It would be cool if you could link your shop stalls to an auction house for whichever planet you are on. The auction house would be accessible via an auction block, and the owner of the auction block would get a small percentage of all sales.
Love the shopping system, but it also gives me a headache.
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Be good to have you add to the thread weâre all already in 
while iâm interested in a search function of some sort to more easily find what your looking for. iâm not so interested in an auction house type system. an auction house would definitely not fit this game. I want to visit shops physically, see what people have built. See what other items they have up for sale while there, etc. I still want the feeling of exploring even when shopping. finding deals, and still have a need to go out and get my own stuff from time to time. problem with big auction houses is it tends to ruin game balance. Diablo 3 for example tried it at release, it ruined game balance so much that they actually ended up pulling it out, because they had tgo balance loot around availblity of all items on auction that playing game yourself you were unlikely to ever find items worth much or worth equipping, since you could just buy best items available on auction. So they were able to balance loot better after itâs removal and it made loot worth looking forwards to again. I donât want to see a system implemented that ruins the fun of exploration, gathering, crafting in this game by flooding market with everything you need and at super low prices. I just want it easier to find shops selling things iâm looking for but physically still need to go there. Whether that itâs a universal search, planet search, or region only search is up to what fits this game the best. More i think about it more i think just a regional search fits this game style most like i mentioned being able to search an item your trying to buy and seeing location markers on compass or something. A planet search may not be bad as well (limiting results only to planet your on) but itâs better to have a compromise everyone is happy with. One that still rewards exploration, allows for some price fluctuations, etc.
No, no, no. Forcing you to physically check each store is driving a real economy. If there was any kind of auction house system it would ruin it. Suddenly everything is the same price everywhere since it would be easy to check all the prices from the auction house list(s).
It would also completely destroy the brilliant footfall mechanic.
No, donât mess with whatâs working.
Edit: A list of locations for items with no prices would still hurt the footfall of people phyically checking to see what new is in stock. So thatâs out too.
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What COULD work is a bulletin board system. Once a day you can post a limited message (say 100 characters) to one (and only one) planetâs bulletin board for x amount of credits and you canât pay in advance. And you have to be in the capitalâs boundries to read or post on that planetâs BB.
That way smaller sellers could advertise deals or folks could post meet up messages.
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Wonderstruck will not include any auction system in the game because they want to have footdriven economic.
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My guess is, if boundless take off enough, at some point we will have 3rd party web page which will list best shops. Probably with stars for judging and opinions.
Even better would be if we would get custom addons like WoW ones within game at some point. Again if boundless take off enough. It would allow to make shopping list in game 
with opinions and so on.
I like foot driven economy and with all game player driven, imho solution for this should also be player driven without using game mechanics.
On the other hand prices I see in some shops in prominent places are just outrages and people who wish to get an auction house are perfectly reasonable. Some shopkeepers are displaying extremely predatory instincts when it comes to profit margins.
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As a suggestion then that includes both a âglobal-ishâ list and also footfall, as a middle ground:
What if there was an explorer skill that automatically sent the location, price and quantity of items available when you looked at a shop stand to a database that could be used to power an API, along with the current time to store as a âlast-updatedâ time.
That way:
- Only people who wanted to function as explorers would populate the database.
- It would never be a definitive list, as data would become stale quickly. A shopper will still need to look around for the best deals / availability.
- I think thereâs be less processing power required to deliver dedicated (and potentially optimised) data via an API than collating it from all available data.
- Even if it doesnât give you up-to-date prices, it will still help the visibility of shops that arenât in the major hubs as explorers stumble across them.
- Footfall is still earned by shop keepers as explorers visit to get the latest prices and shoppers visit when prices get out of date.
It puts the power of maintaining a list in the hands of the players, without making it an onerous spreadsheet task.
Biggest issue I see are all the empty shops, last time I was trying to find advanced coils I think I found more empty shops than shops actually selling anything. Maybe we could have a heatmap on the atlas or something to be able to see where there are active shops? Iâm all for having to actually visit to see whatâs being sold and at what price.
How about something like an auction house that instead allows you to search the entire planet for shops buying or selling the item you want?
Biggest problem right now is people have no way to âfindâ your shop unless you build it next to a major portal network and they trip over it.
So instead of generating footfall for shops people do not know, you prefer people stick to the bigger shops that advertise in the forums and on discord where they already know if they have what they want in stock? So the footfall and the actual sale go someplace else? In the real world stores do not get income from people coming in and not buying anything so why should this be a primary source of income for stores in the boundless universe?
So all the objections again seem to be it is anti-store owner (which I do not agree with) and nothing to do with it being pro-customer. Omni runs a website and I do not think it has hurt his footfall or his bottom line. At least people know what he has before making the trek. I will stick with stores that at least respect my time.
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This made me think if there was a happy medium between store owner and customer that could be achievedâŚ
How about a central shop information stand which could list all items, prices and quantities for sale within any shop stands in your beacon. Selecting something from the list could set a waypoint for you, so youâre led directly to the stand that you want.
This way, youâre still generating sales and potential footfall (which helps in case a sale isnât made) for the shopkeeper and you also save the customer some time.
An addition to this (and part of another discussion on the forum) would be to have a city wide version of this for when a settlement reaches a certain size/prestige level.
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This still requires that I visit each store to see what they have. I guess I am too spoiled by the internet in the real world. I do not want to spend an hour of unproductive time where I am not mining/gathering or generating xp or building looking for something. Even visiting the cities is not something I enjoy unless I am looking for building ideas.
I guess the one thing that makes this different from the real world is as a buyer, there is nothing I have to have right now. I am not going to starve or have my house fall down around me if I do not buy something. It might slow my progress to not have a power coil, but it is just time. So I can stick with the stores that do advertise what they have in stock and never really have to even go to the others if there is no incentive to do so.
What incentive is the store that I do not know of offering the buyer to make me even enter their door? And how am I going to know anything about the store without me (the customer making the effort)?
I do agree there has to be a medium ground somewhere.
I would see this would go a long way from a customer perspective, if all settlement would have it from a get go.
Add ability to the capital which would list how much of each item is on sale in each settlement and we would have very good way of making a search way less irritating.
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This still requires that I visit each store to see what they have. I guess I am too spoiled by the internet in the real world. I do not want to spend an hour of unproductive time where I am not mining/gathering or generating xp or building looking for something. Even visiting the cities is not something I enjoy unless I am looking for building ideas.
I guess the one thing that makes this different from the real world is as a buyer, there is nothing I have to have right now. I am not going to starve or have my house fall down around me if I do not buy something. It might slow my progress to not have a power coil, but it is just time. So I can stick with the stores that do advertise what they have in stock and never really have to even go to the others if there is no incentive to do so.
What incentive is the store that I do not know of offering the buyer to make me even enter their door? And how am I going to know anything about the store without me (the customer making the effort)?
I do agree there has to be a medium ground somewhere.
The problem, Kal-El, is that Stores only need to advertise on TV, and have a website for buying stuff online. And even then, itâs only the really big named ones.
But the convenious stores, and even Big Stores like Walmart, BestBuy and so on, only get costumers by BUILDING A SHOP IN THAT AREA.
Unlike in Boundless, irl you canât just walk 5 feet into a portal, to go to a hub that has a bunch of shop portals, which might or might not be active and dead. So irl, for big companies to make money, they literally have to go and make a shop in every town, and hire people to work there.
Something I donât think ANYONE does in Boundless. All shops are only run by the person that created it. Whats more, irl shops donât go out and MAKE the stuff they are selling, what they do is buy it from the people who make it in Bulk, then sell it to customers for much higher price than they paid.
But in Boundless, YOU have to go out and Harvest the resources, YOU have to craft the items, YOU have to supply everything. Because unlike IRL, there is no set standard price, nor people actually selling ALL the items. Go look in Boundless and try to find someone selling Copper. Not Copper Ore, but just âCopperâ. You wonât find one. I should know, I spent 3 hours being lost, and just exploring shops, shops, and more shops, trying to find my way back to where my home was after not paying attention to where I came from.
There are many basic items, Copper, Iron, (Not Ores, again), Coal, Timber, and so on. All the âBasicsâ canât be found, or if there is a seller they are very hard to find. This is a problem of itâs own. But even the stuff that CAN be found, like Iron Hammers and other tools. Again there is no standard pricing. So one store might have it for 100g, another for 500g, and so on. Youâd have to check, and remember, every store youâve ever come across, remember which had the cheapest, and then go back and buying it. And if shopping for multiple items, then the âcheapestâ could be in multiple different stores.
Where as irl, most stores are very concistent, and very small deviations. Milk, and Candy, and Soda for example are almost always the same price across all stores in the area, and so on.
So yeah, you canât really bring irl stories into Boundless stores. And just making a website isnât going to work either, because no everyplayer goes outside the game, to play and interact inside the game. Me for example. Iâm only here cause I was looking at announcements for updates and randomly noticed this. But I donât actively search the forums for anything. Why would I, when I have to be in the game, to actually play the game?
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My suggestion that could work, and probably simple to code into the game, is a âList of Storesâ based on âtownsâ. So any plots that are touching eachother, and thus âcombinedâ into a town, you could see a list of items for sale, broken down by the owner of the shopstand. However, it doesnât list prices, or where itâs location is. Just what items are for sale, and the name of the owner.
As for how people get that information. Could be another tab in the options that unlocks with a Perk, or could be an item only the owner of a town can place down, and only in the town he owns, and have it as like a sign or Billboard
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You raise a valid pint that most stores IRL do not make their own items or gather the resources to make items.
However , this is exactly why I do not wander around to even consider smaller stores. I do not want to spend 3 hours getting lost looking for something that I can wait until one of the bigger stores has or I can ask them on discord if they can sell me some.
You also correct there is not a standard price, and I am not going to check 50 stores to see who has it and what the price is. You are correct, you are never going to remember who had the lowest price anyway and possibly even how to get back to that store. I will check the 3 largest stores I know and buy from one of them.
You are also correct not every player is going to go outside of the game to check websites. Especially for the cheap items. But I would think before putting down over 10K in coin for a power coil, people might be willing to do more checks. As far as preferring something in game, I would prefer something in game to tell me what is going on with stores. But without prices and a specific location, I would not use it. It still forces me to wander to find a store and check prices on multiple stores and the store owners have done NOTHING to try and get me to enter. This is entirely consumer driven.
Well what I question is 2 things. First, HOW would a store owner get you to enter? Remember, Stores are run solo, they already have to go out and find all the basic resources, gather enough of it, then come back and wait for it to all be crafted, then sell it. That alone could take MANY days, especially for the rarer items, or the more complicated items that need a whole lot of resources to make. Such as trying to sell Decrative blocks, which requires hundreds of stone/wood, and hundreds of spark to craft a very tiny amount.
And since people donât like to find and sell their basic resources, they canât even go find and buy the basic resources and craft items and sell the item based on the price the base resources cost him to make the item.
There is supply and demand. But no one is Supplying, and constantly demanding. And the game is even designed to have it where builders/crafters need to buy their resources since they canât go out and collect it. But there is no actual encouraging it, or supporting it in game. Builders and Crafters have to make a hunting/gathering alt to go collect all the resources for them.
There needs to be more people willing to go out and collect basic stuff, and sell it, and even go through the basic processing of it, Such as smelting the Ore and Mass turning Timber into Wood and such, then selling those items too. Especially since Coal seems to be a very rare resource. (Seriously, I find more iron than Iâve ever found any kinda coal, even after mining for a few hours straight).
And to attract players to them, there isnât much they can do. I mean that seriously, what CAN they do? Go and open a portal in one of the Portal Hub places? Iâve seen many of those being abandoned and empty too. And the one Iâve seen that is active, is flooded with a lot of portals that go to abandoned and dead shops and worlds.
Plus if they DID get a portal up. They would be 1 portal out of, what, 50-100+ other portals surrounding them? What else, pick a cool name? A cool name doesnât tell you what they sell. And if you pick a shop based on the name, youâre just asking to get ripped off by a good scammer that knows how to trick people out of their money.
So what can they do? Make the shop out of very expencive blocks? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What someone might find a cool designed shop, someone else could be gross and repulsive.
Make a website, or advertise on the forums? That takes time, and would need them updating it every time someone buys something, or they make more items. Plus they would still be in the same situation, needing to advertise to get people to come to the website, THEN get them to come to the shop in game. Twice the problem. Discord? Some people donât have or use it, especially for PS4 players who might not even have a PC.
There arenât many options. The one I gave, just listing the items and not prices or location, was to FORCE the Customers to search, without giving away too much info. Cause if you would just give the info, why not go the full way, and just remove all shops and have just one big Auction House system in the Capital of each world for people to buy and sell items from. Removing all items having to do with shops, like shop stands and request baskets, and so on. That would be the âSimpleâ and most âEffecientâ way to do it.
But it does take away the âJobâ of the shop owner. Tho really itâs a broken job anyways, since everyone wants to be a shop owner, and no one wants to go out collecting resources. And those that do, only fund themselves and nothing else.
I will agree with most of your points. with a few exceptions:
All stores are not run by one person. There are stores that sub out portions of the business like resource gathering. A store can buy its resources and just craft them. I would think most do some combination of buying and finding resources.
You are correct that the barriers to entry to run a store are very low, and there are objectives that have you building the basics for a store which may be encouraging people to open a store when maybe they should not.
Advertising taking time. You are correct it does take time. So either one person takes a few hours to advertise or 100 customers take 1 hour to find a store that has what they want. Which is more efficient? If you want to run a store, run a store. If you want to put out a few sales stands, call it a shop and do nothing else, I think you should understand your chances of success are very low. At least if you allow a way for people to see a small shop exists, where it is, what it has in stock and if they are price gouging, then they have a chance. If it is game driven then it requires no more time from the shop keeper. The consumer still has to search and find them, but not waste as much time as it takes to wander a 30+ planet universe.
I think we agree that there needs to be some method of knowing who has what for sale. I am not sure if we agree that the location of the shop should also be given. I am sure we do not agree on prices being provided. How about this. If the system has access to all the prices it can say if the shopkeeper is within the median price range by 5% or higher or lower. No specific prices. A person selling for one coin difference is not higher on the list. It would reduce the time needed for the consumer and in my case, I might visit a shop that had what I wanted, that was not one I had visited before. (Used median versus average to prevent someone setting up a few shops to skew the average). You can always give the shopkeepers the option of opting out of any system. Add the option to the sales stand. If you do not want to be on the list then do not. Those that do can.
I think beacons could be utilized more in this regard,
Craft a unique shop beacon and place it in your store
Then on the Master Control Beacon for the settlement have a tab that any player can view to see what stores are in the settlement and what they have in stock. Then click the item for your waypoint.
So you would still need to visit settlements but you can check whats on offer without having to aimlessly run around searching for shops and hope they have what you want.
Edit: havenât read the entire thread so donât know if this was suggested already.