I’m looking hard at this game, it looks to be a mix of all my favourite games in one, but I wanted to ask a few questions about what the perceived end-game will be.
I see there’s no PvP so wanted to ask what the end game “gold sink” to keep the economy going will be.
If there’s nothing to take high end resources/weapons/armour/huge amount of gold permanently out of the game during an enjoyable dynamic activity, perhaps with a death/respawn “cost” then the economy will stagnate not keep flowing.
Looking at ARK if you start out on a PvE server you build a huge base, collect a load of the best animals, fill your chests with rare ores - and then you literally have nothing left to do.
Everyone in Boundless will eventually be at the stage where they have lockers full off goodies, a huge house, they’ll have killed 30 titans and I assume maintain a vast portal network giving them access to anything they might require.
So what are the plans to keep the long term economy going once players are established?
Depending on your play style and what you enjoy doing there are multiple roles you can play in the game, but the main points are everything has durability so items will break eventually, a single character cannot do everything and everything is made by the players.
Combat players will be using their weapons to hunt and defeat creatures for their resources which they can sell to traders for coin or employ a crafter to forge better or new gear.
Miners and Gatherers will be using their tools to build networks or collect resources which they can use to build structures, trade with other players or hire a crafter to make new items.
A crafter will be in constant demand and will be providing players with bombs, brews, tools, weapons and eventually forge items into powerful versions of the base form.
Explorers will have an interesting role too, as they’ll be able to share enemy locations and resource spots with other players as they are discovering new unexplored worlds in the universe.
Traders will be moving items between worlds and filling their shops with goods to buy and sell.
This is just a brief bit of insight into how players will be playing the game based on their role, however we do have few more “end game” features planned, such as Capitals. This is were a town or city is automatically designated by the game as the Capital of the world, due to its size and activity, so all players in the game will be directed to it, thus increasing the Capital’s chances of getting trade from players and increasing its population and size on the world.
We’d imagine players will eventually contest over who gets the Capital or move on and colonize new worlds.
Thank’s for the reply, I’m definitely looking forward to doing a little of everything, with a Zoo being high up there, I’m an alt-o-holic in most MMO’s so hopefully we’ll be able to get more than 1 character slot in the future.
I’m not sure durability alone will out “spend” the future population’s rate of mining and gathering resources, but I’ve spent a lot of time reading up and I see taxes on sales which is good, and perhaps the potential for separate PvP worlds/or just PvP fun events is being explored(?) which will be great to give players that choice and make the game more “MMO” and less “Building Sim”.
I’ve just brought the game on Steam after seeing that one of the Devs is a big EVE online fan - and that games economy looks to be going strong after many years
I might be missing something but won’t the durability of a tool allow us to gain more resources than it cost in the first place? (assuming you play somewhat considerate) Meaning that eventually the overall resource wealth of the playerbase will gradually increase, leading to an economic “heat death” like @AnnieGYG described, as it happens in many other PvE games without mechanics that actually ‘annihilate’ resources without immediate return.
This ‘contest’ might indeed be the saving grace.
Looking at the Production/Destruction heatmap below, based on data from EvE Online (since it already was mentioned as example) shows that players are inclined to spend (and waste) huge amounts of resources for privileges like claiming territory and the prestige of owning special places like a capital.
Note: The inner area represents the ‘PvE’ zone whereas the outer “ring” shows the ‘PvP’ area, where territorial contest happens.
Wow, really interesting map, I’m far from an expert in economics, I just understand that things have to go “boom” and disappear from the game at regular intervals to keep the need for resources going. Building and item degradation won’t be enough for sure once players are established and have filled every plot - MMOs are meant to last years and not months.
I’m pretty interested in how the global trading post will work in this game, will it be one like GW2 where you can choose your own price to sell and throw items which will stay up there forever, or will it be an Archeage Auction house where you can select the amount of time your item is up for auction - paying more for longer periods.
The main things Devs forgot in most of the games I’ve played was to always keep low level materials relevant and needed in higher end crafts. The global trade posts ended up crammed with low end items that would never sell for 1 copper a throw or you’d just up with bag fulls of “Vendor trash” to sell to the nearest NPC or throw away. New players wouldn’t even buy them since they needed the XP from gathering/crafting low end stuff themselves.
Edit: Actually forgot about EQ2 trade system where the main global trade post was heavily taxed but you could buy directly from players boxes outside their houses to avoid the tax - something similar might work well here.
The only game I can think of I’ve played that had a similar “capital” battle was Archeage that tried 2 weekly castle sieges on the PvP continent but ended up with this huge event failing within a month because once 4 super strong zerg guilds got the 4 castle nodes, nobody could touch them.
