Dev economy goal question

I was just curious what the devs goal was for the in game economy with coin?

It is supposed to be balanced with rare items worth a lot of coin, moderate supply and demand items for avg coin, and basic gathering or crafting items for low coin cost?

Or eventually an economy where everything can be traded basically as a 1 to 1 economy?

Just trying to understand and put my expectations in check.

Thanks

Edit: to clarify, also wondering if an artificial low availability of certain resources is intended or wished for in order to create a gradient economy?

Edit again: I think I would prefer a gradient economy, but realize others may not. Just curious really.

My question: is there a real supply and demand, if nothing really has value or need? Seems like it would cause a dead economy, but I could be wrong.

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I think it was just “introduce coin and a buying/selling system and let the players decide.”

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With players here controlling the markets in general, there isn’t much the devs can do to contol the economy.

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Well the only thing they can change is supply, or the amount you get when you harvest, which would potentially drive prices down depending on how much.
I see that as a good thing.

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This is a sandbox guys. The economy is quite literally what we the players want it to be.

It seems as time goes on the playerbase prefers a barter economy

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Agreed. We will nvr ever have a 100% stable economy. Due to “joe blows” that will farm one thinh for a week straight or longer etc then put it all up for 1 to 2 coin cause they have an over abundance of it with nowhere left to store it. And no backbone to wait it out for the real coin. But this is to be expected i mean kids are gonna play this.

In saying that i really hope all nerf and buffs etc dont comr from an economy stand point cause its ever changing and these things will nvr end this way.

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I don’t think that’s a fair way to put it. This is how a free market economy works. All I like doing in the game is smashing rocks and chopping wood. Stupidly excessive amounts of it so we can make deco blocks. A side benefit is we get a great amount of ores and gems and coals. How is it our fault, those of us who like to farm a specific thing, if they lose their value? Why do we have to hold on to it to keep the market artificially higher just so others can make more money? That’s silly and not a free market.

The option you have I guess is to buy up all the cheap items and horde them so you can regulate the market price, but you can’t do that long term because there are too many of us that enjoy playing the way that we do which results in certain market items having much lower value than what you and others personally place on them. If those items had real value they’d be turning over and price holding steady. The more people play and the more people get to certain tiers/methods of play the more various items will proceed to drop in price. That’s quite literally the basis of economics.

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Ive no problem with it at all. Just stating how i percieve it is all.

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I interpreted joe blow as a negative connotation.

Nah i didnt mean it that way my bad. I just ment anybody.

The devs do have at least 1 more lever they can pull here: access to the money supply. It currently seems the economy is in a recession (I hesitate to say depression, but with at least 1 portal network talking of closing down and more shops closing, maybe we are there) due to deflation of the currency. The devs could, in theory, do something right now that is inflationary (maybe even wildly so) in order to boost the economy.

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The Boundless economy was built around the expectation for footfall to work as intended. The economy was booming back when players were generating footfall. Footfall broke, request baskets stopped being a common thing, and here we are. Maybe they’ll fix footfall this week but I doubt it. It’s not so much that players prefer barter - bartering will always be a nice option. But currently barter is the only option for the lower 90% of us.

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Footfall is a deflationary mechanic, by nature (in that the people that generate the most footfall are likely the people already sitting on the most money, and there is limited economic value in giving more money to people that already have it vs. people that don’t). While I don’t love that it breaking has messed up the economy, I think something like this was going to happen regardless if that remained the only way to realistically generate coin. Hopefully the devs can use this opportunity to figure out a long-term plan.

If footfall hadn’t broken those with money would be spending it on statues made of gems, cities made of copper, fun things. Now the rich are simply in survival mode.

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Today is depressing relative to 3 weeks ago. Poor economy needs Prozac.

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That sounds an awful lot like the 1920s, and we all know how that ended. Any economy where you have to be “rich” to participate isn’t stable long term. We are seeing that now at an accelerated rate. While I have come around some on footfall (mostly to reward portal hub groups as they make this game playable), there needs to be better system(s) for the average player to generate enough money to be able to participate as well.

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Footfall being broken is irrelevant. There is a ton of coin out there already. It’s jist not being circulated. I absolutely do not believe the current sink mechanics we have for coin is siphoning that much of it out of the system.

Footfall being broken isn’t the issue with the economy at all. It’s an overall decrease in demand and increase in supply. The coin that is in circulation is just not changing hands like it should. Period.

Edit:

This is what happens when people horde their money. It’s why trickle down economics is a lie-filled myth.

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I think this is what I was trying to point upon. I like how you said it. Too much supply and no demand, so there is no reason to circulate the coin.

Which makes me wonder how we can facilitate demand without limiting people’s access to items in game. Seems kind of difficult to please everyone.

But without limited supply, eventually there will be no reason for an economy or shops.

Edit: eventually even the forging market will die, because with gems being so low priced less and less people will need to mine or buy hammers

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Lack of velocity is also a problem, for sure. In real economies, governments can and do increase velocity by giving money to people at the bottom, not the top. If you gave everyone in the game 20kc right now, the players that currently don’t have money would spend all of that within a month, while players currently at the top would throw that 20k into their Scrooge McDuck swimming pool.

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There are no repeatable, reliable ways to earn coin so until the rich know they’ll be able to get that money back they’re making the smart choice and holding it.

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