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Minecraft Economy server - How would money get put into circulation?

  • #1 Apr 7, 2018

    So, I am currently setting up a Spigot server with Economy, McMMO, and more plugins such as a chestshop. How would money get put into circulation? I am not doing a server buy/sell shop to encourage players to create their own shops. But how would players earn money?

    Here are some sources that I am considering:

    Starting Balance (yes)

    Jobs (yes

    Server sell shop, but no buy shop? (essentialsX already has one, but i will probably disable it)

    Anyone got any other good plugins for earning money? Comment below.

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  • #2 Apr 7, 2018

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  • #3 Apr 7, 2018

    Government stimulus! Kinda seriously though, the "server" can put out a contract for a job (like building a specific building for spawn, salary for being a moderator, server requests certain amount of bulding materials) and the person who accept the contract or job gets paid when complete. Then he can go spend the money at other players shops and boom a basic economy is born. Just go easy on the offered jobs or inflation happens!

    Bear

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  • #4 Apr 7, 2018

    Assuming "money" is valueless in and of itself (eg. unlike diamonds, it can only be used to buy things), the usual ways to 'prime-the-pump' are:

    direct grants (eg. the starting balance you mention, although a weekly stipend for the first month may also be useful either instead of or in addition to the initial sum)

    bounties [in the historical sense] (eg. a sum paid when a player creates a shop @ spawn [might be able to rig the mod to add a one time bonus to the first sale])

    Bounties in particular represent a form of social engineering, so you will want to be cautious both as to the amount of money available from this source (TheBear1987's point about inflation) and the direction / degree to which bounties influence gameplay.

    [Certain parties :rolleyes: might be happy to see a bounty on diorite destruction which could not ne exploited by auto-grinding, not all players aer likely to agree with the desirability of this end.]

    One time payments (ie. once per player) are generally safe from grinding and (if kept relatively constant) will allow newer players a reasonable leg up without creating strong inflationary pressure.

    I would recommend against paying for metagame tasks (such as moderator) as those are best done by persons motivated by a desire to see the server succeed rather than introducing a mercenary component.

    Inflation is a hazard with economies; and in some circumstances inevitable (eg. the value of a carrot will drop exponetially one the first carrot farm is up). One way to avoid inflation as players join and go inactive (leaving their initial bonuses in the money supply) is to introduce money sinks that permanently remove money from the economy (eg a llama license that allowed one to 'park' a llama in spawn).

    Another hazard can be concentration where late joining players may feel the accumulation of long term or very active members prevents not only equitable play but any chance ot the later players 'catching-up'. Goods that act as sumptuary taxes (eg needing to pay a regular fee for the priviledge of building above cloud height) are a common attempt at this... [how well they work being variable and debatable].

    'Rigging' the system to prevent Honest Al from making Honest Al's Parrot Rookery and Prismarine Farm the sole supplier of those commodities may also be desirable. [Unless your wish is to play where 'corner-the-market' is a game goal.]

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    WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.

  • #5 Apr 7, 2018

    Update: Thanks for responding, guys! I will take your ideas into consideration. As I mentioned in my main post, jobs will 100% be added. Government stimulus sounds interesting, I'll do that but it won't happen often. Bounties would be good, but that would most likely not happen as my server is more anti-PVP oriented (i.e no PVP unless both players agree) so it will probably not happen.

    As ScotsMiser has pointed out, money sinks also must be in play to take money out. I am considering making you pay for more claim blocks, however you will also earn some every minute so it is just in case you need more claim blocks fast, or perhaps a tax on buy/selling from a chestshop. However, what are your guys thoughts? Keep commenting!

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  • #6 Apr 8, 2018

    Balance is also going to be a huge factor. How much money gets put into circulation vs how much is removed. This is how inflation is controlled but it also affects how "good" your economy is. Take to much out and people can't afford anything, take out to little and inflation happens. Real world controls for this include things like tax and interest rates, but those could be hard to implement in game. Making things too complex leads to needing to have someone focusing on it all the time.

    Another thing, and Miser mentioned it, is supply and demand. In Minecraft supply on most things is effectively infinite and any player can have almost any of it with a few hours of dedicated play. This means that supply will almost always be larger than demand, which keeps an economy dead. What people will be paying for isnt so much the items, but the convenience of not having to go get those items. The effort, not the item. So I am more likely to go shopping for an enchanted diamond pickaxe than a stack of dirt, as I can get myself the dirt faster than travelling to a shop and back. One solution is to limit supply. Generate a world with reduced ore generation, or adjust hardness or tool level requirements to increase the effort of obtaining material. Then people will be more likely to want to buy than get it themselves. The downside to this is for some players this will reduce the fun of the game (while for others it may increase and provide a new challenge). Again it comes back to balance. (Some of the following has already been mentioned, just hitting it again and adding my own ideas) Maybe you could start with all land being owned by the server and players need to buy any land they want to use, and you coukd restrict how low they can go (limiting access to minerals). Then you can sell mining rights for certain areas to certain people. Now you have limited supply and created jobs, plus have a means for removing money from circulation. Just some food for thought.

    Minecraft was designed so that a single player could start with nothing and with a little time and effort end up with everything. This makes for a great game but breaks an economy. So to have a good functional economy you really need to adjust the game itself.

    Bear

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  • #8 Apr 11, 2018

    I am sure that you have probably got this all set up as I am 4 days late, but giving money for votes, if you are a public server, or even using a Quests plugin to give people some money for catching fish, or killing pigs or something. lol.

    Economies are easy to break, so it is best to start out really small and grow from there. I have broken a few economies by giving massive influxes of cash to get the ball rolling. The worst thing to do is make money meaningless.

    I pride myself on never getting involved or giving people things, but I had just voted and got some money for it, so I had some money on me. A new player joined, so I thought "What the hell" and gave them all my money.

    They went to the shop, looked around, and gave me the money back as they could see that making money was too easy. haha.

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