Introducing Oortsphere

General
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Introducing Oortsphere

Hello Oortians!
It’s been a while since I was active. But I’ve never stopped to watch Boundless videos and visit the forum (and wait for the PS4 release). I want to present you my project that I’m working on.

I think that Boundless has potential to become a great and popular game and it’s nice to see you all playing and testing it. But something is missing. There’s no website where you can present your shops. So I thought: „Why don’t you make your own website?“ It’s a great way for me to better understand coding and to learn something new. So I taught myself some new frameworks, got new skills and started to build Oortsphere! I’m at a step where I can announce it and present you a few things that I’m working on. So let’s get started with some details…

What is Oortsphere?

Do you want to know which items another user is selling and what price they have? Do you want to know where his or her shop is? Well, you’ll soon have a place to see all that. Oortsphere is going to be a trading website, a site where you can share your shops and what you sell or buy.

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(I know there are icons missing, I still have to figure out what they can look like.)

Features of the site

First of all, you can create your user and you can have up to 3 characters as in the game. So choose the same names as in the forum and in-game for a better findability. For each character you have the option to add shops. Set a name for it, the world and coordinates where it is located (north, east and altitude) and you are also able to write a short description for your shop. You can fill your SHOP STAND or REQUEST BASKET on the shopsite with items. Set up an amount and a price and other Oortians can see what you sell or what you need. Be sure to have everything up-to-date.

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Feed

Want to see when a new shop has opened or if a shop got updated with new items? In the activity feed you will be able to see the latest added shops, items and more.

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Sharing is caring

Share your shopsite with others in the forum, twitter, discord or in-game and attract them to come to your shop and buy or sell items.

Design

The design of Oortsphere will be inspired by the UI of the game, as you can see. I want to make sure that users have a great amount of information without overloading the site with useless stuff. The main part is centered and focused to give you what you need, the details of shops and their items. I might play with some effects, that you can activate or not. I don’t know yet.

Future plans

I have some ideas for future features after the site has launched. They won’t be in the first release because I want to publish my site soon. But I won’t stop developing there. I’ll explain you some ideas and you can tell me what you think.

  • Not-active
    If a user hasn’t done anything on the site for like a week or 2, then the shops could be marked as not-up-to-date or closed. That’s a good way to show users, that they don’t have to go to this shop because the user might not be active anymore. Same way like beacons. But I won’t delete the shops.

  • Item site
    Want to see a list of all items and how many shops sell or buy them and what’s the average price, maybe also what’s the lowest and what’s the highest price? The item site will feature this.

  • Trades
    An option for player-to-player trades. You will be able to create trades besides your normal shop. Set items you have and items you want (e.g. HAVE: 100x Iron Ore, WANT: 50x Silver Ore). Others can then comment your trade and maybe write their own offer to you. If you both accept the conditions you can meet up to make the in-game trade. After that you’ll be able to vote the other user. That way you can see if a user is trustworthy or not. It’s a big feature so it will need some time and thinking to code and release it to Oortsphere.

  • Customization
    I’m playing with the idea to add different color themes to the site. So when you visit a shopsite of another user it can have a different look.

How can you help?

First of all, you can tell me what you think about my project and if you’re looking forward to it. Or if you don’t need such a site. You can give me ideas for features if you want and I hope I can add them. There’s one important thing that I might need. I have a list of items but I don’t know if I have all items that are currently in the game and if there are items that you can’t sell or buy for now. So if someone wants to help with that, then message me. And I’ll need help with some English translations. As you have already noticed, I am not a native English speaker. :stuck_out_tongue:

I hope I can launch the site soon (maybe in some weeks, maybe in a month or 2). You can already start to follow the twitter account where I’ll also post updates: @Oortsphere

Finally, I want to thank @ZaphirDEV for the support. He’s helping me with some ideas and got me to coding. Without him I wouldn’t have started this project.

Note: Everything is just a placeholder and can change. And the logo isn’t the final logo. :wink:

I’ll update the post when I have something new.

Cheers!
DK

28 Likes
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A lot of the sites that attempt to do the same thing for trading in EVE Online use an API that follows market listings in real time.

Without a similar API, I’d still like to try this out and see how it goes.

With a similar API, you could probably rule the galaxy.

Just taking a quick glance at what you have, another useful bit of information to include in shop records is the name of any larger settlement that the shop belongs to… It’s often easier for people to navigate using landmarks than coordinates. This could be included in a separate field, or maybe just by encouraging users to attach the information to their listed shop name.

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Sorry, still thinking out loud here…

You might also want to add in a search function, that allows users to find a shop based on proximity. The user could enter coordinates for either their own beacon or an easily accessible portal, and then pull up a list of results based on travel distance.

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5

This looks amazing, keep at it!

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Wow yeah this could be great, it would definitely help me figure out where i should go when buying things and definitely help people find shops in an easy way.

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I do think this is a good idea and having it used look similar to the game is a great idea too!

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This is a horrible idea…

The reason I love this game is because its economy is NOT BASED on an Auction House system…
When you start opening API’s and your start creating web sights that can tell everyone where the cheepest item is then all those shops turn into an Auction House…

And now all the things that make a NON auction house economy great…
Like Building up a reputation of :
Being the Cheepest guy (Omni)
being the Guy who’s not cheep but has it in stock (Sly)
Or being the guy who’s typically in stock and also pretty cheep (Sparta)

Well thats all tossed out the window… Now its just an Auction house where a lazy player can go to make there game play experience more convenient while destroying the game play experience of the shop keepers…

So as a Major Shop Keeper (Sparta)
I will not support this effort nor will I join it…
People should have to travel to shops and experience the Joy of finding what they want for a great price
+Rep gain for that shop
Or the Pain of Not finding what they wanted
-Rep gain for that shop

I use to play a lot of eve before it opened up its API’s too allow this to happen… It crushed my game play experience made the game no longer enjoyable it turned the game into a huge auction house…

I detest auction houses… Which is one huge reason I dislike 80% of the MMORPG’s that have released in the past 12 years!

I hope that the other shop keepers in this game will see the potential danger that this type of an initiative brings to the game and how it would create nothing but a never ending spiral of undercutting… The shop this would most assist is Omni and I hope that even he will see that the game is better off with shops creating there reputation via in-game mechanic’s; and earning there clientele via in game methods…

I really hope to see @OmniUno @slyduda @RedY3 @Lawrizze @stradosphere @bunky8604 @Dunedragon @Prome3us V-W and the other shops weigh in on this I hope they will atleast see my position in this but this is a dangerous initiative that has huge implications on the in game economy and enjoyment of such…

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This is a lot like grocery ads in a newspaper for an idea around shops in Boundless. I like it. Makes competition between shops that much more exciting. Also, it informs players where to find potential deals for certain things and creates actual consumerism in the game rather than the mindless “Go to Slyduda for great Gem Tool deals!” or “Go to Omni for cheap crafting mats!”. It adds a breath of depth to an existing system that sorely lacks it.

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What it does is enables any Random Joe to toss up a couple plinths and put up an item for cheeper then ^^^^^ all the shops listed above…

What did he do in game to earn his business??? What great build did he design to become capital of the planet Like Sly… How much did he advertise in game? How many portals did he put up…

Now anyone can just toss in the cheapest number on a web sight and put in coord’s and create a cancerous thorn in the in game economy… Will his shop name be remembered???

Or will it become go to web sight search item find cheapest go to coord’s and remember nothing about your entire shopping experience other then the web address to the sight…

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Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but… I don’t even KNOW about very many shops beyond the ones you just mentioned. The shops you just mentioned already have a tremendous amount of visibility, and right now there’s no way for a lot of other ones to be seen.

And I’m probably not going to run a circuit of known shops if I don’t believe they’ll have what I’m looking for, or be interested in buying what I’m carrying. Having some information in advance would have a major impact on my decisions - probably more than a simple 1-2c price difference.

You mentioned that EVE is “a huge auction house”, but it actually has a bunch of major regional hubs (I tend to gravitate toward Hek and Rens), and it has a lot of smaller hubs the farther out you go. What this actually proves is not that the lowest price wins, but that people will pay a premium for convenience. Time is money to people, and personal safety is also a major factor, and that explains the price differences between hubs; it also explains how people make a living off of shipping.

Even when someone does offer the lowest price on a particular item, and they manage to corner the market on that item for a few hours or a few days, they’re always going to be limited by their own supply. If they’re CONSTANTLY pouring in more stock to meet demand? Well then, they’re just doing their job and doing it well, and I don’t think anyone would fault them for that; at that point, they’ve simply earned the right to be where they are. If that’s not the case, their stock will evaporate when everyone makes a run on their location, and then… people move back down the list again. It’s actually pretty hard to stay out of equilibrium for any great length of time.

Personally, the only problem that I can foresee from something like this is the possibility of arbitrage on a massive scale… In theory, someone with an astronomical sum of money could keep buying and buying and buying all of the lower-priced stock, mark it up, and then post it up at their store. But this would require a bankroll that I know even the biggest merchants in the game don’t possess.

Ironically, you also insisted that this would hurt Omni and help Omni - in the same post… I have no idea what to make of that.

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I like the idea - the more tools the better! I would recommend a way to bulk capture items (preferable from CSV) or I won’t list though - updating 300+ items by hand daily will be a pain. Allowing everyone to get visibility on an even level is a good thing.

I do however feel that the game should not expose APIs for this - making players work for visibility is a great game dynamic (even if that work is capturing it on a website).

I am rather curious to see if you actually get traction on the idea since this falls smack in the networked goods category…

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As much as it might offend the Portal Seekers for me saying this - and I apologize in advance! - maybe the best thing we could do to promote more, smaller shops would be to make travel more difficult.

As it stands right now, it’s very easy to get to almost anywhere you want to go on the current worlds, and that diminishes a lot of the impact that location, convenience, and personal safety might have on people’s buying habits. Having the lowest price only becomes the sole factor in people’s decisions… when it’s the sole factor affecting people’s decisions.

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i like it alot is it possible to have a subsection for when shops are in big marketplaces our a way to add the marketplace to the shop info

aquatopia discord

heres a list made by @OmniUno
https://bit.ly/2Gz2heK

we are teaming up me and omni to create fully blown shoptown
maybe omni can send you an invite to the omnishop discord
omni knows his way around shops and stuff like nobody does(except @slyduda maybe :wink: ) so it would be a good friend
to discuss stuff with :smile:

also a way to put in orders would benefit the site i think
ow and i think keeping it simple will help the site
my atention span is very short lolz

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idea is epic i hope it will work as intended. ill gladly help :slight_smile:

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Yes - this would definitely have a space.

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Sounds like a really interesting idea :slight_smile:

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You know where I stand on this sulfur,

I’ve got a small shop, with limited stock, and limited means to take part in the economy. I really prefer people exploring and finding smaller shops, but at the same time I’ve seen some small shops with what seems like very random pricing / no market research.

I have to agree with @anon73404375 that undercutting with unsustainable prices will be, well, unsustainable in even the short term. I also agree with omni that hand-posting 300 item prices per day would require a spartan dedication :yum: to your shop for the larger markets, and marketing alone should not necessarily be a full time job.

My marketing mainly consists of throwing random oorts with starberry stews and generally trying to be helpful when i see someone who needs a pointer. All my contacts are personally made, and this works great for a small store and is where I derive my pleasure from. For larger stores I simultaneously see the benefit of such a system as well as the negative impact it could have on newcomers.

As with everything added / changed / kept so far in the game, adaptation will be key and I’m sure good shopkeepers (whether they are big or small) will find a way to benefit from whatever is or isn’t introduced, would just be sad if something like this stopped people from exploring.

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You’re comparing these people to some random person when they aren’t even the same thing. The main reason, right now at least, Omni and Sly get any item sales is because there isn’t enough competiting shop owners in the game. There aren’t enough people currently playing that are willing to put the time into running a shop on the same competitive level as them, as well as other shop owners.

What some random person is selling in their plinths doesn’t make any ounce of difference if they’re just undercutting a main shop owner. It isn’t like you see Farmer Market’s around the world putting grocery stores out of business. It’s pretty much the same thing.

When it comes to business, it isn’t about how someone earned the sales they got or what awesome build they produced to draw people into the location.

Everyone only has 24 hours in any given day to allocate time for various things in their life. Whether someone is devoting 5 hours or someone else is putting in 8, it doesn’t matter. What matters in running a shop, much like a business, is creating a reliable source of goods and services for a consumer. If that random guy putting up plinths is just undercutting people, then it isn’t a viable and sustainable strategy. It’s a quick coin grab strategy. Unless they’re getting everything for next to nothing in cost and on a regular basis, that pricing and shop management strategy will fail 100% of the time.

Something to keep in mind is the base crafting mats for every item in the game will level out and normalize well after 1.0. When that happens, pricing calculations will be a lot easier to formulate and even backwards engineer from other people’s shops. It means that people who run shops will also look to ways to minimize their overhead so they can make sales off of net margin (profit) instead of just trying to beat another shop’s price.

Players in this game are going to buy stuff just like they do in real life as a consumer in their country.

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I am amazed so many people are missing the basic problem here with this…

Its no different then if the game had an auction house… If this can simply tell anyone who access’s it where Item A is for the cheepest price that is all that matters for the buyer…

He will not remember that the shop was Omni’s or Bozo the clowns or Georges… all he knows is he got the item for the cheepest price… which basically means all shops who worked to create a reputation will vanish into the emptyness of just being another listing on a web sight…

If this is the economy you want in the game then you might as well put in an auction house as its the same difference…

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I run a medium sized shop (Empire). Here’s my thoughts:

  • I am not concerned about undercutting. The market sorts itself out, and competition is healthy. We just saw that with the so called #crashthemarket (what a joke)

  • Without an API, this requires initiative on the shop owners part to maintain. They rightfully so should reap the rewards for keeping it updated

  • I see this ADDING to a shops reputation, since you can see which shops are most actively replacing stock. If you look at his design, it’s not some chart with prices. It’s a feed.

  • I believe in adding value to the CUSTOMERS before the SHOP KEEPERS. That’s how it works in the real world. Business’s adapt or they die.

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