I mean you’re allowed to gain the trust of people, manipulate your way into getting permissions, then stealing all their stuff…
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the idea is not a cartel its a simple lets be normal people thing ans stop to be greedy and eat eachther up. you cant have competition when you push every little shopinto the abyss just to be the big one selling. atm the whole shop thing is a huge mess.
when i came up with the idea i never had in my back a cartel or whatever you guys imagine in it. it was just a simple thing if the shopowners stop to fight eachother and work whit eachother. you drive in the name of ‘‘compeition’’ prices down kill some small shops whit succes and then have a mess and complain about the game be bad and needing to be fixed. so lets fix it the right way. player owned economy can not be fixed whit a patch just by players.
so here a last time explained; all shops as a team set a bar and keep to it there is room for a healthy competition and not what you do now.
the people in need of money sell to you and in need of goods buy from you, i need coin and wanna spend it but at a stable rate, make it possible whit a system and i take it. if you manage to keep to the bar you set for shopowners economy can stabilize, and the coinflow gets some speed again, if it works i hope you get rich cos you deserve it.
if a shop needs fast cash he can then ask another shop and sell a little cheaper per handtrade. if you have a team you can exchange a lot better goods, communicat better and dont be greedy.
if your a team there is no need to buy people out and resell it for a bigger profit. from my view it has done more damage then be a good competition.
handtrade between players are also good for the coinflow. have some gatherers work for you dont run alone around. extracoin benefits every new player. offer jobs at teh forums make some noise as a lot do succesfully.
just dont forget you can not patch or fix something that shud be player driven by changing the mastercode of the game and program this and that if the players keep behaving as usual. the game works as intended the system is not utilized as it shud be by the players. devs can not patch our brains, or how we behave.
in the end this shud be fun? right? shud be a team game? right? shud be and stay a nice community? then it needs work 24/7 by all the nice people here in the game. economy is only as good as the greed is low and understanding high.
thank you.
The shop keepers will always do what’s in their best interest; to maximize profit. The customer will always do what’s in their best interest; to buy at the cheapest price.
With this said, why not take your ideas and implement them for other players who want the cheapest prices?
Btw, I’d highly recommend being a shop owner. Because you will find that it’s a humbling experience. Being a successful shop owner is not a trivial issue than it is being made in your post. It’s more nuanced and complex than what you are alluding to
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Everybody in this game has a shop. And Cartel fails, Corporation wins.
it would be wonderful if all the shops sold everything at the same price!Unfortunately this would be especially true for the shop closest to the portal hubs. “There’s no need to hurt your feet walking to the shop behind me little oortling, give me all your coin…”.
If you have a shop, and you’re not on the highway… you can probably sell to the people who live right next to you. that’s about it. in order to get any customers, you’d need to either have a better product (reliable stock in game as there’s no QC yet hehe) or a better price. if we remove price from the equation, it would depend solely on who is nearest and has stock.
Lets assume prices are fixed based on a ?self determined acceptible profit margin? (nigh impossible to establish - the player who has 12h a day to play may value his farming time less than someone who can fit only a few hours a week). So every shop that sells raw mats or puts out a buy basket has a predictable price. So stocking your shop comes down to picking up the ingredients at the agreed price, crafting the product and selling at the agreed price… No shortages, no random bargains to be had to give anyone an edge, no reason to farm anything except the item that pays the most per minute spent gathering it… thus no stock of other less valuable items, thus no production, because you cant pay someone more to give you what you need…
It’s a very difficult thing to take the free out of free market, especially without some supreme authority enforcing rules (be it an in game dictator or hard-coded limitations); and it hasn’t shown to be very effective on earth - I can’t see it giving wildly different results in-game.
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Or cripple people’s kneecaps. Tho I wouldn’t mind that being in the game so I can yell ‘Get off my lawn!’ and cripple the kids messing on my lawn.
i agree completly that we need shops at one place in the name of the holy oort we need them at one place.
too much portals and only 6 really active shops at all.
just 6 eh? 
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Remember when there was only npc traders ingame. We sold to them for coin. Farmed a lot to get more coin. Now you replace the npc whit the standarized price system. Shud then the people not be acting similar to get coin. My whole idea comes from npc traders. Its just that the role of npc trader is taken over by shopowners. A simple standarized system.
I will make a shop at the arie portal hub asap. To understand you better i will have this experience and maybe we can have more good and constructive posts like this between us.
There are 2 big differences between player and npc shops.
- Npc’s have unlimited coin (or they should, as they don’t do feats)
- Npcs follow rules and dont care about profit / dont need or want to make more coin
Looking forward to your shop! What will it be called?
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Which in my opinion, kinda ruins the game. After all, if you want to farm something, and sell it to people, you have 2 options.
The first is you setting up a shop stand, which might never be visited, the price too high, visiters only wanting to buy something cheaply and not fair priced, and need players actually having money to buy the item.
The second is looking for other player’s shops, and selling to their Request Baskets. But that Requests players to have a specific Request Basket for whatever item you’re trying to sell, and extra money in it to buy the ammount you are selling, AND are buying them at a fair price, and not buying them cheap so they can sell them for higher behind your back.
Those options are not very good. ESPECIALLY when there is a very low population of active players buying and selling items at a fair price.
Where as an NPC Seller would always have coins, and a very set price, so you would always know, 100%, what you were getting based on how much work to put into farming said items.
Atm i work on the layout and what i will sell also waiting for the boss at the new arie hub to come online to give me plots.
For now i start whit basics flint opals fibrus leaves. And when i farm gems also the one i dont need. Including extra copper and iron.
Name shud be Gaja’s Gifts.
Todo list is ready. 1.get the plots 1.2 make a portal to my base 2.build the shop 2.2 dont forget to get the skill to lower tax 3.start selling basics. 5.dont become greedy 4.finish my idea of the forum post for helping new people to break the power barrier. 5.build up a team to supply the shop. 6.dont become greedy 7. Never forget to enjoy the game
I will try out a concept where i dont resell what i will buy instead make it into the next stage and not charge the work time and spark. I find it unnecessery, for bebinners more fair.
Still testing like a maniac stuff out and calculating what to make out of extra materials i got and get from farming.
I am making my powerstations for the machines. Atm collecting diamonds to make advanced and working on refinery extractor centraforge coils. Got for each 12refined gems.
So for now i will start whit about 150k coin and experience this trading world.
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The problem with having NPC’s that buy and sell all things, is that would take the economy completely out of the game from a player perspective. if there is no wiggle room for profit, there is no incentive to invest time and effort into it.
That being said (and taking into account that devs have mentioned before their vision is that of a purely player-driven game), I have thought about it a bit and there is a way NPC stores may not screw up the ability to play the economic game.
If devs have stats about what is traded and at what price (stands & baskets only, including hand trades makes it game-able*). NPC’s could conceivably work as long as they are restricted to one half of the market, i.e. either buying OR selling. I think the least impact but most benefit could be gained if it could be set up so that NPC’s would only buy raw materials - things directly harvested or collected. Add to this that they buy at roughly 80-90% of the price these items are bought for in baskets (and/or around 60% of the price on stands) in player-player trades over the last (x time period).
This way, there is always somewhere to sell things, but someone would have had to put in the time to gather these things. It also means that NPC selling would on average be less profitable than selling on the open market, with the exception that they always have some coin. You could farm and mass sell to NPC’s, but as trade in certain items (I’m looking at you flint & foliage…) go down in player-player ineractions, the NPC would steadily drop his price for these until it bottoms at 1.
It should also offer protection agains an artificial price raise in buying resources and waiting for NPC prices to go up, as dumping stock would always mean you only get that 80-90% return (in line with tax).
*If hand trade is included, guilds / cartels / us creative types could mass trade between each other and give back coin after, artificially buffing NPC prices and skipping the deminished return effect above.
All that said, I’m very sceptical that the devs will ever seriously consider NPC’s.
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Npc traders would only have the effect to make it possible that everyone has huge ammount of coin.
Playersdriven economy benefits shopowners or distributers of goods. They are the one that shud be the richest, cos they maintain from my side of view the important part. Buy and resell and/or make new stuff out of it and sell.
Gatherers make coin only by sell what they gather or how much. More time efford more coin.
And their job is done.
Yeah arestor i agree with you. The problem at the moment is that getting coin is not as simple as it should be. Newer players / gatherers depend on selling their wares to make coin. this coin is used to buy stuff from shops (note the stuff they buy is now more expensive due to owner profit, which is completely fair).
The problem arises when you look at the situation from the end point backwards. I am selling things. great. people arent spending their money as freely, because they have no certainty that they will be able to get any coin back. Less money in means less money in buy baskets - which confirms the gatherer’s fears that they cant sell. The gatherer earns less for raw mats that he sells than the processed product costs - and unless they are in a high footfall area, this means a net deficit. Gathering more than is required to make what you want, then running around trying to find baskets stocked with coin - it is often easier in the long run to just level up an alt to make what i want myself.
I see the difficulty of ensuring a coin supply as the largest issue with the current low trade volumes in most items. Footfall isn’t the major problem in my view, because it rewards something completely different. The guy who makes 100k footfall a week, doesnt NEED to buy a lot of things to keep that up. Sure for the hubs you need oort - that just doesnt stimulate the market for any other products.
Ive always been against npc’s in boundless, it’s not the aim of the game. the issue is however that building can grant a passive income, and that money is often spent on more building and oort. - i have no issue with that.
An NPC trader as i detailed above could be seen as a semi-passive income for gatherers (or anyone, regardless of whether you live out in the boonies). This coin funds the people doing those jobs, which often are not the same people who collect large amounts of footfall.
As to making it possible to have huge ammounts of coin - what is the problem with that? it is a reward for time spent being economically productive. What would those players do with their huge amount of coins?they’d either sit on it or buy stuff with it… If you buy things (no NPC sellers as detailed above) your money goes into the economy, giving others the coin to fill request baskets at rates that would necessarily be above NPC rates… Then those people making huge amounts of money would rather sell to baskets than NPC’s (again, NPC prices would drop when baskets are used as above) making more huge ammounts of money to continue the cycle.
When an individual or conglomerate decides to try and remove coin from the system by hoarding it in hopes of driving down prices and having larger buying power, the NPC buyers become relevant again and allow new money to enter circulation in exchange for actual work put in.
Edit - I don’t like NPC’s, and i don’t want them, I’m just trying to wrap my head around reasons why we might need the service they offer - I would love for a player related way to do this instead!
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At the moment the fear you so beautyfull described i have too so i am holding also back whit buying new stuff. Instead i invest a week of work rather to farm and do it myself making me part of the problem. Coin needs to flow like a small river, slowly but steady. By setting a bar to prices i see a solution for now. Who knows how it will go but it shud stabilize economy. Omni is giving it up and he done a great job. Recoil is thinking bout it. Makes me sad both great shops and good prices.
Maybe we need to make a compromise, we buy more of things we need and can stimulate that more gets requested. Lets be a little lazy. I am sure that raw materials for a masscraft can outweight the most endproduct value if the seller is not dropping the price too much. But even then the product is only in small quantitys awaible. There is okenty of us. So enough room to make it worth the time.
Most of us enjoy all what the game offers.
Example making pies: lets say i hunt for milk glands and farm grass seeds and collect shimmering orbs. The meat i can sell too. Now i got raw materials i sell them to someone who makes the whole work. Buy the pie. Saved me a lot work and 2evenings of waiting. Also the 3000 power in coils i need first.
Lets help players at the pre power level and show them how to get there and also show them to spend some money on what they need to the power endgoal.
I will calculate today around also visit some shops and if it is as i see it i will work whit other shops to cooperate buy from them materials a product make a new out of it resell. Make agreements. That might work out and get the need for raws moving again.
A way to fix this, would be if you got rewards coins from things other than Footfall, which has been abused and now people are seeing just how much everyone is relying on it. I would love for Footfall just to be removed all together because of so much reliance on it being so high, and the reward so unfairly high.
And quests, quests you can’t repeat, and in activities you really really hate.
But look other other MMOs, where do you get money in those games? There are 3 ways.
First being Quests. Lots of quests. You are CONSTANTLY doing, THOUSANDS of quests. Every time you move, talk, and kill something, you’re doing it cause it’s a quest.
The second is items selling to NPCs. Doing dungeons, killing mobs, doing quests, and crafting professions, you’re not only constantly doing quests, but also constantly collecting loot, items, junk, rare drops, potions, weapons, armor, and so on that you can sell to NPCs.
The last I hinted to in the second, is the main goal, action, and gameplay of the MMOs. Aka, killing monsters. Killing monsters not only progresses quests, giving you gold, and drops items, which you sell for gold, but the monsters themselves also DROP gold for you too.
Without taking in player trading, AH, and player owned shops, ^ MMOs have at the very least 3 different ways, that are heavily tied together, constantly making you money, all the time.
But again, boundless only has 2 ways of giving money. Quests suck as there are a limited number of them, and they get progressively harder. However unlike in an MMO where you’re forced to constantly move to new quests area to keep progressing in the game. Boundless is a Sandbox, so you can go anywhere, do anything, and even just stay in 1 area for a long time if they wish. But the quests don’t reflect that. Take mining quests for example. They constantly want you going to higher and higher tier worlds, but you might not want to go to T6 worlds to find 10 Coal vains to do the quests. Eventually you’ll setting down into a build/home, and quests get ignored. At that point, you are no longer making money.
Next is the Footfall system, which relies on other players, and not you, stepping into your Plot. And that’s so imbiguous, so abstract, that there is no right or wrong way to go about it. There is no guide, no ‘Do this and you will get millions’, or anything else.
The only sure fire way we know of, 100% working, is creating a Portal Hub, which takes a lot of work, and again, relies on people willingly using it. But as you pointed out I believe, all that money made pretty much goes into supporting it to continue existing, you don’t get to keep very much of the footfall gained from that. So it isn’t very rewarding either.
And that’s it, those are the ONLY two ways of getting money, without relying on players.
And if we have hundreds of thousands of players, or millions? It wouldn’t be an issue. But constantly having less than 200 players on at most? That is freaken crippling. A player driven only game, can’t sustain itself on such a small community.
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In people’s mind a cartel is something to make easy money. They expect playing with market prices (like Eve-Online).
It doesn’t work for Boundless. The supply is so low and random. You end gathering/crafting the stuff yourself.
But then it’s called a shop right? Not a cartel.
