Notes on Economics
This is a rather long response to a PM I received on how my economy worked, I figured it's some useful info.
Any shop plugin besides mine that has a global shop is killing your economy currently. What you have right now is not real. My server's economy is hardcore realistic which you might not want to do but you can pull some ideas from it. I'm using Towny.
I start a new map with a single town managed by me. I spawn 30,000 coins. From now on, the amount of money in the economy will remain at 30,000. You do not want the economy to grow. A "growing" economy is one that is failing to give money value. Your main goal as an admin is to keep your players poor.
New players start of with nothing. They get added to the town and given a free plot. Now they start mining, collecting resources, etc. They can put them up on the VirtualShop for any price.
Now, as an admin I don't have time to mine when I need to build. Most admins would use /i or /give or whatever. What I do is take money out of the town bank and buy stuff off the VirtualShop whenever I want to build something or for community projects. The is the equivalent of a government building bridges and infrastructure to boost the economy.
Now players have money and they can bull/sell with each other. Every 24 hours they pay taxes (15%) that go to me so I can continue with government projects. So now you can see the flow of money back and forth. No money is lost or spawned.
Another thing I have to stimulate the economy is a private plugin called Careers. Certain careers such as Officers who hunt down and arrest thieves, murderers, and assassins as well as Knights who protect the town from mobs, are paid BY the town to do their job. This helps with the flow of money out of the government. So on my server, money just exchanges hands.
I love economics, currently and econ, math, stat major and created VirtualShop after trying to simulate a real economy with existing plugins and I couldn't. . I realized the problem was I was SIMULATING and not just letting the players make decisions. With VirtualShop prices rise and fall not because of some fake algorithm, but because of real situations and real player decisions. Someone gets wind a giant cobble castle is being made? Suddenly the price of cobble shoots up since everyone is increasing their prices. That is why I love Virtual Shop, it adds realism.
So that was long, but those are just some ideas. The zero-sum economy may seem intimidating but ever since I switched to that system my economy has become a CENTRAL part of my server. The most important part actually.
PS: The money is backed by supply and demand just like the real world since the removal of gold backed currency.
This has made me decide to switch from Showcase. Thanks. :)
This is a great mod indeed!
I'd like to suggest some feature that could be useful: When someone tries to buy an item for a price lower than current selling prices, this data should be stored so that sellers can check demand prices. That would be a great addition.
I absolutely love this plugin! But could you publish the careers-plugin? it would be useful for my server
So your saying, spawning a set amount of money, and letting it move around is best? I currently have a plugin that allows mobs to drop cash, but upon death you loose it. I also have very expensive things for players to buy for towns.
I am having a hard time finding a way to stop inflation, but still letting players be able to buy the expensive upgrades.
How do you deal with players leaving and not coming back while holding a large sum of coins?
To me this is a similar problem that we have in North America where people hang on to their wealth over years. Do you just wait until your 15% taxes eventually get you that money back over months?
@bradgillap
After 2 weeks, we just clear the account, and put the cash back into VS.
Not without telling everyone that we do that first.
@Warhawker
How do you keep track of the last time a player logged in?
I'm really trying to keep my Admin time down to a minimum.
The main thing a real MC economy needs, is an item/block drain, this doesn't provide it. You can't compare MC to the real world, you know why? In the real world, items have limited durability, in MC, only weapons/armor do, blocks last forever and are produced too easily.
Nice plugin tho :)
I got 0$ in my citys but all my players can buy Items from npcs and there for put money in the citys,
Like in city 1 i sale only basic blocks for a high price
In city 2 the blocks a at a lower price, so if players want to buy blocks at low price the people will have to go to a other city and the only way to get there is to but a 1 way teleport.
That way i try to keep my money moving arond. With a limit of 100,000 in total in the world now (start)
With intrest ea day. it will make its own money. Works for me ;)
Is there anyway to set a cap on the amount of a item? I have people selling dirt for millions of dollars?
Please add Language support :)