I personally love the NPC idea but I know other people are so-so on it. IMO it would provide a nice way to earn income in exchange for work/time in a way that is not dependent on other players (footfall, sales). With how erratic the player count has been, it would be good to have a mechanic like that as some sort of insurance policy when player counts dip.
Also, they don’t necessarily have to be shop keepers; how about random NPCs you encounter in the wild that have a non-repeatable bounty for a specific material of a tint (just an example). Or maybe “craftable” (would need to be a grindy recipe) NPCs you can add to your settlement that give out daily bounties. Would be a nice incentive for people to explore and visit different places.
I’m not that die-hard on it needing to be NPCs, but part of the solution could definitely be an active way to earn income with no ties to player count. I can see that. Right now we are sort of punished if less people play and that can snowball in more people stopping playing.
The npc settlement thing is a nice idea. It could be like nms, they are static and you can place them anywhere in your plots but they are specific to a task. Could even be a rudimentary path plotter you control for the npc within reason (so it doesn’t hog system resources)
Start with farming. The farmer npc gives out coin and exp rewards for completing tasks teaching you farming. Once completed the npc hands out 1 task a day for you. Other players npcs do too so you visit other settlements.
You mean like… This? yup i think i agree. Npc’s have not been hinted at, and “everything is player made/driven” kinda hints at no npcs ever; the idea of a cashgrinder though would be NPC-like if they could vary the payout as we both suggest
There should be a tax on held coins. Like 1% a day or something. Will balance out some of the infinite coin generation, and more so encourage people to spend it or lose it. The more you have, the more the more it costs each day to hoarde it.
Wow it appears were on the same wavelength, at a unnerving level. Yes there are options and must be a way, Ive seen it work in other games so why not here, clearly something is wrong at present…
And that game is much bigger than boundless. To have a purely player driven economy would require a large portion of players I would think, as it stands right now we are losing players, just look at all the expired portals
As the economy currently stands, any item that is “worthless” to other players has no value. Worthless meaning players are not willing to pay coins for these items. Some items aren’t even truly worthless, but players still aren’t willing to spend coins on them. Sometimes it’s because the items are easy to get yourself. Mostly though the problem is once you spend your coins they’re gone until you go farm Oort Stones.
NPCs could help a lot with this, even if they had to be player-built and required “fuel”.
The lore could be that the guy in the sanctum takes your products for coins in order to supply the oortian or citizen supply line to help others migrate and settle among the planets.
