Economy Ups and Downs

I do buy blocks (ash, mud, etc) at decent prices. (Fif Land, aquatopia on beckon). But I understand your frustration. I will admit my prices for raw ore are probably lower than they could be, and I will tell you, I can’t seem to buy Oort anymore since that is what everyone is trying to buy these days. The reason people are not buying most of the gathered items at good prices is because it is taking a week or more to sell most of them. The turn around has slowed greatly, and caused a crashing value that doesn’t help buyers or sellers in this case.

Totally understandable :slight_smile: I get where you are coming from, it does take a good deal of time.

Not sure my way is right, just having fun with what I got at the moment.

poor people need to walk more… thats life

This is true. Player count decrease, costs are going up, because people are selling items over priced that were selling in bulk with a larger population, but also forcing the people who can’t afford them to oversaturate the market by making their own stuff. It’s a problem that makes itself worse over time.

The only solution is to tank prices in mass scale to match the player counts.

The devs could help with this by giving vendors an incentive to undersell. Increase the value of footfall if someone sells stuff ontop of footfall

Glad you liked it :smiley: If there’s any particular colour you need just let me know what and the quantity and I’ll see what I can do next time I go to get more.

That isn’t the only solution, there are several IMO. If there were an across Boundless market that everyone could access, prices would probably stabilize on their own via supply & demand. However, each city/planet could still retain their own economy/shops for people to explore & shop at (? or maybe not?).

Devs could inject coin into the market in some way. While risky, it would encourage a ton of commerce/trading/etc, then it should level out on it’s own. Maybe a shop/beacon/XP boost week each month?

They could add coin drops to creatures & certain foraged materials.

They could add “active shop stand” hot spot icons to the GPS bar to make it easier for people to find (or something like that).

They could add loot crunchers/banks that would allow people to exchange items for coin.

Now just imagine if Iron was only found on T3-T4 planets :smiley: Maybe those new players would get their 20c

I think everyone wants new planets asap (myself included), but part of the economic problem might be a result of too many planets. Players are spread across 42 planets…that’s roughly 11-12 people on each planet (actual numbers aren’t evenly distributed, of course). If we get more planets soon, with no influx of new players, each group of friends/communities could basically have their own planet. In some ways that sounds great, but for the health & future of the economy/game… maybe not so much.

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Trashing items isn’t a bad idea, but it would have to be balanced so that something easily farmable returns a pittance.
Like 1 coin per 10 rock (and scaled so it’s the same price for the proportion of stone you get from a mass craft)
It should never be competitive with selling to a player.

I’m warming to it even more as I write, it’ll remove a lot of items from the game.
The one potential downside is over time the playerbase may use trashing values as a baseline for valuing items in trades, thus a kind of soft dev meddling with the market.

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I think you are correct. If I get 1 coin for trashing 1 timber than the buying price for timber would have be higher or it is easier to trash it rather than find someone who is willing to buy it and has enough coin. I also agree that the active user base is spread across a lot of planets and some players are not as willing as others to wander to find a store to buy from or sell to.

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I still like the idea of a recycling machine.

Crafted items can return ingredients (at a reduced rate), and base items return coin (could use similar single, bulk and mass for more efficiency as other machines).

This would help to normalise prices and have an outlet for the piles of items that do not sell.

It would removing more items from the game, which in turn will encourage more gathering when you realise all those fibrous leaves actually have a purpose, and also generating coin to stimulate the economy.

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Could have items destroy into a resource or currency other than coin. That way people won’t just horde forever like they did in Ultima Online before Operation: Clean Up Brittania. Was an event where your trash could be converted into shards to buy cosmetic or fun items like maybe flower pots or a black dye tub.

Turning items into coins works perfectly in Trove & OSRS. It works in synergy with their markets.

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Yeah there aren’t many games where you can’t do that. But the player base in Boundless wants the game to be different at all costs.

Seems like most people want/need more coin right now. Everything is grinding to a halt. Stores can’t fund ask baskets so people can’t sell to them…so people have no coin to buy anything…it’s cyclical.

Doing my bit just like IRL by spending my meagre hoard as fast as I can.

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Maybe they’ll fix footfall this week. Or maybe they’ll take a couple more weeks to think about it.

Theodore Roosevelt. “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

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these are my suggestions to fix the economy:

  • Hire an economist.
  • Use the Albion Online crafting system where you need tier 1 mats to craft t2 items, t2 items to craft t3 items and so on. This will temporay fix the oversupply of mats and make them still valuable in the endgame.
  • Add more moneysink mechanics like portal taxes, temporary buffs/ seasonal items for coins or even a weekly maintenance cost for buildings (bigger = costly).
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It kinda does that a little… fiber leaves --> sackcloth --> cloth

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We need an injection of coins. I’d like coin drops from creatures & the ability to trash/exchange loot for coin.