Join Mercatorum Aequitatis - the Boundless Guild for all "Merchants of Fairness!"

General
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So there has been a lot of talk about issues with shop pricing in Boundless especially around Oort and some other products. While I dabble some in shops I am by no means an expert. But, as many know I’ve helped solve many issues or concerns we had in Boundless because of my Oortian status (chats with Devs directly) and how much I wanted the game to be a success. In beta I led the first hunts so people had Oort as well as ran a hub network when there weren’t really any, then I took over the Hunt bot (OortAdonai) to ensure hunts stayed possible, and now I’m going try this to ensure fair pricing in the game at least until we can get appropriate development done.

This pricing issue is certainly not helpful overall to the community especially for those that cannot play much. People prefer to manipulate the market instead of just ensuring there is stuff that all people can access. To combat this, I am offering my solution below until we can have better development done to solve permission and other bugs around this topic. Yes, I know there are some issues and this is certainly not elegant and by no means perfect but I think with the right group of stewards helping me as well the community of dedicated players supporting it - we can succeed.

New Guild Announcement: Join Mercatorum Aequitatis - the Boundless Guild for all “Merchants of Fairness!”

We are a new guild dedicated to fair trade across Boundless markets. Our members pledge to uphold honest pricing, transparent dealings, and ethical competition in all shops.

Apply now to join our noble cause!

[ Where? : Planet Beckon - Aquatopia Embassy Portal Hub - loc: 1,049N 769E ]
[ Guild Name : Mercatorum Aequitatis ]
[ Guild TAG : >BMA< ]

This is a closed and closely monitored guild of members (buyers/sellers) that are accepted (in a forum private chat with me or co-stewards) based on this Agreement Clause and Oath:

By joining, I swear to buy/sell goods at fair prices, avoid predatory practices, and promote honest trade. I will respect fellow buyers and shopkeepers, maintain market stability, and uphold the guild’s honor in all transactions across Boundless.

Overview:

  1. The guild is for both buyers and sellers but leans toward shop owners.
  2. Sellers must have their shop beacon aligned to but NOT controlled by the Guild. (You are allowed to have other guild shops that are NOT PART of this guild and agreement between players).
  3. Members of the Guild will be only approved by me and a select group of trusted stewards (if people want to apply or suggest who should be those stewards please PM me).
  4. Those that break the oath or play pricing games will be removed - no exceptions. (This will require community help and policing. There will be no toleration of players fighting amongst themselves or sabotaging others to get them kicked out of the guild, etc. Please be adults here.)
  5. Only 1 guild submission per account/person please - once you are in the guild you don’t need multiple ALTS in it. Just use that specific account and because your beacon is only aligned you can give your other accounts perms normally.

How It Works For BUYERS

  1. It is a very simple answer for you : First and foremost spend your shopping time and MONEY only in shops/stands that are in a beacon CLEARLY aligned to this guild. So, yes, you must watch to ensure you are in the right beacon while shopping and that it did not change. Guild shop beacons will clearly have the tag : >BMA<
  2. Shop stands might be locked or behind special areas that require access. The shop owner will make sure you can easily request access via an ingame mailbox so you can shop there (please be patient to get permissions).
  3. If you see prices in a guild aligned beacon that are far off or clearly abusing agreed pricing please report it to one of our stewards so we can solve the issue with the shop owner.
  4. If you see other violations of the oath or what this guild is trying to promote please alert a steward or me.
  5. You can use any shop not aligned to the guild but you risk prices that COULD be off with the agreed fairness price of all Merchants. Stay away from those High Priced shops and they just won’t get any income while those that are part of the guild will continue to make income.

How It Works For SELLERS

  1. Do NOT GUILD CONTROL ONLY ALIGN - guild control will give some people access to storage/shop stand inventory.
  2. You MUST ensure the area you want linked to the “merchants of fairness” guild is in a beacon is aligned to the guild. If that beacon is not aligned those stands are assumed to be not in good standing with the guild. The other areas of your shop can or don’t have to be aligned - just that area you are clearly stating you believe in trade fairness.
  3. You MUST ensure in that beacon there is a “guild control” pointed to this guild so all members can see who is currently in the guild or not and where other approved shop beacons are located.
  4. You MUST ensure that people can communicate to you via an in game mailbox clearly visible. You can additionally add a sign with your account on the forum/discord for a PM if you want.
  5. You are here to help with fair pricing and good trade practices. So price signs and other things to help people know prices is very helpful. We want this promoted for ease of access.
  6. You can put your whole shop or specific shop stands in locked areas if you want to further control who has access. You can set the perms to one or more people or just set to the whole guild. Here is how it works:
    a) A buyer requests guild access and me or one of the stewards confirm via PM that they will follow the oath, we add them to the guild and then give permissions at the “guild worker level.”
    b) Once access is granted you use an “advanced lock” to grant access to a locked room/item.
    c) If you want ONLY that person to have access only click their name. If you want all guild members to get access then use the GUILD option.
    d) If you have the items in a locked room just set up the advanced lock for the room.
    e) If you want to use a shop stand you need a special design (it’s not elegant but works). The shop stand MUST be fully surrounded by blocks (like maybe plain glass panes) and a lock placed on the same block level as a door or trap door. If is critical the lock and the door are on the same block line or the door won’t open because of how locks work.
    f) This will then ensure that only those that can acceess open the door can access the stand.
    g) Note: Because the beacon is only aligned and not controlled they will still need to BUY your goods. Make sure, obviously, that they do not have more perms in the beacon.
    h) Note: Shop stand discover must be off if behind locked situation
    i) Note: If someone has a better way to lock up a shop stand not listed here let me know!

Why It Works

I’m not trying to take over people’s shops or stop them from branding their shop as what they want. What I am trying to do here is give a practical and easy solution that helps make sure buyers know that the shop owners believes in and support the Oath they took. If people help promote this and join our alliance grows and the values we want expands across the community.

How? If you aren’t in the guild, you aren’t willing to be fair which means you now risk people NOT USING your shop because all buyers have clarity on WHO IS COMMITTED. Sure, that shop owner might still be able to get stuff sold but there is a clear group of people and shops that are going to spend money VERY SELECTIVELY. Also, if you choose to use locked areas we increase locking out those that don’t want to commit to this easy Oath.

Yes, some person can buy up all the Oort or whatever (not locked up) but the shop owner still makes their money. I’m just assuming the person bought up the Oort because they needed it and weren’t trying to corner the market. But, if they try to corner it, those that agree with the ethos of Mercatorum Aequitatis will NEVER buy it and it will just sit there. Sooner or later that owner will lower the prices or just not make money off it. Additionally, their whole shop will also be seen as someone not offering fairness and just receive less business.

The more of the community that is aware of this the stronger the alliance gets and what Mercatorum Aequitatis is trying to achieve comes to fruition. People visiting and spending their money at shops that agree with the idea of fairness. Yes, this is kind of using a heavy hand to solve the issue but considering our player base and no other options this at least helps people for now.

NEXT STEPS

The guild is set up at the location listed above. I’ll be approving joins based on my PM conversation. The easy path is to request to join, then PM @xaldafax in the forum with a copy of the oath and your personal agreement in your own words of commitment to being a Merchant of Fairness.

If you want to help at a higher level of being a Steward let me know. I’m hoping a few of you very skilled shop users and those staying in tune with the meta of shopping here in Boundless will step up. I’m not sure if @majorvex is still really playing but she is a good example of trusted people.

Obviuosly, I hope others will help promote this idea and if there are some tweaks to the idea or things maybe I have wrong please speak up. Lastly, if no one wants to use this idea then fine. I’m just trying to create a way for people to CLEARLY SEE who wants fair prices and who isn’t going to participate.

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So I think I have a solution for this until we can get better development done. This solution should help provide very CLEAR TRANSPARENCY on who in the game is willing to offer fair prices and who isn’t.

The more shops that join means it is easier for people to see which shops commit to fairness. Those that don’t stop ultimately getting any real business across the board.

If you are interested see the below post:

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So while I understand this, this kind of messes with how beaconing works. I want everything aligned to Reaper so I can see all my beacons in a single overview. Otherwise it separates them onto several smaller settlements and i can’t easily see an overview anymore.

EDIT: On second thought, the idea of bullying people out of the market because they either don’t know or don’t want to join a guild and/or align a beacon sounds like some seriously toxic stuff to me.

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Hell yeah, mafia style economics, the true solution. /s

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Shop stands must have discovery turned off if they aren’t accessible.

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I spent a lot of time working out prices for what I sell based on how much the components cost to buy + a small amount for production costs. I’m not usually the cheapest, nor am I usually the dearest. I do my best to be fair. I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time keeping my own guild running, and am not really interested in abandoning my main guild in order to join a Merchants Guild and have to align all my shop beacons to that guild.

Because fairness is a thing I care about, I’d be happy to put a sign up saying my shop stands met the requirements of the merchants guild - if you were happy that those stands did so, I’d also happily join a Merchants of Boundless discord. But I would not destroy my building and crafting guild to join a merchants guild on another planet.

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I very much agree with this. I’d like to first know how exactly pricing for fairness is calculated. Right now a lot of us calculate pricing based on average cost of all components with an upcharge for either time, annoyance (forging), and a slight profit margin.

There’d have to be a sweeping pricing guide of ALL resources in the game. All the way from the bottom to the top.

It’s impossible to decide what prices are fair without making sure all prices make sense.

Honestly, personally I feel uncomfortable letting a player decide that. If a moderator or developer makes a pricing guide I’d be more inclined to follow it.

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I’m not asking to or even remotely saying to bully anyone out of the game or market and solely deciding that is the direction I am taking this is pretty disingenuous. It isn’t toxic to have a group of people that agree to buy and sell at each other’s stores. Merchant Alliances and other Groups of Stores have done that throughout history. In this game the only way we have to confirm that person is aligned is a Guild solution. The guild is a way to ensure people are agreeing to the terms by having them tracked and showing as active. At some point I would probably redo the Hunt Bot to include this but I want in-game functions and less out of game functions.

If your guild alignments are more important to you than helping support the community like this then that is your 100% prerogative. I never would expect people to do something they don’t want to. You are welcome to keep your own shop alignments and risk people not going to it because they can’t guarantee you are willing to be support what the guild is trying to accomplish. Your prices might change their mind and they still visit. I don’t know and can’t control a buyer. All I do know is I will always default to going to shops that support this guild first over others if the idea does take off.

I complete get people’s shops are their identity. I’m not trying to stop that and was clear people could have other areas and even be aligned to other guilds in their shops. The goals is to help with transparency and item price fairness as discussed in other forum posts recently.

Putting a sign up pretending you are in the guild and are not will be reported. You’re welcome to have a sign that says you agree with the guild principles but are not part of it and then try to match prices that the guild set. Buyers aren’t required to only buy from the guild and just suggested to be patrons of only guild member shop.

You won’t be destroying your building or shop at all by having a single plot or something with the guild alignment especially for the small amount of items right now being complained about as super high. There are also still many areas people are trying to create malls or places you could have shop stands to support the idea and not impact your other shop. Not to mention, everyone has simple space on their builds that isn’t 50 floors that they can align to a different guild. It does nothing overall to really hurt the settlement prestige because you aren’t going to have a billion prestige in a few plots. ALL beacons in a settlement still give prestige to that settlement.

I didn’t get into this because I’m the only one starting this and need some other trusted people to build this out. Initially there are only a few select items I think are important to address (like Oort) and we will see about how we expand. Please remember the OVERALL GOAL here - buyer transparency and general fairness. If you haven’t caught up on some posts about price complaints, I’d start there.

Anything I do has always been about PLAYERS and the game in general. I haven’t been super verbal in the forums lately so some maybe don’t know who I am or what I did push and help fix in the game directly with the Devs (I was one of only like 3 people that solely bought the Oortian package - not shared with others or an account bought later). I’m just overall here to help solve problems and especially improve new or casual players experiences. There is a gap and it is hurting people that can’t get into the game as much as some people and I won’t stop on helping them because we don’t need to lose more people.

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Are you also gonna leave out that in that history, merchant alliances have been rife with corruption and price gouging, or is that not gonna happen because “you say so”?

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so, basically the guild agree on prices and members only use those agreed prices, creating a bubble within the market where guild members sell and buy stuff from each other, avoiding overpriced shops out there?

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You saying this, is literally bullying people to join you. “Oh well if you don’t join us, you risk losing customers”. The fact you don’t understand this is crazy to me.

I’ll make this statement then:

If this succeeds, i will just reclaim and get out to play something else. I’m not playing a game where a player-run mafia can chase out people who don’t follow by their dumb rules.

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Personally I think the players shopping/selling can make the decision on who they buy from and sell too based on their needs and available coin.

The whole lowering the price of Oort I feel was required and it seems like many others agreed with that.

I also agree that prices for some items are far to high but its upto you the player to choose wether you buy it or not. I’ve lowered the prices in all my stores but not shown up on BUTT!

Guess that’s my punishment for suggesting lowering the Oort price lol

If you want cheap items give me a visit via Dragon Hub

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I agree, oort was an extreme outlier in my opinion. But 99% of the other prices in the game are that high because the resources to make them are slowly running out. Like amethyst and emerald tools are slowly becoming more expensive because the supply of amethysts and emeralds is barely being replenished.

The solution is not to create a mafia to decide who is allowed to earn money. The solution is to replenish stock.

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didn’t take long for me while reading the post at the top to have my hackles start rising lol. Agree with your edited part

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I think we are talking at cross purposes. An alternate suggestion is to set up a merchants discord, and we can lay out all the kind of pricing work that go into making fair prices. I think a lot of people simply forget, or perhaps don’t know, but mega fast brews for example - not only do you need adrenal glands but boost oil that requires, among other things, saltpetre. Teaching pies require not only 576 sweet beans, but also purified butter, sugar and flour.

Make a space where we can talk about what everything takes, what they cost, and what is fair.

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One thing that might work and it would be like what @SWProzee1 had in the LOOT guild was an area only trusted players could enter and you each have a room with shop stands filled with the items you have requested? I dunno just thinking out loud what’s everyone think?

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Personally the only time I will ever follow a pricing guide is if it was made by @jon-eric or @majorvex . There’s not a single chance i’m following the guidance of a player-ran organization who i barely know.

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OK, so basically the way I understand the idea:

The guild creates a market bubble using part of peoples resources, to help keep prices low for those who need it (mostly new and casual players who struggle to amass coin).

It’s not different than having chests with stuff for guild members only. Here it would be shop stands for members only, with prices below the inflated global market.

People entering the guild to buy cheap and then sell it higher outside the guild would be removed, which is nothing but exercising the guilds right to keep its members to their word, right?

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Just a reminder that for those ideas you all have to have your shops unlisted, as you’re not allowed to have your shop stands be discoverable if non-members can’t buy from it.

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Yeah that will be fine with my suggestion above because you will request the items and go and buy them and only you can buy them.

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