#player economy
noble creek
I think at least for lower tier materials there'll just be other uses for it, say for building or maintenance or something. Like, not just copper tools, but things you can only use copper for, or things which maybe you can use other materials for but copper is more abundant so its the easiest to use.
Also for the second thing, I think its just a case of like, it's a really big world. It would be very difficult for one group to somehow monopolise every single, say, platinum mine in the world. Even if they do it locally, sure priced might be high for a bit- even if it'd net them more resources to lower their prices and therefore get them more sales- but that'll also mean its more justified and profitable to start a mine pretty far away and travel to that region to sell for still high, but more reasonable prices.
I'm not exactly a dev but these are just the obvious answers yknow?
cursive arch
the main issue is that copper isn't worth much still cause it's lower tier materials and in theory more abundant. the price will still plummet cause outside of lower tier building/gear/tools it's useless and i highly doubt they'll make alot of higher tier things require/substitute copper instead of higher tier ores. the actual way to make copper still valuable is something that will always be used even at higher tier buldings/gear/tools. mixed ingots. take for example a platinum ingot used in making a chest piece give you +5 defense. now if you mix the platinum with copper you get +5 defence and +2 move speed, if you mix it with iron you get +5 defence and +3 regen etc... same for buildings as you unlock and reach higher tier crafts you make it beneficial to mix ores instead of just using ores to use them. and by forcing a platinum ore to still be used to even attempt to craft it's respective tier platinum will still be extremely valuable or you could double down on platinum ore and get +8 defence
the second issue can be tackled in more ways than just controlling mines as long as you start out the gate with majority control of a resource and get a large starting fund going. you can easily buy out competitors which still puts you at a profit since people have to buy from you at your marked up prices. not to mention each biome has it's own unique resources so even with regenning resources once you find an edge of a biome you can form a business around there. being the closest collector/seller of the material which is appealing to people and they'd rather buy from you than others. so unless others do the same or are able to use for example an ocean to transfer their goods as fast as you. it'd be surprisingly easy to control a biomes resources and basically become the controlling force of the biomes market. since you also have alot of currency/mats to throw around to control other biomes incoming materials.
cursive arch
the main reason i bring this up is less so on launch. well it could still be an issue on launch since alpha and beta players will have the knowledge to speedrun their skills but i digress. but more so say a month after launch when we get more new players it'll be extremely hard for new groups to compete with older more established groups. cause why sell to a new group who can only pay 5 wood per 1 ore for 10 ores when you can sell 100 ore at 6 wood a piece to more established groups? or established groups can pay a higher price for the same 10 ores to essentially block the new group from getting anywhere.
also with the price of lower tier materials going down it prevents people who wanna be part of the markets from really experiencing it earlier. unless they become wandering merchants, get caught up to current tier materials, or join big groups. 2/3 require prolly a bit of time investment to really get going
torpid saddle
The map will expand with new players and they will spawn at that new part of the map. So I don't think this will be such a prominent problem