Economy changes- Public Survey

[The Carrot]

Economy Changes

As many of you know, our economy has been in a stable condition for the last 6 years of Sentinel's history. Still, here recently with the new Minecraft changes from 1.14 onwards, we have had some problems with it and our main ones are listed below. We have created a survey on this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdM9Tde3bnUrgU3G-ESPr3pC3aarQ-YZA-0JwLomM0UAf2U5g/viewform, and you can also voice your opinion below if you wish, which would help us greatly in deciding what the best route to go forward is. All votes in the poll can remain anonymous unless you feel like putting your In-Game name or choose to voice your opinion in the comments on this post.

Some of the issues we have seen with the economy are the following:

Villager trading:

We have seen a significant increase in players taking up villager trading, and we know that current villager trading is quite broken and can be a great source of immense profits. We have not said anything till now as the players who were using villagers for profit-making were doing it on a much smaller scale. This is now no longer the case, many players have large, almost industrial villager farms which they use for trading for the sole purpose of making money and this is not something we are wanting to let continue. If we allow this practice to continue, our economy is going to fall.

Auction House:

With the increase of supply from players, auction is getting bombarded with new listings all the time for the same repetitive items (Diamond, Iron, etc.). Again more recently, this is happening with blocks players have listed in their shops. This is making player shops in town an unviable option for newer players which do not have a reputation or influence on the server. Again as the use of auction has now been so dramatic we are looking at ways to change that and would really value your input on this. Please fill in the poll to make your opinion heard.

Inflating economy:

Also, another issue is that wealth creation is quite easy on the server and has been for quite a while! We are looking for inventive, creative and new ideas on how we can spend our money and remove it from the economy. This means like a new currency to buy unique items, loot crates or even special auction events. Again we want feedback as this server is as much your as it is ours, and want to make sure players want and will use features we take time implementing.

Shop price changes:

This has been something we have been holding off for a long time! The last time the server shop went under some form of revision was in 2017. Minecraft and the server has been through many changes, and we need to start looking at reflecting that in the shop prices. With the money sat in the economy now hitting over 100 million, the shop prices are outdated, and for most players, this is extremely cheap once they have amassed over 100k in wealth. This is the point we are looking for the most ideas and suggestions as this is a very core part of the server, and we want to make sure we are making positive changes which are informed by the community as well as our work behind the scenes.

[amnotbananaama]

We've had a few players who were confused by the "tax" question. For players who are unsure what that means, it means charging a fee for certain actions on the server. We haven't ironed out what exactly those commands would be, once we get user feedback about the idea as a concept, we will decide from there. What that means is "How would you feel if there was a tax or fee for things like adding items to auction, or a fee for using certain commands?"

[JohnBarry99]

These are my opinions regarding this issue. I somehow can't open the form (client-side issue).

Villager Trading:
Either limit the villager trading by changing the trades and increase the number of items or blocks to be traded in exchange for emeralds or completely remove villager trading to avoid exploitation.

Auction House:
Auction House is the new "player shop" in the server. As Pau said, it's difficult for new players to establish a player shop plot since player reputation and influence affect it, plus players do not know where to go to buy items, so known shops are recommended such as shops in Tranquila Poppy Plaza. For the auction house, it would be good to have a cooldown period for selling items since after an item has been bought, you can instantly replenish it. Also, I suggest setting up a global player shop in which a small room can be rented by a player and can sell items so all players can go there and buy.

Inflating Economy:
Crates are great rewards for votes or purchased via in-game money. I think that was brought up last time by a form for late registered votes that stack up in the server.

Shop Price Changes:
Shop prices must be updated already. Increase the prices for buying and lower the selling prices.

Other Issues:
McMMO salvaging is OP. If I recall correctly, salvaging back in Pern for gold swords was one ingot for one sword in good condition or can be salvaged even though damaged. Now, it is two ingots per sword. I suggest a review of the McMMO rewards that can be reaped and also for the other skills.

[Hannibals]

most of the members sell items with a price lower than shop , so shop buying prices just makes new members weaker and experienced players stronger in my opinion. 

[Artinity]

As a server, please don't interfere too much. As far as I'm concerned, the economic duties of a server are:
- Nerfing broken ways to get money or a specific item a certain way (as with iron and diamonds now. Mcmmo and 1.14 villagers come together in a way to multiply profits, and as much as it pains me to say it, that should be nerfed).
- Defining buy/sell prices (but I see no good in changing them now - more expensive buy prices? Only new players buy there for the most part. Cheaper sell? Will only allow for iron/diamond prices to drop even further)
- (And, if you really dislike players having money:) Supply ways for players to spend money. But please, keep this reasonable and voluntary.

NOT duties of a server:
- Price-policing "this item 'ought' to sell for 100 even though the shop sell price is 20"
Again please don't interfere too much. The economy is a fun balance of supply/demand where people have different goals but everyone can participate. Prices will shift based on supply/demand, which is natural and expected. Having a stable economy does NOT mean having prices that never change. The balance of supply/demand IS the economy, and as long as there are no 'broken' loopholes of getting items, IMO the server should't interfere.

In a minecraft server there will always be an inbalance of wealth. Because for some people (including me), getting to /baltop 1 is a cool achievement which I work hard for, while others don't care at all as long as they have some pocket money to buy things they want. Please, as a server, do not enforce one of these play styles as "more correct" over others. Everyone has fun in minecraft in their own way. (Again, only way I see interference as beneficial is nerfing broken ways to get money, NOT by cracking down the people who have "too much money")

The funny thing is, I'm noticing two different themes here: "there's too much money in the economy" but this seems to be spawned by "as an old player I can't sell diamond for the price I used to and I feel robbed now". Note that these two are contradictory. Old, rich players want to make money as easily as before (even though there is now more competition and more supply of items), hence only becoming richer. But to that I say, don't expect prices to remain constant. They are governed by supply and demand, which is the whole fun of it. If you want to influence someone's prices, talk to them. If they're really unreasonable about it, heck, hunt them No need to ask for the server "government" to protect your profit margins.

Auction house: Sure, Auction house makes physical shops less visited. But auction house is the best way for new players to sell their things. With only physical shops, how would new players sell their things? In chat?? (pls no). Also, why would everyone need to build their own physical shop? Some people like them, some don't.

Inflating economy: Yes, the economy is inflating, but in real life this happens too and is natural and healthy. I do like the suggestion of adding new ways to spend money (again, please keep voluntary). Loot crates containing unobtainable enchants (Unbreaking 4 and things) are something I'd buy.

Shop prices mentioned above, I don't see changing them having a positive effect.

[General_Sand]

in my opinion about villager trading: yes it caused economy to fall and making it much easier and less fun because it destroys the challenge of working hard to earn money

[RikoLay]

My opinion on villagers: How about you add a new mechanic to the villagers where a player must have "this" amount of villagers, and a town must have"this" amount of villagers depending on the player count, and a can only be accessed by a specific player or player that has permission to access it. Like a chest!

But then again, maybe towns can form a plan where they abandon the town but the players and communication still remains, for the sole purpose of villager trading


Idk

[Horoku]

Player Run Economy

I will firstly say I will have to agree with Artinity when it comes to server interference, the whole point of a player run economy is that players get to decide how much they get to sell things, if the server starts to dictate how much is appropriate for players to sell items, then it defeats the purpose of player trading and it makes it less fun for everyone involved, it feels really lame to be forced to sell things at a specific price.

Pigmen Spawners

To tackle the root issue of the server's economy problem, you will have to bring attention to how overpowered gold farming on pigmen spawners are, first of all, I understand many people much prefer levelling repair through pigmen farms but it certainly has heavily devalued diamonds. Before, the best way to train repair was through diamonds which was one of the niche uses of diamonds, but now it's almost worthless due to damaged golden swords being easily obtainable. Diamonds blocks aren't commonly used as a decoration tool (mostly to flaunt wealth) and serves not much purpose outside of it, this is a clear example of supply and demand. Many people have diamonds to sell but have no use for it so naturally the price will keep dropping. If you start interfering with that, players will just go to the shop and sell it there instead, since there will be less people buying it, and much more supply coming in. Another thing is that gold ingots are worth too much imo for how easy it is to just sit at a pigman farm and just click. I've seldom seen people sell gold ingots on the auction house due to this.

Mending

On another note, I also have some beef with the mending enchantment, it devalues the repair mcmmo skill and means people don't even need to use diamonds to repair their armour/tools, creating even less demand for them. I'm not sure if it's possible to remove it entirely and wonder what other players will think about this. But I think the more mechanics that prevent resource/money sink, the worse the economy gets. I will also suggest that perhaps if it's possible to look at the mcmmo plugin and make it so that it costs more resources to repair your armour/tool.

Lottery Tickets

This is mainly taken from the prom /roll event Migas did a while ago, but if we had an event which players would buy tickets and contribute to a "jackpot" and the winner would take the prize money (taxed by a set percentage let's say 30%) it could be a good money sink. I'm not too entirely sure about this feature myself, but I would love to know what people would think of a lottery existing on our server!


As many people have already pointed out, villager mechanics are definitely unhealthy for any economy, it discourages people to mine the ores naturally and just use their villagers to get minerals instead. Emeralds are very easy to get and this then gets converted into diamonds & iron. Nerf is definitely needed, may be also one of the main reasons that so many diamonds/irons  are being sold at a low price.

Death Mechanics

I also want to point out some death mechanics taxing, not sure what happened to that when I last played on this server, but this did encourage people to not just /suicide when their hunger was low and get away with it, this also should make players who are being hunted more afraid to exhibit cantankerous behaviour as they now have more on the line. Now, of course people will just store their money on their signs right? so I was thinking of a graveyard system where if you die all your items will be placed in a chest and to access it you will have to pay a fixed fee to retrieve the items in it (not sure how much this is open to debate). I understand this may be a plugin limitation but if it's possible to add such a feature I think it would make for a healthier economy.

Taxing

I will have to disagree with the idea of taxing the auction house, players will just move to trading in global chat to avoid the taxing and it encourages more spamming in there. However, I think all towns should have a mandatory minimum charge fee, as you are also generally providing them with free resources anyway which translates into more money.

Buying Claimblocks with in-game money

I am aware that the server has a donation option to buy more claim blocks to help keep the server running, however if the economy has become this much of a issue, I think it's time to start thinking about allowing players to buy claim blocks. I think as long as the price for buying claim blocks is extortionate enough, players will still be willing to donate $$. Just a matter of mafs I would say, I heard lego is good with that, maybe he can help.

Cosmetics

Cosmetics and mystery loot boxes are a good way to get people to spend their money, the server can introduce a simple pet plugin which follows the player around, allowing players to buy different variants of pets and introduce loot boxes with random items inside (possibly include some unique items in there that you can only get from boxes).

Flat Plots

Allow players to own flat plots which will have to be purchased with in game money, and tax them. I'm not sure what others will think about this, perhaps they prefer on not being limited on space with their builds, but this is worth considering.

Yeet That Money

Now lastly, if you even read this far I thank you for your patience, I would also like to suggest instead of having a /baltop displaying how much money someone has, I would like to see a revamp with a high score that shows how much money someone has deleted from the economy, what I mean by this is that players will voluntarily remove a set amount of their in game balance and throw it away in the void, and have that amount of wealth displayed on a leaderboard, effectively no longer showing the amount of wealth someone currently has, but the amount they have YEETED away.

Sorry for rambling on, but these are on thoughts and suggestions on creating a better economy. Thanks for reading.   

[Swayed]

Let me buy town claim blocks and I will spend 3 mill

[RikoLay]

"Death Mechanics

I was thinking of a graveyard system where if you die all your items will be placed in a chest and to access it you will have to pay a fixed fee to retrieve the items in it (not sure how much this is open to debate). I understand this may be a plugin limitation but if it's possible to add such a feature I think it would make for a healthier economy.
"

Dead Chest
There is a plug-in called "Dead Chest" that stores your items in a chest when you die. It cannot be accessed by anyone other than the owner of that death. Its has a countdown system where, when the countdown is over, other players can now access the chest and get the items of the owner.

My Idea
Maybe they can hire a programmer that can rewrite the code of the plug-in such as, you must pay a fee to access the chest. And if that player is broke, then gg.

May I also point out that it has some bugs. My experience was a hologram that says " *Owner: (your ign)* " that doesn't disappear even when I claimed my dead remains. What I noticed about it was, I had two dead chests existing at the same time and I bet that caused the bug

[Artinity]

@Kirshiro I really like your option of removing /baltop. It's a solution that doesn't forcefully remove anyone's money while taking all the motivation out of stockpiling money above a couple 100k.

I was thinking about more ways to spend money - but in the end, this might be counterproductive (motivation the production of more money). Following the Discord threads, people seem to be wanting to solve these two problems at once:
- There's too much money in the economy, so maybe money needs to be taken out
- Prices go down, so maybe they should be forced back up somehow

They may seem to go hand in hand, but they act out in opposite ways:
- Take money out of the economy:
    - Prices will go down (if the world has 100 mil, 100k is worth less then in a world that has 1 mil. When money's worth goes up, item prices go down)
- Force prices to go up by upping /sell prices
    - Adds money to the economy

So what exactly is the problem we want to solve here? Economies are complex systems in which every interference has a range of possible feedback loops and outcomes. But in the end, this is Minecraft and we aim to have fun. So please, whatever you do, don't punish people for having made money (this is not real life). Instead, all you need to do may be as simple as this:
- Nerf the one or two current best ways of making money
- Take away /baltop perms to demotivate players from making more money then they need (I can confirm that this would work on me )

[Roby2]

Just my quick thoughts:
Villager trading: Don't really know the scale of the issue here but due to the infrastructure and the grind needed to get villager farming going i don't think that this should be changed. In a server with mcmmo where you can make tons of money using those levels(don't know if iron farming and selling is still a thing like it used when i played more), changing a default dynamic of the game might push everything in a direction that will be even worse than the current issue here.
Auction House: From what i've notice, beside the increased flow of transactions made on the auction house, there are a lot of listings of "troll" items or overpriced items that just stay and rot in the listings for way too long. I am not aware how long you can have an item in auction house up for sale but maybe reducing the maximum time could solve some of the issues without touching other aspects of the economy.
Inflating economy: On one hand, yes, maybe the creation of wealth is too easy, but at the same time having very wealthy players allows those players to not care when paying too much for certain items, allowing other players to get their share of money. On the other hand, if you want to change the dynamic of the economy on the server the only elegant and smooth transition will be going to a different type of curenty, wipe everyones money and setting the /shop higher than before so that you slow down the number of transactions made, solving more issues in one go.
Shop price changes: As i said above, without changing the whole server's currenty and making a big reset in money for eveyone, a change in /shop prices without any other changes like the one suggested above, will most likely be pointless and will affect only very new players, and maybe not even those, due to the offer you have from player's private shops.

[Horoku]

"Death Mechanics

I was thinking of a graveyard system where if you die all your items will be placed in a chest and to access it you will have to pay a fixed fee to retrieve the items in it (not sure how much this is open to debate). I understand this may be a plugin limitation but if it's possible to add such a feature I think it would make for a healthier economy.
"

Dead Chest
There is a plug-in called "Dead Chest" that stores your items in a chest when you die. It cannot be accessed by anyone other than the owner of that death. Its has a countdown system where, when the countdown is over, other players can now access the chest and get the items of the owner.

My Idea
Maybe they can hire a programmer that can rewrite the code of the plug-in such as, you must pay a fee to access the chest. And if that player is broke, then gg.

May I also point out that it has some bugs. My experience was a hologram that says " *Owner: (your ign)* " that doesn't disappear even when I claimed my dead remains. What I noticed about it was, I had two dead chests existing at the same time and I bet that caused the bug

That's a interesting plugin, it's not too far from what I'm describing, other than the fact that I believe that other players should not be allowed to access it after the countdown, with the items inside being permanently removed after the countdown is over, maybe it could be similar to how /ah currently works, with each slot requiring "x" amount of money to be able to be withdrawn from the chest. This is rather technical however, as I have minimal experience working with plugins but if someone can put in the effort to modify this plugin or find one that actually does as what I described, I think the economy can see to benefit from it. I'd like to know what others think of this type of plugin.

[Stycore]

I don't think baltop should be removed, as that would take the fun out of earning money for many players. Sure, maybe less people would grind money just for the sake of being rich, but if that's their only goal, what's the problem? It really doesn't matter if someone owns 5mil if they're never going to use it. And if they are planning to spend it, removing baltop wouldn't stop them from grinding money.

[Horoku]

I don't think baltop should be removed, as that would take the fun out of earning money for many players. Sure, maybe less people would grind money just for the sake of being rich, but if that's their only goal, what's the problem? It really doesn't matter if someone owns 5mil if they're never going to use it. And if they are planning to spend it, removing baltop wouldn't stop them from grinding money.

I don't believe you've read the original post, the suggestion was that instead of baltop showing current player wealth, it will show how much money someone has voluntarily removed from their balance, people who like the prestige of being number one on the leaderboards will now have to sacrifice some of their current wealth to achieve that, instead of hoarding large sums of money. The idea is to remove as much money from the economy as possible whilst retaining the ability to flaunt your wealth.