Economy Ups and Downs

Shop keepers are complaining about portal costs and no need to collaborate in game?
What about you guys create some centralized market place and do portal upkeep together and maybe start playing with prices now that regeneration has changed.
There is too many general stores around with same prices and aren’t easy to use that I have stop using almost all shops except one stone store that has been reliable source for what I have needed :slight_smile:

Yes, to me it feels like it is starting to change now finally :slight_smile:

I feel same way , running on PS shopping hubs is fun when taking it as exploration. But there is too many portals and to me many shops aren’t structured well. I used to go thru portals but now I judge shop what I see via portal and don’t even bother checking those out when I even get to this shopping mood.

I am glad that there is no game set values for prices, on early access time there were actually opportunity to just portal surf between settlements to buy cheap from one plinth and sell to someone else basket and that did benefit all sides. If players have huge amounts of stuff and still not selling and buying anything problem is most likely that price is not right or shop is not enough visible.

Fixed prices with NPCs is just fast and short fix of the problem.
If you don’t need something give it away or sell it cheap enough that is gone.
Other possible ways to fix this could be working as contractor for larger supplier or start building centralized market place.

Lol yeah, I don’t need another portal network, good market zone with moderate sized shops is something that I am looking for without portal hopping :smiley:

Something I have noticed in every MMO that I have played that has gathering and crafting, is that it always ends up cheaper to buy the finished product than to buy the ingredients to make the product. It is frequently more cost effective to sell the gathered materials and then buy someone else’s product than to use ones own gathered materials to craft it oneself.

I’ve been curious whether this would hold true in Boundless as well. From your anecdote, it sounds like it does.

I think the cause of what otherwise seems contrary to “real life” is that we get XP for our characters from the process of crafting, which can lead to dumping of goods that were made more for the XP gains than because someone wanted the goods.

-R

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I think the trade off of time vs money is what solves this. I mean, yeah everyone can have alts and go solo, but everyone only has finite time. So in actuality you are not getting any further than anyone else unless you have more time.

So it balances itself in my opinion. You can get everything if you want, but that could take you x hours. Or you could maximize profit by going into something specific and make money to spend on the stuff you would rather not grind.

I think it’s an even trade honestly, dont think the alt issue is broken at all. Still takes time, so if you grind shimmering orbs, then your not grinding other things. If you are grinding gems, then you are not crafting or building.

Edit: plus as the universe expands more items and resources will appear, adding even more items to grind. So eventually it will be much less efficient to get everything vs being part of the economy. Although you dont have to do either.

Just because someone can do everything doesn’t mean they have everything or the time to do everything in relevant time. So it appears fair to me.

Edit again: I have multiple alts, but definitely dont have the time to do everything. I would much rather be a part of the economy and buy from others vs spending time not doing what I want.

But I do enjoy taking part in all the activities, it’s a trade off

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Anecdotally, Biitula Hub has fewer shop portals than where it was 6 weeks ago. There wasn’t a single portal that was open and I had to wait a week before I could get a spot. Flash forward to today, there is at least 20 open spots.

Even with regen being fixed, I don’t think you’ll get more shops. And I certainly don’t think we need more shops. But just better shops. There’s definitely still room to innovate and create new shop concepts but most shops are just generalist for whatever reason.

I am not in a position where I have “worthless junk” just sitting around that I would be glad to sell for basically nothing. I want to grind something and sell it for coin, decent coin, but the list of things I can do that with include:

  1. Oort Stones

I don’t want to farm fiber leaves or sweet beans and sell them for 5 coins each. I could make a whopping 3k coins an hour that way. Big wow. :roll_eyes: totally not worth my time. Not to mention it’d take hours to find enough request baskets to sell that many.

I feel sorry for any n00bs trying to save up for power coils or AoE hammers in today’s market. At least Awkward Mining still gives us work! Aoe hammers for 125 rough gems. No coins involved.

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pearl of wisdom

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The core of this issue stems quite simply from an oversupply of items. Especially with the fixed regen (which i’m not complaining about, mind you), too many people are selling. We have already begun to see the effects of this, where stores who cant compete close, lowering supply. However, with how many stores there are, oversupply is still a very real issue.

Diamonds are a good example. As more and more people mine them, their price and demand both diminish. Everyday I see so many threads on discord and here from people trying to get rid of them.

At this rate, I have no motivation to really run a shop. I did have a shop at one stage, but the portal costs were simply too high, combined with the amount of effort just to keep it stocked led that to close.

The only items i’ve really ever bought are forged hammers and coils, and generally speaking, its easier just to trade gems for them rather than trying to find someone who will buy diamonds for more than 400c

The biggest hope for now is that as demand for things drops, the cost of things will also drop, meaning that even if you can only sell your diamonds for 100c, if the price of buying coils drops by a similar percentage, it should roughly balance out.

thats not true.

as more people mine the demand for gem tools is going up. demands for brews going up. demand for food going up. demand for gems and metals as material is going up.-

because some very loud people have complained about the amount that has to be grinded and the material cost of some items devs are sadly very careful now with the material cost of items… i hope they introduce new stuff to craft soonish

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It makes sense that those other items are experiencing increased demand, however, the demand for gems and metals are definitely not going up. Prices have been steadily dropping since steam release.

prices dropped due to supply, not due to demand-
supply and demand are the 2 main forces to control the price level. There were big changes in supply but not in demand. prices need to keep up or it will influence the specific demand (per shop or item) on the long run

I’d honestly argue that prices are just normalizing. I remember before live, prices on almost everything were about half of what they were today.

The major problem is people are probably like me. Sitting on a bit of coin waiting for prices to drop further. Some things are just crazy prices. Gems? Easier to get than ever, but still more expensive than they were in beta or whatever it was called.

Prices will naturally decrease. Some things will remain rock bottom, or more, like rock, which is basically the road to getting more plots (outside of cash).

The other thing is, coin in this game goes top down. If the top tier of portal networks with max footfall stop buying, then coin dries up. This is a classic problem in trickle down economics. In a trickle down economy, if you don’t see any request baskets to fill, rich people aren’t buying, and coin dries up for the people at the bottom…

But hey… now your stockpile of coin is worth WAYYY more!

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Gems should have never gotten to that 1k mark. That was absurd. A result of the broken regen. They’ve honed it in so it takes a few days instead of nearly a full week to do a full chunk regen. Now we have normalized gem spawns and prices are normalizing as a result. Ive got thousands of gems I could have sold for millions if I had chosen to but there all in storage, as I still decide what I want to do with them. As it stands I use them as my currency to barter with, getting clumps of mats I dont have time/enjoy farming. I really dislike coin based currency, but I know I’m in the minority. Thankfully there are others out there that are willing to barter and make trade deals.

edit: your overall post really hits home. Trickle down economics is such a false myth spurred on by the Reagan administration.

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LOL. And I thought I was the only one who thought of Reaganomics when he mentioned trickle down economics. Biggest myth ever.

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:joy::rofl::joy: sorry I didn’t mean to bring politics in to this. Trickle down economics is a dirty word/phrase for me.

My best strategy is: If I don’t see deep request baskets, I don’t buy anything. Mostly because I know money out will not be able to be replaced by money in.

I also NEVER buy from stores that don’t have request baskets out. In my view that’s the fastest way to remove coin from circulation in the economy

I’ll tell you I’m lower on most prices than other higher in buy prices than most and i still sell very little inventory. It’s too easy to farm mine forge your own stuff

Edit Not that it’s easy so nerf rates but easy as in everyone can do it all get all they need. Being a shop owner and providing that service is much less fruitful than forging your high end gear or going on a hunt and collecting eyes and cores and feathers. There is no economic drive to have a shop. Might as well kill coin and make everything a bartering system

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It’s not that it’s too easy.

Edited my post to explain that better

wheres ur shop

u are lower than others… maybe, but are ur prices low enough for the fact that:

?

the price level is lagging behind the evolution of supply and demand. When u compare ur price to the general price level u always need to take this into consideration

Ultimately the problem is coins serve no “true” purpose and items have no “true” coin value.

WoW you needed coins to repair your gear.

UO and Everquest you could buy/sell from NPC vendors.

Boundless coins are useful only if people have them and are either willing to part with coins for goods or goods for coins. Without some basic value or purpose coins serve a purely hypothetical purpose.

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