In Ashes, it’s not about alts it’s about teamwork.
From personal experience, the holy trinity of economics in video games tends to be Me, Myself and I.
Unless a game has more content than I have time to complete there will always be a reason to use alts instead of other players. Why pay for something I can get myself, when there is nothing better for me to be doing anyway?
In Ashes, it’s not about alts it’s about teamwork.
From personal experience, the holy trinity of economics in video games tends to be Me, Myself and I.
Unless a game has more content than I have time to complete there will always be a reason to use alts instead of other players. Why pay for something I can get myself, when there is nothing better for me to be doing anyway?
Which is fine, but that’s why Ashes has a single player contained in the Artisan class in one of 3 horizontal steps instead of a entire production vertical.
It’s also why moving material between alts is constrained through housing storage.
In Ashes, it’s not about alts it’s about teamwork.
From personal experience, the holy trinity of economics in video games tends to be Me, Myself and I.
Unless a game has more content than I have time to complete there will always be a reason to use alts instead of other players. Why pay for something I can get myself, when there is nothing better for me to be doing anyway?
Which is fine, but that’s why Ashes has a single player contained in the Artisan class in one of 3 horizontal steps instead of a entire production vertical.
It’s also why moving material between alts is constrained through housing storage.
I'm not even really taking about 'solo' though. I'm just talking about being self-sufficient.
Sure 3 players that rely on each other will do more than 1 self-sufficient player.
But 3 self-sufficient players will do way more than 3 that are not.
Yeah, those are some cute semantics. Feel free to explain how my characterization of a single-player ‘solo’ crafting in a production vertical isn’t ‘self-sufficient.’ 🧐
And I don’t think it’s true 3 vertical crafters will outpace 3 horizontal artisans. There are way too many variables to ascribe any sense of certainty.
Sure 3 players that rely on each other will do more than 1 self-sufficient player.
But 3 self-sufficient players will do way more than 3 that are not.
Yeah they will do way more.... but not in the economic sense. 3 specialized players usually produce a finished product much faster than a single player running around doing 3 jobs. Not only that, but each individual player will be producing their maximum money/hour, while a single player will have to do 2 activities that are not their maximum money/hour. Why wouldn't they want to just do your maximum money/hour all the time?
Sure 3 players that rely on each other will do more than 1 self-sufficient player.
But 3 self-sufficient players will do way more than 3 that are not.
Yeah they will do way more.... but not in the economic sense. 3 specialized players usually produce a finished product much faster than a single player running around doing 3 jobs. Not only that, but each individual player will be producing their maximum money/hour, while a single player will have to do 2 activities that are not their maximum money/hour. Why wouldn't they want to just do your maximum money/hour all the time?
What are the 2 players doing while waiting for the gatherer to get the resources for them to use? That time could be spent gathering even more resources on alts.
I'm not even really taking about 'solo' though. I'm just talking about being self-sufficient.
Sure 3 players that rely on each other will do more than 1 self-sufficient player.
But 3 self-sufficient players will do way more than 3 that are not.
Yeah, those are some cute semantics. Feel free to explain how my characterization of a single-player ‘solo’ crafting in a production vertical isn’t ‘self-sufficient.’ 🧐
And I don’t think it’s true 3 vertical crafters will outpace 3 horizontal artisans. There are way too many variables to ascribe any sense of certainty.
Unless every profession is a full time job, I don't see how doing a different profession on an alt character during your downtime wouldn't be worth it.
What are the 2 players doing while waiting for the gatherer to get the resources for them to use? That time could be spent gathering even more resources on alts.
Since their mastery is horizontal, they could be processing different mats in different batches, or crafting furniture then swords. In the vertical model, output is linear. In the horizontal model, the output is systemic. So your crafting teams are going to be more like 5 people: 2 gatherers, 2 processors, and a crafter with multiple masteries.
Also, keep in mind the end product (e.g. the crafted item) isn’t the economic objective 2 of the 3 crafters. The end result of their labor are raw mats and processed components - both of which feed into the broader supply chain.
Like I said, it’s a model that favors teamwork over soloing.
What are the 2 players doing while waiting for the gatherer to get the resources for them to use? That time could be spent gathering even more resources on alts.
While they wait? Like there is none available for purchase on the market? If supply available for purchase shrinks, usually the price rises and more people step up to supply it and cash in on the price hike. When it saturates, people maybe switch to another product to supply. If we are assuming normal market forces though, an item in demand will also be in supply. Changes in supply or demand affect the price, but to say that 2 highly specialized players who likely can make dozen of different things have NOTHING to do because the gatherer player is having a lazy day off makes no sense to me.
What are the 2 players doing while waiting for the gatherer to get the resources for them to use? That time could be spent gathering even more resources on alts.
While they wait? Like there is none available for purchase on the market? If supply available for purchase shrinks, usually the price rises and more people step up to supply it and cash in on the price hike. When it saturates, people maybe switch to another product to supply. If we are assuming normal market forces though, an item in demand will also be in supply. Changes in supply or demand affect the price, but to say that 2 highly specialized players who likely can make dozen of different things have NOTHING to do because the gatherer player is having a lazy day off makes no sense to me.
Ah, but while I don't disagree with you, then you get BDO, and this is a problem for everyone.
When everyone WANTS to be able to make everything, and try to play solo, demand is zero.
By refusing to specialize, a playerbase creates a scenario in which their own effort is 'worthless' for making money through crafting. Now, a solo player doing this HAS to make all the alts. But they don't all do so.
So you get this weird middle ground where everyone who tries to do everything suffers from reduced demand on the things they try to make, or low profit margins, and those who specialize into niches with higher or just more stable demand, do much better.
The former FEELS like they're doing well, and depending on their personal goals or 'Economic RP' or whatever, they are.
But an Econ player doesn't think "I should make things myself" because it just leads to degradation of markets themselves and a ruined game/economy where you CAN'T just 'rely on things' except buying from the poor fools who don't do this.
And there are a lot of them, I assure you, or BDO would not get away with the design choices it makes.
BDO is a totally different market situation. 10,000 people buy-order 1000x Meat but its not actually worth gathering, because the price is capped at the same $ as 10 years ago before massive inflation. Gatherers will gravitate towards products with higher $ caps. If the cap wasn't there, market forces would find an equilibrium price where gatherers would find it worth to gatherer, and people would buy it. Hint: that number is likely exponentially more than the cap.
The game would be VERY different if they just removed price caps and floors, but they can't do that because they make NO effort whatsoever to curb inflation. The market tax is the only thing that consumes silver, but there's no supply of VIP, which drives people to whale up.... meanwhile every new zone has a higher max s/h.
All-in-all, I think comparisons to BDO's sorry excuse for an economy are going to be poor at best.
BDO is a totally different market situation. 10,000 people buy-order 1000x Meat but its not actually worth gathering, because the price is capped at the same $ as 10 years ago before massive inflation. Gatherers will gravitate towards products with higher $ caps. If the cap wasn't there, market forces would find an equilibrium price where gatherers would find it worth to gatherer, and people would buy it. Hint: that number is likely exponentially more than the cap.
The game would be VERY different if they just removed price caps and floors, but they can't do that because they make NO effort whatsoever to curb inflation. The market tax is the only thing that consumes silver, but there's no supply of VIP, which drives people to whale up.... meanwhile every new zone has a higher max s/h.
All-in-all, I think comparisons to BDO's sorry excuse for an economy are going to be poor at best.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things.
They do not.
For example, on Console they have recently changed EXACTLY the thin you were talking about.
They raised the max sell price for gatherables.
Doubled, in fact. And then somehow, in their infinite wisdom, did NOT also raise the max sell price for the PRODUCTS you make with those gatherables.
What would you expect the result to be, if someone doubled costs on an item needed to make a product (because it is always in Zero supply) but did NOT raise the sale price of the product itself, which was previously a razor-thin margin for nearly everyone?
I'd EXPECT an uproar, immediate complaints to the point where they had to fix it, and instant drying up of the supply of Product.
Opposite happened. "Pure LifeSkillers" are a demographic that are VERY difficult to understand in games from an economic perspective, you can't plan your game around the way they do things, and in a very roundabout way, that's why we don't care about it, because the person who thinks "I'll just make everything myself" is EQUIVALENT in mental processes to a 'pure LifeSkiller', NOT to an Economic Player.
BDO is a totally different market situation. 10,000 people buy-order 1000x Meat but its not actually worth gathering, because the price is capped at the same $ as 10 years ago before massive inflation. Gatherers will gravitate towards products with higher $ caps. If the cap wasn't there, market forces would find an equilibrium price where gatherers would find it worth to gatherer, and people would buy it. Hint: that number is likely exponentially more than the cap.
The game would be VERY different if they just removed price caps and floors, but they can't do that because they make NO effort whatsoever to curb inflation. The market tax is the only thing that consumes silver, but there's no supply of VIP, which drives people to whale up.... meanwhile every new zone has a higher max s/h.
All-in-all, I think comparisons to BDO's sorry excuse for an economy are going to be poor at best.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things.
They do not.
For example, on Console they have recently changed EXACTLY the thin you were talking about.
They raised the max sell price for gatherables.
Doubled, in fact. And then somehow, in their infinite wisdom, did NOT also raise the max sell price for the PRODUCTS you make with those gatherables.
What would you expect the result to be, if someone doubled costs on an item needed to make a product (because it is always in Zero supply) but did NOT raise the sale price of the product itself, which was previously a razor-thin margin for nearly everyone?
I'd EXPECT an uproar, immediate complaints to the point where they had to fix it, and instant drying up of the supply of Product.
Opposite happened. "Pure LifeSkillers" are a demographic that are VERY difficult to understand in games from an economic perspective, you can't plan your game around the way they do things, and in a very roundabout way, that's why we don't care about it, because the person who thinks "I'll just make everything myself" is EQUIVALENT in mental processes to a 'pure LifeSkiller', NOT to an Economic Player.
This is very much what I'm referring to. I've never played BDO but in New World I had every skill maxed because I didn't want to be at the whims of the auction house. If a gatherable was too expensive I'd just get it myself, if no one had crafted the exact gear I wanted I'd just craft it myself.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things. They do not.
Are you trying to say that market forces are just totally impossible to understand because one game publisher made a change and the market didn't respond 100% as expected?
I don't personally know any console players, but I'm willing to bet there are FAR fewer console lifeskillers than there are PC lifeskillers. I would be willing to bet that those console players who ARE lifeskillers probably skew towards gather, so they don't even engage with processing or crafting, and all they saw was increased profit.
The whole line of reasoning is a moot point... AOC doesn't seem to want to aim for ANY market intervention aside from tax, and SS has numerous times in Dev Updates talked about the commitment they have to making a full fledged market that curbs inflation, yet provides opportunities for market actors like geographic arbitration. Comparing BDO's HEAVILY manipulated market or trying to draw conclusions from what PA do without qualifying statements to what AOC seems to want to be is just so mindbogglingly wrong to me.
BDO is a totally different market situation. 10,000 people buy-order 1000x Meat but its not actually worth gathering, because the price is capped at the same $ as 10 years ago before massive inflation. Gatherers will gravitate towards products with higher $ caps. If the cap wasn't there, market forces would find an equilibrium price where gatherers would find it worth to gatherer, and people would buy it. Hint: that number is likely exponentially more than the cap.
The game would be VERY different if they just removed price caps and floors, but they can't do that because they make NO effort whatsoever to curb inflation. The market tax is the only thing that consumes silver, but there's no supply of VIP, which drives people to whale up.... meanwhile every new zone has a higher max s/h.
All-in-all, I think comparisons to BDO's sorry excuse for an economy are going to be poor at best.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things.
They do not.
For example, on Console they have recently changed EXACTLY the thin you were talking about.
They raised the max sell price for gatherables.
Doubled, in fact. And then somehow, in their infinite wisdom, did NOT also raise the max sell price for the PRODUCTS you make with those gatherables.
What would you expect the result to be, if someone doubled costs on an item needed to make a product (because it is always in Zero supply) but did NOT raise the sale price of the product itself, which was previously a razor-thin margin for nearly everyone?
I'd EXPECT an uproar, immediate complaints to the point where they had to fix it, and instant drying up of the supply of Product.
Opposite happened. "Pure LifeSkillers" are a demographic that are VERY difficult to understand in games from an economic perspective, you can't plan your game around the way they do things, and in a very roundabout way, that's why we don't care about it, because the person who thinks "I'll just make everything myself" is EQUIVALENT in mental processes to a 'pure LifeSkiller', NOT to an Economic Player.
This is very much what I'm referring to. I've never played BDO but in New World I had every skill maxed because I didn't want to be at the whims of the auction house. If a gatherable was too expensive I'd just get it myself, if no one had crafted the exact gear I wanted I'd just craft it myself.
If I can be self-sufficient I will be.
Right, and the thing is, no matter what restrictions are placed, YOU are the type that will do this.
Countering YOU is not the goal of such a system. Countering 'the tendency for ME to turn INTO You', is.
Given the current system, there is a 'barrier' that prevents Me() from becoming You(). I can tell you that the Barrier is working and I welcome it. But the fact that it is working indicates that not everyone will 'become You() if they are trying to make money.
They do it because of whatever (I don't know exactly what) causes you to be that way, and that player type will surpass all but the most ridiculous barriers to do so, so there's no point in going that far.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things. They do not.
Are you trying to say that market forces are just totally impossible to understand because one game publisher made a change and the market didn't respond 100% as expected?
I don't personally know any console players, but I'm willing to bet there are FAR fewer console lifeskillers than there are PC lifeskillers. I would be willing to bet that those console players who ARE lifeskillers probably skew towards gather, so they don't even engage with processing or crafting, and all they saw was increased profit.
The whole line of reasoning is a moot point... AOC doesn't seem to want to aim for ANY market intervention aside from tax, and SS has numerous times in Dev Updates talked about the commitment they have to making a full fledged market that curbs inflation, yet provides opportunities for market actors like geographic arbitration. Comparing BDO's HEAVILY manipulated market or trying to draw conclusions from what PA do without qualifying statements to what AOC seems to want to be is just so mindbogglingly wrong to me.
I think I got off on the wrong foot here with you, so I'll just disengage.
I don't feel it's productive to try to discuss things if I'm just bring 'anecdotal experience' and you (quite reasonably) just reject it, so let's just not.
BDO is a totally different market situation. 10,000 people buy-order 1000x Meat but its not actually worth gathering, because the price is capped at the same $ as 10 years ago before massive inflation. Gatherers will gravitate towards products with higher $ caps. If the cap wasn't there, market forces would find an equilibrium price where gatherers would find it worth to gatherer, and people would buy it. Hint: that number is likely exponentially more than the cap.
The game would be VERY different if they just removed price caps and floors, but they can't do that because they make NO effort whatsoever to curb inflation. The market tax is the only thing that consumes silver, but there's no supply of VIP, which drives people to whale up.... meanwhile every new zone has a higher max s/h.
All-in-all, I think comparisons to BDO's sorry excuse for an economy are going to be poor at best.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things.
They do not.
For example, on Console they have recently changed EXACTLY the thin you were talking about.
They raised the max sell price for gatherables.
Doubled, in fact. And then somehow, in their infinite wisdom, did NOT also raise the max sell price for the PRODUCTS you make with those gatherables.
What would you expect the result to be, if someone doubled costs on an item needed to make a product (because it is always in Zero supply) but did NOT raise the sale price of the product itself, which was previously a razor-thin margin for nearly everyone?
I'd EXPECT an uproar, immediate complaints to the point where they had to fix it, and instant drying up of the supply of Product.
Opposite happened. "Pure LifeSkillers" are a demographic that are VERY difficult to understand in games from an economic perspective, you can't plan your game around the way they do things, and in a very roundabout way, that's why we don't care about it, because the person who thinks "I'll just make everything myself" is EQUIVALENT in mental processes to a 'pure LifeSkiller', NOT to an Economic Player.
This is very much what I'm referring to. I've never played BDO but in New World I had every skill maxed because I didn't want to be at the whims of the auction house. If a gatherable was too expensive I'd just get it myself, if no one had crafted the exact gear I wanted I'd just craft it myself.
If I can be self-sufficient I will be.
Well then you'll need multiple accounts. Otherwise the answer is no.
No ammount of semantic gymnastics are going to make the game soloable. If there is a single thing a majority of the Ashes community agrees on, its that we don't want people to be self sufficient.
But I don't need multiple accounts. You can just have alts with different professions in the current system.
Think of it as "Intrepid Paying you $15 (this is on the assumption for some reason that you have two computers or can run two instances on one system undetected)" to NOT use twice the time, to use up only the 'amount of time a single instance of the Ashes Client makes available to you'.
You might not be the type to make a whole second account just so you can be self-sufficient in Crafting if they went that far.
But many will, so Alts are a way to HELP with this in a specific way. It's just more 'small barriers'.
"I could be more efficient and self sufficient but it would cost me $15 and it wouldn't be MORE effective than that competitor who just uses Alts so meh".
Right, and the thing is, no matter what restrictions are placed, YOU are the type that will do this.
Countering YOU is not the goal of such a system. Countering 'the tendency for ME to turn INTO You', is.
Given the current system, there is a 'barrier' that prevents Me() from becoming You(). I can tell you that the Barrier is working and I welcome it. But the fact that it is working indicates that not everyone will 'become You() if they are trying to make money.
They do it because of whatever (I don't know exactly what) causes you to be that way, and that player type will surpass all but the most ridiculous barriers to do so, so there's no point in going that far.
But I don't think there is much of a barrier. Like in New World sure it takes a lot of time and resources to max every trade skill, but most hardcore players will do it. If something provides a player with an advantage than the competitive players are going to do it.
Leveling an alt to max takes less than 200hrs according to Stephen. That might seem like a lot of time to most people but if I only work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, than I still have 56hrs of free time every week to do whatever I want. There are plenty of hardcore players who play well over 40hrs a week, and that's not even considering the people WITHOUT jobs. Those 100hr per week gremlins that camp you for 6 hours while you're trying to level.
But I don't need multiple accounts. You can just have alts with different professions in the current system.
Think of it as "Intrepid Paying you $15 (this is on the assumption for some reason that you have two computers or can run two instances on one system undetected)" to NOT use twice the time, to use up only the 'amount of time a single instance of the Ashes Client makes available to you'.
You might not be the type to make a whole second account just so you can be self-sufficient in Crafting if they went that far.
But many will, so Alts are a way to HELP with this in a specific way. It's just more 'small barriers'.
"I could be more efficient and self sufficient but it would cost me $15 and it wouldn't be MORE effective than that competitor who just uses Alts so meh".
Multiboxing is considered cheating so I don't care about it. Having two accounts is fine but playing on both at the same time should be banned.
Right, and the thing is, no matter what restrictions are placed, YOU are the type that will do this.
Countering YOU is not the goal of such a system. Countering 'the tendency for ME to turn INTO You', is.
Given the current system, there is a 'barrier' that prevents Me() from becoming You(). I can tell you that the Barrier is working and I welcome it. But the fact that it is working indicates that not everyone will 'become You() if they are trying to make money.
They do it because of whatever (I don't know exactly what) causes you to be that way, and that player type will surpass all but the most ridiculous barriers to do so, so there's no point in going that far.
But I don't think there is much of a barrier. Like in New World sure it takes a lot of time and resources to max every trade skill, but most hardcore players will do it. If something provides a player with an advantage than the competitive players are going to do it.
Leveling an alt to max takes less than 200hrs according to Stephen. That might seem like a lot of time to most people but if I only work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, than I still have 56hrs of free time every week to do whatever I want. There are plenty of hardcore players who play well over 40hrs a week, and that's not even considering the people WITHOUT jobs. Those 100hr per week gremlins that camp you for 6 hours while you're trying to level.
I think I failed to explain before why doing it isn't an advantage. I don't expect to manage to make the point to you either, but I'll repeat it for... idk, data.
Hardcore players doing this are not making MORE money by filling every Market Niche unless they NEVER do anything else really, and even then.
And I don't think you really want to try to stop those people because they will break down ALL barriers because of the way their minds work. But the idea of 'competitive advantage by doing it' is a sign of a poor economy, the arrow of causation for THAT, I don't THINK goes in the direction of 'People can Make Alts to do everything >> Bad Economy".
In my personal experience it explicitly goes the other way. The Competitive Advantage you speak of must exist, but 'just spending more time' isn't usually that type of advantage (just the more time is, technically using it on this is somewhat wasting it, if you have other interests in the game).
But as I said prior. Anecdotal. Rejectable. Just my data.
Right, and the thing is, no matter what restrictions are placed, YOU are the type that will do this.
Countering YOU is not the goal of such a system. Countering 'the tendency for ME to turn INTO You', is.
Given the current system, there is a 'barrier' that prevents Me() from becoming You(). I can tell you that the Barrier is working and I welcome it. But the fact that it is working indicates that not everyone will 'become You() if they are trying to make money.
They do it because of whatever (I don't know exactly what) causes you to be that way, and that player type will surpass all but the most ridiculous barriers to do so, so there's no point in going that far.
But I don't think there is much of a barrier. Like in New World sure it takes a lot of time and resources to max every trade skill, but most hardcore players will do it. If something provides a player with an advantage than the competitive players are going to do it.
Leveling an alt to max takes less than 200hrs according to Stephen. That might seem like a lot of time to most people but if I only work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, than I still have 56hrs of free time every week to do whatever I want. There are plenty of hardcore players who play well over 40hrs a week, and that's not even considering the people WITHOUT jobs. Those 100hr per week gremlins that camp you for 6 hours while you're trying to level.
I think I failed to explain before why doing it isn't an advantage. I don't expect to manage to make the point to you either, but I'll repeat it for... idk, data.
Hardcore players doing this are not making MORE money by filling every Market Niche unless they NEVER do anything else really, and even then.
And I don't think you really want to try to stop those people because they will break down ALL barriers because of the way their minds work. But the idea of 'competitive advantage by doing it' is a sign of a poor economy, the arrow of causation for THAT, I don't THINK goes in the direction of 'People can Make Alts to do everything >> Bad Economy".
In my personal experience it explicitly goes the other way. The Competitive Advantage you speak of must exist, but 'just spending more time' isn't usually that type of advantage (just the more time is, technically using it on this is somewhat wasting it, if you have other interests in the game).
But as I said prior. Anecdotal. Rejectable. Just my data.
I'm not talking about money though so maybe that's the disconnect. Sure you can spend gold to buy a legendary sword, but what if it's way too expensive or doesn't have the specific stats you want? Being able to make it yourself lets you compete with the market, not exclude yourself from the market. Self-sufficiency gives you greater choice, it doesn't force you to isolate yourself.
If I know exactly what I need to create a legendary sword and I have the option to do so, than I can feel more comfortable paying someone else to do it for me.
Even in New World I still buy a bunch of stuff from other players, I just never get scammed in the process.
But as I said prior. Anecdotal. Rejectable. Just my data.
Just to support that bit of data from a game with free trading. On a ton of L2's private servers people would usually try to be as self-sufficient as possible, because those servers would usually have higher lvling rates so making a gatherer alt was easy (even several at different lvl points). And because of that the game's market would either be barren or the prices on items would be so damn high that no casual/non-guild player could ever farm that much in a reasonable amount of time.
And at the opposite side of the spectrum, on low rate servers the market would always have a shitton of resources and the overall amount of crafter items was usually higher and at cheaper prices (relative to rates of course). And that was mainly because farming some money at high lvl was a much better way to "get resources" than leveling a whole damn alt to go and try gathering a few items here and there. And that alt would have some problems too, because there was a much higher competition for the resources, because way more people would just gather them, instead of leveling up to high, because it was quite profitable.
And on top of that, any new player who just picked up a few lucky rare mats along their leveling way could then sell them on the market for a good price and get themselves some gear upgrades (because again, the crafter stuff was cheaper).
In other words, the economy was way healthier when there were designated gathering players and just high lvlers. The fact that those high lvl players always had stuff to do (namely grind) also helped out the whole situation, so I do hope that Ashes provides players with enough beneficial activities that would outweigh the allure of "doing it all yourself".
But as I said prior. Anecdotal. Rejectable. Just my data.
Just to support that bit of data from a game with free trading. On a ton of L2's private servers people would usually try to be as self-sufficient as possible, because those servers would usually have higher lvling rates so making a gatherer alt was easy (even several at different lvl points). And because of that the game's market would either be barren or the prices on items would be so damn high that no casual/non-guild player could ever farm that much in a reasonable amount of time.
And at the opposite side of the spectrum, on low rate servers the market would always have a shitton of resources and the overall amount of crafter items was usually higher and at cheaper prices (relative to rates of course). And that was mainly because farming some money at high lvl was a much better way to "get resources" than leveling a whole damn alt to go and try gathering a few items here and there. And that alt would have some problems too, because there was a much higher competition for the resources, because way more people would just gather them, instead of leveling up to high, because it was quite profitable.
And on top of that, any new player who just picked up a few lucky rare mats along their leveling way could then sell them on the market for a good price and get themselves some gear upgrades (because again, the crafter stuff was cheaper).
In other words, the economy was way healthier when there were designated gathering players and just high lvlers. The fact that those high lvl players always had stuff to do (namely grind) also helped out the whole situation, so I do hope that Ashes provides players with enough beneficial activities that would outweigh the allure of "doing it all yourself".
If we get enough content that I never feel the need to log out of my main character that would be awesome.
But as I said prior. Anecdotal. Rejectable. Just my data.
Just to support that bit of data from a game with free trading. On a ton of L2's private servers people would usually try to be as self-sufficient as possible, because those servers would usually have higher lvling rates so making a gatherer alt was easy (even several at different lvl points). And because of that the game's market would either be barren or the prices on items would be so damn high that no casual/non-guild player could ever farm that much in a reasonable amount of time.
And at the opposite side of the spectrum, on low rate servers the market would always have a shitton of resources and the overall amount of crafter items was usually higher and at cheaper prices (relative to rates of course). And that was mainly because farming some money at high lvl was a much better way to "get resources" than leveling a whole damn alt to go and try gathering a few items here and there. And that alt would have some problems too, because there was a much higher competition for the resources, because way more people would just gather them, instead of leveling up to high, because it was quite profitable.
And on top of that, any new player who just picked up a few lucky rare mats along their leveling way could then sell them on the market for a good price and get themselves some gear upgrades (because again, the crafter stuff was cheaper).
In other words, the economy was way healthier when there were designated gathering players and just high lvlers. The fact that those high lvl players always had stuff to do (namely grind) also helped out the whole situation, so I do hope that Ashes provides players with enough beneficial activities that would outweigh the allure of "doing it all yourself".
This isn't just a beneficial activity thing though, this is a 'limited open world supply' thing.
Which isn't common in games these days, but...
If an area has enough items for 3 gatherers at a time, in rotation it might support 30 per day. If the game ALSO has less than 30 people including alts that wish to do this gathering, then it is in your best interest to always make alts.
As soon as it goes past this number, it is now no longer in ANYONE'S interest to make alts or even to risk gathering without specialization.
The reason a person can be self sufficient AND profit in games is because the world has too many resources available, because players LIKE to do everything and therefore demand from devs that 'I want to gather, I don't want to go out there and find nothing because so many people are already gathering'.
And inexperienced Devs go 'ok let's increase the amount of gatherables to make players happy gathering'. And then someone like me notices and 'makes a gathering Alt' to deal with the low volume time when all the Fair Weather Gatherers aren't doing it.
Or you can just 'be self sufficient' and not care about the opportunity cost.
This isn't just a beneficial activity thing though, this is a 'limited open world supply' thing.
Which isn't common in games these days, but...
If an area has enough items for 3 gatherers at a time, in rotation it might support 30 per day. If the game ALSO has less than 30 people including alts that wish to do this gathering, then it is in your best interest to always make alts.
As soon as it goes past this number, it is now no longer in ANYONE'S interest to make alts or even to risk gathering without specialization.
Yeah I mentioned this in a previous post too. And when you add owpvp to the equation, there's even less resources per person because someone will always be stronger than you and will be ready to fight over the limited resources.
Can't quite be "self-sufficient" if you're not just by yourself.
@Azherae - additionally, allow gatherers multiple masteries means when so few resources are available in the wild, when you do run across something you can harvest it instead of grabbing an alt (and probably not finding it before another player) to harvest it.
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From personal experience, the holy trinity of economics in video games tends to be Me, Myself and I.
Unless a game has more content than I have time to complete there will always be a reason to use alts instead of other players. Why pay for something I can get myself, when there is nothing better for me to be doing anyway?
Which is fine, but that’s why Ashes has a single player contained in the Artisan class in one of 3 horizontal steps instead of a entire production vertical.
It’s also why moving material between alts is constrained through housing storage.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Alts
It’s possible to solo, but a team will run economic circles around you.
I'm not even really taking about 'solo' though. I'm just talking about being self-sufficient.
Sure 3 players that rely on each other will do more than 1 self-sufficient player.
But 3 self-sufficient players will do way more than 3 that are not.
Yeah, those are some cute semantics. Feel free to explain how my characterization of a single-player ‘solo’ crafting in a production vertical isn’t ‘self-sufficient.’ 🧐
And I don’t think it’s true 3 vertical crafters will outpace 3 horizontal artisans. There are way too many variables to ascribe any sense of certainty.
Unless every profession is a full time job, I don't see how doing a different profession on an alt character during your downtime wouldn't be worth it.
Since their mastery is horizontal, they could be processing different mats in different batches, or crafting furniture then swords. In the vertical model, output is linear. In the horizontal model, the output is systemic. So your crafting teams are going to be more like 5 people: 2 gatherers, 2 processors, and a crafter with multiple masteries.
Also, keep in mind the end product (e.g. the crafted item) isn’t the economic objective 2 of the 3 crafters. The end result of their labor are raw mats and processed components - both of which feed into the broader supply chain.
Like I said, it’s a model that favors teamwork over soloing.
While they wait? Like there is none available for purchase on the market? If supply available for purchase shrinks, usually the price rises and more people step up to supply it and cash in on the price hike. When it saturates, people maybe switch to another product to supply. If we are assuming normal market forces though, an item in demand will also be in supply. Changes in supply or demand affect the price, but to say that 2 highly specialized players who likely can make dozen of different things have NOTHING to do because the gatherer player is having a lazy day off makes no sense to me.
Ah, but while I don't disagree with you, then you get BDO, and this is a problem for everyone.
When everyone WANTS to be able to make everything, and try to play solo, demand is zero.
By refusing to specialize, a playerbase creates a scenario in which their own effort is 'worthless' for making money through crafting. Now, a solo player doing this HAS to make all the alts. But they don't all do so.
So you get this weird middle ground where everyone who tries to do everything suffers from reduced demand on the things they try to make, or low profit margins, and those who specialize into niches with higher or just more stable demand, do much better.
The former FEELS like they're doing well, and depending on their personal goals or 'Economic RP' or whatever, they are.
But an Econ player doesn't think "I should make things myself" because it just leads to degradation of markets themselves and a ruined game/economy where you CAN'T just 'rely on things' except buying from the poor fools who don't do this.
And there are a lot of them, I assure you, or BDO would not get away with the design choices it makes.
BDO is a totally different market situation. 10,000 people buy-order 1000x Meat but its not actually worth gathering, because the price is capped at the same $ as 10 years ago before massive inflation. Gatherers will gravitate towards products with higher $ caps. If the cap wasn't there, market forces would find an equilibrium price where gatherers would find it worth to gatherer, and people would buy it. Hint: that number is likely exponentially more than the cap.
The game would be VERY different if they just removed price caps and floors, but they can't do that because they make NO effort whatsoever to curb inflation. The market tax is the only thing that consumes silver, but there's no supply of VIP, which drives people to whale up.... meanwhile every new zone has a higher max s/h.
All-in-all, I think comparisons to BDO's sorry excuse for an economy are going to be poor at best.
But my point is that I study the WAY they make those decisions, and use that to determine how much players understand these things.
They do not.
For example, on Console they have recently changed EXACTLY the thin you were talking about.
They raised the max sell price for gatherables.
Doubled, in fact. And then somehow, in their infinite wisdom, did NOT also raise the max sell price for the PRODUCTS you make with those gatherables.
What would you expect the result to be, if someone doubled costs on an item needed to make a product (because it is always in Zero supply) but did NOT raise the sale price of the product itself, which was previously a razor-thin margin for nearly everyone?
I'd EXPECT an uproar, immediate complaints to the point where they had to fix it, and instant drying up of the supply of Product.
Opposite happened. "Pure LifeSkillers" are a demographic that are VERY difficult to understand in games from an economic perspective, you can't plan your game around the way they do things, and in a very roundabout way, that's why we don't care about it, because the person who thinks "I'll just make everything myself" is EQUIVALENT in mental processes to a 'pure LifeSkiller', NOT to an Economic Player.
This is very much what I'm referring to. I've never played BDO but in New World I had every skill maxed because I didn't want to be at the whims of the auction house. If a gatherable was too expensive I'd just get it myself, if no one had crafted the exact gear I wanted I'd just craft it myself.
If I can be self-sufficient I will be.
Are you trying to say that market forces are just totally impossible to understand because one game publisher made a change and the market didn't respond 100% as expected?
I don't personally know any console players, but I'm willing to bet there are FAR fewer console lifeskillers than there are PC lifeskillers. I would be willing to bet that those console players who ARE lifeskillers probably skew towards gather, so they don't even engage with processing or crafting, and all they saw was increased profit.
The whole line of reasoning is a moot point... AOC doesn't seem to want to aim for ANY market intervention aside from tax, and SS has numerous times in Dev Updates talked about the commitment they have to making a full fledged market that curbs inflation, yet provides opportunities for market actors like geographic arbitration. Comparing BDO's HEAVILY manipulated market or trying to draw conclusions from what PA do without qualifying statements to what AOC seems to want to be is just so mindbogglingly wrong to me.
Right, and the thing is, no matter what restrictions are placed, YOU are the type that will do this.
Countering YOU is not the goal of such a system. Countering 'the tendency for ME to turn INTO You', is.
Given the current system, there is a 'barrier' that prevents Me() from becoming You(). I can tell you that the Barrier is working and I welcome it. But the fact that it is working indicates that not everyone will 'become You() if they are trying to make money.
They do it because of whatever (I don't know exactly what) causes you to be that way, and that player type will surpass all but the most ridiculous barriers to do so, so there's no point in going that far.
I think I got off on the wrong foot here with you, so I'll just disengage.
I don't feel it's productive to try to discuss things if I'm just bring 'anecdotal experience' and you (quite reasonably) just reject it, so let's just not.
Well then you'll need multiple accounts. Otherwise the answer is no.
No ammount of semantic gymnastics are going to make the game soloable. If there is a single thing a majority of the Ashes community agrees on, its that we don't want people to be self sufficient.
But I don't need multiple accounts. You can just have alts with different professions in the current system.
Think of it as "Intrepid Paying you $15 (this is on the assumption for some reason that you have two computers or can run two instances on one system undetected)" to NOT use twice the time, to use up only the 'amount of time a single instance of the Ashes Client makes available to you'.
You might not be the type to make a whole second account just so you can be self-sufficient in Crafting if they went that far.
But many will, so Alts are a way to HELP with this in a specific way. It's just more 'small barriers'.
"I could be more efficient and self sufficient but it would cost me $15 and it wouldn't be MORE effective than that competitor who just uses Alts so meh".
But I don't think there is much of a barrier. Like in New World sure it takes a lot of time and resources to max every trade skill, but most hardcore players will do it. If something provides a player with an advantage than the competitive players are going to do it.
Leveling an alt to max takes less than 200hrs according to Stephen. That might seem like a lot of time to most people but if I only work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, than I still have 56hrs of free time every week to do whatever I want. There are plenty of hardcore players who play well over 40hrs a week, and that's not even considering the people WITHOUT jobs. Those 100hr per week gremlins that camp you for 6 hours while you're trying to level.
Multiboxing is considered cheating so I don't care about it. Having two accounts is fine but playing on both at the same time should be banned.
Then what is the point you are trying to make? I think you are lost inside your own point/counter point journey.
Or you are trolling
I think I failed to explain before why doing it isn't an advantage. I don't expect to manage to make the point to you either, but I'll repeat it for... idk, data.
Hardcore players doing this are not making MORE money by filling every Market Niche unless they NEVER do anything else really, and even then.
And I don't think you really want to try to stop those people because they will break down ALL barriers because of the way their minds work. But the idea of 'competitive advantage by doing it' is a sign of a poor economy, the arrow of causation for THAT, I don't THINK goes in the direction of 'People can Make Alts to do everything >> Bad Economy".
In my personal experience it explicitly goes the other way. The Competitive Advantage you speak of must exist, but 'just spending more time' isn't usually that type of advantage (just the more time is, technically using it on this is somewhat wasting it, if you have other interests in the game).
But as I said prior. Anecdotal. Rejectable. Just my data.
I'm not talking about money though so maybe that's the disconnect. Sure you can spend gold to buy a legendary sword, but what if it's way too expensive or doesn't have the specific stats you want? Being able to make it yourself lets you compete with the market, not exclude yourself from the market. Self-sufficiency gives you greater choice, it doesn't force you to isolate yourself.
If I know exactly what I need to create a legendary sword and I have the option to do so, than I can feel more comfortable paying someone else to do it for me.
Even in New World I still buy a bunch of stuff from other players, I just never get scammed in the process.
And at the opposite side of the spectrum, on low rate servers the market would always have a shitton of resources and the overall amount of crafter items was usually higher and at cheaper prices (relative to rates of course). And that was mainly because farming some money at high lvl was a much better way to "get resources" than leveling a whole damn alt to go and try gathering a few items here and there. And that alt would have some problems too, because there was a much higher competition for the resources, because way more people would just gather them, instead of leveling up to high, because it was quite profitable.
And on top of that, any new player who just picked up a few lucky rare mats along their leveling way could then sell them on the market for a good price and get themselves some gear upgrades (because again, the crafter stuff was cheaper).
In other words, the economy was way healthier when there were designated gathering players and just high lvlers. The fact that those high lvl players always had stuff to do (namely grind) also helped out the whole situation, so I do hope that Ashes provides players with enough beneficial activities that would outweigh the allure of "doing it all yourself".
If we get enough content that I never feel the need to log out of my main character that would be awesome.
This isn't just a beneficial activity thing though, this is a 'limited open world supply' thing.
Which isn't common in games these days, but...
If an area has enough items for 3 gatherers at a time, in rotation it might support 30 per day. If the game ALSO has less than 30 people including alts that wish to do this gathering, then it is in your best interest to always make alts.
As soon as it goes past this number, it is now no longer in ANYONE'S interest to make alts or even to risk gathering without specialization.
The reason a person can be self sufficient AND profit in games is because the world has too many resources available, because players LIKE to do everything and therefore demand from devs that 'I want to gather, I don't want to go out there and find nothing because so many people are already gathering'.
And inexperienced Devs go 'ok let's increase the amount of gatherables to make players happy gathering'. And then someone like me notices and 'makes a gathering Alt' to deal with the low volume time when all the Fair Weather Gatherers aren't doing it.
Or you can just 'be self sufficient' and not care about the opportunity cost.
Can't quite be "self-sufficient" if you're not just by yourself.