Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Risk vs Reward for Gathering, Processing, and Crafting
Erodgemon
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Risk vs Reward is a tenet that Intrepid boosts for AoC.
Gathering
I see the risk in gathering due to the inherent nature of exploration in the world. PvP and PvE come with risk to travel to locations with resources and the transportation of those resources.
Processing
With the best processing being on Freeholds, I don't see a risk of PvE. PvP also is unclear on Freeholds but does seem like a non-factor. Processing machines are said to require materials but with markets those could also remove risk. Normally with processing and crafting RNG brings in risk but that also is not a factor in AoC.
Crafting
Similar to processing. Location and RNG is not a factor.
Where is the "risk vs reward"?
I've discussed this topic in discord and live stream chat. Node Sieges were used as an argument to impact processing and crafting with the destruction of freeholds and crafting. This would disrupt those categories but very infrequently.
I worry the best processing and crafting locations will be "rich". Rich groups will more easily be able to hire defending groups and prepare for sieges. With the recent bidding system for Freeholds I worry that the Rich groups will win bids, become richer by having short travel times between their highly valued Freehold location by having top tear processing with low travel times to L6 Nodes for crafting (most likely economic node which has a distributed market), and become richer to where they can corner the processing/crafting/freehold markets. "Rich get richer"
Any concern here?
Gathering
I see the risk in gathering due to the inherent nature of exploration in the world. PvP and PvE come with risk to travel to locations with resources and the transportation of those resources.
Processing
With the best processing being on Freeholds, I don't see a risk of PvE. PvP also is unclear on Freeholds but does seem like a non-factor. Processing machines are said to require materials but with markets those could also remove risk. Normally with processing and crafting RNG brings in risk but that also is not a factor in AoC.
Crafting
Similar to processing. Location and RNG is not a factor.
Where is the "risk vs reward"?
I've discussed this topic in discord and live stream chat. Node Sieges were used as an argument to impact processing and crafting with the destruction of freeholds and crafting. This would disrupt those categories but very infrequently.
I worry the best processing and crafting locations will be "rich". Rich groups will more easily be able to hire defending groups and prepare for sieges. With the recent bidding system for Freeholds I worry that the Rich groups will win bids, become richer by having short travel times between their highly valued Freehold location by having top tear processing with low travel times to L6 Nodes for crafting (most likely economic node which has a distributed market), and become richer to where they can corner the processing/crafting/freehold markets. "Rich get richer"
Any concern here?
1
Comments
Are you just checking 'if you're alone in your concern' or is there a specific discussion you'd like to have about it?
If you have to pay for protection, isn't that negotiated? Protection could be expensive unless guild members work for free, for the greater benefit of the guild.
But overall, a smaller group which can do both PvP and PvE will have advantage over groups which need to hire and split their profit.
it doesnt matter what you do, most of the wealth will be concentrated in a (relatively) small group, wether its by freeholds or not. read about pareto distribution.
and theres also risks with freeholds. they probably give you the best rewards, but they also carry the highest risk. you can lose everything at any time.
The only place you will be safe on your freehold is in your house so you most certainly could have PvP occuring as you process or craft.
I agree that currently it seems the most rich people will collect the majority of freeholds. But testing will let us see if that is valid.
i wonder what faucets could do to mitigate this?
It's almost impossible to test this type of game economic model in an Alpha or Beta, I think.
That's what makes it so hard/rare for games to have proper working economies early. Every little mistake snowballs and preliminary testing isn't sufficient.
So we could assume 'faucets will do stuff that fixes it' but beyond that, 'wondering' is probably the right term...
There is nothing wrong with "rich" groups taking the sweetest spots.
As long as their assets are not invulnerable and can be raided for a profit by other groups.
The raiding groups are taking risk that must be rewarded accordingly too.
When there is no reward for raiders, there are no raids and hence no risk for the "rich" groups.
That is where the problems begin.
Do you believe the balance is there in AoC?
yep, exactly
I also don’t think how we get the fuel has been entirely spoken about. There may still be a low level gathering part to this. Chopping down wood, mining coal. To me it seems like there are rather equal risk vs reward scenarios. Probably even more so for transporting processed/crafted goods since it is likely more potential value lost than the gatherables.
Players genuinely don't like changes affecting them negatively.
Any change would affect at least some, especially a risk vs reward change.
So I would say for Intrepid (and us) it is either now in an Alpha/Beta or never.
Well, the problem with that perspective is that it's basically 'doomsaying' with no basis.
There is probably some reason why Intrepid is making the decisions they are making. So they must have faith in something.
If they don't, and whoever is driving these decisions is just guessing or going by their 'gut', then there's not as much reason to support the project, but whoever is still here is probably supporting. We can tell them why we think their designs don't work or don't match their initial offering, but what can they say beyond 'well we think they work'?
We can only hope that they understand that these things can't be 'tested' the same way as other things, and are paying close attention to whatever testing method they came up with.
But if you consider large guilds, well, maybe those can manually move the goods without needing a caravan. If they need a caravan, aren't they large enough to protect it? Remember that you cannot assemble large group fast without fast travel.
Second, large guilds will own freeholds close to the node, so again, they have the advantage imo. And even if they lose the freehold, they made so much money I don't think they will really lose much.
I don't think there is a problem with a group of people becoming rich collectively. From an old school MMO perspective, large groups of players helping one another out towards a common goal is what MMOs were built on. I doubt there will be a purely solo player capable of attaining a Freehold. As Steven has stated it will take a large effort from many players to attain a Freehold. The world will be vast and if a market isn't to your liking, you can take a group of your friends and try to establish a new Node where you can do the same thing.
Try not to get hung up on 1 specific Node operating not to your liking. If you feeling like a specific group of players are getting too much of an advantage, build up a neighboring Node and siege them. Group with similar minded players and attack on sight all players in that guild. Attack all caravans and camp them non stop. Create their("the rich")risk. AoC is a player driven and created world with a vast amount of solutions to your problem.
To process materials, you first need to transport all the materials to a sufficient Freehold. That takes risk. Sure, you could carry them on your person, but that would likely be very time consuming. So to save time, you take the risk of being attacked during a caravan.
Then, you must transport the processed goods back to where they can be crafted. Again, this takes risk, or time.
Gathering risk a little amount of resources but more risk takens vuia multipul trips
Processing risk a huge amount at once but doesnt need to risk as much as often due to caravan bring a load of resources at once
Crafters risk is i guess depends on market i guess being undercut and not selling things it could unprofitable aswell depending how they do gear decay since once everyoen gets BIS your items are worthless potentially which is how alot of games go, unless ur highest level crafter infront of the curve u make nothing due to people out pacing ur crafts and at max l;evel everyone already bought the best crafted items off others so your items have no market. I just hope gear decays and get removed from the game in some way or require completed equipment to repair but we shal see where they go with that.
what if the amount of time it takes to make a full set of gear is so long that not every single player at max level will be able to get their bis gear before the new expansion or gear comes out? then you don't need to remove gear...
steven has already said that getting your gear will take a lot of time and effort. it will probably take months and more than what it takes to level up from 1-50
thats cause majority of the BIS gear wil be from raid drops then given to crafters however outside of rare drops majority of items crafted at high level will be the easier to craft high end gear and people will get than fairly quickly and your not likely gonna be able to craft bulk of the stuff above that due to needing a specific drop from a raid boss.
Gues what im trying to say is the stuff you will be crafting alot of will be the easy to obtain stuff and then it become useless due to everyone having it and u wont be able to craft rarer stuff as easily so ur profit will be sparse waiting to acquire a rare drop. If you cant make money off the easy to crtaft high level gear getting a consistent income as a crafter will be rough especially since atm gear repair is based off processed mats last we heard so your role is skipped entirly there (you might need to do the actual repair i guess but i feel that be tedious for players to find people to constantly repair). The better method i guess would be to have repair kit crafters make but then you get to a stage were the weapon smith will only be crafting weapon repair kits since his weapon are not desired outside of rare dropped ones, which is silly for a weapon smith to like not be crafting weapons but silly consumable to repair. I think repairing an item should take completed weapon to fuse in with the old to repair durability so the base high level equipment is always in demand by players.
early on in the game you could cripple an opposing nodes be constantly raiding the processed good caravans so you can reduce the speed of their node crafters being able to level while increasing yours, some interesting things can happen with node progression race :P
bis comes from crafting, not from bosses, already confirmed
Would you say that's a Processor Risk or another Gatherer Risk?
Scenario:
- You, as a Gatherer, have an agreement to bring a Processor 4000 units of Raw-Resource and they'll give you the 400 units of Processed-Resource
- Your caravan gets attacked and destroyed along the way, and you lose it all.
- You get to the Processor's freehold and tell them what happened.
Are they:
- Going to sigh and say: "Ohhhh man, I guess I don't get paid for these, then", and then give you the 400 units of Processed-Resource for nothing
or
- Going to sigh and say: "Ah well, that's the risk you take, I suppose", and then walk away, leaving you to your 4000 Raw-Resource loss
I think of the game more like medieval simulator. Everything plays its part based on the amount of effort and time you put into it. You and i can argue its unfair that players who work as a huge cooperative like a guild may get first dibs on land however this has always been the intention and this system of what your willing to put in is what you will get out has always been the idea. So when you see a player in said legendary gear you best believe he is legendary himself and has quite the reputation that probably 95% of the population has not achieved or put in. Same for flying mounts. Its a status symbol. The nodes themselves need be incorporated into the economy. It won't be as big a issue. I just don't see why everyone needs a freehold. That would be implausible and then you'd really have tons of land that is just barren or tons of freeholds that are empty laying to waste. Even if only 5 people can be members of said number of freeholds its still about 75% of the population that can participate in freehold activities. At a max population on a server of 15k that's 10k open slots for families of 5 to work freeholds. It isn't that big of a deal and i suspect after testing it will show it's fine and numerous in the occasion you can find a group to participate with in freeholds. Everyone wants to own a freehold.. It's not who really owns it since they cant achieve it alone. It is being sure said systems once you have the freehold don't push people who are not in said guilds or really helping contribute to its node parent as a whole get crushed endlessly by someone said being left out on the border. Since borders may change with warfare and development across nodes. This is why you don't just plop a freehold down, it takes time and research. I also suspect pvp guilds if they did own said node would look to the conflict border to setup a freehold to extend pvp rewards and reputation to create more conflict and opportunity. In essence in a said node the small groups might be given priority to choose closer locations out of high conflict areas. Everything plays a part in a node into freehold success. I suspect the solo player out farming resources outside freeholds will play a huge role in a economy. The freehold is not a be all end all it requires the small guy at the end of the day. And money alone isnt the issue. It should trickle somewhere to the top of the node and not to small groups running a freehold to just "Make money." The point of nodes is conflict and development. As well this all pushes solo players to play with others on a much larger scale and become involved. This has always been the plan as well.
bis in slot coem from crafting items that dropped from raid bosses so yes they come from bosses just gotta use a crafter as a middle man to get it crafted for you.
your baseline high level gear will most likly require gathering mats from both main continent and a smaller island to promote trade run between the continents, and then your higher tiered max level gear after that will need an item dropped from mobs along with there recipes being solo mob, dungeon drops or raid drops in some way or form either via recipe or specific item loot from x mob
Just in case it's not too far along to change it.
I think it's a holdover from a specific set of simplified Korean games from a particular period. My understanding of why they exist this way is to make them easier to understand, but it's a simplification that seems to start to break when you want your game to have a really strong economic model.
weaponsmithing and armorsmithing get split up cause it overloads that profession compared to the others
-Blacksmithing = Metal weapons metal armor (Weapons+Armor)
Leather working = Leather armor (armor)
Woodworking = Bows, staffs,wands wooden weapons (Weapons)
Tailor = light armor (Armor)
these are just general profession plucked out of my ass not AoC just used those from other games as examples
and so on you basicly get twice as much as the other profession in alot of the cases so generaly they get split into 2 professions otherwise you see everyone go blacksmithing cause there more options especialy when your a heavy armor melee person cause one profession makes your whole kit
Yes, that's my point. If you want to build a stronger econ model, you split them up and then put in a specific type of effort, but then it becomes complexity.
But in a less simplistic game, the other mentioned Professions have more things to do and don't get squashed so much. I just realized that I've never explicitly mentioned it before because, well... as much as I wish it was, Ashes ain't FFXI so I don't like to just 'tell them FFXI systems are better'.
But in this case, they are, Intrepid, mostly because much like FFXI, you have enough stuff for the subsections to do, and you're going to have some confusions anyway.
For reference, the FFXI ones are:
Woodworking - Bows, required for some Crossbows, Furniture, Wands, Staves, etc
Boneworking - Bone Daggers and similar, some furniture/tools, some armor/helmets
Clothcraft - Cloth armor, required for certain metal armor
Leatherworking - Leather Armor, preprocessing, certain metal armor
Alchemy - Obvious
Cooking - Obvious
Goldsmithing - Usually obvious, also includes precision machinery along with the jewelry and armor deco
Smithing - More armor and weapons than most, some tools
The above are not a suggestion in any way, I don't want anything changed to this. If simplicity is a requirement, then go for it. It just makes me think an opportunity is being lost if simplicity isn't the primary goal. We just had some thread about if Bows fall under Weaponsmithing for a reason.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes
these are ur professions for AoC btw if u didnt know
Yes, thank you.
ok you kill the boss and then...how many bosses do you need to kill to craft?
and how long will it take you to level up all the professions needed to craft the items, even if its a group effort splitting professions
and how long will it take you to get the rest of the mats?
and after that you add overenchanting and gear augments, rerolls, etc
what im saying is its possible that not all the players will get their bis gear before an expansion comes out, so
crafters will always have somethign to craft and sell.
if you can craft 100 items a day and sell em, thats a different story, but from what steven had said, this isnt how crafting will be.
I think some people will work out private arrangements, and that risk/reward is whatever they agree to. But I think the average player is going to use the in-game systems and allow Market prices to dictate everything.
It will go like this:
1) Gatherer assumes the risk of gathering goods and transporting them to the Market.
2) Processor buys raw mats from the Market and assumes the risk of transporting them to a suitable Freehold and then back to the Market to be sold as processed goods.
3) Crafters buys processed goods and assumes risk of transporting them to suitable crafting stations, crafting, and transporting back to the Market for final sale.