We could start a trading thread listing the mats and quantities we have in excess or mats we want. Then players can just negotiate terms and times to meet via direct messages from this forum. Keeping terms and times private to the individuals conversations
Yeah, if definitely feels like in every scenario under the current implementation for running shops, the winner is he shopkeeper.
From my point of view, it’s just another place where playing your own way and wanting light participation in the economy is discouraged. You either don’t participate and save your coins for warps, or you go all in and have to keep up to date with all the prices if you want to have any certainty that you aren’t getting ripped off?
You’d have through that having a calculated universal average price against each item (as suggested in another thread) would be beneficial to far more people than not, but the speed and voracity with which it got dismissed (mostly by prominent shop owners) was quite discouraging.
Yes, undoubtedly as players there are workarounds we can come up with, and things we can try. But as far as I’m concerned, as soon as you need to minimise the game to go to a forum or use a website that someone else has built ‘just’ to be able to actively trade… that is a sign of poor or incomplete design.
There are plenty of people (not least of which newcomers who Boundless should be trying to provide the best impression to), who don’t use the forums or know about outside sites.
I do feel this site complements the game very well. With the sheer size of the worlds and different time zones this could be the perfect forum to implement that type of trade. There are places in the game I never get to go or know about.
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But maybe you would know about them or go to them if there were better in-game means of communication?
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im wondering anyway why theres still no boundless-bazaar. net website or anything like that out there where u can offer ur merchandise with infos how to reach the market
There is one. I don’t use it, but someone did make a site just for that. To give directions, list what they are currently selling, and showing the last date it was updated.
I’ve seen mention of it somewhere on the forums yesterday, can’t remember where tho. But it does exist.
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Sellers and buyers alike can’t be trusted to post reliable prices on their own, and any enforceable system would be an administrative nightmare that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. A couple guildies and I were discussing the design of such a system last night, and a good counterpoint was brought up:
If a system is opt-in only, that means that not every shopkeeper has to post prices on the public pricing system. Shopkeepers can merely undercut from outside the market and steal customer traffic from price posters for X amount of time until the market adjusts. Price posters are effectively showing their hand to invisible competitors.
There are pros and cons for something like that, but the cons are really strong due to no in-game enforcement/liability for pricing.
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what about an interlinked wiki like page where every shop just promote their shop, location, shows what is bought and sold there. u can make ur own list of shops on nearby planets cointaining ressource x and check them all out and prices are up to barter and discussion? would be nice to have this info ingame. for example when u add a beacon or settlement to ur list of tracked settlements u get the infos what is sold and purchased there
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I think you’re on the right track. I’d like to see something that promotes player economy without weighing too heavily on that aspect vs. other professions.
I like data and economy aspects as much as the next guy, but the problem with in-game trade data system is that most of the time, it’s subject to player manipulation of some sort. For your example specifically of a bought/sold data point, I could set up two adjacent and independent plots in my guild’s settlement in a locked and connected room, each with shop stands/request baskets controlled by a separate alt, selling the most in-demand items for X coin a piece, buying and selling them back and forth. After I tell my guild peers to do the same setup, we’re now not only representing the highest volume of high-demand items bought and sold, we’re now presenting the lowest average price per unit sold through stands with the highest average for units purchased through baskets. Isn’t that super attractive? Haha
Data never tells the whole story, but I’m with you on wanting some sort of market cohesion. I haven’t really put enough thought into it myself. I hate poking holes in things without proposing anything myself!
https://boundlessskill.com/shops-item-catalog
There you go Shadesmar. 
An incredible resource that every serious shop owner should use along with any other resource someone makes for shop owners.
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Current problem with the money system is the same as in real life. Those of us who are rich are happy with it, and those who don’t know how to manage money have none and complain about us.
This is a flawed and over simplification of the problem.
The problem can all go back to footfall.
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K. Let’s just remove coin altogether and let people trade materials for stuff 
This is sarcasm btw. I think the coin and footfall system is nice.
I agree. and not sarcasm.
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The rich and powerful will always snowball, and the poor will always be poor. Luckily Boundless has a lot of rich players buying low level stuff like iron and copper from noobs. Who knows what they do with it all.
that is true, even in an economy based on abundance. But the poor cant blame the system here, thats the difference. And they are not threatend by extinction or repression in any way like it is sadly reality outside of the game
It isn’t hard to make coin.
Whether we’re using a barter system (which is horrible unless the game is designed from the ground up to incorporate it) or using a monetary system, such as coin, you’re always going to have people who are going to have a ton of stuff and people who have very little. If anything, I think a barter system is going to make it harder to acquire things.
Rock is not and never will be as valuable as Iron because of how more abundant rock is. Soft coal is worth more than Iron. It’s why we have a medium of exchange in the first place for items to make the economy more fun to experience instead of a headache of trading Waxy Earthyams for Diamond Gems when the reasonable ratio could easily be something like 1:500. Barter systems are incredibly stupid.
If you want coin, sell stuff to people’s shops or make your own with competitive prices. This whole attitude towards wealthy players is ridiculous. They started poor like everyone does and are getting blamed on the amount of effort they put into acquiring their coin in the ways the game allows. Whether that be through the tiny amount of footfall coin they get from their various builds or from maintaining a reliable shop to hand trading stuff for coin to avoid the tax mechanic.
Free market economies are a level playing field. You have the same opportunities as everyone else to get things done. The difference between one in a video game and real life are extremely obvious.
My suggestion? Spend less time complaining about what someone else has and work towards getting what you want. The more you keep chipping away at obtaining an arbitrary goal each time you play the sooner you are to setting new ones to achieve and progressing further into the game.
I don’t think the problem people are having is the economy of this game. I think it’s something else entirely.
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Something nefarious, no doubt!
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I started a thread for player to player mats trades
The problem is most of the overly wealth super rich (guess the top 1% in this game) is…
DRUMROLL PLEASE…
EARLY ACCESS and Portal hubs (footfall).
Please, please tell me how I am wrong and how that has no effect.
When I was new, I knew nothing about this game and all I was told was to get to a portal hub and close by there. I am sure that is the advice that tons of people get from randoms in-game, just like I did.
But dont worry, ill sit here and read everyone who says Early Access and the portal hubs arnt an advantage, they are just hard work. Ill sit here and read everyone say “footfall doesnt matter”. Yeah ok – that is why most of you pro-footfall people would flip out if there was a change to it.
Good thing it is the weekend, I will answer everyone who says to me that EA and hubs/Footfall is NOT an advantage. I love all the excuses you people come up with.
Too bad this voids your whole argument. Playing field was NOT level from the start. You have EA and everyone else. 2 weeks is a huge snowball head start.
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