At the moment, coins are used to get someone else to farm something for you. There is no NPC to buy stuff from for coins. But the amount of time people are willing to farm for someone else is limited and therefore adding new coins with footfall would not change anything.
WoW has a subscription you have to pay with either real world money or gold and has the ability to buy gold with real world money. That solves the problem as there is now a reason to earn gold and a way for everyone to obtain it. Boundless could sell gleam club for gold and allow you to buy gold with cubits.
I do not want that! Real world currency and in game currency must not be exchangeable at all!
Lynxs idea of using the currency to buy something awesome from the game, like fueling your portal, is actually brilliant. It’s a lot cooler to get a portal then to waste your currency on “repair bills” and it makes you possible to “waste” an infinite amount of currency.
The other problem Boundless has is that, for coins to be useful, everyone must be able to earn them. At the moment the only option for most player is to hunt and sell oortshards.
“Fixing footfall” would not change that as only the few player in the center of the big cities would really get coins. My base is out in the wild with zero visitors and I would continue to not get any footfall. Now, you might argue that that’s fair because no one gets anything out of my build, why should I get paid for it. But in the end I will continue to not be able to spend my non-existing coins.
Lynxs suggestion does not change that as for me the only source of currency would still be hunting oortshards.
The other problem is that whoever has coins can farm everything he needs much more efficient. You won’t be able to farm meaningful amounts of something with iron tools to sell to someone who owns gem 3x3 tools. To fix the economy, AE tools would have to be removed to give people with lesser equipment the change to farm and sell some things. Use your gem hammers to farm diamonds and buy mud from someone with iron tools, it’s a problem that you can farm mud 100x faster with gem shovels.
Again, Lynxs suggestion does not change that. I like the idea as it adds an unlimited gold sink. But I think the economy needs a lot more work then that.