Boundless Economics - Monetary Velocity and You

General
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Thanks for clicking!

I had a big document prepared for this, but in true “dog ate my homework” fashion, I left it on my office computer, so you all are stuck with just the bullet points.

Below are a few proposals to improve the economy that increase in both complexity and impact. The intent is to provide a number of solutions that can work with existing technology for implementation as well as new technology. Each has a specific macroeconomic point they are attempting to remedy as a part of the larger economic picture, and I have briefly identified which. Additionally, none of these are meant to be “unfun”. Even the banking function below is meant to build community and competition.

• Proposal 1: Weekend tax free request baskets
o Details: Every weekend, request baskets would operate without taxes applied. No limit on amount of money or goods processed.
o Economic goal: Supply-side stimulus focusing on monetary velocity and increasing inflation.

• Proposal 2: Daily “Consumer Hour” on a planet in each time zone
o Details: Every day, a planet in each time zone (with a predetermined consumer hour) gets the entire planet’s shop stands set to tax free. No limit on money or goods processed in this time.
o Economic Goal: Demand-side stimulus, again focusing on monetary velocity and increasing inflation.

• Proposal 3: Shrine Quests
o Details: The Shrine Guardian (?) offers 10 quests per day per character. These quests can be “give me 3 titanium forged slingbows” or “go to planet x and explore 2 regions”. Ideally, they would offer “easy, medium and hard” quests and the option to get a new one for cubits (new revenue stream). These quests would consume goods from players, provide compensation for effort (exploration, construction, crafting, combat, etc) and potentially group content (defeat big monster at this place).
o Economic Goal: Demand-side “government” stimulus and consumption, secondary stream of currency and/or goods.

• Proposal 4: Planetary Bank
o Details: Getting bolder! The planetary bank can be placed by the viceroy on the planetary capital. The bank offers a 2% discount in all shops in that settlement. Now each city has a reason to be the best – there is money on the line! The bank is a single block that can be placed anywhere in the settlement that makes the entire settlement eligible to place the “ATM” block. The ATM block allows all users to access banking features including: Putting money into savings, extracting money from savings, getting a loan, paying back a loan.
Loans are processed between the in-game “bank” and the player, no other player interaction exists. The loan availability and interest rates are determined based on the volume of money in the bank on the planet, and the number of loans out. If the bank has 1m coin in assets, and 900k in loans outstanding, the next loan for 100k is going to have insane interest. Whereas a bank with 100m in assets will be practically giving money away. As users pay their interest, those who put their money into “savings” will receive a weekly payout based on who had money on their characters to pay their interest payments. No need to go to the teller to “pay a bill”. This will allow new players to immediately participate in the market. Worried they are going to get in too deep? No worries! Lock it behind a level threshold before they can access it and cap the amount that can be asked for until you hit 30/40/50.
o Economic Goal: Demand-side stimulus, availability of money for capital goods, investment and real estate. True banking platform for overall economy.

• Proposal 5: Inactive Footfall Tax
o Details: Inactive players with fueled beacons will have their footfall taxed at 100% each week. That money is then distributed to all characters with the lowest coin holders getting the most, and the largest coin holders getting the least on a sliding scale. Inactive players are those with fueled beacons, who have not paid for gleam club and who have not logged in for 2 weeks or more.
o Economic Goal: Increased monetary supply, welfare stimulus for poorest players

Thank you for taking the time to read! Please comment, discuss and debate!

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Your last idea is something that would make me quit tbh… why should my hard work to generate footfall be taken and redistributed to players who have made no effort to generate footfall? I currently don’t try to generate footfall and get my coin from selling goods I farm but I imagine if I spent the time to build up a popular settlement and every time someone stepped on it the coin didn’t go to me I would be pissed…

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Footfall should only exist if equal effort brings equal footfall.

It doesn’t.

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Idk how it’s not equal if you build in the middle of no where you are not going to get footfall where as if you build close to an established settlement or attach your portal to a hub then give people a reason to visit you will get footfall…
I have a friend who literally built a giant ■■■■ in a populated area and it generates more footfall than his epic castle out in the boonies

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I think you are really overcomplicating things.

You only need 2 things for a healthy economy.

  1. Demand for goods (and therefore, sinks for items to make them)

  2. Slight inflation

Demand for goods is hard to change because it requires either making durability harder to manage, which sucks for players. Or logarithmic or combinatoric items.

Logarithmic means that the power density increases logarithmically with the items consumed, meaning you need exponentially more items to increase the power. But, the power is functionally unlimited. This necessitates new content otherwise the items are not useful, they would just be for “prestige” (the non-gameplay concept). Combinatoric, we have that, it’s centraforging, which makes items have rolls rather than being static. And it is why forging is one of the hot gameplay areas, as many of the items required for forging are in high demand (probably the best segment in the economy and has been for a long time).

Inflation is hard to fix, because it sounds like there aren’t good metrics right now based on the mention of how difficult it was to debug the footfall issue. If there were good metrics, you could have a footfall factor which targeted 2% inflation. But inflation needs to be there or you have no reason to spend money. It’s always better to hold your money unless you NEED that item to make more money right now, because holding items loses you money. So you can imagine being a shop owner where you leverage all your cash into items and then… the items depreciate. That’s probably why peoples’ shops crash and burn regularly. Deflation sucks for people with any sort of stock.

All of the things you suggested really affect inflation, but in a way that doesn’t really solve the root cause.

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I read what you posted, but each of the items I suggested directly effect the root-cause issue by targeting either supply-side economics or demand-side. This also gives the developers additional tools to control inflation by being able to adjust quest rewards (proposal 3), interest payouts (proposal 2), or the number/frequency of tax free days (1 and 2).

If you had suggestions I would love to discuss them! The goal is to provide solutions to the ongoing problem of economic stagnation and non-participation. There are folks with ample coin that are holding it, which we incentivize them to part with in 1 and 4. We then further stimulate demand with proposal 2 and 3. This creates “government demand”. You are aruging for demand for goods, so am I! Aggregate demand, as a part of demand-side economics, includes government (in this case, wonderstruck’s) investment. This gives them a “faucet” they can control gracefully and at a whim. They can demand 4 spanners instead of 3 for a given daily quest, which is a huge increase in total aggregate demand. I want to emphasize, that proposal 5 wouldn’t target active players - just folks that don’t play. If you are getting taxed and don’t know it, would you even notice? This is an economic stimulus package for our low and middle earners - again, demand side.

In short, this does address the demand side and inflation without effecting direct gameplay components. The entire goal is to incentivize players to do exactly what they are doing, more.

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I’m just gonna apologize as I got heated about the footfall suggestion and didn’t finish reading after having fully read it I would make one altercation.
Instead of two weeks I would have the footfall distributed after the beacon ends.

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Though I respect the thought and hardworking you put into these ideas I feel most would kill the spirit of the game - it’s a free market and economy to run as is it won’t always work in our favor but it’s what makes the game interesting.

Thought I wont toss aside ocassional tax free weekends but not every weekend fornsure.

As for a bank build your own, I was trying to however never got to finish because the town I started it in died. However still may revisit the idea!

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Tax free and shrine quests are fantastic ideas. The market is way oversupplied and there is next to zero demand.

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With the new deco blocks being introduced very soon, I went round the shops yesterday, spending quite a bit on mats before they creep up in price.
New items are always good for the market, though effect is usually temporary.

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Proposal 1 and 2
Why dont do the shopkeepers themself the sales of tax free? There always should be some money sick. This only help on moment. Making people wait to sell and buy goods, untill the tax rule is applied.

Proposal 3
So in the first two proposal you are complaining that there isnt a good enoughf flow of goods because of taxes, people find it expensive to buy or sell good. So you make a material sink?

proposal 4
So since you think people dont know what to do with their coin, they should store it someone where they actually get more of it? making people stock their coins for rents. Then you want to loan that money to new players who have no idea how the economy in this game work?
Is this your way to introduce economy crisis in the game? Because how can you force a player to pack the loan back with interest. While they can leave the game aside and after loaned a bunch.

Besides the loaning to new players make the progression far faster. Why should they grind their way to Gem tools if they can loan money and buy it?

People who say that the economy is broke, are blind. There are plenty of people walking around to buy items. I even do hunts so i can within an hour atleast 15 k worth of oorthstone.
With the atlasses you can find anything what people wish to buy.

The only possible problem with the economy is that everyone can harvest everything what they need. So they feel like it is not worth buying items. How to fix this is to let people take 1 or 2 professions so they have to buy the other materials. There for you get an economy based on profession difference?

Depending how many players are mining shall determite how much mining materials shall cost.

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Agreed, people can make anything they need, so they don’t have to buy stuff. I think it’s a pretty big problem.

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Agree with this and @DKPuncherello’s views, see attached for my 2c :slight_smile:

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@LyndaFromHR
How much coin do you have on all your alts?

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Sounds like some ideas that are either going to force players into being funneled into a specific set of tasks at a specific set of time during the day or be punished for being inactive in a game that lacks an incredible amount of content.

Hard pass on all of these things. It’s not a set of ideas that I see working but for a mere few players.

There’s only real two solutions to the economy that I can see: giving players a reason to buy something all on their own and making more content that provides those reasons.

The constant thing that is said in economy threads is there’s very few things people have a reason to buy. A few raw materials and then forged items. That’s really it. That’s what needs to be fixed.

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There is little demand for many items in game, and that is partially due to tax. If I buy a bean then sell that same bean, boom 15% of that money goes poof. Makes it near impossible to buy and sell for profit because the server ate your profit.

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Thought it was 10% without skills.

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10% for the original seller, then 10% for buyer to sell. with tax epic its reduced to 7.5%, so to buy it then sell it, 15% of the coin goes away

or rather, more accurately, each time an item is sold either 10% or 7.5% of coins disappear.

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That’s what I thought it was.

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I’m all against nerfs, but if they cut 15% off footfall and removed taxes I’d be happy.

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