Just some feedback on the economics in the game so far. In Help, we briefly touched on this, and there are a few different topics related to this in the Forum, but I just wanted to assemble all my thoughts in one place... so feel free to chime in, add to, detract from these.
1. Auctions
a. They are not really auctions, now, are they? :) They are more 'buy it now' things. Not sure if the design was ever to include a true auction system, but that would be very cool if it were. Say, the auction lasts for X time, at the end of which the auction goes to the highest bidder. This would, however, remove the ability for players to gift/sell things for immediate needs to one another from across great distances... but it would put a little free market into the game, possibly making pricing less exploitative. To compensate, perhaps add a nice feature to be able to gift/sell long distance - sort of a Western Telegram for goods, which the Auctions act as now. Or don't -- if people want to trade, perhaps work more teleportation or public transit into the system.
b. Pagination please! The main Auctions page isn't paginated, the main topics aren't paginated, so I'm guessing that individual items are not paginated either. This is a problem in a few ways. First, the auctions are listed newest first. So, when someone floods a board with gems or music blocks, everything older gets buried - perhaps there's something down there you want and I'm betting most people don't know to go to that item's page in the encyclopedia to click the auction link for just that item.
c. Visibility. In the last test, I saw a number of people asking for goods that were already on auction, but that had fallen off the first page. Perhaps links on the item's menu to its auctions from in-game rather than from its info page ['Need more, check out an auction']. Or maybe have an auction board on every street.. anything to make auctions more visible. Most people only learn of auctions through Help, I reckon.
d. Pricing. So, I list X for auction. There is a 'going price' and a 'suggested price' just under that. Last test, I just figured out that the 'going price' is exactly what a vendor will give you for that item. Hmm...much of my incentive to auction anything left me when I discovered that fact. Why should I wait for someone to purchase my cooked food or whatever when I can get a better price for it from a vendor?
Seems to me that the pricing could go something like this:
--- Vendor sells X for 300
--- Vendor would buy that for 200
--- Suggested price at auction should be 250, not lower, as it currently is.
That leads me to point number 2...
Economics:
The economy is very odd, as multiple other topics have discussed one way or another. To start, there is infinite supply. As long as I'm willing to put in so many hours mining or squeezing chickens, there is an endless supply of gems or music blocks. There may be some scarcity in that you are more likely to get Amber or a 1-type musicblock than a Diamond or 5-type block, but since there is infinite supply, there is no way to set true supply/demand pricing. Everything is really a planned economy (as shown by the fact that prices are fabricated and dictated by the various vendors). So, there's a nice philosophical debate right there. :)
This may seem downright cold, but perhaps -- as we have daily quoin limits -- we might have daily limits on many freebies (gems, musicblocks, whatever things get tossed at you in your travels) a given player can get in a day in order to introduce some finite resources.
Perhaps also we could do away with most of the vendors, leaving just a few on the start streets (the ones where you get dumped into the game) so that in the beginning, people can buy things they need (oh, but please do leave Helga, I love her so) and introducing more markets (a general hall as well as shops we can build/own)... so that the economy at least has pricing created by the players - by their efforts in creating the items and their inventory.
Or for those who balk at supply/demand economics, set aside the quoins and we could just barter our wares in the market hall. I liked the idea of a market hall, because you could just wander by to see what's available in a central location (which is vital if Help is going away).
I guess my point here is to facilitate more social interaction by putting the economy more into the player's hands than the vendors' hands. If there are only 5000 piggy eggs floating around the game because no one is making them, that might create a more interesting world than just buying infinite supplies of them from a vendor, using all the gems I just mined for the past day.
Also, that might introduce more sensible pricing than making devs figure out what the pricing ought to be given how long it takes to acquire the raw materials to assemble something. By this I mean that another topic on the Forum showed that it's not as economical to make your own X since it's cheaper to buy it from a vendor when you factor in the cost of raw materials and labor. Rather do the calculations to price an Earthshaker based on the cost of the raw materials and the energy spent to make them, let the free market handle the pricing by allowing players to set up shop and decide for themselves how many to make or whether to collect the cherries themselves or buy them in bulk.. or what the price of the day is based on available supply and current demand.
And yes, I suppose I'm spewing all kinds of Adam Smith here, but it's a starting point for the conversation the devs suggested we have about economics. I'm sure others have good or better ideas, so I look forward to hearing them. :)