Best Posts in Thread: Towny (my stand on it, problems and solutions from a "new" member)

I know the idea of the economy being unbalanced has been brought up countless times, with two completely different viewpoints, but not a single player has given a physical (or probable) solution to the problem at hand. People love to throw the term around, without a real understanding of it. The dictionary definition surmises to “a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.” MeepCraft hasn’t had inflation since before the reset. Prices of items have been stable - or lowering - consistently. Items have less value than ever before, while Meebles have more value.



Problems:

• Item prices are stagnant; the value of items neither increase or decrease.
• Towny, by definition “is a versatile, player-controlled land management plugin for use with Bukkit/Tekkit/Spigot/Libigot. Towny offers solutions for pvp, griefing, chat, inflated economies and monsters to minecraft server admins. Towny allows players to work together and against each other as they see fit.” The whole premise of towny is dysfunctional from its intended state.
• Towny taxes are a major issue to new players and old players alike.
• Therefore, towny prices are also concerning.

Solutions:

• The simplest solution to deflation is inflation. Adding more money into the economy would allow people to spend money; no longer having to hold onto it for their town tax. People who earn money are more likely to spend it -- not through a central shop, but through players.
  • Not many people will remember (or agree with the example I’m about to share) but go back to the early days of the server, January of 2017. Alexxx and I successfully raised the price of diamonds from 200 meebles each to triple that. While the means to get the money wasn’t legit, it allowed the economy to flow. People used the money to buy towns, towns which these players still own to this day. After that, prices were stable for around a week or two I would assume, but there forth decreased to where they stand to this day, at 100 meebles.
  • A comparison to 2012 or 2014 wouldn’t be fair, all 3 servers had their similarities and differences, economy wise. In 2014, the playerbase started diminishing at a noticeable rate (in fact, most players came to a conclusion the server was already dead) and we first noticed a decrease in item prices… Diamonds in 2012 went for 1,000 meebles each, but in 2014, half of that. Go forwards a few years, possibly the end of 2016 or early 2017, when witch spawners were introduced into the admin shops. The economy noticed a huge boom, but only from a secluded (minority) of the players. People were happy with this, as these players used their money to reinvest into the people - they call it trickle down economics. Item prices started increasing at this point, due to players having money! Although they had a finite amount of meebles, they had a pool large enough to make profit. Nowadays, there’s no pool to take from, there’s no admin shops, no way of making money. Relying on the people doesn’t work unless there’s money in the first place. Regulation on items is good in moderation, having a fairly inactive staff team hold an iron grip around the economy doesn’t allow growth.
  • Deflation is not good, you put in more work for less money:
    • Cactus farm (8 meebles/64 cactus)
    • Sugarcane farm (5 meebles/64 sugarcane)
    • Diamonds (6,400 meebles/64 diamonds)
    • Other natural materials (lapis, redstone, gold, coal, iron, wood, and their sub products.)
• Towny is meant to have an inflated economy, and for good reason! Towny is meant for you to not lose your items, and staff have gone far out of their way to make this true. This isn’t necessarily bad, but you are using the wrong mindset for towny. Instead of decreasing the flow of money altogether, a better incentive to spend money is needed.
  • Items themselves, rare admin items, collectibles. I don’t see much effort having to go into this, it only takes a little time. Staff did this in gamma, with rare items. I see staff tried implementing a system somewhat like that, with the Egyptian Headdress, but it doesn’t amount to the worth of the items back in Gamma.
  • There isn’t another possible fix for this one, you can add money, or keep towny going as-is. To increase money is easy, and can be regulated, item flow can’t be regulated, no matter how hard you try. I mention this to remind you of other reasons prices are lower, there is too much competition. This isn’t real life where a couple of companies compete over an item, it’s everyone undercuts each other until it is no longer profitable. Monopolies don’t sound that bad, and technically exist already (through villager trading, shops (due to pwarps) among other miscellaneous non-essential economy aspects).
• Once a player owns a town, they are only faced with more problems than solutions: they pay to claim plots, which increases their daily taxes! Building anything significant on the server is not possible, once you pay your daily tax, your fee for claiming plots, you are left with nothing, no materials to build with or anything.
  • Before anyone says it, towns are not profitable and on a small server, are not meant to be in the first place. Tax on a town should be used to fund it, not hurt it.
  • In real life, taxes are used to fund the government programs, organizations, etc (health care, schools, libraries, churches, etc). On minecraft, that money isn’t needed for funding - why does so much have to be removed? It doesn’t counter inflation, as voting gives you 4k a day (the equivalent of owning 80 plots) to pay for the upkeep.
  • I have project plans, which are halted down by taxes - I can’t physically make 20k a day without gambling… not counting materials or the cost to create a town.
  • The solution would be to either decrease prices of towns (not ideal) or lower/remove daily upkeep altogether! You still pay 1,000 meebles per plot, but don’t have to worry about the taxes which force you to come on and earn money. As Klutch said yesterday, people get busy in real life, his life kept him inactive for 2 months, but he has the benefit of a tax free town.
  • Another, pretty decent solution if you sit down and think about it, is allowing players to earn or purchase tax cut vouchers or a removal of taxes for a certain amount of time. Players could possibly pay $20 for a month without taxes, or earn them in voting crates, for less time of course. This helps fund MeepCraft, and allows people to have a life of their own. All based on the assumption that changing this is decently easy.
• Towny prices may also fall under this category - is there an actual need to hold the player’s hand through creating a town? If they forget or do not add money into their town bank after creation, it is not your fault. If you feel responsible, you could add in a prompt after towns are created that gives examples on commands, which would be more useful than increasing towny prices.
  • I could understand if you decreased towny prices to 100,000 meebles, but put a minority of the cost (say 25k) into the town bank.
  • Allowing people to get towns easily influence them to grow, to build, to thrive! Not a relief, as in, they spent multiple weeks or months earning the money to lead themselves.

I know many of you will disagree with me, probably more for who I am than what I suggest here, but who cares. I only suggest simple changes to config files, or additions that have been done before (either on a large scale or small scale, what other scale is there?).


Sorry for the formatting, I originally did this in a Google doc, and some of the format didn't paste here very well.

 

Which we don't have.

Never said this.

Except no one is willing to put themselves in a position to grind for hours for the "rare" items, which is the exact reasoning why there is no set value for these items. Mob spawns (slimeballs, etc), in both towny and wild are lowered, grinding ghast tears takes time, especially with all the factors involved, blaze rods are grindable and already have a diminished price. Mending books have been completely prohibited from the server.

The only reasonable way to make money is how everyone does it, the economy is heavily limited. It's not probable to make a living off of grinding beacons or ghast tears.

"an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses," is the dictionary definition of a free market.

I wouldn't call the player shops much of a competition... very few shops are run and even less of these shops have sell shops. With the shops that do, it's basically mercantilism - you sell items to a larger shop, most notably emeralds, in which they sell you "manufactured" goods (enchanted tools, weapons, armor)

Having a free market in itself is an awful economic strategy either way... you allow for monopolies, which destroy small businesses - as shown in the Progressive Era reforms, anti-trust laws are "comprehensive charter of economic liberty aimed at preserving free and unfettered competition as the rule of trade." (The Antitrust Laws) If you don't think a monopoly has developed around certain items, enchanted tools, armor and weapons mostly, that would be insane. To enchant books can take hours, villagers allow you to do it in minutes and make a huge profit of up to 3 times the value in emeralds consumed. Villager breeding is disabled in towny, zombie villagers only spawning naturally now, it's near impossible to cure a rare mob, with an even lower chance of it being librarian, and then get a decent trade out of it. Those who do keep these villager in private, and are able to cut their prices severely if someone beats them, while obviously making a profit. You can't compete with someone like Epixaid, especially after the huge influx of emeralds after the Christmas Event, which lowered their prices permanently and introduce thousands into the community...

From the word choice, I assume you believe this is a suggestion over undercutting players? The reason players undercut each other is due to the deflation in the economy - there's no spread of money, meaning players aren't buying items from other players. If you don't have money, you can't spend money, which I attempted to focus on in this (I didn't spend much effort on this, because it probably won't get accepted either way. The staff team probably thinks that the economy is perfect...) You lower prices to make a profit, but to also earn money. You can't sell prices for their value if no one has the money to spend.


edit: using "if" isn't also very promising, you're expecting the players to fix issues themselves which isn't going to happen. The issue is not necessarily the structure of the economy, it's the structure upon the gamemode (which is intended to be on an inflated economy).

I didn't clarify; the meebles you earn from voting cannot hold up a large town, the taxes themselves halt expansion of towns (ie. You pay 1k per plot along with the 50 tax daily owning that one plot adds to your town). Owning a large town (ie. Legend) isn't possible for many players, with 60k+ tax daily. The reason you don't see towns helping players is because no one can pay for the tax brought by these towns.

Educating people only works if you listen to their advice, a new player isn't going to care. The old players may make money off of it which doesn't help much if at all. "Buy as well as Sell in your shop," a perfect way to lose money, why would anyone buy items from me if they have a chance to make money? People will grind if they see an abuse in a system [shop] but they definitely won't buy. The whole idea of items selling lower than value is due to the deflation on the economy - the prices aren't at what they should be because no one buys anything... There isn't enough money to buy town materials, while paying daily upkeep and having a fun time. You either grind for multiple hours for a negligible cost or get materials yourself, instead of buying. If you don't have much money, which not many people do, you can't invest it into the playerbase. People sell items for lower because meebles have a much higher value than they should in the first place. Spending your money shouldn't be an issue but yet people refuse to buy anything from anyone if they can earn it themselves. In alpha and beta people spent money because people had the money, money flowed through the playerbase.

I assume you weren't a fan of alpha or beta economies? They weren't regulated and players still despised them (or, the same regulations placed on them are still on the server, and even stronger).

You can't expect an actual profit from your town, when much larger and more trustworthy towns have free taxes (Legend)?

Except you have too much competition in towns, which is why they aren't profitable. Legend had no tax and possibly free plots, for all members, new or old. You can't compete or expect a resident (most likely new player) to agree to fund a town that they have no intention of staying in.

The players are directly influenced by the economy, which shows why there are so many problems...

edit:

You can't "increase" inflation.

Voting brings up a whole other issue: the fact that you can't physically make money without voting in itself is a horrible practice.

Gold standard - Wikipedia
Fiat money - Wikipedia
Explaining Price Deflation - Causes, Effects and Policies | tutor2u Economics
Inflation and deflation risks: How to recognise them? How to avoid them?

 

More players I would think Is key for the economy to flow

 

WARNING WALL OF TEXT

Some quick replies and thoughts on these below statements that may or may not be accurate.

There are several admin shops to make money on: diamonds (/warp shops) and vegetables at (/warp farming). This also does not count the biggest admin shop of all that injects over 1,000,000 meebles into the economy daily (/vote, /warp crate).

Not true. Deflation/Inflation is neither good nor bad, making sure the economy is balanced is the important issue. The lower prices you are quoting have nothing to do with inflation/deflation at all, they have to do with supply (which is limitless) and demand (which is limited).

Not true. Towny doesn't give a crap about this, towny is developed to give servers all the tools necessary to do as server owners like. Blame the server owners for not setting it up properly, not the plugin.

Not true. Towns allow players to grow their items with no problem from other players, this protection comes at a cost of maintenance taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes, go to the wild and build there (I do not recommend building in wild).

Not true. Taxes are the core design of towny. You get "protection" from griefing players and you pay taxes for it. Taxes are meant to fund your town; if you are not making money (or at least breaking even) you are doing something wrong.

Not true. You can easily make 20k a day without gambling. Voting alone give you 20k in less than 10 mins. And you can easily make more by doing stuff and selling it. Anyone can make 2k or more in 2o mins buy gathering items and selling them.

Not true. This has no effect on the problem that you are trying to solve. The problem is of supply/demand which has nothing to do with towny prices/taxes.

GOOD IDEA. This is something that would be nice to implement, but as a voting "random" reward only. Anything other then a voting reward is a mute point as you would be "paying" for this tax cut to "not pay" the taxes.

Yes. This is is exactly what part of the problem is, that no one understands how the system works. Education is a key factor in letting people make money easy.

Not true. Towny taxes should be whatever the mayor wishes them to be, no restrictions. If a mayor wants to lose money then they choose to pay all the taxes or they can split the taxes to all the residents (as in your suggestion) to break even. One could even "make" money by chargin more taxes to residents than upkeep costs.

Not true. Any town 1 plot or 1000 plots can be profitable (just depends on your business strategy). Many "large" towns as you claim only have few people because those few people build the entire large town by choice; if they didn't want a large town they would not have claimed so much land.

In Alpha/Beta meep I had the largest town (by a vast amount) in both worlds for the resident count and for plot count; which these towns were both the most profitable in their worlds!

Not true. Those two things mention did the opposite of what you claimed; They made the items valuable and not have a value of .0001 meeble.

Not true. This was not inflation at all, but an effect of the artificial rise in demand you created. Diamonds currently have a hard baseline of 100 meebles, as that is what you can sell them for in the admin shop (if not for that shop they could effectively become worthless).

Not true. Anyone that is "rich" on the server has put themselves exactly in that position to become rich.

Not true. A free market is the only way to drive growth by competition. In meep, monolopies have no effect on small business. Everyone can make money the same way as anyone else.

Not true. Nothing about inflation/deflation is even closely related to this topic. The reason players undercut each other is the supply for the items is higher than the demand and thus they want to sell them faster so they lower their prices.

Not true. The meebles from voting daily ~15k can sustain a 300 plot town. If a single player needs more then 300 plots you need to re-think your town strategy/design.

Not true. Owning a large town is possible for anyone. You just need the right strategy/design. Towns help players in their core as providing new players a place to build and store their items (at a reduced cost to owning their own town), free farms for making money/items/XP, and most provide assistance with answering questions, etc.

Not true. This will make you money if you run the shop correctly. Buying in your shop provides an essential service of "re-stocking" your items automatically. If you never have items in stock then no one will come buy anything from you. I was making over 100k a day in alpha/beta from shop sales alone, sometimes more; and never lost any money!

Not True. As previously mentions, by voting alone you can sustain a 300 plot town with 1 person with only 10 minutes of work daily. The other x minutes you can have "fun" doing whatever you like.

Not true. People sell lower due to supply/demand issues. Also, meeble have no value at all except what the server assigns them, which it doesn't, except in the very few cases (gold = 50 meebles, diamonds = 100 meebles, etc).

Not true. In alpha/beta, people spent money because of me! Thanks, your welcome. Also, because of an unbalanced economy, people made lots of money very easy though admin shops.

Almost true. You are right to bigg towns with "free/zero" taxes make it hard to convince players to join your town and pay taxes. However, if you expect to make money from a town then you are in it for the wrong reasons and should not even own a town.

Not true. Sure you can, but that would be stupid.

Not true. You can make money on plenty of things besides voting. However, voting is currently the number way to make money super easy (over 100k a week just by voting in 10 mins or less a day). If you want money, here's a novel idea... a little less whining and a lot more working for it!

Very true. This is a base concept in the free market economy. Do you think Walmart makes everything they sell? No, they buy it from smaller manufacturers/shops and resell it.

Partially true. If a mayor chooses to pay all taxes then the town could have zero tax, but that is probably not going to happen. Having a tax at or above the fees only makes the success of any town large or small more probable.

Partially true. Epixaid (any many of the other baltop players) got to where they are due to game mechanics that are no longer available to the community. Just like I do, we find profitable things maximize our profit, and then it gets nerfed or rules made to prevent those actions.

Partially true. Currently, you can make just as much money as Epixaid. Getting that baltop spot will be very very hard to decrease the gap unless he gets a ban or quits, then eventually you will have more money than him (given enough time).

Meh. Zero tax is a pointless implementation of time. If a mayor chooses to not charge tax that is his call. However, making that taxes "worthwhile" would give those mayors a second chance of paying them for their members.

Very True. Resedents will still be loyal even if you don't give them any of those things.

Probably true. Most towns are not meant to be profitable; but if they are not, they will not last.

Very true. Unless done properly, towny changes will not benefit the economy well. An increased player could help but it would only be tempory.

 

This is key.

Just a bit of contradiction here,

and here.

We are guaranteed 4k a day as you say that can support a fairly large town and if you actually sell your vote keys you are almost guaranteed another 16k+ if you get them sold daily. No one should complain about not having enough money for taxes or anything else.

We all suffer from greed and wanting more meebles than the next guy while being impatient - that I can agree with and it is not an economy problem.

We have a free market and the economy is a direct result of what players do. We are in control of inflation but by undercutting each other just to get your items sold first you are not benefiting yourself or the economy, think a bit. If players focused more on scarce items that are difficult to obtain like potion ingredients (blaze rods, ghast tears, etc.), nether stars, gun powder, leather etc. etc. instead of cobble and logs they would earn much more money and stimulate virtually untapped segments of the eco.

Educating players rather than changing the way the eco works will have a better result. A cheap shop does not equal a successful shop. Buy as well as Sell in your shop. If an item is going for too low a price according to yourself either buy everyone out and sell for your price (risky, lots of capital needed) or move on to another item that there is low/no supply of. Also give your items some time to be sold, you don't have to instantly sell them to be successful, patience is key. People should use /tr to request items they need more often to guide players as to what resources to gather and sell.

Need I remind everyone that out of control economies are what lead to resets... So if this eco is too chill and controlled for your liking I for one am more than happy with it.

I understand and know where you are coming from and it is great that we can discuss how to improve things. Because among all our ideas there is a solution.

As far as towns go I don't think there are any changes needed to the prices. Again it is more of a player issue that I see. Apart from the shortage of new players it's more about this reluctance residents have towards paying fair plot and resident taxes. If you want to be part of a town you should be happy to pay taxes to contribute to it. Resident taxes should be able to be based on the towns upkeep divided by the amount of residents as a fair indication ie. upkeep = 2000 meebles per day in a town with 8 residents taxes of minimum 250 should be acceptable, even 300 as to actually help the town grow. Instead players want 50 meebles or free taxes...but you get 4k a day from voting...how stingy can you be? The mentality of the mayor needs to support his citizens always baffled me. Having nice roads, farms, scenery and services should all fall on the town's owner...why?? This is why I'm a hermit in my 25 plot town and happy not to deal with the drama of having residents.