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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
The Inequality of Animal Husbandry
Halae
Member, Alpha Two
Something that came up in another thread was the fact that animal husbandry has the potential to be split into four overall branches - Mounts, Battle Pets, Beasts of Burden, and Livestock. This is great and all, but there's a secondary problem that spawns out of this solution, and that's the inequality of the different animal husbandry branches.
Mounts have long been a prestige item in various MMOs, and that's not going to change here. Even leaving aside that gaining a rare mount and adding it to your collection is something players can end up spending hundreds of hours on by itself, they have a utility function that's useful to everyone, including the utterly casual - getting from place to place faster. In fact, most games are designed from the ground up to be best handled at mount speeds, or doing things only mounts can do (such as the highly praised mount system in Guild Wars 2, which actually manages to make traversal fairly fun). Tier 2 mounts in Ashes are going to have the ability to glide, which as far as I'm aware is going to be the only way to gain that element of things.
So where does that leave the other options? It leaves them with two problems; prestige, and capability expansion. Let me go down the list of where the other three fail in this regard.
Battle pets are in an interesting spot because they have capability expansion in the form of having an extra body on the field, even if you need to give up a little in the way of stats to pull them out. This is potentially useful and also fairly interesting. However, there's problems - with the nature of the way classes work in ashes, diminishing your own capability for a pet that's liable to be nowhere as strong as you are is likely going to end up with the pet as more of a liability than a boon; my prime example of this is Guild Wars 2, in which players were begging for a way to turn off the ranger's pet because it caused problems for groups that were managing fight mechanics and the systems of the game. If this same problem is present in Ashes, it could cripple the utility of battle pets, while they also don't have the same level of prestige as mounts.
Beasts of burden are actually better off than battle pets, due to being essentially mounts that have given up part of their stats in order to gain an expansive inventory. The extra inventory space naturally gives us a solid reason to pick them up, due to being able to carry around resources well in excess of the player's inventory, but once a certain level of inventory space is achieved - whatever practical limit that is - players won't have any reason to pursue things further. Simply put, beasts of burden are all utility and no prestige, and getting to be 'good enough' is where people will stop.
Livestock is the worst off here, having both no prestige and disconnected utility. Can you gain utility from a cow, for instance? Absolutely. It can provide plenty of milk, and when you're ready to butcher it it can provide lots of high quality meat and other resources. But this requires several extra steps, specific skills for doing it, and... it's a cow. There's very, very few people chomping at the bit to get a cow, or pig, or goat, or other farm animal in their video game, meaning it has both highly restricted utility and incredibly low prestige.
The reason why this is a problem is it means that mount trainers are going to be in excessive demand over other types of animal husbandry specialists, and livestock handlers might even be regarded as something of a shit job guilds need filled but are forced to foist on people who otherwise would have gone for a different profession.
So how is this issue dealt with? The simplest and most direct way I can think of is to have additional tiers for the other forms of animal husbandry as well. By the example that mounts set, an additional tier for animals increases the level of capability it has in completing its function, in the form of Tier 2 mounts adding an additional traversal method (gliding). If we can add tier 2 animals to each of the different branches of animal husbandry, especially if these tier 2 animals are unique to this branch of animal husbandry and thus have some level of expanded capability and uniqueness, that should add much needed prestige to them. If these animals have unique abilities not found anywhere else in the game, or are an expansion on the core conceits of their animal husbandry type, that'd also benefit them greatly, and make things more equal.
Mounts have long been a prestige item in various MMOs, and that's not going to change here. Even leaving aside that gaining a rare mount and adding it to your collection is something players can end up spending hundreds of hours on by itself, they have a utility function that's useful to everyone, including the utterly casual - getting from place to place faster. In fact, most games are designed from the ground up to be best handled at mount speeds, or doing things only mounts can do (such as the highly praised mount system in Guild Wars 2, which actually manages to make traversal fairly fun). Tier 2 mounts in Ashes are going to have the ability to glide, which as far as I'm aware is going to be the only way to gain that element of things.
So where does that leave the other options? It leaves them with two problems; prestige, and capability expansion. Let me go down the list of where the other three fail in this regard.
Battle pets are in an interesting spot because they have capability expansion in the form of having an extra body on the field, even if you need to give up a little in the way of stats to pull them out. This is potentially useful and also fairly interesting. However, there's problems - with the nature of the way classes work in ashes, diminishing your own capability for a pet that's liable to be nowhere as strong as you are is likely going to end up with the pet as more of a liability than a boon; my prime example of this is Guild Wars 2, in which players were begging for a way to turn off the ranger's pet because it caused problems for groups that were managing fight mechanics and the systems of the game. If this same problem is present in Ashes, it could cripple the utility of battle pets, while they also don't have the same level of prestige as mounts.
Beasts of burden are actually better off than battle pets, due to being essentially mounts that have given up part of their stats in order to gain an expansive inventory. The extra inventory space naturally gives us a solid reason to pick them up, due to being able to carry around resources well in excess of the player's inventory, but once a certain level of inventory space is achieved - whatever practical limit that is - players won't have any reason to pursue things further. Simply put, beasts of burden are all utility and no prestige, and getting to be 'good enough' is where people will stop.
Livestock is the worst off here, having both no prestige and disconnected utility. Can you gain utility from a cow, for instance? Absolutely. It can provide plenty of milk, and when you're ready to butcher it it can provide lots of high quality meat and other resources. But this requires several extra steps, specific skills for doing it, and... it's a cow. There's very, very few people chomping at the bit to get a cow, or pig, or goat, or other farm animal in their video game, meaning it has both highly restricted utility and incredibly low prestige.
The reason why this is a problem is it means that mount trainers are going to be in excessive demand over other types of animal husbandry specialists, and livestock handlers might even be regarded as something of a shit job guilds need filled but are forced to foist on people who otherwise would have gone for a different profession.
So how is this issue dealt with? The simplest and most direct way I can think of is to have additional tiers for the other forms of animal husbandry as well. By the example that mounts set, an additional tier for animals increases the level of capability it has in completing its function, in the form of Tier 2 mounts adding an additional traversal method (gliding). If we can add tier 2 animals to each of the different branches of animal husbandry, especially if these tier 2 animals are unique to this branch of animal husbandry and thus have some level of expanded capability and uniqueness, that should add much needed prestige to them. If these animals have unique abilities not found anywhere else in the game, or are an expansion on the core conceits of their animal husbandry type, that'd also benefit them greatly, and make things more equal.
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Comments
Yes, livestock will probably be the rarest of those 4, but that just means that demand for high quality animal in that sub-type will be quite high. And the competition amongst all the players who need livestock will also be quite high, because everyone will be trying to be THE one who sells the best stuff around.
And all the collectors will just keep buying different versions of the other 3 animals just because they're collectors. Mounts have been the most important type in past mmos because that's what those mmos concentrated on. L2 concentrated more on pets because they were way more valuable to the player than the mount (mainly because L2 had TPs).
In theory AoC's most valuable animal could be a cow, just because a ton of potions/food that are required at end-game will require milk. And the better milk you have - the better the food/potions, which makes competition for quality cows just insane.
You make a good case for livestock, but what about beasts of burden? What about battle pets? They're still behind mounts in scope and prestige in ways that aren't made up for with economic power.
I see it this way:
You're not going to be able to afford a prestigious mount if you don't have the ressources to earn the coin for it. And what better way to gather resources faster than having a capable battle pet to speed the process up? And what more efficient way of gathering resources than having a more capable and capacious mule to carry your gathered items in fewer "expeditions" out of the node?
I speculate that these will fall under the 'beasts of burden' category, though 'livestock' (or others) might be substituted. Speculating further, there will be a large demand for caravans. We have personal caravans, node caravans, castle caravans from the castle nodes, quest caravans for nodes and likely other types of quests as well.
In order for caravans to succeed, the faster they move the better. So, breeding beasts of burden which are unusually fast would be a benefit to caravans.
In order for caravans to survive, if the animals were particularly hardy and strong, that will probably improve the caravan survivability. So, breeding beasts of burden that are high HP and high defense would be a benefit to a caravan. Breading animals that are both STRONG and FAST would be really valuable.
If a caravan is destroyed, then the animals are probably destroyed as well. It could be that they are automatically 'used up' when the caravan is completed, as are the other caravan components. I am guessing, therefore, that there will be a never-ending demand for well-bred beasts of burden.
Livestock of quality probably leads to higher quality meals for the cooking profession. Better meals served in taverns will likely provide better buffs for those eating the meals, so a demand will exist for breeding good livestock as well. Someone who breeds a 200-pound hog will make twice the profit compared to a 100-pound hog, and a high-quality 200 pounder will be worth even more. Of course, there will probably be additional uses for those animals that we don't know about yet.
@George_Black is spot-on with his predictions.
I know for me ill tend to find one mount i realy like and never use any other one unless i need x mount for x skill.
I see livestock be like alchemy its not fanciest and showy of the crafts like weaponsmithing but you tend to make alot more money from selling potion since there consumable and in constant need compared to weapons.
its one of those thing where we need more info on the artisan system before we can realy make a judgment on this matter. I will say one thing if everyone does mounts though there be huge supply and some demand where doing something that no one will do like livestock there be low supply with a great demand (Depending on how cooking or alchemy works). Also livestock could potential blend into other crafting it is a fantasy game so maybe there be a livestock animal that provides say wood/plants (like new worlds plant wolfs) or oils for weapon smithing and so on so it does have the potential to be the most important trade in the game :P
Also wealth could play a huge roll in the game too especialy with economic nodes
They have not. They are looking for hypothetical problems again @daveywavey
Sometimes i feel like people who imagine problems think that Intrepid is completely incompetent and that only their glorious minds could prevent them from making game-breaking mistakes. Which is kinda weird.
Yes they have, it was stated twice in the animal husbandry update that you would specialize in one of the four directions, mounts, pets, livestock or beasts. This is intended to bring it in line with the other more static professions.
"Animal husbandrist" will raise a pig that will be used to cook certain foods. The players will always need food and potions, thus the husbandrist will always need new pigs.
This is not the case for example mounts. Once a player has acquired a decent enough mount for land and sea there wont really be a need for more unless you are a collector.
There are different ways to equalize the animal husbandry branches. One would be to make the mounts specialized horizontally. Some may be tankier, have higher carry capacity, or faster in specific biomes.
Another way that won't be very popular is animal sinks, meaning mounts are killable, leading to a constant demand for mounts.
That sounds kind of "gatekeepy". Halae is doing what intrepid intended with these forums. To discuss hypothetical problems so they don't become real ones.
A limited amount of respawns or stats degradation on death would play into the risk vs reward aspect and keep the market healthy but yeah probably too hardcore for most.
My concern is how this will effect the mount market. If everyone only needs to get a mount once, how long would it take until people don't need them and someone who focused on this profession has no one to sell to?
I think it's false to presumes mounts are prestigous. Yes, a lot of popular games have prestigous mounts but they are only prestigous because they are hard to get. The basic raptor in GW2 or 60% mounts in wow aren't hard to get and If those were the only mounts available in those games, mounts wouldn't be considered prestigous.
Ashes will have mounts that are hard to get, like the dragon mounts, and because they are hard to get, they will be considered prestigous. We also will also be mount skins that are hard to get and in Ashes, could be what a mount collectors focus on since they can be put on any mount of a specific class. Mounts have abilities and will serve different roles. Someone's prestigous mount might not always be optimal to use but with a prestigious mount skin, they would be able to show off their achievement over multiple mounts.
Just something to think about. If people focus more on collecting mount skins, I think there should be less of a concern of losing mounts.
As a side note, any combat pet that takes the same resources as a mount would be considered as prestigous since they take the same effort to obtain.
It's rarely about effort. Sure, a very common mount in many games can be low-prestige even if it looks good, but when you hear people talk about mounts in MMOs the effort that goes into collecting it is only relevant if it's as hard to get as a legendary piece of equipment in many games, like how Invincible in WoW has a less than 1% drop chance for a long raid. Most of the time, people have interests in mounts due to liking the look of them, and wanting to be seen as cool. A special horse mount might be ultra rare and look good, but that winged dragon that can breathe fire and has ash spewing off it like it just climbed out of a volcano looks great and so more people will use it more often if they have it available.
That's an assumption on multiple levels, but the most important one for this thread is we don't know how much in the way of effort or resources will be required for any of the animal husbandry branches.
I guess you might need to define prestigious.
To me, it's about status and in games, is usually related to the effort it takes to obtain. Something doesn't have to be prestigious for it to be desirable and just because something is desirable, doesn't mean it's prestigious. My favorite mount in wow is the Sandstone drake because i like turning into a dragon but it's easy to get now and not seen as prestigious.
Yes, they are buying raptor skins, the base raptor is not seen as prestigious. Also, just because someone buys something, doesn't mean it's seen as prestigious. They can buy skins because they think they look cool.
Yes, prestige isn't the only reason people buy/farm things. Some people like to collect which can be seen as prestigious depending on the amount of effort it takes to make a collection.
Yes, we don't know how hard it is to farm resources but if a mount and combat pet require the same amount of resources, then they require the same about of effort to obtain. If a mount created by animal husbandry is seen as prestigious then it's reasonable to assume that a combat pet that requires the same amount of effort, will also be seen as prestigious.
I'm not talking about collectors - I'm talking about normal folks, who still somehow manage to accumulate three or four of the same mount because a new skin came out and they want to look good. A normal person will see something they want and want to get it, regardless of if they already have a "good enough" example at home, since the new one is perceived as new or at least better. That aspect of skin trading and the breeding system won't even depend on prestige, just on how human nature works, but prestige will absolutely help. Especially if, as you define prestige, a ton of effort was put into making the new mount very rare.
This goes back to our definitions, I think. I don't agree that "the same effort to obtain" equals "the same prestige", but I think now that we've established we're working off of different baselines, we should probably drop that path as unproductive.
Note that nothing I say has to do with known Intrepid design plans, I'm just giving the perspective of a 'Processor' within Ashes' systems.
"Processing" by its nature is very likely to also be less prestigious, but I'm not sure it matters too much. I haven't yet met anyone else who wants to be a Processor yet seeks to be 'well known' in the same way. I can get 'prestige' through my giant pile of gold (I'm thinking of using it as a carpet in my Freehold) if I do well.
Similarly, I have interest in Animal Husbandry, and would probably, depending on the system they use, specialize in livestock (I naturally do this, just as I naturally smelt and mix things).
I agree with everything you say about Prestige, my question is why it needs to be balanced at all. For me personally, it never enters my mind. Mount breeders will be prestigious in the sense of "Player A literally stops Player B to ask them where they got their cool looking mount, and they tell people all about Player C the absolute GOAT of mount breeders."
And I will not, because no one asks the Tavern owner that throws the huge Breakfast Buffet "Where did you get this much sausage and eggs for this?"
So the question is, how rare do you think my type of player is, in a game like Ashes, assuming the Prestige part comes from 'the Gold Coin Carpet in my House'?
1- battle pets. forget about gw2. this game is mostly ismilar to l2, so the pet system will most likely be like l2. back then pets were sooo useful and it was soo difficult to level them up, so having a high level pet was also a sign of presitge. no thtat it matters, but i guess its important for some people? e peen and stuff. pets were great for solo or incomplete groups of players. they had some buffs, some heals or mana recharges, or just good at fighting things and even taking down raid bosses faster. no problem here.
2- beasts of burdens adds to the overall experience. stay longer in an area, less trips to town to sell, less time traveling, get more stuff, make more money, but risk losing more as well. no problem here
3- livestock will most likely (pretty sure) be tied up to crafting (cooking) no problem here. its basicaly your gathering profession for cooking?
Mounts may have prestige, but so what? Once someone has a mount, they are good. Same with the others.
Livestock, on the other hand, is essentially a consumable. There will always be demand for meat, leather, wool and what ever else.
It's almost as if it were designed so that people with different goals and preferences were able to pick different options based on those goals and preferences.
And Mounts are caravan components.
While true, they will also want leather armor, or products made from wool, or meals made from meat.
I've yet to see a game that had a consistent market for mounts that didn't wither have mounts die, or constantly add new higher tiers of mounts to the game. As far as we are aware, Intrepid don't plan on doing either of these (they will obviously need to do one of them at some point).
I have, however, seen many games that have a consistent market for leather, wool and meat.
Thats something I hadn't considered and it's a very important piece of information.
"Caravan components obtained from crafters will have stats according to the skill of each artisan.[2]
Mounts bred through the Animal husbandry profession can be applied as certificates toward the construction of caravans.[4]"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravan_components
I'm hoping that if I can breed super-fast mounts, they'll be wanted for super-fast caravans!
Flying mounts obtained from bosses only last for so long until they die.
I know mounts can be killed, either by fall damage or by mobs and players. Do we know if once dead we can still summon the mount after a cooldown? Or if the mount is dead and gone for good?
If the latter were true, it would for sure impact the economy greatly.