Introducing Oortsphere

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.

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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Shops don’t instantly lose reputation because someone else knows where the lowest price of an item is. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen on these forums.

If people are willing to run through 15 portals to buy that 100 unit stack of Hide for 2c per over someone else that’s only 3 portal jumps away from the world they’re on that sells their Hide for 15c per unit, then good for them. Not everyone does that. Not even close to half the player population is ever going to do that. Some people, like in real life, shop at the same place because it’s closer to where they live. They don’t travel 1.5 hours away to some store 2 towns over because a loaf of bread is 10% less than the one that’s a 5 minute drive away. People don’t behave like that when they’re buying products. It’s highly unlikely they’re going to do that in Boundless either.

Shops that can afford to undercut on certain items and go negative on them can use that as a method to bring traffic to the shop to make net margin off other items they’re selling. Businesses do this in real life but have to be careful cause laws are a thing. The reason why people will buy other things from the shops is because the shops are offering more than a single item. They bring value to the person visiting the shop simply by being a shop.

The whole thing around reputation is built around how reliable a shop is in providing items at a reasonable price at sustainable stock levels.

What I really like around the idea of Oortsphere is how it promotes a free market economy and promotes informed decision making for all players.

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Prices on most things have dropped by 30%+ since I initiated the process, so to me my campaign is a huge success. They will be dropping even more - it just takes time.

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Fun Fact:

If your reputation was already so fragile that people were willing to walk out on you in order to save 50c…

… then it was never much of a reputation to begin with.

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  1. Try not to make it seem like you are right, and everyone else is wrong. At least try to be slightly accepting of other people’s views.
  2. How would this site be any different from what goes on now with people posting prices to the forums. It is likely that people who already do that will use this site, depending on its ease of use, and people who don’t won’t.
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Thank you for all the feedback so far. I’m currently testing a few things.

I definitely will give you the option to add the settlement that the shop belongs to. Thanks for the idea @anon73404375
I also like your idea of the search function. I’ll try it out with the coordinates. Maybe I can add it to 1.0. But I’ll also think about all the other ideas…

I haven’t posted anything about the development status yet. So I’ll give you an update about the things that will be on the site at launch. I don’t mention everything and nothing that will come later. Just a few things that are important right now.
:heavy_check_mark:️ - means it’s done and working (but could still change). :small_orange_diamond: - means I’m working on it right now. :white_medium_square:️ - means it’s not yet done.

Backend:
:heavy_check_mark:️ Create User
:heavy_check_mark:️ Edit User
:heavy_check_mark:️ Create Character
:heavy_check_mark:️ Edit Character
:heavy_check_mark:️ Remove Character
:heavy_check_mark:️ Create Shop
:heavy_check_mark:️ Edit Shop
:heavy_check_mark:️ Remove Shop
:heavy_check_mark:️ Add Item
:heavy_check_mark:️ Remove Item
:small_orange_diamond: Edit Item
:white_medium_square:️ Feed ( Added Shop, Removed Shop, Added Item(s), Removed Item(s) … )

Frontend:
:small_orange_diamond: /shopsite - Shop Stand
:small_orange_diamond: /shopsite - Request Basket
:small_orange_diamond: /shopsite - Info
:small_orange_diamond: Design
:white_medium_square:️ All other sites

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Definition of Auction House
“An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder. The open ascending price auction is arguably the most common form of auction in use today” Wikipedia

Since this will not have buyers actively bidding it is not an Auction House. The main difference is a lack of Buyers participation. I know you said like an Auction House, but since one of the main components of an auction house is the requirement of active participation of the buyer, I think your comparison is faulty.

I agree with Steele, the process will require active participation of the shop keepers to work. And if they do they will be rewarded. As a sometimes buyer, I get frustrated with searching for something to find a lot of empty pedestals. If I can find an active seller that has a better chance of having the items that I want, I will go there. I also agree with Crypticworlds that a few coins is not going to make the difference when you factor in distance.

In the real world we can use the internet to check on prices and availability of goods. I think this is similar to that. It give us a single place to search for an item we want and who has it and at what price. It saves the buyer time and gives each seller at least a chance to get people to buy from them. I may still buy from Amazon due to reputation and avoid others where I had a bad experience, but the smaller and larger sellers each get a chance at my business.

And if a buyer or seller chooses not to use this, that is their choice.

Why is this bad?

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So thats a great modern world definition of an Auction House but if you have played any of the 80+ MMORPG Themepark WoW clones that have released in the past 12 years you would understand that 80% of the Genre uses “Auction House” as there Market place… And yes its a bit different then your definition all it is…

Is everyone and there mother putting up the same item for 1c cheeper then the last person put it up at…

If it takes active participation thats fine… But there was Talk of API’s earlier in this thread… And API’s require zero participation… As anyone with the know how can tap the games API’s if they are opened up to create a 3rd party program that can do many things one of them is list every item for sale and at what place anywhere in the game… Thus a 3rd party program like this turns an economy that was NOT auction house based like the other MMORPG’s into basically an auction house. Because the Third Party program will tell you exactly were and for what cost the cheapest item is and how many etc etc…

This happened in Eve and it ruined my enjoyment of the economy there and I would hate to see that happen here too…

And that 3rd party program had no opt in or out of ability.

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@Sulfurblade i partially agree with you, not all that glitters is gold, and this “oortsphere” seems glittering a lot…

as you know shopkeeping is the profession for wich you need the absolutly higher game’s knowledge; if you try to open a shop as a beginner/intermidiate you will fail, at the beginning you think you failed because of “them”, of “the system is wrong”… later you understand about all the things that are needed: time, dedication, wise choice of items to sell, variety, etc.
i don’t think that having a list of all the shops will help small shops in the long run, nor will do it making travel harder (as someone suggested), basically a lot of small shop’s shopkeepers just give shopkeeping a try and then they realize that it’s not what they want to do…

whoever is really ready to make his own shop will just do it, a price war based on this “oortsphere” would just end with the same result: the small shops doesn’t close because the market is “corrupted”, they close as they realize they don’t really want to follow it up and adding the “oortsphere” will just add ANOTHER things to follow if you want to be succesfull… after a month we would have again the same number of shops: exactly the ones of people who enjoy to have it

Even expanding the concept to the post-relese, erasing any actual big shop, this “oortsphere” wouldn’t be a real Auction-House (intended as it is in other games), because you will have to fisically go to the shop, the number of possible-to-save locations is limited and warp-by-coordinates it’s not possible… so: you will just compare prices between your “favourite” shops xD

as said before, i don’t think this is going to be real game-changer

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What @Tarahyumaro just said sums it up perfectly… A lot of people assume that trading is just piles and piles of easy money, but it’s a SIGNIFICANT amount of work in order to keep a shop stocked, update prices, and keep it in the public consciousness. This is the exact reason why I don’t trade at all in Boundless–because I know that I don’t currently have the will or the level of interest to keep it going.

If you’re worried about whether this will help or hurt Omni… don’t. Omni posts daily updates of his price listings. Omni runs promotions. Omni restocks dozens of coin baskets. Omni collaborates with people on constructing and running his new store. The ONLY person who can truly make or break Omni in this game is Omni himself.

And @Sulfurblade, your backpedaling to the issue of API’s doesn’t leave you on any more solid ground than the rest of your arguments. The thing that you’re complaining about, that an API would bring to the table here and allegedly ruin this program? That has always been a part of EVE–it’s called the Market Tab. Any consumer has always been able to pull up their Regional Market info and sort every item for sale in the game by price… station… quantity… number of jumps from their current location… contract expiration date…

Those third-party sites don’t serve 99% of consumers–they’re primarily used by traders who haul between stations which are so many jumps apart that no consumer would want to make the trip; the major difference between them and the in-game Market Tab is that they allow someone to compare prices between regions, across vast distances that represent anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more of real-world travel time.

And the actual effect of all of that hauling, as opposed to what you seem to imagine, is that it creates greater price stability throughout the game. When there’s a major discrepancy in the price of a given item between regions, someone notices, and they buy that item at the very low price in one region, and they haul it to sell at the much higher price in the next region. This simultaneously decreases supply in the area where prices were too low, and increases it where they were too high… and demand (and thus local pricing) shifts (and balances) as a result.

That kind of trading hurts… absolutely no one. The seller in one location already agreed to that price, and the buyers in the other location were already looking at their prices as well. Everyone consented to everything, and the only thing it did was create new jobs by giving the haulers a way to make a living.

I’m pretty sure that what ruined your enjoyment of EVE was your inaccurate perception of what was going on around you.

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what i meant is: i am skeptical with this tool as sulfurblade it is

what for me keeps it viable is the simple fact that is an outside resource, it will not give you the possibility to buy from a list, it will just tell you “where and whom”, than you will have to reach the place; that is the difference: as long as you can just chek wich is the average price but you can’t buy it’s ok

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I would buy the heck out of someone’s supply of raw black, gray, and dark gray rocks once those colors are in the game on top of whatever I mine up. Off setting my stockpiles for brick mix materials through spending coin. Same goes for clay. Would buy clay of any color it if means I can compact it and use it to further create more brick mixes.

The one thing that hasn’t been mentioned about Oortsphere is it doesn’t tell you how to get to the shop with the lowest price on Sapphire Gems or Titanium Bars. Portals can close without notice and that changes the route you would take to get to where you want to go in order to buy what you need. The longer the distance the more someone is going to run into that problem.

Besides, for contract builders, I would think they would want to know what shop sells the cheapest building materials for someone’s project so they can bargain a price for labor. It would actually give leverage to either the builder or client. Building materials + 25% in labor or if materials are provided then 50% of average material costs for labor. This happens in real life. That way people can have biddings for contract work for building people’s stuff. Makes for competition for builders that way and I think that’s a good thing. So if you’re not very good at building, well, start putting the time in getting good if you want to compete with other builders.

Another thing I think is good to keep in mind is how not everyone is going to be competitive in this game. Not everyone wants to compete for builder contracts or shop sales. The more ways we can compete with one another the better and it doesn’t necessarily need to be PvP either. Could be collecting resources. Competition in this game on a lot of different areas would simply just be pure fun.

I look forward to it and any tools the developers allow members of the community to build.

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