Infinite sales and infinite purchasing power.

I think they should keep the merchant system as simple as possible. If people making too much money becomes an issue somehow, then just reduce sell prices and/or increase purchase prices based on what is being sold or bought. Obviously, rapidly farmable stuff like wheat shouldn't be worth a lot.

The less time I spend on inventory management, the more time I can spend having space adventures.

 

I would put myself in the builder-corner, but since the reduced pixel outcome from refined ores, i have to spend a lot more time underground to earn the vast amounts of pixels i need. My problem now is not to get rid of mountains of pixels, but to get them! 150k pixels is 1k diamonds is 6k blocks of any kind. Sounds much but is built away in about 15 minutes. 1k diamonds means farming for hours. Don't know how to have too much pixels. Will think about that whole matter and write again if i have something more productive to add. Sorry...

edit:
As long as there's nothing you can buy that makes really a difference for anything else than printing stuff for building purposes, there's no problem at all. Let people hoard pixels if they want to. If it makes a difference on balancing, pvp and so on, then there's a problem for all these who want to build large scale as they have to deal with reduced possibilities to get the material they need. At least there are mods...

 

I am not sure if it was pointed out but like real life most games that limit the capital of a merchant buying from them gives them more money to buy stuff off you.

That and some merchants are more well off than others, some games even let merchants up there cash flow the more you deal with them or by investing in there shop (unlocking more items for sell and a higher pool of money to buy things with)

 

I kind of agree about the pixel amount from ores being too reduced right now. That said, to get large amounts of pixels I just run through Erchius Mining Facility or go kill higher-end mobs - even while mining actually - like Radioactive/Heat planet ones. They provide a decent yield if you can afford the risk (in case you don't have great armour).

As for the original topic, while I understand the limited vendor capital reasoning, I have to say I wouldn't be very fond of it. I mean, it's still better than nobody to sell anything to, that's true for certain; but I would probably get annoyed after a while of playing and having to go find several different vendors just to get rid of junk I'd rather not have and rather not trash because I know I can sell - if that makes sense.

 

Yeah I believe they are still working on the prices for the items in the Nightly build as Rare and Legendary gear sell for 1 pixel each. Farming and Decorative stuff seem to be the only things with an actual price on them for right now.

I would understand if they made it were a Produce merchant only bought food items, General merchants only bought gear and weapons, and Builder merchants only bought decorations and building materials.
******************************(This, however, makes the game a bit more complex then it needs to be)

Running missions is a good way to produce a large amount of pixels too, but the Dreadwing missions don't have any pixel payout so you're limited on repeating 2 of the 4 missions for income. Selling to the merchant any excess loot you obtained from these missions helps keep the inventory clear for exploration and building.

Limiting the merchant means you have to hold on to stuff longer or travel to several different merchants to achieve the same goal, thus taking a ton of time away from gameplay.

Pixels, right now, seem to be vastly used on the pixel printer and portable pixel printer for building purposes (Not really game breaking stuff there). Even if they made it to were you could invest in upgrading the outpost to add different types of merchants, themes, and even more NPCs to hand out missions it still doesn't take away from gameplay, but add the extra goal for the player to strive for.

 

Have to say, I pretty much agree with everything you've commented, especially in regards to the merchant limiting thing.

About Dreadwing, perhaps the scrap of his ship will be sellable for a little bit of pixels. I don't really know what they intend for that kind of item; same goes for planet core fragments, steel spoons, etc... One-time items basically. I haven't played the unstable/nightly builds so I haven't checked any of this vendoring business myself.

 

What i don't get is what the issue IS having large amounts of pixels? Worst case would be you don't need them and therefore ignore them.

Balance of what? Pixels are mainly important for the pixel printer, means for builders and people who decorate their ship/home/whatever. In nightly i don't know, really alternative weapons and stuff as i heard. But nothing that influences game balance?
So the builder fraction has to carry chain and ball because noone else needs pixels that much? Tell me if i get it wrong, i do hope so, but that sounds much more imbalanced, penalising one playstyle. As i mentioned before, I have a really hard time right now due to less pixels from ores (in diamonds it's 150 now compared to 400 before update!) and when it becomes possible to sell stuff and AGAIN get the amount of pixels i was able to earn earlier, there waits the next restriction to prevent this.
Would be okay for me if printing cost for blocks were reduced to under 5-10px per block.

I do agree that merchants and trade should be balanced, but it should be possible to build large bases and houses and so on without mods or /admin. Else, the huge empty asteroid fields and barren planets that were recently implemented become somewhat needless.

Inventory space is a similar prob, while building i'm carrying around several k blocks, a lot of furniture and decoratives, inventory filled up. Same on underground exploration and mining, even when deleting everything that's not of any woth for me, after an hour or two i'm full. Biome blocks, ores, furniture, and so on. Most of that i won't sell, especially now, when pixels become more hard to obtain.
I got somewhat agitated about that whole matter, if i used inadequate tone, i apologize! As i have to look up many words while writing, i'm not sure about the correct use of everything. thx

You can say more clearly and calmly what i try to. Thanks!

 

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't think that this need of balance must exist for a game like Starbound.

At least, speaking for myself and from my own experience, me and my brother rarely have much inventory space left. We like to hoard and these 2 bag tabs in the character don't feel like it's enough, especially when there are subtle variations in certain blocks, such as Moondust, with different tints that don't stack. (A proposed solution would be multi-block stacking in a single slot, but I'm not sure that would help with interface clutter.)

I hoard because there are blocks/items I know I will want to use or give to friends/family, but just haven't gotten around to yet, because I have different immediate goals or the like. My problem is usually that even stowing away my hoards, I lack the physical space to put more containers as most of the bigger ones naturally take more space.

All that said, my view is that being a sandbox game, I don't desire to have to spend half an hour sorting through inventory management related things. Which I already do...

How do you see the game? I'm curious, since you feel the need for this specific balance.[DOUBLEPOST=1432642321][/DOUBLEPOST]

You beat me to a post by a little bit!

Just wanted to say I feel you, regarding the comments you make on that post.

 

When I play games where merchants run out of money, it feels almost like I'm punished for getting a lot of loot, because it takes so long to run through six different merchants and try to make sure they're each buying as much as possible from me and maybe I should craft some of this stuff down but then will that make them too valuable and can any of these merchants afford to buy it all or do I need to make a trip to another town again- and so on ad nauseam.

And then, finally, my inventory is clear enough for me to go exploring again.

Also worth noting that Bethesda games use this limited funds system, yet you inevitably end up with outrageous amounts of money in them anyway. Balance should come from prices and providing the player with something they'll actually want to buy. If that means I sell stuff at 10% actual value, so be it.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't have an issue with that myself. Even if it's 10%, but unlimited, I'm not bothered. Like you said, I don't want to feel like I'm being punished for getting a lot of loot.

 

Like I was saying earlier, whether or not you have one merchant or have to go through multiples, you achieve the same goal in the end (an empty inventory, and a lot more pixels).

Especially when you may have stacks of 1000 dirt and cobblestone you're not using, that in it self is 1000 pixels for the stacks themselves.

 

Indeed.

Most certainly. As I've mentioned, I hoard certain materials I don't immediately need but might want to use, but sometimes I wouldn't mind just selling some of the excess.

Also, did you change your avatar?

 

Oh geez, I really doubt merchants would pay anything for cobblestone or any building block that isn't vanishingly rare and/or costly to craft. I hope and believe that they will not pay for dirt.

 

Yes I did, I changed it from Star Wolf to something more Starboundish

The Dirt and Cobblestone sell for 1 pixel each so having a ton of stacks pays out in the end

 

I liked the old one better.

I might lean more towards Lazer's side to say that it would probably be a bit too much, considering how common dirt is. Perhaps something made WITH the dirt; added value to labour/crafting. Atleast, if memory serves me right, in Terraria, the simplest materials like dirt and stone have no vendor price. I'm not saying it has to be that way, just establishing a comparison, for the sake of argument.

 

• Yeah my guys pose matches my steam account however see attached file but ill see about changing it back
• I agree that the dirt and cobblestone prices need to be fixed to 0 pixels, but what about packed dirt and cobblestone brick.

 

Haha

Yeah, that's what I meant by added crafting value. Like sand, I don't expect it to be worth anything by itself, but I'd expect glass to be worth something, since it needs to be crafted first.

 

xxswatelitexx, I think you got a great thread going , it is bringing a good debate over the new merchant system coming out. However I'm still leaning towards the merchant just handing out pixels like candy

• Should a merchant have a limited cash supply?
  • Would it be possible to invest in said merchant to have more cash each visit?
    • Whether by buying more stuff from him, doing missions to upgrade his cash on hand for each visit, and upgrading the inventory they sell.
  • Can pixels be used to upgrade the outpost in the future?
    • More rooms, vendors, and crafting stations.

The outpost seems to be the go to place anyways, and I don't really see this hurting exploration.

 

Same here.

However, going along with the discussion... Both of the quoted posts have some good ideas.

About your first point DrgnKakashi though, would that be an infinitely repeatable process? Hopefully we could choose to do it in the way we prefer to do it by too. I would personally be put off from doing a mission that felt like a chore, even for the purpose at hand.

In fact, one thing nobody seems to have brought up is, how often would limited cash vendors resupply? xxswatelitexx suggests a randomized refresh rate at spawn... But we're still not thinking of concrete time intervals here.

A planet's day cycle? (15 Mins, give or take...)
An hour?​