Hi guys. It seems there's been a lot of complaints and controversy over the shop lately, and I want to do my best here to offer a solution. A lot of games, RPGs especially, follow a ratio of buy and sell prices for their shop items. This ratio is fairly constant for all of the items in the shop, with more unique/rare items not being trade-able. The job of an admin shop on a minecraft server is to set price ceilings that are healthy for the economy of the server overall. They should make it so that player trade is encouraged, and that goods/money flows freely between players, rather than straight into and out of the shop. It should be fair; not too high and not too low; but it must also recognize that some items - cobblestone, wood, etc. - would not be produced solely by players in a capacity high enough to supply the server, and so must account for this and things like it. The shop right now clearly is not fair in its prices, and in some places lacks functionality as well as the ability to foster economic growth. For instance, right now, emeralds cost $500 and sell for $10. This is a ridiculous discrepancy, and because of it, emeralds have been rendered useless. Other items in similar situations, that may otherwise contribute to the economy, are never used, because the shop has rendered them worthless. I agree that emeralds should have been nerfed, but if selling price is lowered, so should be the buying price. I am not basing this entire argument on emeralds, either: they are just the most broken and hotly-debated item I can think of right now, and the server is currently down, so I cannot look at the shop for examples. I think a good ratio of selling to buying prices would be 1:4, 1:5, or 1:6. I'm personally more partial to 1:4. For anyone not good at math, that means something that costs $200 would sell for $50; $800 for $200; etc. If the staff and server like this idea, I'd be more than happy to make a spreadsheet of new prices to save you all the trouble. Just let me know any materials you'd like prices lowered for, and of course, this will not apply to things like spawners and other items without a selling price, since I think it's best that the price of spawners, gapples, etc. be dictated by the player market: given their desirability, it's not really a problem. Thanks for reading, I know it's a long post, but hey, thought I'd give it a shot. By the way, I'm pretty tired, so if anything in this post has not been communicated well, leave a comment and I'll try to explain.
Yeah, some items would definitely be best left untrade-able, or at an unfair ratio, like spawners, potions, etc.