New Player Experience: Dealing with all the empty shops

Suggestions
1

Hello,

The premise…
Knowing how the game was in beta, where people would have to throw items on the ground for someone else to pick then up, and where you would actually need to talk with the person and directly coordinate for projects bigger than one person, this ending up being the norm in “trading”, it now got elevated to anyone and mostly everyone rushing for plotting a zone and building a shop, and why stop there, if there is space, why not build a bigger shop and so on, but never taking into consideration if one could ever actually sustain that “shop”.

And so, we end up with a world full of shops, small designs, big designs, large or small, all of them end up being full of empty shop stands, not knowing if the owner will ever fill them up, or if he even plays the game.

The solution…

Given that the entire shop stand concept is as is build from ground up, for this one, there’s no simple solution, or at least I don’t see a simple one that would be fun, but there is one that would be engaging, and that is to have the shop stands locked if the plot owner is not near by, this is ofcourse not always nice, and not that fun nether for the owner that is forced to stay in one place, and neither for the customer that finds the shop closed/locked.

With that said, my suggestion… is, for you, the developers, to review the way you want the economy to work in this game and to decide if you indeed want Boundless to be the shop simulator that everyone was dreaming of or to be something where people get in, and can gather stuff, and build stuff together, not only go for the money and build shops, than gather for the scope of selling.

Regards,
Lion

1 Like
2

Not sure that I understand the proposed solution. If the issue is the abandoned shops that don’t restock taking up space and being unusable is the problem, then how does locking active shops up when the owner is away or offline fix that? If your proposal is to make shops less prevalent by making them inconvenient, then you won’t increase the number of active shops, you will just create more abandoned shops. If your goal is to encourage peer to peer trading over shops, the tax system already encourages p2p trades by taxing shop transactions.

I believe the opposite approach should be taken. Make finding active shops easier for shoppers, and make maintaining those shops simpler for the owner. Players should be able to see how actively a shop is restocked with product and coin, both in volume and frequency. This tells the player what shops are most active and gives owners incentive to attend their shops more to gain more customers. Additionally, shop keepers need a single UI for restocking all shop stands in a plot, and a centralized cash till for collecting and allocating coin from stands. This should increase the quality of shops available to players and direct shoppers to the more dedicated shops, reducing friction for both customers and shop keepers.

7 Likes
3

Respectfully, I wouldn’t be in favor of the solution you’ve described.

I understand it’s demoralizing to see empty shops everywhere, whether you’re a new player or you’ve been around awhile. It’s especially so when you go to a mall and it’s a ghost town. But I’m not in favor of forcing players to be physically present at their shop in order to sell.

3 Likes
4

My suggestion, is for devs to take a look at the overall economy and maybe, hopefully, do something that doesn’t transform Boundless into a shop simulator.
Maybe add some new activities, maybe donno… titans, new mobs… anything that would encourage people to NOT build only shops that eventually they will not fill them with anything.

5

:slight_smile: I agree, and said it the post as well, forcing the owner to stick around is not a good idea either, but, still, something has to be done to discourage the “get in game, build a shop, than build it bigger” gameplay loop.

6

Ah, so your proposal for shops is to do anything but improve shops, so they go away from lack of interest. Thats certainly an approach. I mistakenly believed you wanted to make shops a better experience, whereas you want them more or less abolished. I don’t think you will find many people share your point of view on that.

1 Like
7

I just don’t want too see only shops as the norm in build variate.
You probably like to build shops and I’m not against it, but seeing only shops and especially empty ones, for me it’s one of the main reasons I stopped playing.

8

Personally i think great material dump Or what not would be that you should have example furnace Or some sort of mandatory item In your Shop Where you would feed coal Or some other material To keep it open.

1 Like
9

Just make it so we can buy from the knowledge tab and be done with it.

Now hate me lol

2 ways to purchase go to shop directly to purchase at store sellers price or buy from knowledge tab for a 15% increase in price.

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10

On the contrary, I’ve not owned a shop in well over 2 years now. I’m just saying that your approach is unlikely to find much support. But now I feel like I better understand your desire here and I agree with it- more build variety would greatly benefit the game. Right now you have builds with no purpose, builds that are shops, or builds that are workshops, nothing else. We need a way to give builds purpose. Furnishings for homes, public services, libraries, etc. Expand on things that give builds purpose and life and people will have more to do than just set up and abandon a shop.

5 Likes
11

exactly! Content, the game has no endgame, so no reason to stick around. The only thing you can play with is the “economy” which in my opinion it’s a porly implemented system.
I’m a big advocate for economies in games, mostly that is what I play for, lifeskills in BDO, market manipulation in EVE Online, the build your own stuff and share with others is what attracted me to this game at first.
A central market server where everyone can buy and sell to would completely fix the shopping in this game and let people build different things.
Build purpose is indeed a very good thing to have that the game is lacking. Make requirements for the machines that you would need x and y build first, like a refinery to be build in a 3x3 plots that contain x amount of prestige or whatever blocks.
This would make it more difficult to build the machine but also provides a challenge. Also, making it like that, would limit the number of machines in a plotted area, meaning better performance, and meaning you could lower the crafting timers a bit that in turn would compensate for not having 10 machines around, there are a lot of solutions that could be implemented, but will see with time.

1 Like
12

Oh god no.
I alrdy Feel like its impossible To do smaller build with current system lol

3 Likes
13

Maybe a listing fee for shops based on some relative value of the goods sold within it? A shop with no customers can’t turn a profit and becomes unlisted or the owner decomissions it to stop bleeding out income to maintain it.

4 Likes
14

that is a very good idea as well.
like a base tax per day for each shop stand, that would encourage owners to fill the shop could be a thing as well

1 Like
15

Just create a mall beacon that allows a mall owner the ability to remove shops that are inactive. The ability to do this on a sovereign is already there shouldn’t be hard to do.

16

thing is… how do you determine a shop that is inactive (additional processing power), and, how do you ensure that the owner is not taking advantage of the system

17

I can understand why they might not do this in public worlds… the potential for mall owners to grief shop keepers on a public world is a bit risky, where as on sovereign worlds the guest acknowledge that risk.

2 Likes
18

I used to help DK witk DK Mall and I would mark shops that I noticed weren’t active. It was overly tedious and took a LOT of my time. But maybe there is a way for to detect the activity and show a “status” for shops that have had no activity.

I personally wouldn’t want to push players away from shops though it is a pretty integral part of the game.

1 Like
19

Most malls have had rules in the past. I mean I suppose there is no reason to follow them on a public world as there are really no repercussions if you don’t.

20

It can be frustrating to see empty shops. The reason there’s so many around is because ppl have gleam club to preserve their builds while they break or do other things. And rightfully so…
Boundless Universal Butt Tracker is very useful used alongside the knowledge tab to find the active shops
Hopefully the new management will help motivate some of these empty shop owners to come back :crossed_fingers:

1 Like