The economy is not broke

Trading
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I have heard a lot about the economy being broken. And plenty of ideas as to how to fix it. Here’s an idea! (Little bit of tough love for some, but some of yall need to snap out of the old ways)

“The economy is not broke. Your prices are too high.”

Think about it. I ran a large store for quite some time, and then suddenly it just seemed like people stopped buying. My response? “Well if the economy is broke, this isn’t worth my time!” So I shut down the big store to focus on forging. The Forge seemed to be immune to the recent “decline”

Well, the forge wasn’t keeping the millions of coin in my pocket like I was accustomed to. So I decided to open back up ye olde store with a smaller focus. Just so It wasn’t so hard to manage.

In doing so, I had to price each item accordingly, so I decided to go price checking! Fun! What did I find? A friggin shopper’s nightmare is what i saw:

16c for Iron!!! I find this stuff like candy gem mining. It’s almost bonus money when it sells! But in no way would I think 16c… it’s way too common for that. well, lets move on…

200c for Shimmer Orbs?!?! I can farm 300 in 15mins! That seems a bit much.

250c for exotic yams!?!? wtf?!?! Has this person even been to Alycon? They are everywhere!

250c for Reactive Lamella… have they even looked underwater?

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE was overpriced. No one who has walked across any planet would pay more than 35c for sweet beans. So of course they arent selling! Does that mean the economy is broke? NO! Your pricing is broke!

You shop owners need to make it worth the customers coin to buy your stuff. Let’s say I need to craft some Compound Base. Ok, i need Reactive Lamella. Lets go shopping! I only need 36 for a mass craft! Well… this shop is selling for 250c ea. To make my mass crafts that is 9000c… Screw that! I’l go to Besevrona and break 18 plants and save myself a cool 10k in 5 minutes.

Now, what if we bring that price down to 75c? Thats only around 2700c total now. Maybe that person thinks that is reasonable so that it is worth it to buy them instead of the 200c warp fees, and the time needed to trek to Bes?

My point is, some of these prices I see are literally FORCING shoppers to go farm instead of buy.

And I am not talking about a store here, or a small shopstand there… these are well established large stores in well traveled hubs that are trying to sell for these high prices. And then “Johnny new shop-owner” goes there to price-shop his items for his new shop, and undercuts them for 5c. So now, Johnny’s prices are STILL too high! And Johnny gets frustrated that nothing is selling, even though he’s the “cheapest” in town. Now Johnny thinks the economy is broke… when it’s his prices that are busted.

I think every shop owner needs to go out and farm some stuff. Then think about how much time it took to farm said items, and price accordingly. And, if they already are out farming, and know how quick you can get these items and STILL charge 200c for Shimmer Orbs… then they deserve to live in their “broken economy” bubble.

The reason I had to shut down my large store, was because items stopped selling because I didn’t adjust my prices accordingly. I didn’t change with the times, and how easy it was to farm items now. It’s a hard lesson, but one I’m glad I learned.

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Great post, and exactly my feelings on shop prices!

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I tried adjusting my prices, problem is there is a point ppl refuse to sell to your requests baskets. My silver for instance i try to buy for 25c and sell at 30c. Ppl buy it gladly at that rate. But no one ever want to sell it to me.
Thats the reason some prices stay high. So unless that changes some prices wont go lower.

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This is a problem for the stores that don’t farm their own stock. Because they will buy at those low prices, because it is worth their time. But when it comes time to sell… they go 4 portals down and sell to someone elses basket for 50c.

I don’t know the solution to this, as there will always be someone putting out baskets that give more coin than you. maybe find the balance in sale price and buy price that keeps a decent stock, and still sells. You won’t make as much, but when it comes to basket flipping… it’s free money either way!

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Yea im gunna have to agree with you. Prices have changed alot recently and you just have to keep adjusting. I think people price certain things based on how easily they can obtain them but some people can get alot more of something alot faster than some people can. I feel like that might be a big reason on the dramatic price differerences from one another but thats just my opinion

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It’s maddening sometimes keeping up with it. I mean, when Flan came out the ground was a carpet of Glowing Mushrooms.

“Ok… gotta lower my Glowing Lamella prices!”

Of course by now, we all know that was just “New planet nonsense…” and there arent so many populating the surface anymore after they were farmed out.

“Ok… gotta bring them back up a bit”

Lol, it never ends

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Maybe what you are saying is really part of the issue. Some players believe merely by having a store they deserve to make coin. As you have stated, it can be a lot of work if you really want to make sure you are pricing your goods at a point they will actually sell. They believe the economy is broken because they may not be selling like they used to. Is this because players know more about how things should be priced, or have learned to price shop, or are making things themselves out of frustration with the shopping experience, or maybe some combination of all three

The barriers to entry to have a shop are so low, maybe there are just too many shops for the size of the player population.

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Thank you! It’s really a simple concept most are missing, for the most part as things are added the economy and shops will figure themselves out.

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I think many players are pricing on “Demand” only.

“Well, this gets used in forging so it NEEDS to be expensive!”

The problem is that the supply is 100% different for almost every item than it was in EA. And when I say “supply” i mean how many things are available to farm on every planet.

Whether you actually HAVE 1000 beans or not… you can GET 1000 beans in no time. So that is insanely high supply.

The question needs to be “How much will this customer pay for these Inky Leaves so that they will buy instead of farm?” Is it 5c? 10c? There is a line there… we just have to find it for every item.

And as @LunchLadyArms said, that line will be different for certain people, based on how easily they can obtain said items. Just gotta find the middle ground

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This game is much like real life. Some people want to make money through free market capitalism, and when they find they aren’t getting as much as they want or need to put in more labour than they want, they demand that the market be manipulated until it yields to their demands. Call it lazy-fare capitalism. At least we don’t have any vendors “too big to fail” that demand the devs bail them out with a special tithe on other player’s inventory.

I think the real solution is get more players in the game. Then, some people can play store owner in the sandbox and others can build castles or pretend to dig for gold or hunt for meat and mushrooms.

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On my part, it’s hard to know what’s a good price when it jumps around so much. So as stated previously, what I thought was low isn’t actually low. FF XIV had an interesting system in their market so I can see the selling price of that item over the last x transactions. It was nice to see if the prices were trending up or down.
Location also plays a part, bc I’m pretty sure I can’t sell anything cheaper than 1c each.
Also, why buy when you can farm and save?
Aside from a few items, my store is more a “eeehh, I don’t really need all of this” store.
I packrat and hoard, because I might need some of that stuff one day, and I might make bank now, but it’s a time-activated trap that’s gonna shoot me in the foot later.

You’ve made excellent points and I agree with them, but if everyone is doing this, there’s still gonna be shops crying out there that it’s not fair.
It’s not the economy–We’re just all Starbucks, lining every corner, every mall, every airport, everywhere. We find our favorite Starbucks, bc the barista is nicer than the 37 others down the street, and stick with that one.

But I like Caribou Coffee better anyway and now I really want a peppermint mocha. :grinning:

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You’re definitely right!

Does anybody here remember seeing this much desert sword in EA? Not me. Those were one of the rare items.harder to find than rubies on vulpto. If I’m not mistaken, they had another name too?
Anyway. They were hard to find. People complained, now look how many there are since release. Diamonds? Same thing post release. Sweet beans? Yup those also. And many many other “rare” items.
So the things that were once rare that people needed to actually go buy, are in now limitless. What I’m getting at, is Crete hits it right on the head. Too much supply,too high of prices, and everyone can take a minute to go hunt down whatever they need now. So of course the coin changing if hands isn’t going to happen much.
But, with more players, and same amount of allocated resources, the supply will still be there but it’ll be take longer to find whatever a person needs from other people harvesting. In turn, pushing them to go buy instead of creating an alt.

How far off am I? Hahaha

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I agree. The economy is living and breathing. I shop constantly and price everything. My stores do really well… I see so many shops that over price their stuff or don’t decorate well… give me a reason to visit your store (make it look enticing) and give me a reason to come back. (Good stock and prices). The stores that do well are the store that put the effort.

The folks complaining that there aren’t any NPC’s to buy your junk, or the ones that put a shopstand in a dull store and expect sales believe the economy is broken. Those that have great looking stores with good selection and prices know it’s working fine.

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Cmon people! Let’s work together here! This is a game about teamwork, and making the system flow beautifully. Whether your a crafter, a builder, hunter, or gatherer, we all need each other. They gave us a world, we set up the economy, and I don’t think the devs should intervene as much as they do already! Sure there’s some things I don’t like or have a hard time finding,but, instead of complaining, I go shop around or find someone to trade with. Working together.
…There will never be a perfect economy,real or fake. Just like a civilization isn’t civilized without peace…

Edit: Caribou coffee does kick butt!!! I’d like to order a Triple shot of espresso with a side order of twitches please

Edit: lennonmarx brought up excellent point. Deleted

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There is a kernel of truth in these remarks, but no healthy economy deflates by 50-80% over the course of 2 months. Right now the economy is great for buyers because the coin that you can generate is relatively fixed but prices are all way down. A shop that puts in more effort will do well, sure. But as other have remarked that at some point prices get too low and sellers don’t want to sell to your baskets, the same is true for the people in the shops. If it takes me X effort to make Y, and Y is deflating in value over night, every night, at what point is the return on my investment not worth it? My time is also of value.

Another thing to note here is that we know a “fix” for footfall is coming. Once this happens prices are going to inflate again. Why am I, as a shop owner, going to try to sell something now for Zc when it will sell for 2-5Z in a few weeks? Economies need an element of stability that boundless lacks at the moment.

Also, your comparison at the start of your post is wholly out of line for this forum and the topic we are discussing. I would suggest editing it to something less politically charged.

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Fixed thank you!

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I found it funny :stuck_out_tongue:

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I don’t believe the economy was ever broken, but there has definitely been a resession (since newer players are like 60% of your income). I still get foot traffic daily at nearly all my locations, and “move” about 50-100k a week through my store (buying and selling combined). I am hoping for a small increase to playerbase with the guild system bringing some players back.

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I want to rant about gems… I might make a post because of the drop rates. But the economy is not broken for sure lol

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To the people saying “The economy isn’t/wasn’t/has never been broken,” I can only offer this. Because I’m a psychopath and think economics is fun reading, I figured I would check out some stats on The Great Depression and see how boundless is holding up, relatively, to the single largest economic failure in the modern world. The one that stands out to me, is that at it’s worst, in about 1933, the US GDP (the total value of everything the country makes) had gone down by ~30% from pre-depression values. Now, I don’t have all the data about the boundless economy (@james I’d love to see GDP data for the game if it’s something you track and are able to share), it’s possible that even though prices are down and trending downward enough more stuff is being made that the “Boundless GDP” is stable. However, as someone that was here at launch, prices now are way more than 30% down across the board (closer to 75%). This indicates to me that the boundless economy is probably in a worse position currently than the US was in 1933. So, the people saying that everything in boundless are fine, would you also agree that the economy was fine in 1933 because some people still had jobs/not every bank closed?

Huge disclaimer, of course, is that boundless is much simpler than a real economy. If your or my or anyone’s shop fails in game, they are still going to be able to eat at night. We aren’t going to be writing a 700 page book about struggling though the dust storms on Merika trying to find a better life for our Oortians. And due to that simplicity, I would think that the economy could handle larger shocks than the real world and still just be in “recession” instead of full blown panic. But that doesn’t mean it is healthy/everything is fine.

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