To answer your questions myself…
I would buy more if i had more coin. The price of things is relative to how much a player values their time vs others value their time and that averages with how much coin is available. I would like to see three changes; Earlier footfall, less Oort needed for portals, and Disperse the tax’s.
Portals encourage cooperation and Independence, Tax dispersion encourage close communities, Footfall encourages building.
1: Plots with 1,000 Prestige start earning footfall. Currently @ 10,000) This will allow the new players to get a taste of the action “Ohh somebody checked out my home!”, And instead of the plot footfall depending on city size, I feel it should be relational to their personal size. (A little relief for those monster cities eating smaller helpless settlements)
2: Taxes should be dispersed to city participants related to their percentage of prestige of the settlement. The Coin sink can still be a portion of the taxes or the Mayor needs the Tax Epic to negate the sink. Screw the coin sink even… Let players sit on millions of coin, they can buy the blocks for their next 1 million prestige build and all the noobs that farmed those blocks will benefit. The game is at a point where many players builds are starting to regen so recycling of space is happening.
3: Adjust portal requirements and restrictions. Id like to see less portals allowed per beacon, and less oort needed to fuel them. (Or drop more oort from meteors.) Moore Oort will encourage or allow players to spread out a bit more and not be so reliant on vicinity to HUBS and portal networks. Make it easy for players to build away from cities and maintain their portals, instead of so many drying up if you don’t consistantly hunt for an hour every week. I could do lots with several portals throughout my own build, but i don’t have enough time to spend hunting AND building AND enjoying OORTMAS. I feel Boundless is a bit too dependant on community involvement and discourages newer players. Theoretically a player should be able to do it all by themselves within a reasonable timeframe. If you want to do things in great quantities, that should require cooperation.
4: What i really think will help Boundless, is striving to have MORE players. More players means a more robust economy, more supply, more demand. Most my thoughts are with the lower 75% in mind who have less than 25k coin. Who might forge, but rarely have a hammer with All Rounder + Damage, and typically use a titanium and maybe a gem hammer. and has less than 500,000 prestige in their build(s) I remember how hard it was to get past the “Power wall” for me, and heard the same from many others, (Granted coils are much cheaper now) but players need to see the possibility for themselves of a 1 mill prestige build rather than assume that’s only possible for pre-release players and get discouraged. Players need lots of progress up front and should only have to grind for the end 25% of abilities. (Add super complex machines that have more slots, or perform functions of all machines but cost like 500 Shim orbs / 900 Titanium Alloy / 900 Bonding Agents)
Rite now I feel it will take players around 60Hrs to to be able to reach a point where they can consistently forge themselves a T4 hammer and acquire mats and build their dream 300,000 prestige castle/workshop/HUB/fort/spaceship/road/pacman/artcontest/floatingisland/dungeon/shop/50ftallmario/etc. Thats 3 hrs / 5 days a week / for 1 month. Players who love building (Minecraft/No-Mans Sky/Empyrion/others) will take the gamble of spending that time, new unsure players will not. Especially not during this season when there are so many other games being released.
I really like this idea… I want to be a real-estate Mogul