I have been thinking about how users spend their money on the server (Uncs, not real money). This has been an ongoing topic over time and we had several new mechanisms (the kingdom being one) where we tried to get people to spend their money.
Why?
If people do not spend their money, money has less value for everyone and the whole economy slows down over time. People do not offer things in the shops anymore and so on. Right now people buy mainly kingdom lots, but in the vast majority of the cases, people do not do anything with them.
So there are several ways in addition how we can make people spend money:
- Make kingdom lots cost incremental: The first main lot costs 10k, the second 20k, 40k etc, always doubling.
- Make people pay to use other features in the lot manager: adding 1 person? That’s 500 Unc. 2nd person: 1k, etc.
- Selling lots that are only available for higher ranks at 10x the price of a kingdom lot, with progression
- any other ideas?
I am not sure which of those to do or not to do. But think about it like this: If someone spend that much time on the server that he needs 30 people added to their lot, there should be people in that list being able to contribute some money for the privilege…
I also like the idea of prestige items that are only available by paying huge number of uncs to obtain. It needs to be things that remove money from the economy but don’t break the survival aspects of the game so you may want to avoid selling hard to obtain items such as beacons. It could be purely cosmetic things like being able to use a nickname in chat or have text after your name for a certain number of days. As far as pricing, each voting player gains 400 uncs plus 10% chance of 1-500 uncs each day. So a price in the neighborhood of 500 uncs a day would be doable if it was something a player really wanted. I’ve been here 18 days and have already amassed almost 10,000 uncs with limited buying and selling, so reducing the accrual of uncs might also be needed.
Psiber had a great idea a few months ago,kingdom lots in creative including the terrain and not just a flat lot. Maybe 50k for a lot? I wouldnt mind paying that much for one of those lots. Dont know how many peope would buy them.
I’m not sure I’d pay for a creative lot as readily as a survival one… but it’s still a cool idea nonetheless.
I really like the idea of very expensive prestige lots, probably in a new world. That’s probably my favorite idea of all :D
Additional ideas for money (just brainstorming, not all of these are great ideas):
Okay so…with the more survival aspect to the server,weather and time control are OP in the aspect of this. People will just want it day and not to rain. People complain about the night and rain a lot though. With how many people there are on the server,what if this option overlaps and people all pay at once for the option. The setting home and warp thing cancel eachother. Why pay for homes when you can set a permanent warp for a higher cost.
While I don’t particularly like the ideas, if the cost were high enough it would be a deterrent. People would wait for someone else to change weather/time, but if you get asked, you can very easily say you don’t want to spend your money.
Again with homes and warp… It depends on the cost, yes? If it costs 10 uncs to go home but 25000 to set a warp, are you really forward-thinking enough not to use home for 2500 uses because you’re saving up for that warp?
How much would you say it is to set a home if we remove the free home option.
I dunno, 100 uncs? As I said, I was just brainstorming. I don’t want to be stuck defending a particular pricing structure because I am simply floating ideas. If Unc/you/everyone hates the idea, I don’t want to waste the energy figuring out exactly what a fair cost would be. :)
On the other hand, if it depends on the cost, and we end up going that way, we can spend some more time figuring out what is fair.
100 uncs doesnt sound too bad actually.
I like the idea of being able to buy more /homes. The /homes can have a relatively high monthly price and each additional /home can be say twice the price of the previous one. We can decide on a cap in terms of how many more /home a player is able to purchase based on say the player’s rank.
What about a deposit box that cost uncs each month?
Make trapped chests uncraftable and you can only buy them from the server?
I LOVE the idea of creating a warp. For those of us with large projects etc, we could craft a warp house. That way people can travel to big destinations like Heaven’s Reach or Eagle Bay or Kawasumii. Get people exploring the server. But if you want to build a way for people to come, you pay a big fee in uncs to build a warp waypoint. OR, make it a one time fee of like 20k uncs to create, and you have to pay a monthly fee of 10k uncs to maintain it. This way we dont get 200 warps that go to builds that people have abandoned. If it isnt paid for in the store every month, it goes away. This will keep the uncs flowing.
You could build a “Warp House” in city where people can read signs of available warps.
Could you please plot the distribution of Uncs among players? Is the problem a few (2%) accumulating all the wealth on the server? What percent of uncs in circulation is held by the richest 10% of players?
When we buy from each other currency stays in circulation. When we buy from the server they are removed from circulation.
My data is old, but according to the data I have access to, counting only wealth held by active players (and not counting Uncovery):
The top 2% have 28% of all wealth.
The top 10% have 63% of all wealth.
The top 25% have 82% of all wealth.
The top 50% have 95% of all wealth.
Edit: To clarify, at the time this data was pulled, there were only 1.16 million Uncs in circulation, distributed among 108 players. Note that players who had no money at all were not counted for the purposes of this survey, again due to data limitations.
so interpreted loosely, you could say that
approximately two and a bit players cumulatively hold 280-320k uncs between them.
the top 10.8 players have 630-700k uncs between them.
Those are kind of crazy figures.
I like the second point very much.
– You also could sell rare and hard to get items in the shop – like beacons or dragon eggs for quite a high prize.
– Maybe there is also a way to pay a “transaction fee” when you pay money to an other user?
– You could sell contracts/diplomas to allow users to build a “gold farm” and similar stuff in survival world.
– What i dont like is buying creative building rights in survival world.
The person who pays the money to another has to pay a “transaction fee / gift tax”…
… and lets have an economy crash every Friday the 13th when you will loose about 50% of your Uncs :)
I like the Black Friday idea. This is very realistic, although it should not be predictable as to when it would occur. Maybe trigger the event when the total Uncs in possession by the community reach a threshold amount.
I dont think anyone suggested creative / survival build rights mixing. The idea referenced above was a new creative world that had terrain and VERY expensive plots, like a creative kingdom equivalent.
Wow. The distribution of wealth is that big to only a few people? It appears as if the problem isnt with the general population of players, but in trying to get the rich to spend some uncs.
I only have about 20K and I usually sit at about that amount, so talk of taking uncs away scares me. I do buy things and sell a limited amount of items.
To be charged to use /home would stink. I have all my goods consigned to my aether lot and tp back and forth quite often as I build. I would say that a slightly higher cost as you buy more kingdom lots would be ok, but doubling them seems extreme. I have 2 cities that I am working on currently, and one of them it’s just me and 1 other builder. It would suck if expansion were to be doubled every time. With as many lots as i have bought, I could never have afforded to build Kawasumii, which i am very proud of. Maybe a 20% increase would be ok, and it would not make builds in the future for other players cost prohibitive. I would hate to think of someone who could build something amazing on the server not being able to because of the cost of a lot.
Maybe a luxury tax for those players that are richest on the server. If you get over 70k uncs (or whatever # is deemed to much), you get taxed 20% of your money each month. This would encourage people to spend. I also like the idea of a transaction fee for money transfer to another player. I transfer 100 uncs, and the server takes 10%. that is 10 uncs out of circulation right there. You could do the same for all items bought and sold in the store. Tax the money being spent.
Make a minimum amount for items in the store. This will get rid of stuff selling for .0001 unc etc. make the least amount something can sell for 1 unc. This will do away with the fractional transactions, and increase the value of the items. If 1 unc is the lowest it can go, there wont be that continual slide of prices.
You could make a minimum for different types of items as well. Iron crafted items could be a minimum of 10 uncs, gold, 15 uncs, diamond 50 uncs, wooden items, 5 uncs. etc.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but your “only” 20k puts you in the top 10% using the figures I gave above.
If Unc gives me a more up-to-date copy of the DB I could run some more accurate numbers. :)
As to capping the items at the bottom at 1 unc, that won’t work. People will simply stop buying the items, which will hurt the economy. Nobody is going to pay 1 unc apiece for bonemeal, cobble, etc. You can’t artificially inflate the value of the items by capping the minimum cost.
What works is taking money out of the economy. The wealth tax is not a bad idea. But again, I think we need some concept of who is wealthy and who is not. I think the perceptions and the reality may be very different.
wow. I am rich? who knew….
I have heard a lot of people brag about how many uncs they have and i assumed I was not so wealthy. Sounds as if some have been inflating their wealth. lol
I honestly thought I was middle class on here.
So, if 20k counts as being in the top 10% then I definetly think charging double for each Kingdom lot would be too much.
And adjust the wealth tax to be holding 20k – 30k gets you a 10% tax, 30k – 40 K 20%, 40k and above gets 30% taxed. something like that is just an idea.
I also like the idea of some items being taxed if you have them. Thousand uncs a month for each beacon you use. And they would be charged if used only once in a month. Don’t make it a day that it is checked. Otherwise people would just remove them on that day. Is this possible?
That warp point still sounds amazing for a way to take uncs out of circulation. Then charge a monthly fee to maintain the warp point. I would definetly make one. I know there are others that would do it simply to get people to them easier, or allow people to come visit their builds. You could charge the monthly fee, or charge people 10 uncs to use it or something.
The wealth tax could work, but taxing per month is tricky, better to prorate it per day I think. Could also make the minimums dynamic, based on the amount of uncs in circulation compared to your personal bankroll.
The beacon taxing idea is probably not workable. It might be possible but it would be difficult to do, would require a custom plugin, etc.
I like warp points too. :D
What about capping uncs? Say you hit 25k or 40k or whatever number and you just stop accruing them any more.
Then in that case , the raising prices of Kingdom lots would be a terrible idea. If I want to buy *High Exageration* my 7th kingdom lot , say it would cost about 70k , and the Wealth is capped at 60k , then I can’t Expand. If there were to be a SLIGHT increase , that would be understandable , but the money cap would have to be pretty high too.
And lets not get too far ahead of ourselves here. Changing the market too much could devistate new players ( we do have alot of those ) , Settlers would have ahard time finding a nich in the economy ( I still do xD ).
– Note , if we are going with the increasing Kingdom prices , than 40k would be a very small amount in no time
Things I would pay for:
Land
Another Empire lot or 2 or 3, at highly increased prices per
Kingdom lots, I like making the 2nd and 3rd cost more
A smaller creative lot for testing stuff, or a flatland’s lot
Game stuff
Extra /homes with free uses
The /tpa per use
The /tpahere per use
I would pay to make the rain go away some times
My own warps that others can use
Blocks/items
Rare items and blocks
Mob spawners for xp farm building
In general I prefer to save my money for land and trade for items I need.
Up to 50K for a Kingdom lot would be acceptable because they are so vast and take a while to develop on. Hypothetically, the more time spent on the first kingdom lot would mean more time to make enough for the next Kingdom lot if said player wanted to expand.
However, I don’t think charging players uncs for adding others to their lots is the answer to the in-game economic problem. I don’t think a price should be put on the kindness of people helping out on someone else’s lot.
One suggestion I have for the currency is capping the decimal places to 0.00 just like the Dollar or UK Pound. I find that I have certain common items that I want to sell but there’d be people selling their’s at things like 0.0025 and I struggle to see the point of even offering something at prices like that.
There has been some okay ideas, but I think what jonno proposed, the luxury tax thing, would be the best. I propose that 20% of the money gets lost every month from all the players that have over, say 25000 uncs.
I for one am very lazy at spending money, I’m currently at about 60000. I did not think about the economy stuff earlier, but this post got me thinking. I’ll try to spend more in the future! :D
I’m not sure that’s the best proposal on its own. If that’s all that gets implemented, we will see rich players hoarding all of the diamonds/iron/emeralds to keep their liquid cash levels low. There need to be other ways for players to spend their money.
And what we have then is just the same thing, uncs being held in easily liquified items.
Doesnt really solve the problem.
But it would remove at least some money from the economy completely.
Also the 20-30% increase in cost of buying new kingdom lots sounds good. There are people that have enormous amounts of lots there, and that should not be encouraged in the future imo.
I have more than a few, but a lot are streets, and corner lots for the subway project, and all of my regular lots have development and projects on them. Same with Owl who is the only one with more lots than me. I think the main problem in Kingdom, is where a lot of lots are started and then the project stalls or is abandoned, while the player remains active, just not in Kingdom. Then the lots languish.
I didn’t mean to say that its wrong that some people have many lots, it’s fine as long as they’re in use and will be built on. I just meant that if there will be many others who will buy more kingdom lots, because they’re told to use more money, it will be a problem.
And do keep in mind people! We do have a fair amount of new people joined , so any major market changes could be devastating. The people in Kingdom aren’t the only ones using the market you know :)
I just want to know who’s going to be the IRS for this change so I can give them bad karma =)
On a serious note, I am guilty of saving my money. If of course, that’s something you can be “guilty” of. I don’t spend my money because if I need something, I simply go get it before I even look at the shop. I view the shop as a luxury, and try to stay as self reliant as possible because I play in survival and want to maintain the realistic gameplay. If I just bought everything I wouldn’t be having any fun.
If you put an amount that when reached a player will be taxed, they may just stop voting. (they, not me)
I’ve been called the “Black Hole” Because when given Uncs or sold items, the Uncs are never seen again.
Yeah, I echo this sentiment, I hate spending also. I think if possible it would be nice to focus on providing cool things for people to spend money on that do not break the game, rather than punishing people for having too much money.
As I said in my comment above, if there is, say, a 60k cap, I’ll just buy some diamonds before I vote every day. If all “rich” people do the same, before too long diamonds will be out of reach of regular players.
I’m with Tar – I never spend.
If there is a cap or tax, I will spend my entire 100k uncs on all of pluto diamonds in the shop and just not vote.
After reading this, I feel like a minor fee for using /home, say 10 uncs to activate that home per day. Example: /home king charges me 10 uncs, but I can use it for the rest of the day for free.
I also like the idea of taxes on buying/selling/donating. It would be more realistic and rather educational, but not too bad to deal with.
I can see Pine making more donation requests in the future when he has to expand HR or start on a new project XD.
One thing that I am open to doing is donating Uncs/valuables to promote “other” activities around the server. A while back, I was giving out prizes for trivias and mini games to promote the understanding of the Uncovery server, the Uncovery website, and various aspects of Minecraft. I also gave out valuables to winners of Hunger Games at one time and I know Jonno and Sleepystrangekid were giving out diamonds and dragon eggs for their prop hunt games. Some of us (say the top 5 or 10%) can contribute funds to a pool which can then be used purchase prizes from the server directly and hence removing these Uncs from circulation (thereby, somewhat counteracting the effects of the “free” Uncs received during the voting sessions).
Some other games that comes into mind would be team pvp (via the our future in-house arenas), capture the flag (or capture the tower per one of Achievement Hunter’s let’s play), horse/hog races, jousting on horseback (Pine has a good design in HR), Minecraft griftball, and the best build/guess from Sethbling’s the building game (this 1 might be a tough one to implement). Of course, the viability of these suggestions would depend on the amount of work required as well as the lag it creates on the server. I know there is already some great designs for some of the above mentioned activities which would really promote the builder’s reputation on this server.
Now, it may be difficult to automate these activities and distribute the prizes/awards. I am wondering if some of the regulars on Uncovery are willing to take up this task and be given some Uncs/prizes from the pool in return. The game can be limited to certain user levels to balance the distribution of Uncs across all the players on this server.
Just my 2 cents. Let me know what you guys think.
These are great ideas, and I really hope we see them happen.
However, they are kind of a side discussion to the main point. As Sleeping_Owl pointed out, just moving money from player to player doesn’t actually take money out of the economy. Every day, for every vote, at least 100 uncs are created from nowhere and added to the economy. If we have 30 players voting at all 4 sites, that’s 12k that gets added to the economy each and every day. In a month, that’s over 360k.
Of course every day people are creating resources and mining, and adding more stuff that has value to the economy, but Unc’s belief is that we’ve got too many unc sources and not enough unc sinks. So we need to figure out something that actually takes money out of the economy (and not just by putting it in the pockets of players who don’t spend), and doesn’t just move it from player to player.
Would it be possible to have Kingdom lots to be paid monthly or bi monthly. So a Kingdom lot would be 5000Uncs a month or every other month. This would encourage people to spend time on their Kingdom lots and increase the usage of Uncs. Treat it like you are renting that Kingdom lot out I guess.
Would it be possible to have a donation type rank with the “++” and “+” but with Uncs. For instance they would have the same perks to that of a donator however they paid 10k Uncs or more. Maybe have a different colour for the “++”.
Would it also be possible to have a lottery you can pay for. For instance a ticket be 200 Uncs. You pay the 200 Uncs and get a random item worth around 100 Uncs, however there is a chance 5%? 10%? At a rare item such as a Skeleton head or Zombie head. Maybe that is too complicated.
This is a long shot but would it be possible to have a warp that you could buy for the DL? So someone could pay 1000 Uncs and have a personal portal to the DL at x=10 000 or something. I know some people really like having cords that are far out. I am not sure if this would work.
Would it be possible to give out small lots in the City that higher ranks would be able to build in. So lets say Architect+, and they can make a little monument in that area. It could be a 20x20x20 area, located just outside of the main City. Have them cost 10K or 5K. I am not sure if this would be popular for people but it would be cool to have their own area in the City that they could build in. I would pay 10K to have a small area in the City to make my own.
I liked all of the ones Az had as well. They seem like they would be used a lot and would useful.
Oh please dear god no rental Kingdom lots. Owl and I could never pay that monthly, and would be forced to reset huge projects.
I like the Idea of a lottery.
What if we were to have no payments on roads or corner lots and reduced the payment for every lot you own. 1 lot be 5k a month. 2 lots be 2.5k. And so forth. So you’d be paying 5k a month, regardless of how many lots you have to stay in Kingdom. You’d still have the 10k per lot. Just have the payment starting the month after.
Jonno, as long as we’re not taxing people or having a cap – I’m sure I could help you and owl for rent – I’ll just be a nice landlady :P
Sell a player a desert and he will make a garden. Rent a player a garden and he will make a desert.
What if I make a player a dessert?
Owl Pecan Pie? I’ll take 2!
I like a lot of these ideas but some such as weather control make survival like creative and some like paying to /home make survival just impossible
Others like Tbrewda’s idea of monthly kingdom costs would make the peeps like me go broke and lose my lot. This could really effect how much building and projects are started
An idea that keeps player to player circulation would be setting up contracts. Like someone could propose a contract saying you give me ten million uncs every Tuesday for three months or until I say you can stop. But then the other player would have to accept before it started.
What about bringing the gold exchange back in but having it run on gold blocks instead of ingots so that it wont get inflated as quickly and having the same thing run with and diamonds.