When I first started playing Boundless, I found the quest rewards and footfall coin to be a vital source of income, and I welcomed it. Now that I am starting to make more and more money, I’m quickly seeing what a problem the money system in the game could lead too, inflation.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are multiple sources to make money in the game (BESIDES trading with other players, I’m talking about generating money from thin air) with almost no way to take that money away. This is great while the game is fresh and new because new players have an easier chance to make good amounts of cash. Filling the economy with enough money is vitally important to keep variances in prices at a stable level. The problem is that I don’t see the “money spigot” turning off anytime soon. If money keeps filling the system as fast as it is currently, then eventually it will have no value come one or two years down the road.
So how do you change the system? Either you turn off the “money spigot” or you add a “drain.” I would personally prefer the first option because it provides players with the best flexibility and doesn’t force them to rely on in game systems that take money away (it would feel like a MAJOR MMO then).
Yes inflation is out of control because there are no legitimate money sinks. This is my biggest gripe with footfall. I’m expanded on that in another thread but like you I think that an appropriate money sink would do a world of good to keep inflation under control
I don’t necessarily think that a money sink would be the best solution, because it would be a game system that players would have to rely on. For instance, imagine if the money sink was buying resources from a centralized store on each wold where the prices didn’t change? The economy and prices would be entirely based around one store not even created by the players. A money sink, if implemented, would have to be very carefully thought out.
The current “drains” are the sales tax and the warp fees. The warp fees probably don’t amount to much with as ubiquitous as portals are these days. The sales tax, hard to say without numbers. If there’s not enough trading going on, the currency will inflate. If there’s too much trading going on, the currency will deflate.
One thing to note about the warp costs though, is that they are fixed cost. If we see extreme inflation, it may reach a point where people start to warp more because the cost is less. Suppose rock request baskets got to 25c (pretty extreme inflation). Now I can warp anywhere on the same planet for only the price of 4 rocks. I might just do that instead of trying to maintain a personal portal.
How do you control inflation if you don’t have a means of taking money out of circulation? You need a finite amount of coins in the game at any given time to keep prices at a certain level. Otherwise the barrier to entering the market because a whole issue.
It’s definitely something that would require a significant amount of planning and implementation but I am definitely of the school of the thought that smart money sinks are not a bad thing.
Edit: @ceresward
Yes. I agree that warp costs were meant to have an impact but portals took over. I got to the point where Specced out of blinksec and warpoint skill because why put myself st a monetary disadvantage if no one else is? Everyone else used portals while I spent thousands to explore. Stupid of me I guess but I thought I was playing as designed and intended. Being a sandbox players find the most efficient ways to play. Warps were a good money sink until they weren’t used as a sink any longer.
Another problem is that money essentially will become useless. With alts, one can overcome any resource/skill deficits. Portals negate warp costs. Once you have a lot of money, you won’t even need the money. Hopefully we see other uses for money.
This doesn’t mean there wont be large warp sinks later. Something like temp unstable planets that only last for a week and cant be plotted sort of thing. I remember hemoraging coin the first few days before PS got there portal network up…No amount of footfall would have been able to maintain travel under the warp system.
Also, inflation never really went rampant in alpha because of the ease of access of all the materials. They become easier and easier to farm with less time and become more plentiful. The only reason we are having issues right now is the powercoil gating. But its a wall players only need to cross once, and once the majority do, they never have to again.
There are still some planets and game features that have been announced and stuff, but not released. I would not bank on this economy being the main economy later, but it is true that money becomes useless pretty fast. Coin only seems valuable to players who shop for their materials instead of venturing out and gathering them. If you are a player at the top of the game or you prefer to just get your own stuff, coin is just this random thing you keep getting and you know you need to hoard it for something later.
I wonder if it would make sense to have a small maintenance cost in coins for beacons. Something like 1c per day per plot. Just so there is another drain option that is not so dependent on the economy functioning properly. And hey, the hermits would finally have a use for their coins too
Well the low cost I proposed you could support up to 100 plots just by completing dailies. Plus objectives income could sustain you for quite some time even without that.
While I can agree the amount of coin being made by some people is creating an imbalance and probably inflation, your suggestion does nothing to curb the income stream for the people making the most coin through footfall or stores. I think it punishes the people with less income like someone focused on building that uses plots versus someone with 10 plots making a lot of coin from a store.
If you want to address the footfall, place a cap on the amount of footfall someone can get in a day/week/month whatever. Or tax footfall income over x per day. This should reduce the coin into the economy and the sales tax sink will eventually bring it down. I would be ok removing footfall income entirely, but I do not think that is going to happen and it would negatively affect portal networks that use this as income to buy fuel.
The solution, IMO, is cosmetics. Get rid of cubits costs for cosmetics and change it to credits. Make some cheap, others insanely expensive and none of it have in-game effects.
Maybe not get rid of it, but give the option for either or. Rich people will spend coin, broke people or people that dont need more plots can spend cubits
