Anyone else tired of running up and down shop aisles to look for one very specific item? I’ve been trying to come up with a (hopefully) inexpensive feature that can assist us in buying and selling.
What if a shopping guide item was added to the game? We can load any item into it and our compass will now help us track down shop stands and request baskets buying or selling that item in the immediate area.
It doesn’t need to be all powerful, it could simply tell us the same information our client already knows about nearby shop stands and request baskets loaded into memory. But filtered to the item we are looking for.
Since you’re holding the shopping guide in your hand, let’s do something with that too! Let’s say I’m shopping for red candy canes.
Okay, okay, I suck at art. But you get the idea! Anyone who sees me running around with this item in my hand will know that I’m shopping for red candy canes!
There’s even some bonus fun we could have with an item like this. Build a secret organization deep below Finata, and tell your members to load a very specific rock color into their Shopping Guide. Voila! Their radar leads them to your secret entrance!
I really like this idea! Especially the compass one. Only problem I see is that there would be too much clutter on the compass.
In turn, we would need a way to choose what we want to show up on it. You know, like just players, just buying/selling, only settlements, everything, or whatever. Check mark boxes for the compass legend.
Until something like this is implemented you could check out https://boundlessskill.com/shops-item-catalog And see if the item you’re looking for is listed for sale by someone on there.
Not every problem must be solved by the developers, that’s what slows them down from content drops! Perhaps there are in-game ways shop owners (or more specifically mall owners) can come up with to at least give you a better idea of what’s around you and where to go for what you’re looking for.
Players have tried a bit to solve this problem, there was an API set up that store owners could push their stock and prices to and then shoppers could search on a website. But it was too tedious to keep the list updated so shopkeeps stopped doing it. The only easier way they found to harvest the pricing information was reverse engineering the game client to extract it from memory but it would be a brittle solution requiring a new hacked client every release. In the end too we get an auction house style interface which doesn’t feel very Boundless-y.
I think devs are in the best position to solve this problem. The Shopping Guide item idea hopefully remains in line with their intention to have us running across planets doing our shopping. It’s not unlike the atlas. The key innovation it provides is increased awareness of your immediate surroundings. You still need to know where the malls and shopping districts are but now you don’t need to run over every inch of them every day hoping to find a deal. It also equips newer players with the ability to do price comparisons across shops so they aren’t so easily taken advantage of (or beaten to the punch) by experienced players.
really cool idea!! I like it!
but, what if you want to buy something that you don’t have already?
would there be a menu/GUI for the shopping guide?
maybe there could be a tabbed list for every item in the game and i suppose a checkbox, then go to the other (details or w/e) tab and there would be more options depending on the item.
like if it’s a tool then there would be a checkbox for if it is forged, or used
if it’s something made out of a coloured material have a checkbox to ignore colour or have a colour picker if you really want a green hammer to pretend it’s emerald
or for a quick search to refill your food, just drop your last cooked earthyam or steak onto the shopping guide in your inventory and you don’t even have to bring up the UI.
Mwahaha… It’s designed like the atlas where you gotta get the first one yourself by finding it or buying it. That’s mostly done to keep the feature simple (no need for the UI you describe) but also helps gate content to items the player is already aware of.
For color shopping, I think it should be locked to the color you put in. That way you could use it to find the exact purple stone you need vs still having to scan all stone plinths. But a request basket accepting any color would show up on the radar, since you can sell that specific color to it.
ah ok this makes sense.
and yeah that would also make the ui not necessary.
ah yes. this all makes sense
although I do like the idea of being able to select something that is not acquirable, to make these secret rooms more secret. if anyone can pop in that rare wood colour into the shopping guide, then you might get uninvited guests to your secret meeting
