-1.

This is how I'm interpreting this suggestion: "The increase in price at /warp colorshop is an inconvenience to me. The blocks are too expensive, and they're not easily accessible to me elsewhere."

The raise in prices at /warp colorshop is absolutely a good thing. It's taking more money out of the economy (should users choose to use it), and it creates an entirely new market. What did players do when they needed dirt for their farms, but didn't want to overpay at the server shop? They started buying dirt, and now we have a big market for dirt. The reason there aren't many colored blocks accessible at the moment is because there has been no market for a long time for these blocks, since for quite some time, the server sold for less than players themselves were selling for. What's the point in fully stocking a shop when you know that the sever sells materials cheaper than you?

We can look at the viability of creating something like /warp colorshop.

• Black -- Ink sacs. These can be obtained from squids. Squids are not all that common without a squid spawner, which costs at least $15,000 for one. I can assure you that one squid spawner will not produce a significant amount of ink sacs, since only 1-4 squids spawn every few seconds.
• White -- Bonemeal. These can be obtained from skeletons. Skeleton spawners can be found occasionally, scattered around the mining world. But, again, you would need a decent amount of skeleton spawners to obtain a good amount of bone meal. Skeleton spawners are certainly not cheap either; they go for about $85,000 each.
• Brown -- Cocoa beans. This is one of the easier dyes to obtain. A lower price for a brown block can be justified.
• Blue -- Lapis lazuli. One would need to go mining to find lapis, and this would helped significantly with a magic pickaxe to increase drops. It is also not the cheapest to buy from users, though it is one of the more easily accessible dyes to create.
• Cyan -- This is a tricky one. The traditional sense of creating cyan dye cannot be done easily through mixing lapis lazuli and green dye. (More information will come on green dye and its shortcomings.) So, one has to farm blue orchids, and then smelt them. Creating in bulk requires a large amount of furnaces and in turn, a large amount of fuel. The only alternative to this is /smelt, which even then costs either USD or a large amount of in-game money.
• Lime -- This follows a similar idea as with cyan. Green dye and white dye can't be mixed to create lime dye, so one has to smelt sea pickles to obtain lime dye, requiring either a sufficient amount of furnaces and fuel, or /smelt.
• Yellow -- This requires converting sunflowers and dandelions. If you can get your hands on them, then you can absolutely make yellow colored blocks. But, getting them in a bulk amount requires time and effort.
• Red -- This follows a similar idea as with yellow. You need either roses or rose bushes to create red dye. If you can get your hands on a lot of them, then you're all set. Otherwise, get ready to grind, grind, and grind some more.
• Green -- This is by far the most inaccessible dye to users. It requires smelting (which requires furnaces, fuel, and time), and cacti, which with cactus farming disabled, makes accessing getting your hands on green dye next to impossible. It's situations like this where maybe the server can have a small say in injecting materials into the player market.

The common denominator in all of these is that it takes time, it takes effort, and it's a grind. I can understand maybe re-evaluating prices in a few months or a year (as has been done with all shops for the past 13 years), and considering the difficulty of obtaining these blocks, I wouldn't be opposed to the server taking its hand out of the entire colored block market and letting the player economy / trading dictate the prices (besides with green blocks, due to the rarity of the dye).

The blocks are currently being sold at about $15 per block, which is really not all that much. It comes out to about $50,000 for a double chest of colored blocks. (How many blocks do you really even need at one time? Anyway...) I personally do not think that is a lot of money to spend. If you don't want to participate in the user economy, if you can't be bothered to create the blocks yourself, and if you want to buy blocks in bulk and right now, then you should pay the premium to buy from the server shop.

This is an economy server. I don't understand why we need to, all of a sudden, forget that player markets exist. Sure, money needs to be taken out of the economy, but money needs to also flow. In fact, one of the main purposes of taxes is to get money out of accounts that sit on huge amounts of money and do absolutely nothing to contribute to the player economy. The idea was to redistribute the money through events, and sure, one can debate that events are the way that money gets re-injected into the economy and creates the cycle, but it's very easy for users with huge balances to get even bigger balances. With the server shops, money doesn't flow at all -- it's basically a one-way street.

But, let's go with the case that blocks at /warp colorshop are on the upper end of a user's budget. If that is the case, then there are hundreds of blocks in Minecraft, and you can choose to pick one that is cheaper -- it might just end up looking better in your build.

 

Then why don't shop owners do this already? Why would they buy dirt for $5 per block? Are they stupid?

If you don't want to put the effort in, then pay the premium.

Perhaps a bit extreme of me, but yes with few exceptions. If you have no money, then you're either grinding for money, or playing a vanilla version of ECC. In either case, it's a hardcore economy, and that implies grind. Sure, you can have a lot of money and be rich, but you're still going to have to grind in some way, and if it's not for money anymore because you have so much of it, then try to get those blocks yourself. This isn't necessarily a "build" server, as you seem to pose; it's an economy server. If you want a "build" server with blocks that cost next to nothing, then file a suggestion that ECC adds a server with creative mode.

The reason /warp everything is as popular as it is is because it does exactly that -- sells everything a user might want, no matter how insignificant it may be. If someone asks in chat where they can buy sculk sensors, I guarantee you at least one user will recommend /warp everything. At that -- why do you think /warp everything charges more than nearly every other shop? It's because users know it's a place where they can buy nearly any item, no matter how uncommon.

So you need one particular, pretty uncommon block in bulk. You know that it's difficult to obtain these blocks too. Instead of looking for places that are selling blocks, why don't you offer to buy blocks? If nobody wants to take you up on your offer and sell these blocks at even $1 below server price, then you know the issue is with the mentality rather than the economy.

I think we agree on this. There is no market for colorshop blocks yet, and the fact there really aren't many opening shows how unnecessary users find these blocks to be. But, the market, no matter how limited it may be, exists. So, let the first user who can take advantage of the new (albeit small) market reap the rewards.

 

1. They want to build their town and want the blocks in bulk.
2. Dirt is sold at $10 at /warp blockshop. Color blocks are sold at $15 at /warp colorshop. There's a 50% difference in price, but is there a 50% difference in the effort required to get colored blocks? I would say not. I would think it's 150-350% more difficult, depending on which color the block / blocks is / are.
3. The reason dirt makes more is because users name a price that competes with others' in the market, and people sell. Name a price for a colored block that's competitive and will make users want to get that block, and people will sell. Case in point: I have offered to sell many shulkers of black concrete at $13.50 per block, but I feel as though the suggested price of $10 per block is not enough. Therefore, I will not sell for less than what I believe the blocks are worth.

This is correct. Colored blocks require much more effort to gather than dirt because users buy dirt at competitive prices. Buy terracotta at a competitive price, buy dye at a competitive price, and see how it goes.

$10 is simply not a premium in my opinion. This would mean that the server block shop sells dirt and colored blocks at the same price, yet, as you accurately state, it does take more effort to obtain colored blocks. So, I'm inclined to believe either the price of dirt needs to go down, or the price of colored blocks should be at or preferably above $15.

Yes, you will have to spend time getting the block that is difficult to find in the market. If you don't want to put the effort in to get the blocks, why should any other user? You also stated previously that you "gladly do pay a premium", but $10 is not very much of a premium.

Let's take a look at another block you can't buy in bulk but can have sudden peaks of interest to users: emeralds. They can't be bought in bulk, but if users want to get the collector medal, and if they want to get the prestige boost, then they have to either work to get the emeralds, or pay the price in the market, wherever they can find them available.
Colored blocks often can't be bought in bulk, and it just so happens that black terracotta is of interest. They are unable to be bought in bulk, but if users want to make their build look nice, then they have to either work to get the block, or pay the price in the market, wherever they can find them available.

1. It is more difficult for users to obtain colored blocks.
2. Dirt makes you more money, meaning it pays itself over time through harvests. Colored blocks simply do not.
3. It's the access to the block, the purpose of the block, the scarcity of the block, and all of these factors lead in to creating a competitive price.

I go back to my previous point: if you don't want to get the blocks yourself, what makes you think other users want to do it? Name a competitive price, or pay the premium (which is not $10).

Ranks have doubled in price, towns have doubled in price, donation feature conversion rates are at what seem to be all-time highs, and I think the root of this issue can go back to inflation. In real life, people didn't like paying more for gas, but if they want to drive places, they have to pay the higher ("premium") price, or find cheaper alternatives for transportation. Nobody wants to pay more now for what they got at a cheaper price before, but that's just the state of the economy. There's not much that can be done, besides adapting to a new norm and "getting with the times". The same goes for colored blocks. Why should colored blocks have stayed the same price when inflation was quite evidently an issue? Either find cheaper alternatives for building blocks, or adapt to the new era of inflation on ECC.

Besides this, the server shops are reviewed periodically by administration to make sure that the prices are well above what users are purchasing for, and to make sure it's not being depended on, but rather that it serves as a complement to the player market. I'm sure that if $15 is deemed to be an inadequate price for the state of the economy, an appropriate adjustment will be made.