The thing is that the human element is a spinning coin, you never know on what face it lands on, so might be friends with DK and play well but in other cases this mall beacon can be take advantage of in big ways.
Shops are a “integral part” because there isn’t anything else to do. There needs to be other content added in the game to play with and to be encouraged, because so far, the only good dopamine rushes you get, are from getting a good forged item, or selling that stock of things, I guess, don’t know everything that is so much fun in this game. Maybe I’m too old to understand :))
Yeah, there is a lot of competing friction on the ghostown thing. People do not want to have their builds disappear when they stop playing because they put a lot of time into them, but they also want the world to be active. I am not sure what the solution is to this issue. Blueprints would help, but not really solve the issue.
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We get into this debate alot about how there isn’t anything else to do. It’s a sandbox game with an economy and at times the two do not mix well.
I used to run a few shops in malls and in the end if you have the product no matter where it is most people will find it thanks to BUTT. I stopped using a shop completely (other than concrete) because I would have to undercut everyone. It became apparent to me I could simply search using BUTT to find the person offering the most coin via a request basket for the item I wanted to sell.
In my eyes, Monumental could integrate BUTT into the game or something like it. BUTT pretty much creates an auction house within Boundless as I would use similar tools in other games like “Search Auction House” for the items I wanted to buy and purchase it at the lowest price.
EDIT: BUTT also allows for the whole buy low sell high mentality to make money. Buy out one item selling for 5 coins and sell it at 10 coins. Good or bad that is a thing also.
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Appreciate the idea and post but I am not in favor of this idea.
Just because it is a sandbox game does not mean there is not supposed to be anything to do. Sandbox games are games without predefined objectives where players set the gameplay objectives themselves. There has to be some content options in order for players to do that.
Players make the content, devs make the tools the players use to make the content.
I don’t want the shops removed either, but I agree there needs to be some other usable content that players can create. Dungeons, jump puzzles, race tracks, pvp arenas (whether actual PvP or stuff like dodgebombs), treasure hunts, whatever. If you expand the options for player interaction, you expand the diversity of build creation. You expand the reasons for exploration. You expand the options for player interaction. You expand the options for player defined objective setting. Adding options does not diminish the sandboxyness of the game.
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I agree there should be more to do, but people will still become bored. It happens with every game. You will always come back to it and play it some, but sometimes you just have to make your own content. In a sandbox building game its normal … you create content by building, but expanding what you can build might help.
Overall, though the game is Sandbox MMO not a Sandbox MMORPG. I do agree however there needs to be more, however there are people that want it be more “creative-friendly” with no crafting timers etc. and then there are the people that want it more RPG like with dungeons, economy, etc. You might be able to mix the two, but there are always players that lean one side or the other.
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Is that what he was trying to say? He haves my support with that, I personally am not very fond with how the shop stands work in this game, way too decentralized and very annoying at times. And sometimes I encounter shop stands with something cheap inside that have glass casing around them making it impossible to buy from.
Personally I would be willing to pay an 10% to 20% Tax in most cases just to be able to have the choice to buy and list items on a centralized market, and not have to spend extra time looking up prices on 3rd party websites only to have about a 35% chance to find once I spend about 5 mins getting to the shop, the item is sold out.
“Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it into what it is today: a shopping mall” -George Carlin
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I really enjoyed the Auction House in Guild Wars 2. You can list items on it from anywhere.
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that one is nice as well
Sure, people get bored. There is a reasonable range of time for them to get bored in, though, and there should be enough content objectives to keep them from getting bored prior to that point. Currently, there is precisely one reason for players to interact with other players builds. Shops.
There are lots and lots of building games in the market. Most of them are single player. This one is an MMO. Why do people opt to play an MMO building game versus a single player building game? Because they want to interact with other players and have other players see their builds. How do you get people to come see your builds? Right now your only option, from a gameplay perspective, is to build a shop. Not everyone actually wants to run a shop. So what do you do? Beg people to come look at them?
There are a few tools that could be created by the devs to add options for player generated content. Prize chests. The abililty to place mobs. Triggers. Timers.
Obviously, we don’t want these tools to be abused, but there are ways to prevent that.
Make the prize chests only lootable once a day, and tie them to prestige or footfall. Only 1 lootable chest per million prestige on the beacon, or some such. Only 1 chest per non-owner player to enter the build a day. Players cannot loot their own chests.
Make player placed mobs invulnerable to lava or drowning so that loot farms cannot be setup. Only player weapons can kill them.
Players can decide what kind of builds they want to make if given the tools to make their ideas work.
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There are trolls in every game. Not a reason to abolish shops. But I don’t think that’s being suggested or considered.
I agree with all your points and love your ideas. But even with all those boredom will set in. Minecraft has all of these ideas you have either in the base game or the millions of mods it has.
I ran many MC servers and played it (and still do, yet very limited) and I’ll be honest I am pretty bored with it even playing a modpack with over 500+ mods in it.
What always brings me back to MC though was the building.
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Oh it absolutely needs an overhaul, the current implementation is not great. It’s not even passable by today’s mmo standards. But I mean… abolishing or abandoning the concept doesn’t do the game any favors that I can see. Some GUI work could improve the overall game and its economy.
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I think a better solution for the posed problem would be to have empty shop stands actually cost the owner coins, or have fuel mechanic similar to beacons where when the shop stand isn’t being refueled it would just go into an inventory similar to beacon reclaim inventory and be automatically removed from the world. This way, people would need to think if the shop they are making is sustainable.
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Taking economy completely out, definitely is a bad thing, it just needs to be integrated in a different way.
Probably most realistic thing is to have a centralized server for market that can be accessed from anywhere, this way it can be scaled based on needs and capacity. But also, it needs to come at the same time with other types of content to provide players with something to do.
It’s not a simple endeavour for sure.
I think that is the most organic and least disruptive approach.
There’s already a tax on every item sold. Since there is no benefit to that except to remove coins from the game I don’t think we need more taxes.
Maybe I am just doing it wrong but I often use BUTT to find who has the biggest selection. If I am looking for light blue gleam sign modules I know I will have a better chance at the store with 5,000 than the store with 50. I am also willing to run 1500 - 2000 m to get there.
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Doing right if you ask me. There are certain items that you just can’t pinpoint, like forged items or specific colors sadly. Things like Oort, and other items though you can find the cheapest seller.
I too tend to just go for the person with the largest selection if looking for say a rare color of a block.
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The benefit would be creating an overhead cost to maintaining a failed/abandoned shop that clutters the world, so I wouldn’t say there is no benefit.