Market and Mall owners treated unfairly - contracts should be allowed

It’s not a perfect solution, but I am hoping others can have a idea of what can be done, how it can be set up.

I don’t like it in a way, but in another way I hate seeing the mall, market and others being take advantage of and nothing can be done to protect them.

There are plenty of threads of griefing, hunts are having problems, discussions are in what can be done to help with it. The damage here isn’t as obvious, but it is there.

It is possible nothing can be done, the mall, market and others owners will have to just suffer from the players taking advantage of them, and I’m not talking about a legitimate situation, but the abuses that have and do happen.

Anyone who wants to find a way to trick the system will, but there will be some who will understand and have no problem with it. We can’t stop all the griefing, the abuse of the freedom of this game, but can we create something to help with the problems, to some extent? Is it even possible? I don’t know,

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Firstly, one thing I would like to say to others is that there’s no point fear-mongering about a system like this being added to the game. In the way @Janna55 describes the system, I would take it as a system that is
optional and that would actually need to be willingly setup by the market/mall owners and willingly used by the people that wanted to use that same economic area.

With a system like this, malls and markets as they exist now wouldn’t suddenly disappear as a result of an optional contract/rent system for shops… They would simply exist alongside any new malls/markets that did decide to use the contract system.

The contract system should certainly, like @Janna55 puts it, hold both sides accountable and protected from each other, as much as possible. And on that point…

I think you’re right, it can’t ever be fully stopped, but a contract system would definitely be helpful in curbing a few things and making certain areas less “dead” (in some sense of the word), I believe.

And it should be possible to implement a new system to handle these things; as a reminder to everyone reading this thread, it is not really up to us, as players, to figure out the technical details of how such a system would work. We should definitely discuss the nuances of a potential system however.

Heck, as a reminder for everyone, please see this post on how the responsibility of technical detail does not fall on us:


On the point of discussing the nuances of a potential, new, system:

I don’t know what I personally would feel is a good time. Maybe two to three months sounds ok to me, based on my own experience of wanting to take breaks or having real-life interruptions and the like.

I do know I’d want the system to protect my actual assets from the mall/market owner at all times and vice versa, for the sake of being fair to everyone; if the contract expired, the items should simply somehow be returned to the renter/shop owner.

I think the problem is this assumes that the players are always the ones taking advantage and not the ones being taken advantage of. That is not always going to be the case. The mall owner can pack up and leave anytime then want stranding all the store players without portals or other infrastructure. What protection do they have to prevent this? You mentioned the players with stores in the mall running them for footfall. . what about a mall owner doing the same? Why is one bad and the other not bad?

I think putting in some complicated contract system that will likely require constant interaction on the part of the developers to mediate is not good for the game. I do not have any suggestions because I think in the end this is part of being in a game with other people. It is like what happened to you before you changed settlements. No one has to run a mall. It is like starting a settlement. You only have so much control and if that is not enough control for you as an individual then maybe it is not worth the frustration.

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I can see both sides, and I think there should be protection for the shop owners, not just the mall, market and other owners. We are trusting them to not bail out on us.

That unfortunately happened when Aenea had to shut down her market. She gave notice for quite some time, but there were still some who lost out because of personal events in their lives and they weren’t on and saw them. Portals were shut down, but she gave notice and for plenty of time, but again, there were some who didn’t see it I guess. I think I read of one or two who found out later.

I don’t know what she did, I would guess, knowing her, that she did the best she could to contact them all, and most likely took what she could with her although the plots were in our names so they would have probably been left standing. I trust that she will have tried to contacted them so they could get them later. That was in some ways a choice forced on her when she was going through a very difficult time in real life. I can feel for both sides in such a situation; the owners and the shop owners, both lost out.

A contract on both sides that is by choice, as I should have mentioned, is only fair. Forcing someone to do something isn’t my idea of right, I just want them to have the option. A player can go, no I don’t want to and they can make the choice to let them set up or not. There are lots of malls, markets and other shopping type of setups that players should be able to find another location.

I had been offered a plot at a few after NLM was shut down, so I am sure that others would have found some place. It was a inconvenience, but that happens in games when you are dealing with people and a game that is really still in early access.

It is trying our best to find a way to work out solutions that can be helpful. Maybe someone in brainstorming can come up with a method that will work for all. Maybe Wonderstruck will get on the ball and hire someone to take on the task of dealing with problems in the game and on the forum.

And I can agree that for some a contractual set up may not appeal to both sides, and they see it as too much trouble and if something like that were to be implemented they may go this isn’t for me. I know that I personally would not want the headache of having a market. Saw enough of real life problems my dad dealt with his businesses, dealing with renters was at times a nightmare.

The thing is, it should be a choice and I can see in the future others having the same problem that @AeneaGames had in her market, so we need someone to over see these problems and nip them in the bud when it starts up, right now the devs are so overwhelmed in other areas they can’t keep a eye on what is happening in the game and take care of problems.

I’m not advocating for a dictatorship of the mall, market or other owners, just something that will protect them all from being griefted by someone who wants to create trouble.

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While I can fully understand the reasons behind this and the pain felt I do not think people should be able to take plots away from others and that we need to protect malls. I feel each side needs protection based on their side of the situation. Due to this, I feel we need more fundamental change that would make these scenarios not happen or be very extreme occurances.

I don’t think we should fault people for trying to have a shop but maybe not doing it well or find that they have other responsibilities or builds in the way. I know I sometimes overcommit to things and it takes a while to get back on track. I also know that I get burned out on parts of the game and need to step back and focus somewhere else for a while so that I keep playing. Those type of scenarios could make some think a person wants FF when in fact it is for a whole different set of reasons.

To me the overall issue here is the result of a bad system (footfall) and a completely lacking game ecosystem (economy/shops). I feel that if we spend time fixing those issues a lot of these other problems would go away.

I have no issue with discussions around a contract between mall owner and shop owners but think we need a more robust design and it should be linked to other true contract type technology where people can negotiate things and hold others accountable. Until we have those things in place I don’t see a simple solution beyond just focusing on fixing core game failures and maturing them into better game play.

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This thread has gotten pretty crazy.

To be honest, I just skimmed the last couple of posts. I got to the part about video recorded contracts and couldn’t take any more.

What you will push for, if you keep pushing in this direction, is an end to players bothering with these arrangements IMO. Malls and shopping centers aren’t part of the game. They’re player constructs for convenience and when they’re not convenient any more they’ll go away.

I can’t imagine how many hours of MajorVex’s time you would want devoted to recording contracts, monitoring shop levels, managing closed shops, taking 90 day player activity checks, etc…

Any other mall/market owner of course, but just as a prominent example.

EVERY mall shop is a player beacon and that player is responsible for it. If you want a better spot you have to watch fro it. I got my first shop from another player and had it for a couple months before I ever even met majorvex.

I have two there now and the second one was also me randomly catching an expired beacon that was on my way to my own shop. Several beacons expired there that week in fact, krasniy might still be selling a couple.

I keep wondering if I can get you to write a letter to safeway for me. The one near me burned down last year and now they used the fire to get out of their lease they’re not rebuilding. This is super unfair to me now I have to travel twice as far to get my groceries.

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I don’t think that there should be restrictions on players around this.

Players also have to do irl things, so there will be shops slow to restock, and plots that look semi-empty. You can’t force everyone to play how you want.

@MajorVex does so much for the mall already, with building the mall, updating the map, monitoring, helping current and new players, saving plots that go out, etc. Contracts would add more work. It would be difficult to make a contract for every single player, hundreds, and have all of them agree and follow it.

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:face_vomiting: No way. This is a game, not a prison or a job. No one would pay employees to watch gameplay video contracts & play moderator to deal with all of the issues it would create.

I nor my friends feel taken advantage of.

Playing Boundless makes me happy … definitely not suffering in any way or being taken advantage of. If a game stressed me out that much I would go play something else.

Reference quote? Otherwise, I would disagree with this statement. Neither of us can speak for a business that we don’t work for. I see lots of communication from the devs & them patching/updating/resolving things quite often when compared to other games.

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but they are when the devs leave it purely to the playerbase to make something work then whatever they find that works becomes part of the game if we where to say “all Malls and shopping centers are banned” then you would see even less shopping then whats going on now they make participating in the economy at least somewhat bearable

no less then what a mall owner would be doing now keep in mind this is a computer game and alot of the parts of the contract can be automated for instance if a onwer wanted to say have a condition where your shop needed to be stocked for 40% of the contract term you could set all that on the beacon level when placing a “shop beacon” for someone to “rent” then the “renter” would just walk up read the terms and condition’s then agree and boom they have control of the plot failure of the condition’s could then either revert the plot back to the owner or auto DM them saying x was broken. the thing is 9/10 if this is done i feel it would made 100% optional anyway and if a mall or hopping centers owner did not feel it was worth it then they could just stick to “normal beacons”

the recording to see there is no voice ingame can be done server side i have not read the full game ToS but im sure data recording is in there already

any stuff the contract system would not cover can be done via ingame or discord and it would just be a Gentleman’s Agreement like how its handled now i have seen mails where they ask you do to this or that in order to keep a shop in there.

:point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2::point_up_2:

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I think what Nightstar was trying to get at was that Malls, etc are emergent game play and not a directly created asset in the game. Just like with Portal Hubs. The direct assets allow players to do what they want in the sandbox that this game is.

People should be very careful about trying to make them a direct asset and developer controlled with things like contracts, etc. If you do this then I would expect you start having to pay taxes on income and other things you create and things like land tax and other business related charges. Additionally Malls have a contract in real life but actually charge rent. So are Malls in Boundless going to charge rent for their location and then follow more along those lines of companies going out of business, etc…

That is why fundamental solutions is probably better than trying to solve a specific issue around “restock” especially when how are you expecting to hold a person responsible for a lack of “demand” in this game?

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i get that its just i dont think doing anything to FF would change anything around malls and tbh unless we all band together and start kicking and stomping i dont think any changes will happen anytime soon anyway and the only change i could think with the ecosystem bit would make malls/shopping centers obsolete and more of a vanity then a needed thing

I’m not singling out just one mall, how many are there? How many have shut down? What is the reason for them shutting down? I don’t know positively, but Aenea can’t be the only player who had problems with a shop owner.

@majorvex References? I would think that seeing how many problems have cropped up lately and it has taken a while for someone to respond says it all. They are focused right now on the farming, there are only so many developers, and they are human in that they can only do so many thing in so many hours.

I’m not putting down, just stating a fact, they don’t have enough time to ride herd on the players and fix all the problems, let alone do their job, which is developing the game. It can take a while for them to even learn of them and in a way, both suffer, we have to wait in some instances for them to learn of the problem and then try to find out what is going on and this takes away from their time to work on the game.

Shortly after I bought the game and joined the forum some person who job was to keep an eye on problems in the forum and in the game left for a better job. No one has replaced him. Several have remarked that we need someone to step in to take his place when there is a problem and see what has happened.

The “griefing” in the hunts is a perfect example, how long has it ben going on that there have been some players throwing bombs to grief others, and I’m not talking about the hunts where it is announced but others. Where the meteorite has had regen bombs tossed to cause the loot to be lost?

One very well respected and cared for hunt leader has stopped, reason is to the constant harassment from another player. Others have stopped in hunts I am sure for similar reasons. Devs haven’t had time to check on them, find out what is going on because their job is to Develop the game, not take care of problems between players. That is not their fault, but the Wonderstruck’s really, they need to hire someone to handle the forum, plain and simple, not dump it onto the devs and take time away from developing the game.

The devs are human, not perfect and they have a lot to do, I’m not putting them down, just accepting facts that they can not take care of developing the game, fix problems between players, step in immediately when there is a problem and fix it. It doesn’t make them bad people, bad developers, just overworked people who need help and are not getting it from the employers. Plain and simple.

I am not picking on you when I say mall, but all malls, all markets, all shopping centers, all small shop areas where small settlements let players set up a shop in a general area then have problems that we never hear about.

You are taking this as a attack on you. I used G. Mall as a example because I have seen shops that are empty, you are busy, you have a life outside of this game, you don’t have time like I do because I am disabled, homebound and can’t get out except on rare occasions so am online sometimes as much as 6 or 8 hours in a day/night. Sometimes less on a bad day, that can have me on just one hour, very little time to run around. But when I can, I don’t sit in my base and do nothing, I’m out exploring, looking at a lot of different malls, shops sometimes for fun, sometimes for stuff I need.

The problems that malls, markets and other shop centers have are NOT the fault of the their owners, but the shop owners, so I’m not blaming them, unless there is evidence of them being unfair to the shop owners, and it can happen and the shop owner just up and leave.

I’m not saying it is just on one side, and should have made that clear at the start, but my focus has been on the owners of the plots, the shopping area that they created for players to set up a shop. And I do feel that most of the time they are getting the short end of the stick.

Even tho @Janna55 keeps pulling my name in, hehe, I do not support what she suggests.

What I solely want is a level of support for one single thing that can go wrong:
When people leave the game or are taking a long break but still having many months of time on their Gleam Club.

Sure, I rather also have shopkeepers that keep their store stocked, but if they bother to stop by every xx week(s) to make sure their beacon doesn’t revert back to the mall/market owner I will already be satisfied with the idea that they want to keep the shop around .

Also please note, Nova Golda Market is rather small compared to many malls out there where one can get lost in, it’s much more noticeable that a shop is not being attended to then in one of the bigger malls.

But again, I just want protection from people forgetting they have a shop, or stopping to play without giving plots back. Nothing more, nothing less.

It’s also why I’ve decided that new shop owners at my market will not get the plots, they get the perms, they receive the footfall every week (or whenever they ask for it) and I want them to apply for the Nova Golda Merchants faction (no need to set primary) so I can see if they are actually still playing.

If prospective shopkeepers don’t like that there are plenty of other markets and malls who don’t have this set up…

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From looking at the last few months, maybe the biggest problem with this game isn’t the game itself, but how the community members deal with each other. I feel like a lot of the “fixes” people want for things aren’t anything more than “social bubblewrap”. Do we really need to make a bunch of changes to combat a couple of trolls and people that have issues talking things out?

The more I read these forums I am reminded of when I use to play with my sisters and cousins in our sandbox when I was a small child. It always ended with one person playing by themselves while everyone left because said child wanted everyone else to play the exact way they wanted. I was the oldest and I thought I was in charge and had all the good ideas. Turns out playing in a sandbox alone really wasn’t all that fun for a 9 year old.

TL:DR Trying to make others play your way just leaves you alone in a plastic turtle filled with sand while everyone else is having fun without you.

All%20alone

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:eight_pointed_black_star: I decided to respond because you keep mentioning my name &/or the mall my friends & I created.

:eight_pointed_black_star: I also don’t like it when people speak for me, nor when they make incorrect assumptions about how someone else feels or what they think.

Empty shops are none of my business. I have not once said anything to anyone about their shop style, their inventory, anything. It is a non-issue to me because all of the shopkeepers are 100% in charge of their own spaces. The game says their beacon/their space/their business. I don’t pressure them to do anything, I don’t try to make them feel bad/guilty…I do the opposite. I try to be kind and motivate people instead. I even go out of my way to help people that have been unkind to me.

I am a very private person. It seems you are making some assumptions about me & my life that are very wrong.

:thinking::thinking::thinking:From their posts, the devs were apparently monitoring the regen bomb issue, responded, & will be taking some action. I’m sure they don’t act out of haste because every little change they make to the game can cause ripple effects. BL is not a simple platformer game. It’s a complicated MMO sandbox. Every action/inaction effects everything. Kinda like a virtual game of chess.
:point_down:

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How about we stop trying to tell people how to Boundless?

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i dont think anyone is saying mall/shops need to run x way just that the OP proposal should be allowed to be used for those that like the idea or would use it. in sandbox game if you dont have systems in place you are just asking for trouble…malls especially seem to have the most consistent drama in the game then any other playstyle tbh that should have been a red flag a while ago that the shop system may need a rework or at least a looking at.

i lost count of how many malls have shutdown due to trolls, drama or a internal war between owners and shop keeps

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I hear you, but portal hubs have shut down, cities have shut down…it’s not just markets & malls. There’s no good way to put a band-aid on these issues.

I agree with @Xaldafax that it’s more of a fundamental issue with beacons, plots, permissions, etc.

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I need to apologize to both @AeneaGames and to @majorvex, I tend to use those I know for examples, not because they are the main ones, just easy for me and others to see as real.

I don’t know what majorvex does in real life, I know she has a job, assuming a family, friends, a life outside of this game. She has friends who help her with the mall and it is a great place to go to. I have gone to many malls, some to check out items, some for just something to do. I have seen the same thing at each and everyone of them, shops that seem to never have restocked, the same amount of a item for sale on a stand, same items still left there. Some eventually shut down, some just seem to end up deserted and no one goes there any more, it is like a ghost mall, market or shopping area.

Go through a portal to a planet to go gathering and it looks dead, shops everywhere, and I can go to a couple often for my favorite gathering spots. Never have I seen a person there, not even players in that city or town, it is a ghost town, I never remember their names so can’t state such and such city,

I see the same items on the same stands, the same number the same price. It’s as if they just vanished, whisked secretly away. We all know of course that many are from original players who built those towns and are taking a long break or may have even quit.

But present towns, cities, settlements that have people running around, I worry about them, I see them being filled with shoppers, that shop owners are making coins and are feeling positive about the game.

Then, all of a sudden, there are less and less shoppers in that mall, market, open area and the shops no longer have the items I used to buy, the stands are now empty or some have just one or two and never seem to sale them or restock them.

I was at another shop, Mom and Pops, and it seems that there are less items for sale, I wonder, are they okay, did something happen to them that they can’t play, such a loss if it has. That is one of several shops that I used to go to, I won’t go into their names, remember Mom and Pops because I was there yesterday looking for some items I used to buy, and have stopped several times in the last few days and no restocking on them.

I care about people, even people that I don’t know, who I saw here on the forums or in shops they had all over the place and I may have never met them, but I feel that somewhat connection because I shop there often. But then all of they sudden stop restocking, stop posting here on the forum, seem to not be playing any more; are they okay? Can I help in any way, say a prayer, be a ear for them to vent to?

Yes, James did responds to the problem about the griefing on the hunts, but how long was it going on before he did? And am I blaming him? NO, absolutely Not! He is busy, he is constantly on the test servers checking up on what is very important to everyone now, the farming testing, seeing what needs changed, tweaked to make it better. I’m surprised he has time to eat a meal and I am making a guess his family at this time sees less of him because of his commitment to this game; and I bet the same with the other developers.

He needs some help, and it isn’t his fault, it is the fault of those who pay the bills.

I have been trying to think of ways that can help both the show owners and the mall, market and open areas around cities and portals to not suffer from being griefed, is that why some have shut down, it seems that there are a lot of griefing problems lately,

My field was psychology, my focus was on Human Behavior, what causes people to act the way they do, what are the factors in the changes of how we, society, respond things differently now than we did 10, 20, 40 years ago. What can be done to help the general public, teachers to realize that a child who is acting up may have a mental illness and you have to change how you handle them. Why, What and How are always on my mind concerning any situations; in real life and in games,

So, again, sorry to seem to have picked on certain ones, I “know” them and their names, but not the ones in other malls, markets, shopping area that I see that no longer have items for sale, very few players there any more looking for stuff to buy.