How would you encourage or give reason to trade and specialize?

[weylin 36]

Minecraft has always lacked a meaningful economy.

There's little to no reason to establish trade, or use methods like minecarts or wagons to transport goods in bulk.

Most anything can be done by anyone, and most players would rather establish production of something for themselves, rather than buy it from someone else.

Part of this is the nature of minecraft players, they like to be self-sufficient.

Rather than buy food, they'd prefer to grow it, and it's easy enough to not be a task one must commit themselves to and focus on.

Nearly everyone is a jack of all trades, there's no specialists, and no reason to be one.

Most things just aren't involved enough to require specialization.

What are some things you think would create a supply and demand, and encourage players to specialize in a particular role?

[Eleazzar 33]

You apparently have a very idiosyncratic definition of "meaningful economy".

It's true any experienced player can get anything they want in time, but on a server i used to frequent different players would specialize. I built a huge mob grinder and would exchange gunpowder for whatever i needed. Others built grand factory/farms and did a good trade in porkchops and steaks. Others traded enchanted tools. Some players true tend to want to do it all, but building the infrastructure for producing a resource in quantities for dozens of people is a different kind of challenge.

The main roadblock to trade in vanilla is that you have to be there in person. Various mods allow set trades to take place when the player is offline or busy.

Of course you can simply make things harder to get, and thereby encourage diversification, but that starts to kill the singleplayer game.

[fofi9753 25]

As for the whole minecarts and wagons thing, there would have to be a LARGE advantage to transporting items through them rather than just carrying them in your inventory. Some of these advantages could be larger inventory, speed, the ability to carry very heavy items, etc.

[killster550 401]

1 way i like is supply and demand: so you start a server, get your mods to build the bare neccessities out in several regions and edit out some others (naturally)

what it could create is 1 mining town, and 1 agrarian town, and 1 military town, all co-existing, the Preceptory would defend the agrarians and miners from mobs and Barbarians/Mamluks (take a pick), agrarians feed the miners and Templars (i love em) and the miners supply the agrarians and Templars with tools and armor, on the other side you would have a equal setup, with something lacking in either side that the other has, to make a passageway for peace (they are granted this item through peaceful trade, or conquest alone, no just giving it to each other, and no self growing)

(yes, this limits freedom, but it allows for roleplayers to sort of achieve a goal and storyline within MC's sandbox nature)

i once had a town of the Mongol Horde in a server, our only job was to literally grab speed potions (to reenact horses, that'll come for real soon enough bows and arrows, and some swords, and raid other towns and grab what we could, with the Mamluks and Templars BOTH trying to defeat us but not knowing where our base was, and not being allowed speed potions (so they actually had to raise an army (20 people) and intercept us on our way out, to try and follow us back, whereas the mamluks simply defended their towns with traps, scorched earth tactics and bows and arrow mounted people (50 of em)

this took on for months before the storyline changed into an all out templar v mamluk v mongol war (no its NOT historically accurate )

[aliceingame 114]

I played for some weeks on TT's server and I would say that economy is a hard thing to establish. I do not agree about the idea that you should have job specific town, like fighter/miner/farmer, but instead town where everybody have it's own speciality.

As far as I know, most people had a bloomery in their house and lot of people had a charcoal pit in their basement. Of course, newbies where willing to buy ore to get first tools, or ready to buy rare metal. I think that there is 3 main problem about establishing a good economy in game.

1. Lack of specialization

I think that the economy would be dynamic if there was jobs. As you join a town, you select the job you want to do. If you want to be a blacksmith, you can build a bloomery and make tools. If you are a miner, you can dig and look for ore. If you are a farmer, you can build a farm and sell food. In TT's server, there is a lot of people who spend their time sluicing, because you can sell gems. Then you end up with floating dirt island (because people took all the sand). I would rather make the gems almost useless and give a starter kit for every job as you join a profession (like you get a pick and propick if you are a miner).

2. lack of market organisation

The second thing i noticed, it that it's hard to sell and buy items. The main reason is that everybody sell/buy anything (partly because nobody is specialized) and if the shop area is not well organised, it's hard to find who sell what. So if people are organized in job, they could also have their shop one next to the other, so it's easier to shop for a specific kind of item.

3. lack of price calculation/regulation

Yow much do you buy/sell items ? I think that is a rather hard question. Do you want to have a controlled economy with fix buy/sell price? or a free economy where people will have to set their own price. And in any case, how do you set the price ? By the time needed to gather or produce an item, by it's rarity ? The other option is to create kind of communist economy where you don't have price, you just take what you need and give what you produce.

The way I would see the "perfect" town is to have specific buildings or zone dedicated to the production, transformation, and storage (selling) of every kind of item. For example, you have the tree farm to produce wood, the sawmill who store the log and transform it, it can send the log to the charcoal pit, and the log or construction material to the architect warehouse. I guess it would be nice as a player would have is house, and workplace, and the workplace could even be shared by many workers.

[transcengopher 349]

So, what happens when your miner, farmer or blacksmith is very busy in real life and can't play minecraft for couple of weeks?

[aliceingame 114]

So, what happens when your miner, farmer or blacksmith is very busy in real life and can't play minecraft for couple of weeks?

Quickly, I see two options

1. More than one player for each job.

2. You can have more than one job.

Still the question is, what kind of dynamic do you want?

Do you want to have a big city or many small villages. Do you want to have individual workers, or groups of workers. Just with these two factor, you can end up with 4 scenario.

1. Small communist village (everything is shared in the village) who trade with other small villages.

2. Small village where everybody do it's own job (the busy players would be much of a problem as a whole aspect of the community's economy would fall)

3. Big town with "company" (group of players) competing in a field of the industry.

4. Big town with all player doing their own job.

[transcengopher 349]

Do you want to have a big city or many small villages. Do you want to have individual workers, or groups of workers. Just with these two factor, you can end up with 4 scenario.

1. Small communist village (everything is shared in the village) who trade with other small villages.

2. Small village where everybody do it's own job (the busy players would be much of a problem as a whole aspect of the community's economy would fall)

3. Big town with "company" (group of players) competing in a field of the industry.

4. Big town with all player doing their own job.

With most of scenarios, except current situation and the first one without any skill system, players will suffer from lack of active players. Minecraft's not an mmo. Some servers cannot hold more than ten players at a time. For the most times you need about ten times more than that, and the more - the better.

[weylin 36]

Towns are normally established near areas where there's a natural resource to be tapped.

Several of the towns I lived near were built to support the lumber industry, but they all ended up turning into tourist traps

[aeroc 51]

-Make resources more scarce or more difficult to obtain.

-Make production more complicated and productivity less efficient.

-Make resources more sparse relative to one another.

-More restrictions on renewable resources, make it harder for things to grow in all regions.

[Peffern 94]

On my server we have about 6-7 people. We specialized sort of by accident. Our farmer supplies the cook, who supplies the miner, who supplies the blacksmith, who supplies the explorer, who supplies the farmer.

It's all nice and dandy without any forced economy.

[callisto8413 19]

TFC mod, already, makes it very important that a MP server has players who all select and specialize in certain skills. I only played SP so far and find it very hard to carry out many processes because I just don't have the metals, or minerals, or what not in my area. It takes so long to do ANYTHING that I can't help but see trade in a MP server using TFC mod as a must. Loners bringing in supplies while towns grow food, raise cattle, create weapons, and make a safe place for people to live in. Soldiers have to patrol to keep the area safe for work and travelers. Maybe a exchange rate for rare items like jade?

Maybe I am seeing too much into this...

[Menoch 335]

I think, and correct me if I am wrong, that TFC, like Callisto8413 said, is a Mod that caters to specialities. However, since it is still a young mod, and there is much in store for it (I HOPE), the different areas of workable resources will eventually branch out so there HAS to be a tree of specialization in a community... unless someone has no life and lives on the server. Again, like Cal said, I find it difficult accomplishing everything I want to when playing TFC on single player.... or maybe I am just slow.

NOTE: I am bringing this up as a heresay hinted-at topic piece... this does not mean it WILL be implemented... BUT:

Alchemy has been hinted at, which would introduce new plants and maybe even animal drops. I know Dunk has been (or at least I hope... again... HOPE /em pokes Dunk ) working on animals for a future introduction into the mod.

With Alchemy comes an area of specialization separate from mining and farming altogether.

Perhaps aside from the varied aspects of farming, botany would encircle those herbs and plants akin to an alchemist's studies. Perhaps it will lead to better ways to heal one's self, or give slight buffs, or aid in the other areas of skills. Perhaps the moon really IS made of cheese!

There are many possibilities in this Mod. What about Gems? Will gem-smithing take on a life of its own? There are still so many of those in game and no use for them as of yet. WIll there be future uses of gems in armor or currency? Will Batman ever escape the Penguin's dastardly trap?

The state of TFC a year ago compared to now is quite staggering. Much has been accomplished with this mod in the last year, and I am greatly looking forward to seeing what the future holds. I still hold to my word that new TFC tracks will be created for this mod once I get situated, and hope to somehow work with the B' Master Double XX and General Dunktastic to make that an ambient experience...

And on a side note if we are seeing an up-and-coming combat revamp, I would guess that a mob overhaul isn't too far behind. Just me guessing though.

So yea.. that said... be glad there isn't much need for "specialization" in your server right now. You might actually need more players in the future if TFC evolves the way my tiny man-brain thinks it will!!!

Discuss amongst yourselves....