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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Best Of
Re: Splinter Topic: Local vs Regional vs ServerWide (vs GameWide?) Markets
Do you think there's a chance the games didn't do enough to make other parts of the game feel attractive enough to the average "crafter main"? Other things to spend their money in and get the same kick out of?Azherae wrote:I can find a few direct examples on FFXIAH if you need more than my anecdotal 'we had a problem literally getting people to stop selling things on Auction House for less than the price that an NPC would pay them for the item'. And I don't mean 'after you calculate the AH fees' either.
I do not, but this is a combination of bias and arrogance.
Even then, however, you asked how much of your position it makes me dismiss. Unfortunately, all of it, much like how the L2 players generally dismiss concerns about most aspects of corruption.
I've played games with extremely functional crafting and market interaction systems for years, and I (obviously biasedly) believe in my observations, for one reason more than any other.
The things I have observed to be true are frustrating to me. I don't want to have to think about how to solve 'players that undercut things just so they can feel like they're a shopkeeper', just as I don't want to have to think about players who log into a game that is clearly crafting/economy related and complain about having to interact with it.
But as you noted, players do this, and they do it enough to make me constantly annoyed at how much you have to 'babysit' them, even the ones that know this is what they are doing.
So the gap between our perspectives is that you say "I think we can just not worry about those players" and I say "I have been wishing I could just not worry about those players for decades".
Azherae
2
Re: Splinter Topic: Local vs Regional vs ServerWide (vs GameWide?) Markets
I think you can control way more of that than you're willing to admit. Perhaps due to the risk of sounding naive? In my experience, way too many of these discussions devolve into economy majors waxing poetic about how "markets control themselves and if you try to do anything to control the behaviour of market agents, you're only ever going to make it worse."
They tend to forget that what they know about the economy applies in a world where the baseline will always be real predetermined needs. In an MMO, you can design the needs any way you like.
If you want players to care about local markets without hyper-obsessing about prices, you have to (1) give them products to trade that are important and rare enough to keep an eye out for, but (2) not give their competition so much money that whenever anything remotely worthwhile gets put on the market, the competition will be able to buy it all up and resell it for profit by principle. (Further regulated by processing fees.)
Both the competition's access to money, and the players' need for resources is fully controllable through the game's skill design (limited artisan classes per player; gold-intensive artisan class progression) and loot design (restricted resource distribution, restricted gold distribution, high gold sinks in node/guild/equipment development.)
If the merchants stubbornly try to raise their profit margins anyway, players who want to improve their artisan class skills will just spend more time actively farming their own resources, and fewer players will bother to level their class skills in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, merchant players won't like this. So there will definitely be loud complaints. But they will like that the game will live longer, because there will be less spite and stress in the rest of the community. And I'm sure in the end they'll get their profits, and there will be monopolies here and there. But the escalations will be slowed down enough that competition will have an equal share of the profits, and the wealth will be distributed more homogenously, and players won't be so stressed out chasing prices.
Bear in mind that I am the definition of that sort of person, except that I go even further and study MMO economies specifically.
Whether you put any stock in my understanding is up to you, but I'm saying that from the perspective of MMO economies specifically. If anyone would like an essay on precisely why I don't believe devs can control the specific concept of 'whether or not a player considers it a worthwhile investment to trade', I'll provide it, but for the sake of simplicity in this thread, for now, just know that I still disagree.
Particularly with this line, so that you know where we diverge:
In an MMO, you can design the needs any way you like.
My response to this is 'not a chance'. You can generally only add and remove them.
And my experience on this is that FFXI had literally every thing you said, and it still was not controllable, so I feel like I have many years of experience, including interactions that border on 'interviews' with other players, as to why this is so.
Azherae
1
Re: Splinter Topic: Local vs Regional vs ServerWide (vs GameWide?) Markets
I'm not too worried about them in my system, because their gold income will be too limited for this to lead to overly drastic profit increases for the merchants trying to profit off those players' tendencies.Azherae wrote:So, briefly, what do you say about the player whose wish to undertake the crafting gameplay loop is itself so much more important to them than any profit that they will choose to consistently take actions that cause them to lose money or 'waste time' just so that they can have that feeling?
If 90% of players acted like that, yeah, merchants would have monopolies within the first 2 months.
But this excessive tendency I believe you can counteract by designing these class skills in a way that incentivises most players to use their money and resources on other, more incentivised gold-sink investments, like node progression, guild progression, or itemisation (which also has an aggressive item sink mechanic in Ashes with the over-enchant system.)
My data from FF11 and BDO puts this percentage of players between 30 and 45%.
Both those games have a higher tolerance for this value than Ashes. Ashes, practically speaking, can only have 30% as their absolute upper bound of players willing to behave like this, given their world size.
I can find a few direct examples on FFXIAH if you need more than my anecdotal 'we had a problem literally getting people to stop selling things on Auction House for less than the price that an NPC would pay them for the item'. And I don't mean 'after you calculate the AH fees' either.
BDO similarly had an issue that I think I could theoretically still prove where they raised the price caps on some components for potions, yet did not raise the price of the potions, and the supply remained.
World chat confirmed for me multiple times that people will just go 'hey I log into this game to craft and I don't have another game to do it in and I like it here, so I will just burn the money so that I can continue to have that feeling of being part of this'.
People will 'accept Merchants underpaying them for their work just so they get something', your suggestion/method simply increases the burden on that player type. Now, maybe they shouldn't play this type of game, but I'd prefer that they were able to enjoy it, since I know they can't be 'controlled' by those specific incentive structures.
(note, high processing costs also tend to drive others who do not enjoy it out of the markets, and this results in the BDO Pain Point of basically 'lifeskill players being economically abused while also being reduced to precisely the demographic of player that accepts that abuse', and there was still enough of this behaviour for certain monopolists to continue doing their thing)
Azherae
1
Re: Splinter Topic: Local vs Regional vs ServerWide (vs GameWide?) Markets
I can accept this, though I do wonder how much of my ideas this makes you discount.Azherae wrote:Particularly with this line, so that you know where we diverge:
In an MMO, you can design the needs any way you like.
My response to this is 'not a chance'. You can generally only add and remove them.
Also, just quickly (though I'll gladly take the essay if you ever feel like it):
Would your stance change to any extent, if I clarify that we'd account for the fact that we can't design the exact needs of all/any given player, but just the general tendency, while accepting that different personalities will veer drastically to the left and right of the mean?
Then we're at semantics, but we'd probably be agreeing.
So, briefly, what do you say about the player whose wish to undertake the crafting gameplay loop is itself so much more important to them than any profit that they will choose to consistently take actions that cause them to lose money or 'waste time' just so that they can have that feeling?
And note, I'm specifically talking about very mundane activities.
Azherae
1
Re: Ranged Mobs: Impossible to Counter if you are in their attack range
How do you guys feel about the current fight mechanic which the current ranged attack mobs have it implemented?.
Currently any mob in the world which is using a ranged attack: spell, throwing spears, arrows, etc, will auto lock on you , no matter if you strafe or try to avoid their direction of attack by moving fast around.
I think this is a little silly for 2024 being forced to just embrace their incoming attack, no matter how good your hero movement is.
Is this how you guys want?, to be just statues in front of mobs and let the stats dictate our fate?.
For pvp it might be a different story, but for pve mobs, this makes no sense. Is like going back to the old click to move, let the mob hit you, and just click skills on the skillbar...
"Good" hero movement is a game abstraction, though.
Characters in MMOs often move without any true momentum, if you move fast enough to dodge an arrow, then you also shouldn't be able to easily 'stop' that motion.
But many MMO players don't like games where they don't have total control over their character, even to the point where they don't like having to slow down before they change direction. So, games give them a dodge roll, which solves 'both issues'.
Would you be fine with it if the dodge roll was the only way to dodge projectiles? It could probably be coded so that a locked-on projectile loses its target if the player uses their dodge roll.
Azherae
3
Re: Ranged Mobs: Impossible to Counter if you are in their attack range
i don't think you see my point, but ok
Let's find out.
Your point, as I see it, is that you think players should be able to use regular character movement to dodge attacks.
My point is that this isn't what regular character movement is for. The game provides specific activated abilities to perform this specific function.
'You don't use movement to dodge' has to be one of the funnier things to come out of a person's keyboard
Not only do you not use movement to dodge, you don't use dodge to move.
Is the notion of a dodge ability that foreign to you?
The notion that moving can cause an attack to miss in a game with tab target mechanics is absolutely off the charts in terms of naivety.
Noaani
1
Re: Next Livestream + Q&A Submission - Friday, September 27, 2024 at 11am Pacific
One final shot at asking this but here it goes.
Can you give us some insight on modifiers that will show up on gear and tell us how much does this come into play when our character is fully kitted out such as do I go for stat boosts that compliment my class or is there modifiers out there to completely change the way my class plays.
Can you give us some insight on modifiers that will show up on gear and tell us how much does this come into play when our character is fully kitted out such as do I go for stat boosts that compliment my class or is there modifiers out there to completely change the way my class plays.
Apok
2
Re: Next Livestream + Q&A Submission - Friday, September 27, 2024 at 11am Pacific
You've stated there is no dampening for PvP and that player power is split on the character 50/50 between level and gear. If PvP is part of the leveling experience, are there any measures to "protect" lower level players from higher level players other than guilds and teams, and is it possible to get 1-shot in the starting zone on a PvP mission by a max level and geared character?
Morgalf
1
Re: Splinter Topic: Local vs Regional vs ServerWide (vs GameWide?) Markets
I'm used to this cause L2 had it, so I'm obviously biased for that.
Based on what you have provided me over the years, though, and my own research, L2's economy does not come close to what is required or optimal here. If you have more information about how player hubs worked in C3 specifically, I'd appreciate it.
The compromise of "you gotta build up nodes and they'll spread the market's influence in the vassal system" is something I'm ok with, cause even with all of my hardcore preferences making people run around every damn node just to see where they can sell their item would be a bit too much.
This is a bit of a 'misunderstanding' possibly. The sort of player who 'runs around to get the cheapest price' likely either doesn't understand how pricing logistics work, or have a lot of time on their hands and will usually become a true trader, eventually. Those players probably still exist, there just aren't any non-sci-fi MMOs for them to play at the moment other than BDO and BDO is... a long story.
But I think the only "server-wide" thing should be linked to cross-kingdom node relations. So if there's a war between nodes (which would right now only include nodes of different vassal systems) - you shouldn't be able to see markets. But I do think that nodes should have mayor-driven relationships where you can share your stall/shop info, so that people can check that stuff easily.
This is a question of market stability, and I haven't encountered games other than the ones I already play, where that's even a real concept, except ArcheAge, and ArcheAge isn't the same type of economy depth as FF11 or Ashes. Basically, in FF11, you wouldn't need to be able to 'see' the Markets, after a little while.
And of course, people will always create online repositories for information. "All Fantasy MMOs also have the Internet". That's not something one 'fights' because one doesn't have to, you just assume every economic actor has perfect information and continue from there. It doesn't meaningfully affect the design, as long as the system doesn't allow Buy Orders and the Econ Designer is savvy.
And even with that mechanic, connecting nodes from across the server would, in theory, still be kinda hard. Though this will depend on how exactly we can build up node relations, so that's a separate convo.
This will also come down to whether or not 'delivery' is magical and always safe or not. Right now, we don't actually know with certainty if the items a player buys on a distant Auction House will be delivered to their residence/current node/warehouse without any chance of disruption.
Azherae
1
