I think it might have been around the time bombs and food buffs were introduced or it might have been a balance patch that caused footfall to give insane amounts of coin. In all honesty, when you multiply out the increase in coin in the money supply by people just passing over someone’s beacon by tens of thousands of active players, it adds up in the millions pretty easily. Before it was nerfed down to what we have now, in a single day with minimal traffic to my own shop area in Aquatopia, I would walk away with 20k coin with zero shop stand sales. That’s pretty wrong.
The bulk of someone’s coin income should come from some sort of trade or shop activity. Having small bits of coin injecting into the economy out of thin air is nice though.
I also don’t see much of a difference between someone passing through someone’s beacon versus whatever “community” means since the way the plot system works is based on beacons. But I am sure as more important things come online in the game the devs would look more closely on the plot system and footfall mechanics with it.
Footfall is fine as a concept right now though. So we both can agree on that but with how taxes work with shop stands and request baskets, I think without something being able to off set that it’s just going to drain the entire game’s economy of coin.
Perhaps if people who are building cities and towns and such aren’t clumping all their shop stands into a single location, there would be more of a reason to explore a city and give other people footfall. Aquatopia does a pretty good job at that by providing the shop stand locations but still is far from being ideal on the organizational layout.
In my opinion, the primary source of income in this game should be derived from shops, whether as a shopkeeper or a supplier . I’m not saying the footfall algorithm is perfect, but I do not believe it should be a major source of income.
I always viewed footfall as a way to balance the deflation of taxes.
I’ve only been playing for a month, and I have no major builds beside my shop. I got around 3,000c my first week at my shop, which I find nice. I see it as a free diamond tool every week. Perhaps my view would be different if I had more invested, such as a major city.
I really like the idea of a portion of footfall being derived from the settlement footfall. This could be seen as “footfall tax” almost… you get 80% or 90% per person crossing your beacon, with the rest going towards the settlement. From here, the “tax” part of everyones footfall is distributed back according to your prestige in the settlement.
This would mean that if a player crosses a single plot in a settlement, the owner would get (for example) 90c and 10c would be divided between all the plot owners of that settlement.
In a different settlement, if a player has reason to cross 9 different beacons, the owners would each get 90 and 90 would go to the community pool… this would motivate people to make a place worth strolling through like sparta, elop portas, aquatopia to name a few.
I don’t think people in prime locations in Therka Market had to be friends with the right person to get their plot… in my case, I joined Therka Market in it’s infancy, way before Moebius Plaza, and the rest of the town built up around those plots. Those plots have pretty much always had either a small shop (which I found to be fairly non-profitable as it wasn’t very large) and a portal to one of my other builds.
I provide that portal to another planet free of charge, both because there is no way to charge people for that service, but also because there are so many other free portals, I would be shooting myself in the foot. Footfall goes a very small way to offset the charge of fueling that portal.
I think those players that build roads and essential infrastructure, to get to all of the other locations within a settlement, should be rewarded for providing that service. In my opinion, they’re certainly providing something of value. Again, there is no way for them to physically charge another player for that service, which footfall tries to address.
If we’re going to liken this to life, I have to pay road tax for my car to use the provided infrastructure. The only difference with Boundless, is that there is no centralised government, and no means to enforce a charge for using the infrastructure other players provide. That charge also doesn’t come out of your own pocket.
I agree. It’s not a major source of income - more like a low taxation for the use of a settlements infrastructure (one that the player themselves doesn’t currently pay).
As stated in all the other posts… There needs to be a way for all class types to be able to make coin to use within the player driven economy. As it stands at the moment, the ability to earn coin is unbalanced. Personally, once that aspect is addressed, I would be content and would fall into the non-existent “meh” vote with regards to footfall.
Anyone who lusts for more wealth must be greedy thus evil… You and I we are the evil doer’s here lol…
Because we must be Greedy if we want footfall to increase…
So I think this topic gets skewed or it turns into a they got something I don’t and I am jealous type topic.
Instead of being looked at from a clinical perspective of is the game mechanic working as intended.
Its instead being looked at as… Will this make so and so more money then it will make me…
Well, my opinion on footfall is that it isn’t meant to be the sole source of income. Granted at the moment it is essentially the sole source of income for someone who only builds things, but with the eventual inclusion of contracts and schematics this will change. Most other professions do have other more major sources of income anyway.
So at the moment for anyone who just builds things footfall may be too low, this will be fixed in the future.
Granted that isn’t a short-term fix, but I think that’s what footfall is meant to be… a nice little boost for people rather than the only source of income.
Well my view is perfectly clear in that footfall needs to be removed completely and a better method for builders and community helpers be provided income. There are plenty of other designs and methods we could provide income that won’t require what Moe is having to go through or worse the fight for “optimum placing” of plots to leverage it.
Unfortunately, you didn’t provide an option to vote for removal which I would have selected.
If I had to pick one of the above I would say things are too early to decide because of the lack of a larger community base and competition from others that would have the same amount of plots and wishes to build as much.
Once 1.0 comes and there are a hundred or more planets with private planets etc. too the whole discussion may become pretty moot. Most people make very little, if any income from footfall since most are scattered around in the countryside. 30 - 100 coins on a property total is not uncommon at all. Once we have many planets and private planets then there will be fewer communities people tend to go in and so an even smaller percentage of people who make money off of footfall will likely be the case. Those not interested in the footfall and prestige game will tend to gravitate to the low population planets (like many do now) and the private planets and ignore that. Some will be survivalists doing everything themselves. Others will make small communities where one or two people make and sell supplies to the other 10 or 20. Artists will do art for the sake of art. Some folks will be PvP players that care only about that and will have little or no interaction with non-PvP planets. In most any game that has PvP (especially if they have arenas) you see many players who join the game for the arena or PvP and never interact with the rest of the game. Money folks will gravitate to a few planets so they can compete with each other for money and many will stay away from those high population planets as much as possible. Me? I’ll probably stick to private planets as much as possible and rarely go to the populous places and I know many who plan on the same. For economics games I stick to dedicated economics games (and for now Star Citizen since there isn’t a lot to do at the moment beyond trading).
So your saying that the game is going to be 100 times worse at release?!?
I highly doubt the dev’s are going to flood the game with planets when there is no population to support it…
it doesnt make sense from many perspectives, most importantly is the fact those planets will require cost to maintain the servers, and why inquire extra cost if there is no population to use it…
after 1.0 100s of planets will be perfectly viable. there will be many more players and exsploration is a main theme.
people will always congogate together. there will mosey likely be many larger city’s spread threw out the multiverse and tons more smaller setlments.
after 1.0 it would be nice if there was this huge influx of people but we need to be realistic if they release with 50 planets that would be sensible and expand IF we really do get this big influx otherwise ElfMarines predictions could come to pass…
It wasn’t a prediction. It has been stated several times including how planets would be created and they can easily have hundreds. Here is just one small example:
Just because the game can support 100s and 100s of planets, it doesn’t mean it will need to do so at launch. The key aspect here is that it is now easier to dynamically add new worlds when they’re needed. This means the universe will scale with the player base.
James stated sometime ago that number of worlds on release will be scaled to predicted player base. Can be 50 can be 100. He didn’t say what population density they see as acceptable. Will they look for 100 per world or 1000 per world? Also, at the start all players are on home worlds and it will take some time before more of them will be able to migrate to other planets. Some worlds will always stay almost empty due to harsh conditions and mob difficulty. So even if we imagine 200 per world is ok, and 100 worlds are introduced for 20k initial players (arbitrary numbers), them 20k will be squeezed into 20-30 home worlds, and even after migration starts the 20k will probably stretch evenly over maybe half of the worlds while the other half will have small population.
My point is simply based on “The universe can and will be huge” discussions of specifics of footfall at this point are not necessary. The universe will change, the player base will change, new features will be added and all of it will drastically change the results people obtain who do demand footfall and therefor will change their perceptions of how much is enough, what is too low and what is too high. Yes, how footfall works as a general idea or if it’s necessary for some people or not is a worthwhile discussion for those interested. But, the specifics of quantity are pretty meaningless at the moment. There’s a military saying that “No plan survives first contact intact.” In the case of Boundless one might say “No plan survives universe or player base expansion intact.”
I don’t think so.
Certainly no more than footfall in general.
You can only get footfall once a day.
And I’m pretty sure you could make more money gathering stuff and selling it.
