I started by trying to base my prices around warp costs, but that was totally misleading. The bigger influencers turned out to be the available coin supply and available goods supply per player.
Since coin is turning hands daily and there is only one small coin sink - there is much more coin in circulation per active player. Also, due to pre-alpha state many players are only active for short periods - quickly removing and reintroducing old coin levels.
Goods supply is basically just what’s available on shop stands. Players checking in on updates tend to not resupply their shop stands (but they tend to buy stuff to try things out) - leaving us with a diminished available goods supply per player and even more coin influx.
The end result: coin normalizes to old patches’ coin levels and supply to current active player volume. Of course, this macro picture is also subject to change. I predicted more players after this patch but did not plan on the creature killing debacle. We now see many players taking breaks as a result and active players have already dropped by 50% according to Steam DB. So depending on time taken for a “fix” patch (as in, that fixes the economy - not fixes the game):
Slow fix: Prices will drop since more recently inactive players mean less total coin in circulation and a lot of goods remaining with fixed prices (from those players) which will lead to a temporary drop in prices for active traders to stay in circulation (in game time this will happen over 2 weeks or so).
Fast fix: New players, new characters and new coin sources will increase coin supply significantly whilst difficulty will decrease goods supply leading to short-term inflation as these characters level.
EDIT: Footfall is much more than anticipated. We will be experiencing inflation. And it will be on the goods that builders want first. This is gonna be awesome!
