sought after items that enter the economy in a way that is directly related to the activity of the server. If the ratio of donors to non-donors remains consistent, the amount of commodities per player should stay the same. If this is true, the shortage has a cause unrelated to the devaluation of the skybuck. I believe it's because everyone is trying to build farms of their own.

With this design, it starts out iron heavy because of the hoppers needed to build the collection system at the bottom. Then people realize their fancy new farm is actually quite small and they want to expand it. At this point they need way more grass than iron. The evidence that this is correct is that grass is now more than iron while previously it was less (grass has been about 80% of iron since I started in early April) and iron is starting to loosen up again. Redstone prices have gone up, but not as bad and it's still easy to get.

After the base, the ratio of materials is 2 parts iron, 3 parts redstone, 4 parts grass. In kits, you get a lot of redstone, some iron, and less grass. This tends to support my argument that new farms are causing the shortage.

As far as the currency value and why redsand/glass is the answer:
Let's say we have $100 in circulation in a micro-economy. Everyone wants one of the 50 magic sea shells, and there is nothing else to buy or sell. Sea shells are worth $2 each. Now some jerk finds a way to farm money. Now there is $500 in circulation. Sea shells are now worth $10 each. It's not that they are more valuable, it's that the currency has inflated. If there was a way for cash to exit the economy and bring down the amount in circulation, the price of sea shells would drop. When you buy something from the adminshop, the money leaves circulation. When you buy something from another player, it doesn't. It doesn't matter what they add, as long as player actually want it and will buy lots of it.

Ultimately, this would help the jerk who farms money by making the money he farms worth more, so I like this idea.

 

Money is so easy to get now. I've made 40k in one day off of 5050