Wow. This has reminded me again of the vast difference in economic experiences offered by MMOs.
I thought it was 'clear' that Ashes mobs would drop crafting mats and not things you could just sell for coin to NPCs.
I realize now that it does not explicitly say that. But for clarity that is what my understanding, models, and FFXI's gameplay loop are based on.
You take the 'certificate' halfway across the map because the people there don't have any crabs to kill for crab meat. Not because an NPC will just give you gold for crab meat.
Daylie quests are the absolute death to fun.
WoW Vanilla did not have them and your source of income was huge. You could do every day something different.
Since TBC and all other MMOs followed the lazy way. Archeage at the current stage is by far the worst.
Daylie quests are the absolute death to fun.
WoW Vanilla did not have them and your source of income was huge. You could do every day something different.
Since TBC and all other MMOs followed the lazy way. Archeage at the current stage is by far the worst.
I believe that daily style quests offered by players who are citizens of a node would offer enough guidance for the type of player that normally needs the game to have them.
Wow. This has reminded me again of the vast difference in economic experiences offered by MMOs.
I thought it was 'clear' that Ashes mobs would drop crafting mats and not things you could just sell for coin to NPCs.
I realize now that it does not explicitly say that. But for clarity that is what my understanding, models, and FFXI's gameplay loop are based on.
You take the 'certificate' halfway across the map because the people there don't have any crabs to kill for crab meat. Not because an NPC will just give you gold for crab meat.
Next month's Q&A question I guess.
I really hope so.
(which is why I thought it made the most sense for questing to be the major source of currency)
Or we could go REAL grassroots: mine precious metals and any tier 4(?) economic node can build a mint and start BRRRRRR - except they need the precious metals to do so (and the currency would ACTUALLY be able to be resmithed into something else ... like a legimately non-fiat currency)
Actually I'm really curious - if Ashes had "non-fiat" currency that was based on mined precious metals that could also be resmelted into armor etc. - would an MMO's economy break because of some virtual factor?
Monsters drop hunting certificates, Items and crafting materials rather than gold.[2][3]
Hunting certificates is a term that covers items, such as Pelts that house the value of a mob's death. These certificates are specific to an economic region.[4]
A wolf is not going to be carrying a sack of gold. It may instead drop "pelts" that can be traded for gold.[3]
Hunting certificates will also drop on a character's death.[2]
Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.[2]
The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.[4][2]
The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.[4]
Hunting certificates can also be stored within node warehouses.[2]
Loot tables of world bosses or dungeon bosses have a small RNG chance of dropping gear (completed items).[5][6]
There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.[5][7][8] There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.[9]
Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.[10]
Stats on dropped items will vary based on the rarity of the item.[11]
Loot tables are disabled for player controlled monsters.[12]
Experience debt decreases the drop rate percentages from monsters.[13]
Players drop hunting certificates and other items upon death, based on their applicable death penalties.[14][15][16][2]
So yup, the current design is that you farm mobs for certs, and then you bring those certs to NPCs far away in exchange for raw gold. In addition to certs, mobs appear to also have a chance to rare items, legendary items, and mats.
Grind at Star's End for certs until inventory is full and hope for a extra rare Star Droplets. Shuttle those back to medium distance Economic Metropolis when your inventory is full for travel bonus. Liquidity pools. Drop off Star Droplets. Buy Armor Upgrade. Head back to Star's End. Repeat.
Grind at Star's End for certs until inventory is full and hope for a extra rare Star Droplets. Get attacked by a PvP'er hoping to steal your full inventory. Lose to the PvP'er. Grind at Star's End for certs until inventory is full and hope for an extra rare Star Droplet. Get attacked by a PvP'er hoping to steal your full inventory. Beat the PvP'er. Shuttle certs back to medium distance Economic Metropolis when your inventory is full for travel bonus. Liquidity pools. Drop off Star Droplets. Buy Armor Upgrade. Head back to Star's End. Find another gatherer who has a full inventory of certs. Become the PvP'er. Beat the gatherer and take their inventory. Shuttle certs back to medium distance Economic Metropolis when your inventory is full. Put certs on a caravan that someone's sending out, to get the extra cash for it. Go along with the caravan to defend it, and make a ton of cash at the caravan's end. Repeat.
I hope that when I choose to play scissors, I run into a bunch of paper on the road instead of rock. Or maybe I can run into other scissors so I can actually play.
Sorry @daveywavey that was a tad out of character for me, the jab was too appealing to pass up 😈
I totally agree with what I think your point is - PvP makes everything more interesting, even mundane repetitive grinds.
I hope you agree with me that PvP also adds fun to fun, novel, interesting games. Like how if I didn't have to endlessly grind Star's End to be economically efficient, and instead, there was a system in place that incentivized players to not pick a single lane and stay there (with everyone in their own separate lane according to congestion dynamics), allowing players to experience novelty (multiple lanes) while also staying efficient. That PvP could happen in that game, too!
I'm not actually sure what changes. Gold is created, (but I always knew gold was going to be created. It has to be created, somehow.) Then, there will be a sink. That sink might be in the form of repair costs, or auction house fees, or whatever. If the faucets and sinks are out of whack, you get inflation / deflation, but we know that already.
It also looks like the design creates low-liquidity crafting mats from farmable mobs (since crafting mats are a low% drop rate while giving players a steady supply of certs so they don't feel bad for getting nothing all the time).
I guess a main difference is that money can change hands without there ever being an exchange. Someone can farm up a bunch of certs and sell them. They're richer and the server has more gold. Meanwhile, the rest of the server pays repair fees and the rest of the server has slightly less gold. Once enough repair fees have been paid, the server has the same amount of gold as before, but money has changed hands. Everyone has effectively "paid" random-farmer-person for killing all of those crabs.
I'm not actually sure what changes. Gold is created, (but I always knew gold was going to be created. It has to be created, somehow.) Then, there will be a sink. That sink might be in the form of repair costs, or auction house fees, or whatever. If the faucets and sinks are out of whack, you get inflation / deflation, but we know that already.
It also looks like the design creates low-liquidity crafting mats from farmable mobs (since crafting mats are a low% drop rate while giving players a steady supply of certs so they don't feel bad for getting nothing all the time).
Forgive me this time for not wanting to go deeper into that, I'm honestly kinda bummed out now.
There's a whole lot that I have to restructure and work on based on the realization I just had, and I'd rather spend the time I was devoting to Ashes, back to Cardinal.
Short version if you wanna discuss it yourself:
When currency is based on some questline, then I can control currency by 'number of players x number of quests' and then add whatever faucets I like as necessary.
When it is based on drops, I can't control it because it's now 'number of player hours x value of drops'.
That's what I was telling you before. I have made less money in FFXI from selling goods to an NPC over the years I have played it, than I probably have opening treasure chests in dungeons. And I know I've opened less than 100 treasure chests.
Have fun. I may drift in and out, but I'm gonna go channel all this weird emotion into doing design work.
Sorry @daveywavey that was a tad out of character for me, the jab was too appealing to pass up 😈
I totally agree with what I think your point is - PvP makes everything more interesting, even mundane repetitive grinds.
I hope you agree with me that PvP also adds fun to fun, novel, interesting games. Like how if I didn't have to endlessly grind Star's End to be economically efficient, and instead, there was a system in place that incentivized players to not pick a single lane and stay there (with everyone in their own separate lane according to congestion dynamics), allowing players to experience novelty (multiple lanes) while also staying efficient. That PvP could happen in that game, too!
Heh, don't worry about it
It was more a point about player interaction. There will always be one particular way of doing things the most effectively and efficiently. What will break it up is interaction from other players, whether that's PvP, or finding someone running a caravan that would actually triple your profits, or running into a group looking for just your role to run a dungeon raid, or having a guildie need your help, or seeing a large group incoming and setting up a personal shop right there to sell your stuff, etc. The game is based around player interaction, right down to its cores principles such as the Node System and how nodes develop. Hopefully there will always be some sort of player interaction around us to keep things interesting.
Sorry @daveywavey that was a tad out of character for me, the jab was too appealing to pass up 😈
I totally agree with what I think your point is - PvP makes everything more interesting, even mundane repetitive grinds.
I hope you agree with me that PvP also adds fun to fun, novel, interesting games. Like how if I didn't have to endlessly grind Star's End to be economically efficient, and instead, there was a system in place that incentivized players to not pick a single lane and stay there (with everyone in their own separate lane according to congestion dynamics), allowing players to experience novelty (multiple lanes) while also staying efficient. That PvP could happen in that game, too!
Heh, don't worry about it
It was more a point about player interaction. There will always be one particular way of doing things the most effectively and efficiently. What will break it up is interaction from other players, whether that's PvP, or finding someone running a caravan that would actually triple your profits, or running into a group looking for just your role to run a dungeon raid, or having a guildie need your help, or seeing a large group incoming and setting up a personal shop right there to sell your stuff, etc. The game is based around player interaction, right down to its cores principles such as the Node System and how nodes develop. Hopefully there will always be some sort of player interaction around us to keep things interesting.
I don't know how much of the thread you read, but there's a couple of things here.
"There will always be one particular way of doing things the most effectively and efficiently."
There might be multiple ways that are sufficiently close to being equal that you have a choice as an optimizer.
Also, the duration at which a particular activity is the top-dog is the main concern that I'm worried about. If the market settles, and it turns out that the most effective activity for me is to farm crabs for the next 10000 hours (and for someone else, it's to farm harpies, and for someone else, it's to farm turtles, and so on, everyone in their own lane), then I think that's a problem. If I only need to farm crabs for the next 6 hours before something else becomes more efficient it's less of a problem. Does that make sense?
There are mechanics the devs can put in place that creates the kind of system I'm talking about. It just has to be recognized as a goal and explicitly designed for.
Wow. This has reminded me again of the vast difference in economic experiences offered by MMOs.
I thought it was 'clear' that Ashes mobs would drop crafting mats and not things you could just sell for coin to NPCs.
I realize now that it does not explicitly say that. But for clarity that is what my understanding, models, and FFXI's gameplay loop are based on.
You take the 'certificate' halfway across the map because the people there don't have any crabs to kill for crab meat. Not because an NPC will just give you gold for crab meat.
Next month's Q&A question I guess.
Taking crab meat to a node that doesn't have any is what the caravan system is for, not the certificate system.
To be clear, I am not saying that all mobs will not drop any crafting materials. rare mobs and bosses will drop (or, more likely, will be able to have an experienced harvester remove) specific parts of them to make specific items.
While you may use 120 leather to make a leather tunic, you may be able to make a "leather tunic of the big bear in that cave over there" by using 120 leather tunics as well as one pelt from the big bear in that cave over there.
Forgive me this time for not wanting to go deeper into that, I'm honestly kinda bummed out now.
Fully understand this feeling here.
Developers still have levers they can pull to adjust the gold coming in to the game. They can adjust the drop rate of certificates, they can adjust the added value of taking them further, they can even adjust the base gold value of each certificate that is then altered by distance.
The problem with currency generation being based on quests is that all a player needs to do is make an alt, and they double their currency generation potential. Developers have no real control over that, any given players wealth is still a simple factor of the time they have available.
It also looks like the design creates low-liquidity crafting mats from farmable mobs (since crafting mats are a low% drop rate while giving players a steady supply of certs so they don't feel bad for getting nothing all the time).
Most crafting mats will be produced by players in their freehold.
There will, however, be low liquidity rare crafting mats.
Keep in mind, when saying that some mobs will drop mats (or be able to have them harvested from the mob) he was talking about all mobs in the game, not just trash mobs. It may well be that there is a golem raid boss that once killed drops what ever loot it will drop, and also allows a high level miner to mine a specific ore from it to make raid level loot. A regular base population golem is not likely to have this happen at all, you would just get the certificate.
Someone can farm up a bunch of certs and sell them. They're richer and the server has more gold. Meanwhile, the rest of the server pays repair fees and the rest of the server has slightly less gold. Once enough repair fees have been paid, the server has the same amount of gold as before, but money has changed hands. Everyone has effectively "paid" random-farmer-person for killing all of those crabs.
No one explicitly agreed to that transaction
So, in any game, someone performs action that generates gold, someone else performs action that is a gold sink - is that an exchange that no one explicitly agreed to?
I mean, all games have a means to generate gold, and all games have a money sink. You yourself said that. Surely this line of thinking either applies to all games, or it doesn't apply to any.
It also looks like the design creates low-liquidity crafting mats from farmable mobs (since crafting mats are a low% drop rate while giving players a steady supply of certs so they don't feel bad for getting nothing all the time).
Most crafting mats will be produced by players in their freehold.
There will, however, be low liquidity rare crafting mats.
Keep in mind, when saying that some mobs will drop mats (or be able to have them harvested from the mob) he was talking about all mobs in the game, not just trash mobs. It may well be that there is a golem raid boss that once killed drops what ever loot it will drop, and also allows a high level miner to mine a specific ore from it to make raid level loot. A regular base population golem is not likely to have this happen at all, you would just get the certificate.
Someone can farm up a bunch of certs and sell them. They're richer and the server has more gold. Meanwhile, the rest of the server pays repair fees and the rest of the server has slightly less gold. Once enough repair fees have been paid, the server has the same amount of gold as before, but money has changed hands. Everyone has effectively "paid" random-farmer-person for killing all of those crabs.
Yeah, checks out - not every mob necessarily has to drop a crafting material.
So, in any game, someone performs action that generates gold, someone else performs action that is a gold sink - is that an exchange that no one explicitly agreed to?
I mean, all games have a means to generate gold, and all games have a money sink. You yourself said that. Surely this line of thinking either applies to all games, or it doesn't apply to any.
Yup! I'm also not the one that has a problem with this sort of game design. I was trying to figure out what was troubling Rae. Worth pointing out that nothing there was a criticism, just pointing out implications
From an economics perspective, this relatively punishes currency holders (since economic power is transferred from holders to mob-farmers without an explicit exchange), and that's something I'm completely okay with. You see that sort of thing in crypto yield-farming all the time - mech design that punishes passive stake-holders and rewards active investers.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the game design I like, in 202X.
But for clarity, quests in FFXI don't usually give you cash nor exp. "Fame", maps, and occasionally some standard armor (which can be sold but tends to suck in NPC price), sometimes some other item that is used somewhere else and can be sold, but not currency.
So it's another place where my experience doesn't match up. "Players can just generate money by doing quests"? Sure, a little, but...
"Back in my day we had to walk fifteen malms through Bhaflau Thickets just to get a lady to teach you how to cook a dessert!"
I recognize that this is not the game most people want to play, I just got all starry eyed at the possibility that maybe people did, and Ashes was going to be close to it.
And for clarity on why I realized I've made a mistake:
Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.[2]
Don't like this.
The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.[4][2]
Definitely don't like this.
The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.[4]
Feeling pretty stupid for not paying enough attention to the loot concept to notice this and geting all excited, but it's important to forgive oneself for one's mistakes.
So, given that the above is the sort of game that I've played for the last 15 years (at various levels of abstraction) do you see why I made the thread?
At the very least in WoW/FFXIV, once you were a total gold goblin, you still had to go out and earn your gear, and couldn't just buy that too. Here, I'm just terrified that I'll be infinitely shuttling my certs from node-52 to node-17 and it seems like the general response is "what's wrong with that?"
So, given that the above is the sort of game that I've played for the last 15 years (at various levels of abstraction) do you see why I made the thread?
At the very least in WoW/FFXIV, once you were a total gold goblin, you still had to go out and earn your gear, and couldn't just buy that too. Here, I'm just terrified that I'll be infinitely shuttling my certs from node-52 to node-17 and it seems like the general response is "what's wrong with that?"
I think it's a testament to your (our?) tenacity for discussion that we managed to reach a point of agreement on something without even actually having the same priors.
The question now is, what's the better course of action? Should we assume that this design concept is 'just what is enough to make the caravan system work'? Should we give negative feedback (beyond what this thread amounts to)?
I usually don't do that because I like my games too hardcore, too complicated, and this is often not fun for others. Now I'd have to try to figure out if this whole 'go to node 52 and kill a bunch of stuff and then caravan certificates all back to node-17' is something other people need to have fun.
Now I've absorbed all your concerns twice over. World manager algorithm? For every certificate across 103 nodes? One bug or 'too safe' route and this whole thing is back to optimizer hell. In the end all I can say to it is, that I don't see why it is necessary to be carting around certificates for '4-5 times the return' as your cash flow in a 'risk-vs-reward' 'player driven economy' game.
So, given that the above is the sort of game that I've played for the last 15 years (at various levels of abstraction) do you see why I made the thread?
At the very least in WoW/FFXIV, once you were a total gold goblin, you still had to go out and earn your gear, and couldn't just buy that too. Here, I'm just terrified that I'll be infinitely shuttling my certs from node-52 to node-17 and it seems like the general response is "what's wrong with that?"
I think it's a testament to your (our?) tenacity for discussion that we managed to reach a point of agreement on something without even actually having the same priors.
The question now is, what's the better course of action? Should we assume that this design concept is 'just what is enough to make the caravan system work'? Should we give negative feedback (beyond what this thread amounts to)?
I usually don't do that because I like my games too hardcore, too complicated, and this is often not fun for others. Now I'd have to try to figure out if this whole 'go to node 52 and kill a bunch of stuff and then caravan certificates all back to node-17' is something other people need to have fun.
Now I've absorbed all your concerns twice over. World manager algorithm? For every certificate across 103 nodes? One bug or 'too safe' route and this whole thing is back to optimizer hell. In the end all I can say to it is, that I don't see why it is necessary to be carting around certificates for '4-5 times the return' as your cash flow in a 'risk-vs-reward' 'player driven economy' game.
An open question for me is whether or not certs even take up appreciable inventory weight or space. They might just be an ever-increasing PvP risk. If they fill up your inventory but aren't worth a lot, folks might end up deleting them to make space for mats. If they fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, you might end up making frequent trips to adjacent nodes (and cross paths with other travellers, which creates open world PVP). If they don't fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, it inflates the gold but you end up sitting in farm-land until you fill up your inventory from mats or you get too nervous because your inventory has too much risk in it and you want to unload.
Anyway, once we get the answer to all of that, this issue is important enough to me that I'd be willing to escalate somehow. Whether that's forwarding it to some sort of higher-up contact (if someone has one), sitting down with one of the community content creators (I happen to think I have a pleasant speaking voice), etc.
So, given that the above is the sort of game that I've played for the last 15 years (at various levels of abstraction) do you see why I made the thread?
At the very least in WoW/FFXIV, once you were a total gold goblin, you still had to go out and earn your gear, and couldn't just buy that too. Here, I'm just terrified that I'll be infinitely shuttling my certs from node-52 to node-17 and it seems like the general response is "what's wrong with that?"
I think it's a testament to your (our?) tenacity for discussion that we managed to reach a point of agreement on something without even actually having the same priors.
The question now is, what's the better course of action? Should we assume that this design concept is 'just what is enough to make the caravan system work'? Should we give negative feedback (beyond what this thread amounts to)?
I usually don't do that because I like my games too hardcore, too complicated, and this is often not fun for others. Now I'd have to try to figure out if this whole 'go to node 52 and kill a bunch of stuff and then caravan certificates all back to node-17' is something other people need to have fun.
Now I've absorbed all your concerns twice over. World manager algorithm? For every certificate across 103 nodes? One bug or 'too safe' route and this whole thing is back to optimizer hell. In the end all I can say to it is, that I don't see why it is necessary to be carting around certificates for '4-5 times the return' as your cash flow in a 'risk-vs-reward' 'player driven economy' game.
An open question for me is whether or not certs even take up appreciable inventory weight or space. They might just be an ever-increasing PvP risk. If they fill up your inventory but aren't worth a lot, folks might end up deleting them to make space for mats. If they fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, you might end up making frequent trips to adjacent nodes (and cross paths with other travellers, which creates open world PVP). If they don't fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, it inflates the gold but you end up sitting in farm-land until you fill up your inventory from mats or you get too nervous because your inventory has too much risk in it and you want to unload.
Anyway, once we get the answer to all of that, this issue is important enough to me that I'd be willing to escalate somehow. Whether that's forwarding it to some sort of higher-up contact (if someone has one), sitting down with one of the community content creators (I happen to think I have a pleasant speaking voice), etc.
Noted. The other concern here is something else that my group has been sitting on for a really long time but I keep telling people 'don't go fussing about it until we see Alpha-2'. The gist of it is 'is your Freehold safe?', and 'if you can generate economic returns from your safe Freehold, then isn't this the least risky action possible?'
The assumptions I would have made before were 'of course Freeholds won't be very safe' (I'm not counting the fact that they can be destroyed if the node falls, because you can't siege nodes often enough) and 'Of course you won't be able to just generate most materials in your Freehold'.
Starting to feel like I shouldn't assume either of those, either. Another question to throw on the pile for next month's Dev Discussion Q&A.
So, given that the above is the sort of game that I've played for the last 15 years (at various levels of abstraction) do you see why I made the thread?
At the very least in WoW/FFXIV, once you were a total gold goblin, you still had to go out and earn your gear, and couldn't just buy that too. Here, I'm just terrified that I'll be infinitely shuttling my certs from node-52 to node-17 and it seems like the general response is "what's wrong with that?"
I think it's a testament to your (our?) tenacity for discussion that we managed to reach a point of agreement on something without even actually having the same priors.
The question now is, what's the better course of action? Should we assume that this design concept is 'just what is enough to make the caravan system work'? Should we give negative feedback (beyond what this thread amounts to)?
I usually don't do that because I like my games too hardcore, too complicated, and this is often not fun for others. Now I'd have to try to figure out if this whole 'go to node 52 and kill a bunch of stuff and then caravan certificates all back to node-17' is something other people need to have fun.
Now I've absorbed all your concerns twice over. World manager algorithm? For every certificate across 103 nodes? One bug or 'too safe' route and this whole thing is back to optimizer hell. In the end all I can say to it is, that I don't see why it is necessary to be carting around certificates for '4-5 times the return' as your cash flow in a 'risk-vs-reward' 'player driven economy' game.
An open question for me is whether or not certs even take up appreciable inventory weight or space. They might just be an ever-increasing PvP risk. If they fill up your inventory but aren't worth a lot, folks might end up deleting them to make space for mats. If they fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, you might end up making frequent trips to adjacent nodes (and cross paths with other travellers, which creates open world PVP). If they don't fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, it inflates the gold but you end up sitting in farm-land until you fill up your inventory from mats or you get too nervous because your inventory has too much risk in it and you want to unload.
Anyway, once we get the answer to all of that, this issue is important enough to me that I'd be willing to escalate somehow. Whether that's forwarding it to some sort of higher-up contact (if someone has one), sitting down with one of the community content creators (I happen to think I have a pleasant speaking voice), etc.
Noted. The other concern here is something else that my group has been sitting on for a really long time but I keep telling people 'don't go fussing about it until we see Alpha-2'. The gist of it is 'is your Freehold safe?', and 'if you can generate economic returns from your safe Freehold, then isn't this the least risky action possible?'
The assumptions I would have made before were 'of course Freeholds won't be very safe' (I'm not counting the fact that they can be destroyed if the node falls, because you can't siege nodes often enough) and 'Of course you won't be able to just generate most materials in your Freehold'.
Starting to feel like I shouldn't assume either of those, either. Another question to throw on the pile for next month's Dev Discussion Q&A.
As far as we know, you are safe while inside a building on your freehold, but not while out in a garden, or tending to animals or such.
It is also worth pointing out that generating materials in Ashesnisnnot likely to be lucrative, but supplying materials where they are needed probably will be.
That is the part with the risk - getting the near valueless materials to a location where they have value.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the game design I like, in 202X.
But for clarity, quests in FFXI don't usually give you cash nor exp. "Fame", maps, and occasionally some standard armor (which can be sold but tends to suck in NPC price), sometimes some other item that is used somewhere else and can be sold, but not currency.
So it's another place where my experience doesn't match up. "Players can just generate money by doing quests"? Sure, a little, but...
"Back in my day we had to walk fifteen malms through Bhaflau Thickets just to get a lady to teach you how to cook a dessert!"
I recognize that this is not the game most people want to play, I just got all starry eyed at the possibility that maybe people did, and Ashes was going to be close to it.
And for clarity on why I realized I've made a mistake:
Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.[2]
Don't like this.
The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.[4][2]
Definitely don't like this.
The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.[4]
Feeling pretty stupid for not paying enough attention to the loot concept to notice this and geting all excited, but it's important to forgive oneself for one's mistakes.
Do you know if you don't like these things because you have seen similar systems in action and didn't like them, or because it is not what you thought was going to be the case in Ashes, or perhaps some other reason?
There's no real right or wrong answer here, its just often worthwhile to explore why you don't like something.
Do you know if you don't like these things because you have seen similar systems in action and didn't like them, or because it is not what you thought was going to be the case in Ashes, or perhaps some other reason?
There's no real right or wrong answer here, its just often worthwhile to explore why you don't like something.
As has been discussed for most of the past 5 pages, the problem is that the certificates generate an uncontrolled amount of total gold on the server dependent entirely on player time investment. This will make your economy spin out of control into inflation, because there's no true limit to the money supply, and any sinks you add will only hurt players who aren't min/maxing on certificate farming.
Grilled cheese always tastes better when you eat it together!
Here's my problem: Often, the content I'm most interested is locked behind something I don't find rewarding or isn't rewarding long enough to keep my attention. My time is important to me and Id rather not spend Most of it doing boring or unfun things just to keep up with the fun content. I think it's really important to enjoy the journey in MMOs so I'm trying to think of ways I, and other players like me, can enjoy the journey to get to the most challenging content.
I agree. This is also my problem with a lot of MMOs. I like the enjoy the journey, not just the destination. However, a lot of times, the destination in the MMO is the content that you actually want to play, and the journey is a 1,000 hour unfun grind to get there.
I don't think the solution to this needs to be very complicated. Make progression paths for plays of each type of content in the game. These progression paths do not have to be exactly the same exp/hr as every other progression path, but make it so that it doesn't feel like a waste of time to choose one progression path over the other. This will let players find their niche in the game, and let them enjoy the journey while also letting them progress at a reasonable rate.
Also, I don't think that making the most boring activity should be rewarded with the most exp/hr. The devs have the ability to control this, and they should slightly favor the activities that promote fun player engagement with others, rather than incentivizing everyone to turn into mob grinding zombies.
Do you know if you don't like these things because you have seen similar systems in action and didn't like them, or because it is not what you thought was going to be the case in Ashes, or perhaps some other reason?
There's no real right or wrong answer here, its just often worthwhile to explore why you don't like something.
As has been discussed for most of the past 5 pages, the problem is that the certificates generate an uncontrolled amount of total gold on the server dependent entirely on player time investment. This will make your economy spin out of control into inflation, because there's no true limit to the money supply, and any sinks you add will only hurt players who aren't min/maxing on certificate farming.
You say this as if literally every other MMO in existence didn't have a means of creating coin that was essentially uncontrolled.
Also, you have no real way of knowing if there will be any controls on certificates. We know for a fact that the more that are turned in, the lower any subsequent certificates are worth in that node. What we don't know with this is how many - it could be that certificates lose 1% in value for every 100k turned in, or it could be that they lose 90% value after 10 have been turned in. We just don't know.
If the reason someone doesn't like this system is due to it being uncontrolled, those two points should at least make them pause and rethink. We already know of more potential controls on certificates than most games have on their primary gold generating activities, so it is just too early to have this opinion.
I am fairly confident @Azherae would be able to see this, as they are generally a fairly level headed person. It may take a minute after realizing a major aspect of what they thought the game was may not be the case, which is why I was asking them to try and establish what it is they do kot like about the system.
Comments
I thought it was 'clear' that Ashes mobs would drop crafting mats and not things you could just sell for coin to NPCs.
I realize now that it does not explicitly say that. But for clarity that is what my understanding, models, and FFXI's gameplay loop are based on.
You take the 'certificate' halfway across the map because the people there don't have any crabs to kill for crab meat. Not because an NPC will just give you gold for crab meat.
Next month's Q&A question I guess.
WoW Vanilla did not have them and your source of income was huge. You could do every day something different.
Since TBC and all other MMOs followed the lazy way. Archeage at the current stage is by far the worst.
I believe that daily style quests offered by players who are citizens of a node would offer enough guidance for the type of player that normally needs the game to have them.
I really hope so.
(which is why I thought it made the most sense for questing to be the major source of currency)
Or we could go REAL grassroots: mine precious metals and any tier 4(?) economic node can build a mint and start BRRRRRR - except they need the precious metals to do so (and the currency would ACTUALLY be able to be resmithed into something else ... like a legimately non-fiat currency)
Actually I'm really curious - if Ashes had "non-fiat" currency that was based on mined precious metals that could also be resmelted into armor etc. - would an MMO's economy break because of some virtual factor?
So yup, the current design is that you farm mobs for certs, and then you bring those certs to NPCs far away in exchange for raw gold. In addition to certs, mobs appear to also have a chance to rare items, legendary items, and mats.
Grind at Star's End for certs until inventory is full and hope for a extra rare Star Droplets. Shuttle those back to medium distance Economic Metropolis when your inventory is full for travel bonus. Liquidity pools. Drop off Star Droplets. Buy Armor Upgrade. Head back to Star's End. Repeat.
I added a few extra steps in for you
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Game_balance
I hope that when I choose to play scissors, I run into a bunch of paper on the road instead of rock. Or maybe I can run into other scissors so I can actually play.
I totally agree with what I think your point is - PvP makes everything more interesting, even mundane repetitive grinds.
I hope you agree with me that PvP also adds fun to fun, novel, interesting games. Like how if I didn't have to endlessly grind Star's End to be economically efficient, and instead, there was a system in place that incentivized players to not pick a single lane and stay there (with everyone in their own separate lane according to congestion dynamics), allowing players to experience novelty (multiple lanes) while also staying efficient. That PvP could happen in that game, too!
In the end I guess this is what I get for being lazy and not wanting to make the game myself.
It also looks like the design creates low-liquidity crafting mats from farmable mobs (since crafting mats are a low% drop rate while giving players a steady supply of certs so they don't feel bad for getting nothing all the time).
I guess a main difference is that money can change hands without there ever being an exchange. Someone can farm up a bunch of certs and sell them. They're richer and the server has more gold. Meanwhile, the rest of the server pays repair fees and the rest of the server has slightly less gold. Once enough repair fees have been paid, the server has the same amount of gold as before, but money has changed hands. Everyone has effectively "paid" random-farmer-person for killing all of those crabs.
No one explicitly agreed to that transaction
Forgive me this time for not wanting to go deeper into that, I'm honestly kinda bummed out now.
There's a whole lot that I have to restructure and work on based on the realization I just had, and I'd rather spend the time I was devoting to Ashes, back to Cardinal.
Short version if you wanna discuss it yourself:
When currency is based on some questline, then I can control currency by 'number of players x number of quests' and then add whatever faucets I like as necessary.
When it is based on drops, I can't control it because it's now 'number of player hours x value of drops'.
That's what I was telling you before. I have made less money in FFXI from selling goods to an NPC over the years I have played it, than I probably have opening treasure chests in dungeons. And I know I've opened less than 100 treasure chests.
Have fun. I may drift in and out, but I'm gonna go channel all this weird emotion into doing design work.
Heh, don't worry about it
It was more a point about player interaction. There will always be one particular way of doing things the most effectively and efficiently. What will break it up is interaction from other players, whether that's PvP, or finding someone running a caravan that would actually triple your profits, or running into a group looking for just your role to run a dungeon raid, or having a guildie need your help, or seeing a large group incoming and setting up a personal shop right there to sell your stuff, etc. The game is based around player interaction, right down to its cores principles such as the Node System and how nodes develop. Hopefully there will always be some sort of player interaction around us to keep things interesting.
I don't know how much of the thread you read, but there's a couple of things here.
"There will always be one particular way of doing things the most effectively and efficiently."
There might be multiple ways that are sufficiently close to being equal that you have a choice as an optimizer.
Also, the duration at which a particular activity is the top-dog is the main concern that I'm worried about. If the market settles, and it turns out that the most effective activity for me is to farm crabs for the next 10000 hours (and for someone else, it's to farm harpies, and for someone else, it's to farm turtles, and so on, everyone in their own lane), then I think that's a problem. If I only need to farm crabs for the next 6 hours before something else becomes more efficient it's less of a problem. Does that make sense?
There are mechanics the devs can put in place that creates the kind of system I'm talking about. It just has to be recognized as a goal and explicitly designed for.
To be clear, I am not saying that all mobs will not drop any crafting materials. rare mobs and bosses will drop (or, more likely, will be able to have an experienced harvester remove) specific parts of them to make specific items.
While you may use 120 leather to make a leather tunic, you may be able to make a "leather tunic of the big bear in that cave over there" by using 120 leather tunics as well as one pelt from the big bear in that cave over there.
Fully understand this feeling here.
Developers still have levers they can pull to adjust the gold coming in to the game. They can adjust the drop rate of certificates, they can adjust the added value of taking them further, they can even adjust the base gold value of each certificate that is then altered by distance.
The problem with currency generation being based on quests is that all a player needs to do is make an alt, and they double their currency generation potential. Developers have no real control over that, any given players wealth is still a simple factor of the time they have available.
There will, however, be low liquidity rare crafting mats.
Keep in mind, when saying that some mobs will drop mats (or be able to have them harvested from the mob) he was talking about all mobs in the game, not just trash mobs. It may well be that there is a golem raid boss that once killed drops what ever loot it will drop, and also allows a high level miner to mine a specific ore from it to make raid level loot. A regular base population golem is not likely to have this happen at all, you would just get the certificate.
So, in any game, someone performs action that generates gold, someone else performs action that is a gold sink - is that an exchange that no one explicitly agreed to?
I mean, all games have a means to generate gold, and all games have a money sink. You yourself said that. Surely this line of thinking either applies to all games, or it doesn't apply to any.
Yeah, checks out - not every mob necessarily has to drop a crafting material.
Yup! I'm also not the one that has a problem with this sort of game design. I was trying to figure out what was troubling Rae. Worth pointing out that nothing there was a criticism, just pointing out implications
From an economics perspective, this relatively punishes currency holders (since economic power is transferred from holders to mob-farmers without an explicit exchange), and that's something I'm completely okay with. You see that sort of thing in crypto yield-farming all the time - mech design that punishes passive stake-holders and rewards active investers.
I don't like the design, that's all.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect the game design I like, in 202X.
But for clarity, quests in FFXI don't usually give you cash nor exp. "Fame", maps, and occasionally some standard armor (which can be sold but tends to suck in NPC price), sometimes some other item that is used somewhere else and can be sold, but not currency.
So it's another place where my experience doesn't match up. "Players can just generate money by doing quests"? Sure, a little, but...
"Back in my day we had to walk fifteen malms through Bhaflau Thickets just to get a lady to teach you how to cook a dessert!"
I recognize that this is not the game most people want to play, I just got all starry eyed at the possibility that maybe people did, and Ashes was going to be close to it.
And for clarity on why I realized I've made a mistake:
Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.[2]
Don't like this.
The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.[4][2]
Definitely don't like this.
The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.[4]
Feeling pretty stupid for not paying enough attention to the loot concept to notice this and geting all excited, but it's important to forgive oneself for one's mistakes.
At the very least in WoW/FFXIV, once you were a total gold goblin, you still had to go out and earn your gear, and couldn't just buy that too. Here, I'm just terrified that I'll be infinitely shuttling my certs from node-52 to node-17 and it seems like the general response is "what's wrong with that?"
I think it's a testament to your (our?) tenacity for discussion that we managed to reach a point of agreement on something without even actually having the same priors.
The question now is, what's the better course of action? Should we assume that this design concept is 'just what is enough to make the caravan system work'? Should we give negative feedback (beyond what this thread amounts to)?
I usually don't do that because I like my games too hardcore, too complicated, and this is often not fun for others. Now I'd have to try to figure out if this whole 'go to node 52 and kill a bunch of stuff and then caravan certificates all back to node-17' is something other people need to have fun.
Now I've absorbed all your concerns twice over. World manager algorithm? For every certificate across 103 nodes? One bug or 'too safe' route and this whole thing is back to optimizer hell. In the end all I can say to it is, that I don't see why it is necessary to be carting around certificates for '4-5 times the return' as your cash flow in a 'risk-vs-reward' 'player driven economy' game.
An open question for me is whether or not certs even take up appreciable inventory weight or space. They might just be an ever-increasing PvP risk. If they fill up your inventory but aren't worth a lot, folks might end up deleting them to make space for mats. If they fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, you might end up making frequent trips to adjacent nodes (and cross paths with other travellers, which creates open world PVP). If they don't fill up your inventory but are worth a lot, it inflates the gold but you end up sitting in farm-land until you fill up your inventory from mats or you get too nervous because your inventory has too much risk in it and you want to unload.
Anyway, once we get the answer to all of that, this issue is important enough to me that I'd be willing to escalate somehow. Whether that's forwarding it to some sort of higher-up contact (if someone has one), sitting down with one of the community content creators (I happen to think I have a pleasant speaking voice), etc.
Noted. The other concern here is something else that my group has been sitting on for a really long time but I keep telling people 'don't go fussing about it until we see Alpha-2'. The gist of it is 'is your Freehold safe?', and 'if you can generate economic returns from your safe Freehold, then isn't this the least risky action possible?'
The assumptions I would have made before were 'of course Freeholds won't be very safe' (I'm not counting the fact that they can be destroyed if the node falls, because you can't siege nodes often enough) and 'Of course you won't be able to just generate most materials in your Freehold'.
Starting to feel like I shouldn't assume either of those, either. Another question to throw on the pile for next month's Dev Discussion Q&A.
As far as we know, you are safe while inside a building on your freehold, but not while out in a garden, or tending to animals or such.
It is also worth pointing out that generating materials in Ashesnisnnot likely to be lucrative, but supplying materials where they are needed probably will be.
That is the part with the risk - getting the near valueless materials to a location where they have value.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Yes.
Do you know if you don't like these things because you have seen similar systems in action and didn't like them, or because it is not what you thought was going to be the case in Ashes, or perhaps some other reason?
There's no real right or wrong answer here, its just often worthwhile to explore why you don't like something.
As has been discussed for most of the past 5 pages, the problem is that the certificates generate an uncontrolled amount of total gold on the server dependent entirely on player time investment. This will make your economy spin out of control into inflation, because there's no true limit to the money supply, and any sinks you add will only hurt players who aren't min/maxing on certificate farming.
I agree. This is also my problem with a lot of MMOs. I like the enjoy the journey, not just the destination. However, a lot of times, the destination in the MMO is the content that you actually want to play, and the journey is a 1,000 hour unfun grind to get there.
I don't think the solution to this needs to be very complicated. Make progression paths for plays of each type of content in the game. These progression paths do not have to be exactly the same exp/hr as every other progression path, but make it so that it doesn't feel like a waste of time to choose one progression path over the other. This will let players find their niche in the game, and let them enjoy the journey while also letting them progress at a reasonable rate.
Also, I don't think that making the most boring activity should be rewarded with the most exp/hr. The devs have the ability to control this, and they should slightly favor the activities that promote fun player engagement with others, rather than incentivizing everyone to turn into mob grinding zombies.
You say this as if literally every other MMO in existence didn't have a means of creating coin that was essentially uncontrolled.
Also, you have no real way of knowing if there will be any controls on certificates. We know for a fact that the more that are turned in, the lower any subsequent certificates are worth in that node. What we don't know with this is how many - it could be that certificates lose 1% in value for every 100k turned in, or it could be that they lose 90% value after 10 have been turned in. We just don't know.
If the reason someone doesn't like this system is due to it being uncontrolled, those two points should at least make them pause and rethink. We already know of more potential controls on certificates than most games have on their primary gold generating activities, so it is just too early to have this opinion.
I am fairly confident @Azherae would be able to see this, as they are generally a fairly level headed person. It may take a minute after realizing a major aspect of what they thought the game was may not be the case, which is why I was asking them to try and establish what it is they do kot like about the system.