Markets are not broken, as I see players buying and selling items (I buy, and sell). There also more and more shops and markets being created (I am not only talking about the mall).
The economy has a decent entrepreneurship, as shops and markets are continually created.
Players do spend large amounts of coin.
If you make a build and then sell it, you create a real estate market. Personally it’s not something I do.
You can invest in yourself by buying the tools you need, building your place, improving your shop/market, etc. If you want to invest in someone else then you give them that.
Costs are not dropping because of the chrysominter. I don’t see how the whole game economy is “affected” by the chrysominter. (IMO it’s not)
I don’t think this game needs a full out auction house, but as others have said maybe a central world hub, and a place to quickly scroll through locations or something else.
I do think it would be nice to transfer beacons.
I don’t think we need to go as far as dividends and advanced economic concepts. This is a game we are supposed to have fun.
I call it as I see it. There are not enough players “in the market” right now for it to grow or stabilize. If you want more people to see your build, more people to give you footfall, more people buying your stuff, etc…we need more people.
(This part is @ everyone in Boundless)
I think a lot of people are refusing to use/participate in certain game mechanics, and may want to take a 2nd look at that and if it’s preventing them from enjoying/experiencing the game to it’s fullest.
How to earn coin in Boundless:
Daily feats/quests.
Meteor hunts.
Run a shop.
Sell items to request baskets.
Put up something that attracts other players so you get footfall.
Help another player out with something they need…earn coin.
How do we answer the question of why people are leaving in terms of not being able to figure out how to be involved in the economy?
I bought a copy of the game for someone 2 weeks ago. They quit playing after just a few days for a large host of reasons, many which we’ve seen on steam. The first reason given to me was ‘I can’t figure out where to go to buy what I want’. I tried to explain how the game works and hubs and markets and what not but they did go to a mall (yours actually) and items were either too much for what they had or many stands were empty.
At low level you’re stuck to being specialized. Newbs don’t know you need alts to be get self sufficient quickly.
What can we do to make the economic experience easier to understand so that’s one less reason we lose brand new players?
The game only gets one first impression. I doubt I’ll be able to get that person to log in again.
Then you avoid that shop. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a mall or your neighbor. I’ve seen middle-of-nowhere shops selling diamonds and titanium tools for 5000c. I moved on. It didn’t hurt me in any way.
Builders would get an even smaller cut for spending their cubits and irl $ on their time & builds.
Who has done this? - I’ve not seen or heard of this yet. I am definitely not floating in coin. Many days I get 0c. Other times there is a few k. What do I do with that money? I fill up portals, buy supplies. I personally put a free portal to your shop and bought items from your store several times to see if you would still say you got nothing. (I also went to your base 7 times to catch you to give you a bunch of free trophies & hopper cores that I got from fighting meteors to help you get started.) I stay broke and I don’t care. It’s a game.
If there is nothing in a shop, avoid it. They probably have a life, are busy, and forgot to fill it up.
I would like to see a footfall trap shop. Where is one? No one is forcing anyone to go into any build or shop that they don’t like.
This is like saying Zales should pay every potential ring buyer $500 for walking in their store. If the coin just poofs out of the air into your pocket and isn’t taken from someone else’s, I guess it wouldn’t matter.
This is a screenshot of the one main beacon for the mall and the main Guild:
Players come and go, so prices might not match all the time. This happens everywhere.
In our mall, we do have shops with great prices, and stands full of different items.
The mall is wonderful. All of them are. I wasn’t attempting to knock them by saying many are empty or expensive.
Seasoned players know that and how to deal with that. Newbs do not. In my anecdotal case was the top concern they had. Baskets not buying enough, when they finally found a basket. This person ran around for 2 hours just trying to find someone to buy their inky leaves. I could have just pointed it to them but like many other players they wanted to learn on their own. So they did, for 2 hours. That wasn’t a fun experience for them. There’s other reasons they didn’t care for the game but that was their chief complaint.
??thats not a knock. It’s just the fact of the matter. Why do you consider this a knock?
Forget I said it was your particular mall, just insert mall to that spot. I mentioned she went to your mall because ultimately that’s where she found a basket buying leaves. Maybe I should have included that info as well and this misreading wouldn’t have happened. That’s my fault.
We don’t control prices nor put any pressure on the merchants. If they want sales, they figure out what a good price is to sell their items. If their request baskets are too low or empty, then they won’t get the items they are asking for, so they adjust.
I…to this day…have the problem you speak of with running around for hours to find items. I go through our mall 1st, then I hit the other malls, then stores via hub portals…there are days I spend many hours and don’t find what I need.
I think the devs have something that will put this behind us.
I wasn’t trying to imply you should moderate shop owners prices so apologies if it came off like that way. I was just saying the expense of items is a thing for new players who try to engage in the economy ‘too early’ if that’s the correct way to describe the problem.
Trying to solve the problem of not having money, as you note, equates to hours of running around so they can sale their items to make money. As vets, not a problem. We’ve learned to suffer that. Call us masochistic?
But for new folks that’s a lot of time wasted trying to make money to spend money.
I hope whatever you may have gotten from your conversations with them pans out to be the fix to this problem. It would be a big fix and something I might be able to entice a few people back with. Taking part in the economy in an easy manner is key for everyone’s success I think we would all agree.
I didn’t want a “coin machine”. It sounded so ridiculous to me.
Then they put it in, and I was amazed. It’s very usable. It’s nicely balanced. It rewards additional effort and exploring at least the first tiers of craftingby encouraging players to use their raw materials to gain additional experience and EVEN MORE coin.
It allows a steady stream of PVE income without diluting the existing loot table with coin drops. It allows each player a choice on what sort of loot they want to take from a given activity and what they consider to be “worthless” with their personal goals.
Honestly, they won me over with this one.
But still it’s forgotten, ignored, and in some cases even denounced as “useless” while people continue to argue over the scraps of coin that most players will ever be able to generate with footfall.
Chrysominter is the best addition to the game. It does way more coin than footfall but it’s an active tap unlike footfalls passive.
The problem for at least a few new players is it isn’t intuitive.
Like you mentioned there are a lot of feats that newbies go through and use a lot of mats as a result. That stuff could be minted but a lot just drop it out of their inventory. If the game had a line in the feat for those cases, that suggested minting the item each time if they didn’t have a use for it, the new players would better understand the value of the chrysominter in helping get started out.
That alongside the potential to track shops on an individual planet would be two great steps at helping retain some players who find all this complexity a bit much. They will establish a small little nest egg to hunt for some upgrades if via easier to find shops. To me, that sounds like a recipe for a more active economy which feeds in to retaining players and growing the population as a result feeding the circle of a more vibrant economy.
While I’m sure that there are some cases where people choose not to play in certain ways based in some personal principle, I’d say that in most cases people ‘refuse’ (your word… I’d go with ‘choose not to’) to play a certain way because they just don’t enjoy it or find it actively unenjoyable.
So you’re really telling people that the best way to enjoy the game is to do a number of things they don’t enjoy. That’s just going to drive them away entirely.
Theres nothing wrong with the economy. i have multiple shops all making profits with very regular customers. And they are not front row against a ps hub… location has nothing to do with it.
If your shop is dead have a look at your prices/layout/range/customer experience. If its good, people come back. Simple as that.
I have shops i frequent that take 4 portals to get to (i live at TNT hub, more than one jump to freedom is outrageous!), because i know they always have plenty of what i want at decent prices.
If you want more people to see your build, more people to give you footfall, more people buying your stuff, etc…we need more people.
bought items from your store several times to see if you would still say you got nothing. (I also went to your base 7 times to catch you to give you a bunch of free trophies & hopper cores that I got from fighting meteors 
to help you get started.) I stay broke and I don’t care. It’s a game.
