This. The frustration of dealing with and wasting time going through many empty shops is the biggest detractor of the game for me. I find the economy to be a major waste of time and it makes me dislike dealing with the community. It may be one of the biggest things pushing me towards private servers when they release.
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The larger shops have baskets up. Golden Fist for example has millions of coin in their baskets with prices listed for items that allow them to maintain their margin.
There are other large stores that have tons in their baskets for buying (Coil King for example).
I just got to a few stores and they are rarely if ever out of coin and they keep their baskets filled. You can get as much as you are willing to gather.
I think that looking at it as X to Y is inaccurate given that many activities have multiple drops.
If I go mining, I get Metals/Gems/Rocks/Fragments/OpalâŚdo I need all of them? If I only sell off the parts of my gathering/game play that I have no use forâŚthen I am not grinding for X. I am playing the game the way I want, and getting coin for the things I donât want.
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Not sure if you misunderstood me or not, or if I misunderstand you, but he said there isnât enough supply ie. people buy but donât sell. But I disagree, people sell and they sell a lot, just need to up the price enough. If one has trouble buying bones for 0.5c each, try (exaggeration) paying 5c each.
But what I disagreeing was people buy AND sell a lot. But some are heaitant to spend coin and collect it, not saying all do. I know many who constantly has coin but then there is a lot of people that only has shop stands and rarely buys anything.
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Then you are very fortunate that the way you want to play happens also to be arguably the most profitable. Would you still want to do it if the returns compared to other activities were relatively poor?
Which is why I included the line âassuming that supply and demand has roughly normalised pricesâ.
If youâre getting all those things as spare resources, then so is everybody else. Their price has been driven right down. If youâre keeping the metals and gems because you need them, are you really making much money?
I canât pretend that itâs nothing⌠but in my experience itâs something pretty small. Moreover, if itâs a current âspareâ resource that you get without trying and so doesnât have much demand, how long will it take for you to find someone who actually wants it? Surely that just furthers the suggestion that Boundless is in need of a more accessible economy.
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I think diversification of markets and increased gameplay routes will help, but that will take time. The more items that can be made in variations, the higher demand will go up.
I dont think balance of what is in boundless will help much, until they create more deco items or functional mechanics and machines to use.
Much like what farming has brought to the table
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My fault! I did misunderstand. Sorry about that and thanks for clarifying!
Iâm out of town so can respond to everything but here are a few thoughts:
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Footfall can be removed and it is smart to have a discussion on if we can find a better evening model. Not doing so just keeps those unable to make money below those that constantly can.
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We have too many hubs and not enough people so some hubs make more than others. Footfall should not be the driving funding source for hubs. I like the pay on use or something else. They should be an ease of option solution. Not a requirement to use option. A player should be able to go anywhere themselves not requiring coin but fuel.
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coin generation should be like other games - quests, found in chests, etc. Other games have successful economies because of the design. Boundless needs work.
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remember Iâm looking a separating game play - economy, exploring, building. They are not mutually exclusive but offer each player type stuff to do.
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I am really interested in peopleâs thoughts on an economy built completely on Barter and Trade. No coin. Can the game work in a true barter/trade type scenario instead of using coin. Then everyone can easily participate at some level. Barter can work because players can set equivalent levels of goods. Also it focuses more on the needs of the people in the transaction.
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With all the items available I am not sure this works for Boundless. I have black metamorphic brick to sell/trade and want to get refinery advanced coils. I have to find someone what wants black metamorphic brick and happens to have the power coils I want or I can be forced into a never ending cycle of trying to trade my brick for something the person with power coils wants or that the player that has what the player that has the power coils wants so I can trade with him to trade again to trade again to finally get what I want. I think if there is a concern that players do everything themselves now, this would just make it worse.
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I totally agree with this point. Iâve played games with an auction house and it worked for them and the type of game they were⌠there were other factors like quests and dungeons what are the primary game experience. Boundless, on the other hand, is intended on building communities⌠in my mind we need shops and town centers to bring us to that point. Our society, needs to socialize and not depend on an âAmazonâ method to shopping.
I donât know about anyone else, but Iâve seen a change lately in the community⌠it seems like we have evolved. In the beginning it was all dog eat dog and fighting over territory and dominance⌠but, lately it seems things have settled down. The community itself has found a routine and new players come into an existing social network and then find their own place within it.
I guess itâs the Sociologist in me⌠I find it all very fascinating. 
Here, have a cookie!
Yeah, which is why it needs to be high-tech barter system to work. The âsellerâ can set values for various resources, just like you do today with coin, but instead of having coin to buy, they just drop in enough resources to equal the value youâre looking for.
So if you have a forged hammer that would today sell for 10,000 coin, youâd say this is worth 10,000 units or whatever, and then youâd say youâre looking for exotic yams, which you value at 2, and goo kernels which you value at 10, and bones which you value at .01.
So the buy could give you any of these things to trade for the hammer. Ideally youâd have a wide variety of resources youâre looking for, not JUST the few I mentioned.
Then YOU donât need to stock your request baskets with coin and THEY donât need to hoard 10,000 coin for that hammer. No tap needed. If you donât need any resources they have, then they might need to find a barter elsewhere first and get something you DO need, and then youâve involved another touchpoint in the economy.
The idea needs a ton of work, but I think it could be managed and can be fun.
No need to remove footfall for this. Just come up with new ways of making money.
Quests are a good candidate for this. In your journal you may have 50+ (an arbitrary number) you choose a few like collect coruption from a tier 5+ planet or gather wood from a tier 2+ planet. Or special recipies for items ment for the minter that mint for a higher coin value.
Come up with new ideas not stripping the game of things that people enjoy. If you have the option making your coin elsewhere then do it and let the people that enjoy the footfall game have there way to.
Itâs a sand box game tor Bobâs sake. Add more remove less.
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Seems overly complicated, why not have a similar setup with less resources. The seller can set out baskets for the items they are looking for then set a coin price for those items. Then the buyer can drop off enough resources to get enough coin to buy what the seller is selling. (EDIT: To be clear this is how it works now)
Barter systems donât work, both in games and in real life. If you have something I want but I have nothing you want I am stuck. If however someone else wants what I have and has what you want I can trade with them for it then trade that to you, coin simplifies this process as it can quickly get complicated otherwise.
I think what you are trying to get at is a credit system, where you earn coin or credit to a specific shop by selling to them specifically. It still relies on players selling to baskets which I donât think happens nearly as much as it should be.
I still stand by that I think the biggest detriment is that players want to get more coin to hoard instead of getting coin to buy the blocks they want.
Unfortunately with coins being the only way to open warps I can completely understand why players need to hoard their coin for warping to exos. The last thing anyone wants is for a new exo to pop up and not be able to go so youâre going to sit on a solid stock of coin which will end up leaving the system instead of spending it back into the system.
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This makes no sense to me as to why I am going to decide how many units everything I am willing to buy and to sell is worth rather than just use coin. Sounds to me like a very complicated change when the developers are looking for ways to simplify the game. All you have done is substitute the word units for coin and made it so I still have to play the hunting game to find places where I can ultimately trade materials around many different between players to get what I want versus find one buyer and one seller using coin.
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Well, Iâm not against an auction house or something similar, but that wasnât the prompt.
The system Iâm proposing is essentially the same as the current coin system, but without the external unit of value, and no need to generate the base value from anywhere.
I understand this barter suggestion but it will all come up like every game wihtout currency, An item will become the currency so i would guess it would be oort in the Boundless universe.
So it actually donât change anything just move it to another source.
I think coins give more freedom to the buyers/sellers.
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But it would, because you can hunt for oort, you canât hunt for coin. And the source of âcurrencyâ being the whole point of the thread, right?
I am much more interested to trade gathered items to other than to coins. I wish game had trade stands like some sort of ratio trading system with possibility to use coins.
I really donât get why hunting should be award more than now by mobs dropping coins.
Going to some public meteorite hunts gives in short time much valuable items that can be turn into coins. I have understood it is pretty much possible just stay around and loot without participating fighting at all, it is just about time investment.
If player after hunt feels like it is not being awarding enough with around 200 oort stone on pocket and all mob drops it is probably about hoarding issue (or maybe about luck attribute).
Lastly I see chrysominter already as suggested NPC merchant that accept every trash players can find from world. Much of this trash that can be found can also be refined to make more coins and same time it will even award XP by doing it.
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yes but if we are just shifting the currency its 100 times easyer for both the devs and players to just change the way the current currency is collected then to completely revamp it for a new system
i see that has more of a wake up call to add more to that aspect if people aimlessly wandering around looking for a shop is the only reasson to explore then Exploration was never really part of the game
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Think about it this way though. Iâd I have a hammer and you have oort, we can trade without any coin. But if we want to preform that transaction through an unmanned store, one or both of us MUST have coins. Either you have to have coins to buy my hammer, or I MUST have coins in the oort request basket, you sell me the oort, then you give me back the coins in exchange for the hammer.
Just allowing for automated self contained credit/value systems then removed the need for introduction of coin to the system ever.
This system benefits from, and arguably needs, global markets and service monetization too.
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you know what it could work has long as we have a Universal currency and not a barter/trade system it could work
i was just thinking of things like the minter need a single system to payout otherwise you would need a whole block of code just to allow the user to pick what resource they get in exchange and the devs would need to do the nightmare work of balancing that