Jump Starting The Economy

I really don’t feel how come guild update will affect the market.
If guild run the system like you mention, the current market will become even worse situation.
Right now is too much providers on market, and lack of demand on a lot of things.
The idea you mention is bring more mats to the market, but demand remain the same, the price will drop even more for sure. Materials will become less and less valuable. To that point, coins become completely useless.

The current market system you can always lower the price if you have a number of stocks and 100% fill your shop. People always buy the cheaper product instead of expansive one. So if one guild lower the powercoil from 2500c to 1500c. They can do it very easy as long as they want to. This why the advance power coils price drop from 14000c to the current market price 2500c. And believe or not if one owner has 40m and he wants to sell it cheaper he can lower it to even 500c - 1000c / unit for long term.

But i really don’t think most guild will hire people to gather anymore.
If one month ago its possible, but now i don’t feel really worth it anymore. Since the Tools itself is more valuable than the materials. And how many cut you want to share to your worker ? The balance point will be very hard to calculate, especially a lot of people can gather the mats they need super easy these day.

Do my best to stay with the aspect of shops.

A) Shop listing is great idea. What they are selling, location and if they have request baskets and what they want. Reality, it would be hard for many shop owners to keep it current, but that would be a help as I hate the running from store to store to find out that this one wants what I left at my base and have what no one wants to buy. I personally think price should be added so I know who is asking a fair price. Go to one store and silver slingbow was 449c. Thought that was a fair price. Go to another and they are 200 c. Could have bought both of them for what I paid for the other and had coin left over to spend elsewhere.

B) Same aspect of listing of what they are wanting in the request baskets. And prices would help me decide where to go and save me from bouncing around and getting lost. And frustrated.

I hate the running around. I really hate that the prices vary so much . A small difference is okay, but one place want 75c for a iron hammer and another wants 250c? And I went to that planet to get items I need and see that they want to give me 4c for iron and is selling it for 30c?

I still think that 1) quests are the answer, in the sanctum we can choose a quest from a selection that is geared for all level of players. We take the items back to the sanctum and put them into a drop box and get coins.
I used to think auction houses were the answer. But that keeps the player who wants a shop from having the one thing that they enjoy doing in the game.
2) Shopping malls can be a solution. But there is the potential of them getting too big and players buying from the stores closest to the portals as players don’t want to go searching through 200, 300, 700 shops.
There is no easy solution at this time.

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Guild can run a central market, instead of all members having their own shop everything can be sold there.

But that won’t change anything to be honest.
Yes people can find the thing they need easier
( Well, depends on the center size, if the area is famous, it still take a lot time to find the thing you need)
But it really won’t change anything. Right now the gem price is almost to 70c - 100c / unit.
Advance power coils around 2500 - 3900c / unit.
But if your guild is huge and host the advance power coils for lets say 3900c / unit.
One famous store pop up at other place sell it 1000c / unit.
People will still choose to go there to buy the power coils not to your guild center market.
As long as that shop owner can keep the price at the 1000c for 1 month.
Your guild will become the one who need to lower the price to 1000c / unit.
Otherwise you can barley sell daily.

Unless your guild is powerful enough to buy all the 1000c power coils at market and sell it at 3900c again.
But it also means your guild need the ability to monopoly entire power coil market to remain the 3900c for long term.

Yea i agree it wont change much as the problem is the amount of players, which are in a steady decline since release.
I do believe guild will be able to provide a common objective to keep more active players and maybe find new players.

Or give shops the ability to create their own currency/shop credit. Then the shop could pay higher prices because you would be forced to spend the money back in the shop.

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The market’s problem is not amount of players in my opinion.
The reason cause a market break especially for gem market is basically caused by a player. XD
I won’t name it here. But he is the one who share the best forge method on forum
He is one of my friends, and i know he share it because he wanted to help more players.
But it also turn out that people learn the extremely easy way to forge super powerful tools to grind.
It kind of a god give everyone ability to get everything super easy.

Its good intention at first i am really sure, but the result it cause is not healthy for the game in long term.
Right now the problem is the materials we can gather in such short time is way too much.
I don’t mean that dev should nerf it to the ground. but for me, 1800 gems in 1 - 1.5 hour is too broken.
Maybe 700 gem / hour will be good enough for people to use for long term ?

Also yeah i slightly agree with you guild will help to provide a common objective to keep more active players.
But i am not 100% sure about that. Because this game still lack a lot of end game content for players to keep playing.
Guild system is good, but i feel it still not enough to affect the current population.
At least its a good start.
The best part for guild system is to solve the “Town Merging issue” . This is a very necessary system to add into the game.

What about trading posts at guilds? I’d love to go and trade what I have that I don’t use for items I need. Did a trade with a guild member of copper for him to make refined copper and I got some iron and titanium bars.

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For me, both questions A and B are caused by the same thing.

I don’t buy or sell things at all any more. I started off doing it on a small scale here and there, but soon decided that with an unstable economy comes too much uncertainty around what is a reasonable price for which items. I don’t have the time to (or not want to waste the time to) trawl through enough shops to get a decent idea of what it a reasonable price right now and I neither wanted to rip off customers, nor be ripped off. So I just stopped using shops.

If there was a Universal/Global (preferably both) average price available based on items actually sold recently (not just prices people put in shop stands), I’d feel much more comfortable about using the economy, both buying and selling.

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About the current market.

If you are a Mid - game players ( which just start to craft your first or second advanced power coils)
Its a perfect moment for you guys. Right now you can join hunts to sell trophies or oortstones to exchange money to buy those extremely cheap advance power coils on market ( 2500c - 3900c only)

If you are Newbie, i am very sorry. You basically miss the best moment to host a business to make your first money. It still possible, but way more harder than before.
(Due to population drop, items / materials value drops/ demand drops…etc)
It will takes longer to get your first 1m or 2m.

If you are experienced players and close to the end game. I guess some of you may feel the same as me.
Nothing worth to buy on market anymore. Only when you lazy to grind certain materials to host your shop.
Or you are running a big city requires tons of oortstones to fuels portals, but too lazy to join the hunt daily XD
But i believe you won’t have any day that you really need money to buy something.
(For example for some seller who has 5m - 20m. Basically they don’t need to worry about money for couple months at least :grinning:)

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

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I currently have less than 4k coins. I constantly spend it all. 3x3 hammers, Adv power coils and lately some forge ingredients.

I replenish my coin by selling the extra stuff I don’t need. Mostly iron and copper. I only maintain 2 portals so I have tons more oortstone than I need and I make a killing off of that stuff.

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The Economy seems fine on my end, but all I buy are advanced power coils aside from that most things I collect myself.
But I dont think there is a jump start needed.

Thank you everyone so far for the responses. This is the type of information I know @James and the development team need to help them understand the deeper issues people face and how they look at things.

Hopefully he can use this info and then as they continue looking at solutions provide some more details on us for future suggestions…

Keep giving answers to the question or experiences of why you do not participate in the economy.

My 2 coins is that the economy is right where it should be at the moment. Nobody seems to be aspirating on vomited coins that they just can’t seem to keep down, and coin feels valuable but not impossible to get. Anything is better than The Month Without Coins.

you shop owners need a syndicate to get out this recession
lol

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Hehe moebs you night have an idea here… we need to group together and convince those that “do it all themselves” that their time spent gathering is worth more coin than the product they are getting, thus rather buy than farm!

At the same time, we need to convince the farmers that they can get more money by selling to us than the time it takes to gather, thus farm for coin!

Problem is, these two seem mutually exclusive, you cant satisfy them both without outside forces acting on the system.

At the moment, that outside force is the shop owner being willing to gather for less per hour than the farmer is, then selling for less per hour then the buyer is worth- getting screwed both ways with some effort added in the middle.

If farmers got extra coin for the act of farming, this would in theory make them willing to sell cheaper. Similarly if the buyer got some coin extra from spending time somewhere, he would value his time more and pay more to not waste it.

I still think dailies could be useful here, if the target level of activity is slightly higher than what an average player would spend doing in a normal day.

For example, if you get coin for harvesting a smart stack of peat or silt or clay. Johnny average is looking for 50 glass blocks. He can go farm the ingredients himself, but gets nothing for his effort. He is a lumberjack and would rather be getting coin for chopping trees. Opportunity cost rises, and hes more willing to buy.

Now steve is a miner. He likes the crunch of dirt under his shovel. He doesnt mind farming silt, and because he does so above average, gets some coin for it. His silt has already earned him some coin, and hes now willing to sell it for a bit less per unit than johnny thinks its worth.

Steve makes coin digging dirt, and more by selling it. Johnny pays less for dirt than his time is worth, and gets money from chopping so he spends it on Steve’s glass. A good trade was had by all.

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