An Economy How-To

A helpful reference to keep a healthy economy.

Why is a balanced Economy important?

Before there can be any how-to on how to approach the economy, you need to understand why it is important that the economy be balanced, and why there are rules in place regarding it. A healthy economy is intended to be beneficial for both new and old players. Something that can be continuously cycled regardless of the age of the server or player data. With an equal number of ability to obtain and spend money, something the staff try very hard to balance to ensure it is not too unreasonable. Example: GTS taking a taxed percentage of the profits made from selling a pokemon. This is a give and take feature that allows you, the player, to globally list a pokemon for sale that can be bought at any time regardless of if you're online. The take is that the amount you asked for isn't entirely what you get, due to the tax, which is treated like a cost to list the pokemon, is deducted. This allows you to earn money, but also allows us to take money out of circulation and prevent the hoarding of all the money to one player. It is no fun to anyone, be they a returning player or a new player, to come on to an extremely disbalanced economy in which they feel they cannot gain a foothold or obtain anything within reason.

How to set up a Chest Shop

In order to create a chest shop, you need to do /ecs create (buy price) (sell price) while looking at a chest, with the item in your hand.

• To edit how much is in your stock, you want to click the chest, and then in the bottom left corner, you will see redstone dust, clicking that will allow you to enter your storage, and edit the stock

• If you wish to disable either the buy price, or the sell price, you can either set one to 0, or you can put a price, enter the chest, then click the setting button in the right, and you can change the buy/sell price, disable one or the other.

• Everything you can change within the settings AFTER creating a chest is: -> Transaction Message -> Disable Buying -> Disable Selling -> Setting people as Shop admins -> Hologram Rotation -> Shop Buy/Sell Prices -> Custom Holograms

How does the Pokemart fit into everything?

First and foremost: the Pokemart is not priced as a bare minimum, it's priced for convenience. The buy prices in the Pokemart are a helpful average reference. It should be used as a reference point when determining a couple of the following:

• The value overall of the items on average.

• Considerations for what is "eco-dumping"

• What items are not on the Pokemart and why.

But Wiki, why can I barely sell things/sell prices are so low? Well, to put it bluntly: the pokemart was and will never be, meant to be a large or even medium income source. Many items are farmable, especially with the availability and frequency of kits, and a history of mass farms that have caused issues in the past have made us determine that sell prices might as well be pocket change.

How do I determine what prices that isn't considered "eco-dumping"?

It's important to note the obvious: pricing something obviously rare a very low amount or pricing a very common basic item for a high amount is just a form of obnoxious spam. Please don't do this, as it can lead to a warning from staff. Whenever deciding how to price an item, consider this:

• The rarity of the item.

• The demand of the item.

• The existing listings from other shops and what they're going for.

• What benefit that item can provide to the purchaser.

Here are a couple of examples to properly determine what you should do when considering pricing.

1. Item: Red Chain - Two player shops have it listed for $45,000 and $50,000. - You asked general chat: five players are wanting one of the Lake Guardian Trio. - This item is very rare: finding it took you considerable time. - This item will provide a legendary Pokemon. By using this information, it is reasonable to do one of three things:

• Sell the Red Chain for $60,000. You already know 5 players want this item, and there's only two currently on the market. It stands to show that odds are, those other two will be bought, and you can gain a better profit. It also increases the value of the item overall, as your listing may become the new "standard".

• Sell the Red Chain for $40,000 - $48,000. This is advisable if you're trying to get it sold quick. Money isn't an issue, you just want to get rid of the item and make somewhat of a profit quickly. This is an appropriate range to either sandwich yourself inbetween your competitors or undercut them without undervaluing the item too much.

• Use the Red Chain and Sell the Pokemon. This is important to consider the value of the pokemon this item can provide may exceed the value of the item. It is not necessarily excessive to get a feel for which the community would want the most, utilize the red chain, and then sell the pokemon on GTS. You could turn a $40,000-$60,000 profit to a $150,000-$170,000 one.

1. Item: Quick Ball -This item is available in the Pokemart to buy for 50 and sell to it for 5. -This is a popular pokeball to use, therefore the demand is constant. -This item is incredibly common, but labor intensive due to farming/crafting the lids and bases of the pokeballs. By using this information, it is reasonable to do one of three things:

• Sell Quick Balls for $45. This is the quickest method, but not necessarily the most effective. You are still saving the player money by undercutting the Pokemart, but you are not far from the Pokemart price to possibly justify the player going out of their way to go to your shop.

• Sell Quick Balls using a formula. My go to for this is basic, but NOT universal. Take 20% of the price of the item in Pokemart (in this case, 20% of $50 is $10), and then halve the sell price of the item. So Then do ($50 ÷ 2) + $10 = $35. So $35 should be around the price you should reasonably sell the item for while accounting for the labor of creating it. It will also protect you from accusations of eco-breaking.

• Sell Quick Balls in Bulk. This is a great way to justify a reduced price. Keep in mind the prior suggestion using a formula, it would not be awful to chip off a margin of $5-$8 if the player buys a stack. So if you decide to sell Quick Balls for $35, a stack would normally cost $2,240. However, you could discount it by having the player buy it in bulk, and sell a stack for $1,920, which is $30 each.

Keep in mind, this guide is a strong suggestion. There are exceptions to every rule, but unreasonable or deliberate underscoring of prices because you are planning on quitting the server will result in your inventory/pokemon being completely wiped. We take preserving the economy very seriously here, so please keep that in mind before doing so.

Why is "eco-dumping" bad?

Eco-dumping, for clarification, is the extremely cheap or completely free giveaway of pokemon, items, and other rarities en masse to another player or players. These items and pokemon, by their very nature, were amassed and worked for over a large period of time. In Why is a balanced Economy important?, it was explained that there are give and take methods on the server to help keep the economy balanced. A sudden large influx of items and pokemon without any negative effects on money, items, or pokemon in circulation can do the following:

• Undercut existing prices for rare and/or valuable items and pokemon.

• Oversaturate the availability of otherwise hard to get pokemon or items.

• Inflates one or a select group of players unfair access and/or large collection of pokemon/items that they paid nothing/lost/spent anything for, thus allowing their overall net-worth to rise without consequence and throwing off the whole server balance.

Part of the love and joy of the game is the grind, the reward, the deals, and interaction with the community to make it happen. Eco-dumping takes that away, and can ruin the game (intentionally or unintentionally does not matter in this case) for an entire server. It can also, if disbalanced enough, lead to the server having to completely reset. This is why things like exploits and Eco-dumping are banned and/or need to be reported, to prevent the gaming experience being ruined for new and longtime players. Eco dumping is an immediate bannable offense. If you need clarification, please reach out to staff.