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!
Tax free and shrine quests are fantastic ideas. The market is way oversupplied and there is next to zero demand.
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.
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.
Agreed, people can make anything they need, so they don’t have to buy stuff. I think it’s a pretty big problem.
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.
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.
Thought it was 10% without skills.
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.
That’s what I thought it was.
I’m all against nerfs, but if they cut 15% off footfall and removed taxes I’d be happy.
I am not sure I like the idea of inflation very much even in video games. It’s bad enough I have to deal with that bs in real life.
It would be nice if we had more than just footfall that generated currency. But yeah, I am against nerfs too since it usually leads things down a path of less fun.
Roughly 200k on my main, 30k on an alt and 0 on my last alt. so 230k altogether. Everything is made from request baskets or quest completions.
@crypticworlds
I understand that concern! Tax free weekends are to encourage those with shops to invest in those that can supply their shops - its all about increasing the velocity of currency. No one is at a disadvantage - they are getting a benefit for using a function. This is no different than a person using an xp pie and a person not using an xp pie - an incentive is created to help generate participation. For the consumer hours, this is to encourage folks to visit planets that are not biitula or gyosha - this gives a chance for all the shops on 3 planets a day (one in each timezone) to be very slightly more profitable. The marginal utility also encourages players not to abandon sites simply because the world is “less desirable”
I know the footfall tax is a hard sell, its why I put it at the bottom, lets address the other two proposals, #3 and #4. The quest functionality and the banking system are universal and give access to all players. So, to your point of “…giving players a reason to buy something…” both systems support that behavior without forcing it. An banking institution can give players the liquidity to offer the coin to buy plots from other players - and even provide an interface to allow plot trades (another option). The quest giver can support consumption of finished goods from the player market - further supporting crafting and demand.
If you have other suggestions or concerns, I’d love to hear them!
Taxes are an important sink for cash - it allows the devs to reduce the money supply if they need to. Right now the money supply is too low as it is and velocity is reduced, so the devs don’t need to reduce the money supply, but its an important tool to have. As with each of these proposals, its about adding tools into the developers’ toolbox to control the economic “faucet”.
Thanks for the reply!
Inflation is a fact of any healthy economy, and an economy is going to exist where goods and services are traded for currency. The idea is controlling the inflation and trying to prevent stagflation or deflation. Apologies for repeating myself - but each of the proposals are about giving the developers tools for controlling inflation and players encouragement to participate in the greater economy.
The calculation for the Consumer Hour proposal is effectively simple, the developers would take each planet and run a couple small calculations of the impact. In this case we will use Maryx
Maryx total weekly shop stand tax amount / 168 = Y = Average weekly shop stand tax amount
Maryx actual weekly shop stand tax at designated happy hour = X
Game wide total weekly shop stand tax amount = Z
Z - X = I
I = Taxes removed from game and left in monetary supply.
Comparing X and Y will tell you if the happy hour is effective at producing the desired results.
I appreciate all the responses!
I like some of the top ideas but not the later ones as much. I think the top one might be interesting around temp tax stopping.
Ultimately I applaud that you are willing to provide suggestions. We need those type of things so the developers can help everyone. Personally I always have felt that providing us a contract game mechanic would help players offer services and other things like that.
What new deco blocks
After I responded I actually did think about the banking system. I think the banking system is nice but it needs to incorporate other things besides buying plots from other players. I think loans can be incorporated into that as well. As long as these things have some sort of mechanic placed on then than flowery bs word of honor that we have to deal with now if players want to do it. I think that can some how incorporate footfall and other main sources of renewable coin generation.
I do understand how inflation and deflation works. I am pretty understanding of how basic economics works in real life too but very little of it applies to a video game. I just don’t want to see unchecked inflation if we have nothing that self-regulates the input of more money versus the output of it. Besides, my response was more of a reply to what @Krollbar said about completely removing taxes from the game. I think that would cause more harm than good. I honestly like the idea of constant money input and constant money output. Makes it extremely difficult for someone to horde all the money and bottleneck the economy because they hold half or more of the money supply.
Months and months ago there were people who suggested we have a fixed amount of money in the economy but even then it just inconveniences people since farming up hundreds of thousands of rocks to turn into stone to then refine nets a lot of levels on a brand new character. Those new levels means more coin and if you can consistently min-max that sort of money printing operation, you can literately just have unlimited money if you’re consistently getting amazingly well forged AOE hammers.
As far as tax free days, I guess that could work for an idea when you really think about it and I suppose I didn’t really give the idea much thought until after I invested that time doing so. To expand on that idea, I think having those days be on the weekend during peak times is critical while having daily rewards given to players for logging in also can help stir more activity with the players.
You appreciate my responses as much as I do yours. +1 for creating good discussion.
The later ones are more controversial! That was intended! The first 3 are intended to be more consumable and easier to engage with - its hard to be mad at a quest giver that literally just wants to reward you for doing what you already do on your own. Its supporting gameplay 
Banking and taxation on inactive players, those have huge challenges to overcome! However, I cannot think of a single MMO that has supported a healthy banking sector - but Boundless has the right system to make it happen. A player-driven economy that allows for free-flow of capital, and variable interest rates, will benefit as long as people play.
Consider, for a moment, that if a player takes out a 100,000 coin loan on a planet that would be flush with cash, like Biitula, the interest rate might be only 1/2 a percent. That is, 0.005. If you took One Hundred Weeks to pay that off, even compounded weekly, that would still be only 500 coins in interest. Isn’t that crazy! Imagine being level 30, getting your “100k loan quest” and running around with emerald gear from your local shops.
Loans don’t have to be like payday loans at 30% interest - but I would expect if you are on Galan with it being Population: Tire, that you might pay a bit of a premium for your money.
Again, thanks for the response and positive feedback!
My apologies! I wasn’t trying to imply you didn’t - the details are more to make sure we are on the same page. Fixed monetary supply would ultimately lead to deflation, its dangerous and it is the same argument that folks that support the gold standard make - its not good for any growing economy.
Thanks again for the positive feedback! I’ll continue to respond to anyone who wants to engage on the topic. I think we all benefit from having a positive discussion about how we can all enjoy the game more!
Since people are so intent on the honor system and contracts, I’d suggest some kind of reputation system. Allow people to establish a reputation (or infamy) that’s visible in-game.