What should be sold for Cubits, and what shouldn't?

General
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The cash shop is here to stay, that much I think is obvious. In that case, I think we should all list the cash shop items we believe would have zero impact on the Steam Reviews of this game.

This is my opinion, but if you disagree, please do so while acknowledging many, MANY Steam games are destroyed by bandwagon negative reviews.

Also, please add your own list of anything you would be willing to pay money for in “The Exchange” and a list of things you think could harm the game’s longevity.

Things that likely won’t cause negative reviews:

  1. Costumes/clothing.
  2. Advanced character creation options.
  3. Inventory boosters.
  4. All the current Gleam Club options.
  5. Dyes.
  6. Respecs.

Things that I think risk negative reviews:

  1. Plots.
  2. Weapons/Items that give an advantage.
  3. Reductions in crafting time.

Explanation:

6*. New players need to be given a few free respecs, so they don’t rage quit over a bad build in my opinion.

3*. While I believe inventory boosters could give an unfair market advantage, I find them to be in a gray area.

7*. If you ask any child, teenager, or adult if they expect freedom to build from a voxel sandbox game, they’ll likely agree, and yet, the first thing you’re introduced to in Boundless’ Tutorial is how small your plot is, and a way to spend real money to increase the size. The immediate optics, appearance, and perception is negative, as the player won’t have had enough time to truly understand their plotsize is unlimited as long as they get levelups.

Because Steam has a 2 hour refund, people are going to see this first and have to make a decision if they want to refund or not, and I don’t see how it’ll have a positive outcome on their outlook of the game. You get reactions like this https://steamcommunity.com/app/324510/discussions/0/1746720717330843291/

He clearly explains in later posts that he only had 2 hours to make his decision to refund, and so because his initial experience was bad, he refunded.

8*. Obvious pay to win mechanics. No further explanation needed.

9*. This game is market based, and while I explained hesitation of inventory size expansions and how that greatly benefits traders, I think crafting time reductions goes a little too far.

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I think there are exactly zero items that will have zero impact on the Steam reviews of this game. People will talk about what’s in the game in the reviews…

plots, wearables/cosmetics, name changes.

god mode. ability to permanently ban any players. ability to build in other people’s plots without permission. Ability to instantly spawn large sheets of lava over cities. ability to bypass rate limiting in chat. Ability to bypass rules against obscene or inappropriate buildings.

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If someone is spending vast amounts of real currency to speed up ALL of their crafts, then they are no different then people who will buy oortstone for 200 and sell shards for 1 coin each just to be the market leaders. This is a matter of convenience, there will be an absurd amount of crafts that I doubt this will even come close to Pay to Win.

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we have more and more topics that are quite similar - cubits, P2W concerns, plots and so on… thats confusing and a lot of points made by different players are going to be repeated again here, I have a feeling they will…

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Because this is a sandbox economy, and there are no NPC’s to regulate price, one of the conditions for “winning” in a Sandbox MMO is market control.

Being the leader in a market. Having the most money. If you can become the leader by throwing money at the game, it makes it so any other would-be traders cannot ever compete.

It may seem niche to you, but people do buy Sandbox games for the express purpose of being the leader of a trading empire. Look at EVE Online for examples.

In this case, yes, technically, anything in this game that allows someone control over the market in Boundless via cash shop purchases would be Pay to Win, as the definition for winning in this case is Political and Economical, like a Civilization game.

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The previous topic was “remove the cash shop”

This topic is, “The cash shop is clearly staying, what can we add or remove to it to please the most people and still be profitable”

They are sufficiently different and I believe this is worth discussing, so we may put forth specific suggestions instead of just debating “Should the game have a cash shop, yes or no?”

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I’m not saying it won’t happen. I’m saying it is less of a concern. It’s all passive. You aren’t physically standing there waiting for your craft to be done. I can pop things in 5000 machines and have them all done in the morning while another sucker wastes 50 bucks the morning of to rush all of his crafts. Worth it? Maybe to that guy I guess. Is there any impact on the economy? Hardly. Nobody should ever factor in time that they didn’t actively do something into a price in the first place (unless it is an issue of capacity, which this person wouldn’t have a problem with if he just bought a few plots…) When you go for a pizza at a pizza place you think they charge you for the minutes they wait there too?

Edited: you to they to make the analogy make more sense.

Edited: clarity on the passive time in cases of being at capacity.

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I personally like the way they’ve outlined it already. I think the gleam club is very much like discord nitro, nice to have but easy to work without. I don’t think I would be sad about another player buying absurd amounts of anything available in the shop right now.

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They do, it is a hidden cost. Restaurants and Movie Theaters (and even Sporting Events, like Baseball games which take HOURS to finish) absolutely factor in the amount of time it takes for you to receive their product when they price things.

Why do you think sodas cost so much, and candy, and popcorn at theaters? It isn’t because they cost a lot to make.

The longer you are willing to spend in a restaurant happily sitting and waiting, the more likely you are to buy appetizers, and spend money on sodas and refills for other drinks. The bulk of the profit from these businesses comes from those purchases, not from the main course meal you’ve ordered.

Speeding up crafting times and allowing huge inventories for those involved in the Trade and Market gameplay of Boundless is the equivalent of introducing a “Take-out” menu, which typically yields very little profit for companies. Your prices won’t compete with theirs, and people won’t visit your shops, and you’ll lose to someone because they spent real money, that’s the definition of Pay to Win.

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pretty sure this is not how businesses work

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Slyduda and his buddies owned one of the most successful shops in the game so far and helped set the prices for the economy in quite a few ways. He may, or may not, also deal with this stuff on the outside.

But you and others who aren’t familiar with the exchange, or weren’t around a couple months ago should read the OP in this thread to get a better idea of what the plans for it are.

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But does that hidden cost go up the more that they wait? So if I grab my pizza an extra 30 minutes after they expect me to am I gonna get charged for it at a normal pizza joint? I am on the same boat as you buddie. I get that there are absurd markups all around. The difference here is that you have Party A who can make a bunch of things a little earlier and sell them over time. Then you have Party B who can make a bunch of things at the moment of and sell them over time, but this guy paid real money to get here. Who is the real winner. Who ends up gaining the most here?

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Try this in Boundless at release. It is not viable I can guarantee this to you.

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Yes, it does. If someone is really enjoying themselves in a restaurant waiting for their pizza, they may go through the beer they just bought, so they order another one. This boosts the profit of the company. If you can keep a customer happy and make them wait, you have the chance to increase profits.

If it takes 10 hours to make 100 Super Oortstone Portals, and there’s market demand for them, and you are the market leader, you set the price at say 10$ a Portal.

Then someone, a whale, comes in and buys Cash Shop boosts, and he can make 100 Portals in 1 minute, he floods the market, sets the price at 5$, and takes all your customers away.

You lose customers, you lose money, and all the investment you made into those portals is now lost and you’re stuck with a huge leftover inventory of portals that no one wants to buy.

That’s the danger in huge inventory expansions and crafting time reductions, if combined with an ease in collecting materials.

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I think it’s more valuable to provide quick service than to bank on people being happy with 2 beers and slow service. Word of mouth for slow service will spread pretty quick.

I don’t know what I’m debating here exactly but at least I admit it

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I think you need to play the game a little more to understand the mechanics of trade in Boundless specifically. Yes, you are correct that if a whale makes everything at once and marks something up then they may make a good amount in the short run. So where is everyone else’s portals that they are selling. Did everyone just stop making portals then?

My point is there is a lot of everyone doing everything that if someone tries to make a big name for themselves by marking something up that they have a large supply of competitors like me will come in to kick their tushies. That’s the beauty of competition in this game and in real life and why I believe you need to take a second to play the economy game more to see that this isn’t necessarily a big issue.

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Hm lets talk about Plots in the Cash Shop.

I can only provide my observations. I am pulling from my knowledge in this game, and my time being a moderator on a vanilla minecraft server that uses Golden Shovel.

If you aren’t aware, the golden shovel mod allows you to claim area’s in Minecraft so that other players can’t use them (just like the claims in Boundless). The claims can be setup in a variety of ways, but on server the longer you played the more area you could claim.

When you started on the server you could only claim a small area (about one chunk) and it would expand from there as you played. Before the updates around $$ in minecraft, people could donate to the server and get more plots assigned to them.

I share all this because I was a part of that community in Minecraft for 4 years. I met many new players, organized feedback to the server, and put myself in a neutral position to collect feedback to improve the server.

Over the 4 years, I did get feedback that people wanted more access to plots and didn’t want to pay $ for it. The feedback was a small sample of players, I would say about 3 - 4.

What is interesting is I thought the solution would be to give those players plots for free (just to keep them playing, we needed a community after all!) and they left anyway, usually 1/2 through a big build that overwhelmed them.

I understand the feedback around Plots. I understand that concern that a large Plot amount can be viewed as a person being ‘ahead’ or that having only a few plots could be viewed as ‘limiting’.

However, in practice, people that want a lot of space quickly…even in a game where gathering materials is easier (Minecraft), get burned out quickly as they get overwhelmed. Especially when they are new to the game.

The limitations on Plots is a helpful guide to keep players builds small/reasonable. Especially in a game where skills/levels have a high amount of influence on what blocks you can obtain and the time it takes to gather them. (unlike Minecraft)

I think Plots in the cash shop are fine. The amount of time you need to invest in collecting resources to make a big build already support you getting plots. Also, you need to be online consistently to keep your plots alive. There are other factors that are in the game which make the system balanced and fair.

Again, this is my opinion. I respectfully disagree, but am not trying to silence discussion. I hope my observations and information is helpful and presented in a way that helps show how I came to this conclusion.

Thanks for taking the time to make the thread ! The passion to make the game as great as possible is one we all share and can relate to.

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How could you ever beat someone who produces products not only faster than you, but sells them for cheaper, and at IDENTICAL quality?

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I like this too myself. I ended up making a few small builds instead of starting with something large like I often do in other games. It’s quite possible that this contributed to my integration into the community more.

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There is no auction house in this game, so one easy answer is: location.

People aren’t always willing to shop around for the best prices, so you can still compete if your shops location is better or if you are more actively watching what people want and put it front and center where they can get it quickly, as opposed to a megashop like the Gemporium or Omni’s (no offense meant fellas!) that might have a better price but theres so much to look through you feel overwhelmed

Regardless. I don’t like crafting time boosters either, so I’m not really supporting their potential existance…

1 Like