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.
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.
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.
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.
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. ️ - means it’s done and working (but could still change). - means I’m working on it right now. ️ - means it’s not yet done.
Backend: ️ Create User ️ Edit User ️ Create Character ️ Edit Character ️ Remove Character ️ Create Shop ️ Edit Shop ️ Remove Shop ️ Add Item ️ Remove Item Edit Item ️ Feed ( Added Shop, Removed Shop, Added Item(s), Removed Item(s) … )
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Frontend: /shopsite - Shop Stand /shopsite - Request Basket /shopsite - Info Design ️ 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.
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.
@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
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.
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
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.
And I still agree with you on that… You’re pointing out that there are still other factors involved in a buying decision. Location and travel time will be factors, and also availability. Does this person have the quantity of items that I need? Do they also sell 3 other items I’m looking for?
These are all important issues, and they’ll still be important issues after Oortsphere is up and running.
Hey all, Crete from the Concrete Corner SuperStore here:
It sounds like a great idea, Although i wont be using it. As a solo shopkeeper most of my time is spent keeping stocked. Whether that means farming fresh, or finding that one guy who sold 2,300 Opals for 1c each. I wont have time to spend an hour or so on a website alt-tabbing and updating prices.
I may POSSIBLY (In the future) use it to price my items. As of now, things are just priced for what i think they are worth to me… cause its my stuff… I store my stuff at my shop. I surely dont have time to adjust the pricing on a daily basis. Kudos to those that do, but holy spit… dunno how you do it.
But that’s way in the future when I might have time to update prices accordingly. “Aint nobody got time fo’ dat!”
The thing is, whenever you have an economy you are going to have competition. This community might be small now but when it gets larger, the problems you’ve mentioned will still arise with or without this site. Human beings will be human beings and compete in the end and, the way the portals are set up in this game, the ease of access will effectively create an auction house, just with more work on the buyer’s part.
Perhaps there wouldn’t be the “one penny under” sellers without this site, but sellers still want to sell their goods and competition will still be out there.
I get you are very worried about your shop and quest to make the most money you can in game. I mean any idea that ever comes up in the forum that talks about economy or footfall or income or p2w and you bring out the biggest bat possible to beat it down…
Just so you know the game already has auction house mentalities. It is very common where the two powerful shops already control the market prices and have pushed down prices before because they can. So the problem goes way beyond API access.
API just levels the playing field and distributes the power of market manipulation to more people than the select few that currently have it.
Your lazy is another man’s opportunity. This is no different than other conversations where other people defined it as lazy and you felt it was not. If this destroys game play, then so does so many of the other suggestions people brought up but you did everything you could to shoot it down.
The reality is this – whether you, me, all the shop keepers, or anyone agree or disagree with the “shop website” functionality, people WILL MAKE THEM. That is life. Either they will be successful or not based on the value they bring to the whole community. If you don’t like them, then don’t visit them. But for people that don’t want to support the “big guys” and maybe want to give the “little guys” more money, they will like these sites. Or the person that doesn’t want to visit tons of towns and planets trying to find a shop with decent prices, then they will like it.
Not a random Joe… just someone that is willing to not make 1000 coin on something that isn’t worth that. I have seen people gouge the shop market making huge profits just because they can. So maybe it is time for them to have some real competition.
And like anyone earned the business they get now? lol… in almost all economies the cheapest price is King.
This is incorrect. For the guy that doesn’t care then he won’t remember. For the person that does care they will still go to the shop they want to support. This changes nothing in the dynamic. People inherently support shops they like and the shop owners.
Yes this dynamic in Eve and any other game out there is pretty crappy. But, we have crappy people all over the world and the website will not change anything. We already have people setting prices 1c lower than someone else. I’ve seen it all over the place since Boundless had shop stands and people selling stuff. Same for the request baskets. That is commerce.
Blockquote Just so you know the game already has auction house mentalities. It is very common where the two powerful shops already control the market prices and have pushed down prices before because they can. So the problem goes way beyond API access.
Two, first off it was one powerful shop that pushed many prices down to silly levels… Why is this able to happen not because their is some inherent flaw in the system, its because there is one shop who possess’s far more money and is able to run in a deficit longer then the rest of us… This has nothing to do with your belief that the non auction house system we have in game is one!
Blockquote API just levels the playing field and distributes the power of market manipulation to more people than the select few that currently have it.
The reality is this – whether you, me, all the shop keepers, or anyone agree or disagree with the “shop website” functionality, people WILL MAKE THEM.
So this sums up all of my worries, I don’t care if someone makes a web sight like this but I do care if that someone is receiving Developer assistance to do so, because Developer Assistance open’s up the discussion of API’s… Without API’s I and other shops can just ignore the web sight with API’s we are magically forced into it…
Blockquote And like anyone earned the business they get now? lol… in almost all economies the cheapest price is King.
This particular comment I find flat “offensive” There is nothing easy about running a shop, to be successful you must restock daily or twice daily or even more… You cannot have an empty shop stand… You have to constantly monitor every other shops prices, you have to actually make the stuff you sell… You have to advertise, you have to set up portals, you have to fuel your portals. If you seriously think that the major shops in game just put down some shop stands and then waited for people to show up then your way off base!
Blockquote Yes this dynamic in Eve and any other game out there is pretty crappy. But, we have crappy people all over the world and the website will not change anything. We already have people setting prices 1c lower than someone else. I’ve seen it all over the place since Boundless had shop stands and people selling stuff. Same for the request baskets. That is commerce.
Then why support it here… and again I don’t care if the sight is an opt in with no developer assistance opening up API’s people can make them all they want… its no different from Omni posting his price spread sheet in the forum… But if a place exists where every shop in the game’s prices appear in one listing that’s when you will see me exit this game stage left…
As for people pricing things 1c less then other shops there is nothing wrong with that because again this is NOT an auction house the Normal shopper will not know his price is 1c less then Larva Falls. Unless that shopper literally travels to every shop in which case good for him for doing his due diligence to save 1 coin.
But normal Shoppers don’t do that… Shop Keepers do that! Why so we know our prices are competitive!
You were talking about reputation of a person and them then having that making it be their “right” to a business. So don’t go taking my comment to one of your statements and then trying to turn it around. I said nothing about working to run a shop and how that relates to this discussion.
So your offense was really misplaced.
I never said whether I support API in game or not.
At this point I would say that if we are allowing people to post price lists like Omni then you are doing the same thing as providing it via API because it is very easy to scrap the data and present it anyway via a site. All of it could be automated so there really is no difference.
So I would prefer at least to have a better supported method. But, my decision is still not made either way.
At this point the thread has gone beyond my personal tolerance for madness, so I’m just gonna end my presence here by saying that I hope @DarthNott is successful and I’m looking forward to using Oortsphere when it’s up and running - whether certain people here support it or not.
And as a final warning to shopkeepers out there… If you’re worried about this nebulous concept of your “reputation” and you want to protect it, the worst thing you can possibly do is say that you’re afraid of consumers having access to information. The only thing we can infer from such a statement is that you intend to deceive us, and that you intend to profit from that deception. You might want to consider another line of work.
Assuming that you’re talking about the Omni Shop - we’re making a profit every single day. I’ve nearly doubled my coin since starting to play again. We just have a decent supply chain…
I’m working every day on my site…
Currently styling the shopsite.
Here’s a preview of a feature that I’m working on at the moment. You’ll be able to write a description for your shop. I’m developing my own markdown editor so you’ll be able to use headlines or lines or make your words bold and italic. I’ll work on more markdown elements like lists …
All you can see is already made with code and working but not yet final, so everything can change.
A few questions:
Should there be a character limit for the description? If yes: Why and how many characters? (Current is 300)
What markdown elements would you like to see? (maybe adding a color)
On the picture below you can see the info site of a shop. What else would be important to have on the site besides coordinates, world, settlement, how many items you are selling/buying, last updated and description? I’m thinking about having a MAIN shop (if you have more than one, but one shop is your biggest) and to close/open the shop (if you take a break or there aren’t any items to sell).
️ - means it’s done and working (but could still change). 
- means I’m working on it right now. 
️ - means it’s not yet done.
