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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.
Comments
That on top of weird guild politics so certain people can get more gold than others and get more gains with some manipulation.
While I can see how you would come to that conclusion, the reality is that the faction in question was a bunch of guilds that didn't have enough trust in each other to show up each week. This meant they couldn't do a reward share system where one guild got the item one week, and a different guild got it the next time they won the encounter.
With this method, everyone present got a fair portion of the rewards, in the form of gold.
They did offer the item to anyone present for the fight first, if anyone had the resources to buy it. My understanding is that this offer was taken up a number of times (wasn't my faction, so going on second hand knowledge - though I did purchase an item off them for a guild member at one point).
I'll try to roughly describe L2 market, how i see it, as we move towards low supply items.
Supply and demand decide the price.
When price is high enough - PvP will start to happen around PvE content that is supplying the item.
As prices continue to grow - PvP starts to take control over access to PvE content, and will begin to influence the price.
At some point, when supply gets low enough, players by means of PVP will be able to take enough control over PvE encounter supplying the item, to have PvP(controlling supply) and demand decide the price. Market starts to shrink, since those in control are likely also part of demand.
Final step: PvP has full control over PvE encounter, supply is low enough to effectively never satisfy demand of those in control, with that - there is no longer a market. Now the only way for demand to meet the supply - is to become it. The only price you can pay - is PvP. (unless RMT, hacked account, etc.)
Hope this helps to understand my perspective.
Top guilds aren't going to wait until an item has a high sale value before they go after the encounters in question. Everyone capable of taking the encounter on with a reasonable chance of success will be present. The sale price of the item increasing isn't going to mean more people are suddenly in a position to contest the encounter. The only increase to how many people show up to fight an encounter will be when there is an increase in the number of people that think they have a shot at it.
This is why supply and demand and risk vs reward are different things.
Any item that is valuable for players will have a higher price tag and/or be a item people won't part with because of the advantage it gives and knowing the low chance of gaining something like that again.
The only reason the price would not increase is if more people were trying to obtain it and the drop rate was higher which would have more abundance for people to obtain. If the amount of items can't meet the demand people will pay higher for it, and more people will fight to try to get the item if it has good value.
With more people fighting over things, and of course materials being droppable the risk is increased in terms of player opposition, to both prevent you from obtaining but also take what you have.
Though the value would have to be equal to the risk of corruption, but who is to say with guild wars that won't cause certain mats to be droppable and such.
Brings me back to my original point and a issue with pretty much 80% of your takes saying this is how things will be. You do not know how the game will be, you are looking at a incomplete picture like a finished product.
Only factor that would decide if someone would try to PvP for something - is if they can? What about risk involved? Profit? What about opportunity cost?
In my L2 market example - it's not one or another thing that is happening. And it's not just PvE, PvP and market, stripped of all other systems and other human interactions, like it is in an example. It is a scale from 0 to 100% that is going through the entire game, interacting with all other systems in a different way, creating different situations, that different players solve in different ways, all at once, fluidly.
If someone is doing something - it's because they find the risk to be worth the reward. Taking too much risk is not worth it - you could do something else with better ratio of risk to reward. So when you are saying - "sometimes risk is not equal to reward" - it's for you to decide, not the game, not other players - you! It's like you are saying: "if i made poor decision, and put a lot of effort in it - i should still get great reward". A lot of movement in the wrong direction does not get you where you want to be. If you want to bring 100 players to a boss designed for 10 - you absolutely can, but you are paying a massive opportunity cost. You could have sent 10 to the boss and have 90 controlling 9 different farming spots instead. This is why travel time is important - it helps to control opportunity cost. All game systems are connected, not instanced
As I've been saying this whole time - I am talking about what ever boss is dropping the best items in the game (or the components to make those items).
The thing is, I'm actually looking at it from the perspective of a number of games - Archeage, BDO, EQ and EQ2 all had open world encounters that dropped the best items in the game. While PvP wasn't present in all of these games, competition over the encounters was present in all of them.
You, however, seem to be the person with just one game you are using as your example - and a poor game at that.
The thing that makes L2 a fairly poor example for this kind of thing - is that the game was designed with the Korean market in mind rather than the NA market. In Korea, in order for your game to be successful (especially in the early 2000's), it needed to be installed on computers in internet cafes. When deciding if a game would be installed or not, these cafes looked at the game play of the game. They only wanted games that had long periods of marginal attention (grinding), so that people would eat and drink more.
Thus, Korean games were designed totally different to western games at the time, and *TOTALLY* different to what any NA gamer would accept today.
While an argument can be made that Ashes is taking a good amount from L2, it is all in regards to PvP. There is literally nothing at all in relation to the economy (a games economy includes the creation, transfer and destruction of in game worth - so item drops are within it's scope). Archeage and SWG are the games you should be looking at for anything at all to do with Ashes economy - L2 should be totally ignored.
Your item argument i take like this: "if best items were not actually the best - they would not be worth fighting for as much". Thanks, Captain - then don't do it? Meanwhile Steven: Does that sound like AA or L2 to you? I did not mention singular exclusive items L2 had, because they don't make sense in context of this discussion.
Only things you should be looking at as inspiration from AA is competitive housing and gathering.
Not my videos:
Big boy boss in Archeage
Big boy boss in L2
Both games will drop full items and mats for those items, both games have ow bosses, both games have mobs dropping mats (yet to see their relevance in Ashes though), both games have PKers dropping full items.
If the repairs do in fact require the same mats as the craft of the thing you're trying to repair then the general gameplay loop related to that would be similar to the OE process in L2. And obviously if AoC's OE destroys items then it's exactly like L2.
And on the topic of caravans, we've yet to see their direct relevance to personal item crafting. They'll most likely be involved in node-scale stuff and maybe guild-scale crafting, but I'm not sure that solo/small group players would use caravans instead of mules. And mules bring us back to PKers, which will be the same loot piñatas as they were in L2.
The dial thing is more of an addition to the process, and iirc that's the main link to SWG. So this mainly leaves AA's relevance unknown to me, so could you point out the difference?
There is actually wiki page on this topic: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Inspiration
I can also add leveling time and balance around group, instead of solo as L2 influence.
A few points.
It was in the game from day 1. It wasn't killable from day 1, but it was there - north west Karkasse Ridgelands, the part of the map somewhat cryptically labeled "Red Dragon's Keep".
Sorry you missed it.
That video of the dragon was from years after I stopped playing the game, it was indeed an version of the red dragon, as opposed to the actual fight I am talking about. From what I understand, Kakao realized that raids are better instanced, and so instanced it.
The reddit post you mention is from three years ago. People were killing it on every NA server by 2016. If any encounter in any game still has top end loot after 4 years of being killed, the game developer should be embarassed.
Being an internet detective on things you have no idea about when talking to someone that does know what they are talking about requires a lot more than a basic google search.
You should be embarassed by this post.
I'd be happy to post a reply to your post that was immediately previous to this post of yours above, but not until you appologize for how straight up poor form in every regard this post here is.
The notion that the economy is actually an important aspect of the game. In L2, it really isn't by contrast (not knocking L2 here, EQ2,s economy could just be ignored as well, it had similar complexity to what you have talked about in the past in regards to L2's economy).
Material quality. Assuming it is still in the agenda, that will be directly from SWG.
The only economic aspect of the game that could be said to be from L2 is item enchanting, but I would wager that it will be more like Archeages version than L2's. Same materials, yes. However, that doesn't mean destroying the item is the only way to get them.
Imagine if you will a regular sword drops from a mob. You could use it, and then when damaged you will need to repair it. This sword is made from iron, and so you could go out and get another sword and deconstruct it to get iron to repair the sword you are using.
Or you could go out and get some iron.
Now imagine your sword is made of mithril. To repair it, you could get another sword made of mithril and deconstruct it to get that mithril for repairs. Or you could go get some mithril.
While you can deconstruct items to get some specific items needed for crafting other items, Steven has in the past mentioned that the intent is not that you need to keep feeding your raid dropped weapon other raid dropped weapons in order to keep it in good repair - that it is only the basic construction material that is needed to repair the item, and they should be available via the gathering process.
To your later point about caravans, my expectation for them from the personal level is that they will exist to make money. An example of this would be a metropolis node situated deep in a desert - there are no forests in the desert, and so someone may well fill a caravan with lumber in a forest node and move it to that desert node so that there is lumber for sale there.
Basically, from my perspective the purpose of personal caravans is to transport materials from areas where there is an abundance to areas where there is a lack purely in order to make a profit. There likely will be some guild level stuff where caravans full of materials are transported for guild crafters, but I think that will be less of a use to people moving goods for profit.
Based on what you have provided to be and my other research, L2's economy is very low level.
If you have not played a 'deep economy' game, then it looks similar, but it's really quite far. In fact, the entire reason I would not in fact get the gang and join you and Depraved on the new L2 server, is that we wouldn't be able to stomach the gap.
L2 Economy is slightly above BDO tier, and for us, BDO is a 3/10 - 'At least you can sell things'.
I'm sure that I'll end up writing y'all another chapter of Fiat Magarin at some point over the next years as Ashes moves forward, but I mention it now because 'just explaining why L2 economy is five levels below where Ashes is aiming' (Ashes is definitely, by claims alone, aiming for 9/10 minimum) is a 'textbook chapter'.
I'm curious - on this scale, where would you place Archeage?
It is the game with the deepest economy I've played other than EVE (which I didn't get in to enough), and I did play it for a while purely because of this economy, but it still felt shallow compaired to what it could have been.
1. Production is tied to location, player must actually interact to achieve production
2. Players can trade or sell items to each other, if prices have a clamped range, the range is large and doesn't tend to hit the top.
3. There is no way to get money directly from selling mob drops (specifically, treasure found in chests ok) to NPCs unless it is acting as the price clamp
4. There is at least a regional auction or known place for players to gather to 'Bazaar' their wares (must be safe once there)
5. Mobs (and even quests) drop very little regular cash, it is generally found as treasure from exploration only.
6. No daily login rewards exist, that can be converted to cash or economic power (preferably just 'none exist' but you can get a daily 'entry pass to an area where you then have to do something else')
7. Supply of items varies by region (attempting to control demand too is not necessary, often not even good)
8. Fast Travel is limited, so the game has SOME form of 'trade run', whether directly input or not.
9. Crafting requires materials generally provided by lower level players or less invested players, so the opportunity cost of collecting these materials themselves is not good for the dedicated crafter.
10. A food system drives some of the material churn, converting 'gathering time' -> temporary power. (potions ok too but food tends to be more interesting to me personally)
11. Some other item sink drives the gear material churn (optimally this is not BDO style where completed items are involved)
12. Crafting specializations exist and are available to any character, but specialization paths are very flexible so players can at least somewhat adapt.
13. Consumable usage is low
14. Material volume input side is low enough to be volatile by player whim (basically, there could be little or none of something on sale because no one bothered to gather it lately)
FFXI gets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (lost 6 around 2008), 7 (weakly, but you can count it or not count it), (lost 8 around the same time), 9 (got wobbly after a level cap raise, but when I discuss it, I'm talking about at LEAST before that), 10, (not really 11), 12 - (I don't count this for FFXI, though it should be counted, because crafted gear is not generally BiS for the type of player who has a lot of money), 13, 14.
For a total of 9/10. Also, some things, when applied together, are detrimental to the fun of a large section of the playerbase that isn't my player type. People will stomach '5' but not without '4' and certainly not without a lot of freedom in '2'. People will be okay with '9' but having both 9 and 2 without 13 and 14 is a botfest, etc.
Ashes has basically promised all but '3' and '5', and I'm suspicious on their implementation of '1' and '12'.
Rate whatever game you know if you like. NiKr, I'm happy to learn more about L2 via that. TL is looking like a 6, but I know a person who knows a person who might know soon sorta.
Relevance to thread and nuance:
The issue with boss difficulty is that 'reward' is defined by the econ system above. In weak econ games, particularly those without '5', the way gear reaches players is really weird sometimes. Low spread on itemization or limited crafting also causes this sort of thing, which is why BDO scores so low, it works against itself, failing 1 and 2 despite 'theoretically having them', intentionally not having 3, originally having no '4', issues with 5, 6 is their whole game flow now, 7 is sus, autopathing kinda wrecks 8, 9 is laughable, 10 is shoddy, 11 is broken as soon as you're out of green grade, 12-14 not a chance.
So BDO is hard to rate because it TRIES to get some, but only half manages, so it gets a half point for many.
When a game is like that, player motivations are very random, not 'as a group', but even within individuals, which is bad. So 'risk' is barely defined (if you factor for time) and 'reward' has no meaning unless you explicitly avoid 3.
I'm going to first think of if the game has '5'. If it doesn't, then there's a high chance that I can get more cash to buy the boss drop by farming 'trash mobs' than I can by fighting the boss for it. Not guaranteed, but for many reasons, this is how it tends to work.
If '2' isn't in place so I 'have to fight the boss myself' (Bind on Pickup for example) but the game has PvP, chances of '12' are super low. Boss will generally drop full items or 'things that a single character puts together without crafting skill'. Not always, but probably.
So 'reward' is janky and 'risk' falls apart in certain ways too. High PvP games could result in a 'if I can't have it, no one can' situation for bosses very easily, and Mutually Assured Denial in a game isn't actually combated well by not having '5'. That just makes the number of people who show up random, like certain stocks. The daily confidence interval on a boss or Elite mob with a good drop is completely shot. If everyone thinks 'everyone else is farming let's go get the boss' no one gets anything. If everyone thinks 'everyone will be at the boss, I should just farm' then the few people that don't think that get an easy kill. Social RNG!
The risk and reward of actions in game are directly tied to econ, and for me personally, any game below 6/10 means that you can't even say they're related to each other. Because you can't define either risk or reward (from the perspective of an Econ player/RL investor, at least).
Though on a number of points, they did do the bare minimum to qualify.
I do agree that the overall complexity of the system is higher in Ashes, but I'm not sure if the gameplay loop itself will be all that different.
To me this just sounds like graded crystals in L2. You'd need them to craft stuff and you'd usually get them by deconstructing items of the same grade, but of lower quality.
So once again, the core principle is the same, but complexity is a bit lower.
Do you mean material acquisition here or stuff like "anvils are only located in this place, so you gotta go there to craft stuff"?
I assume the latter and L2 had this in the slightest way iirc. There was an npc that helped you craft some stuff and particular items could only be crafted in particular cities. Now, L2's travel wasn't as meaningful as AoC's will be, so I'd assume that kinda fails this point.
Yep. Clamping was only at the bottom, cause you could sell to npcs which determined the floor price. Ceiling price was literally 2.147kkk, cause that's the code limit. Prices never reached this afaik. At least in the early updates of the game (which are the only good ones according to a ton of people).
Mentioned this in 2, but to add, you could sell general mats to npcs as well, but that cost was usually quite the ways lower than what people were asking for those items, so it was pointless to sell to npcs if your goal was making money off of those sales.
Yep, each town had player stalls, but there'd usually be a single "main" hub of traders that you'd go through if you wanted to buy mid-high lvl stuff or just general mats. Iirc auction npc was added way later in the game, but player culture lead to proper naming schemes for your shop, so you could do a shop search by the name of your desired item and shops with its name would stand out of the crowd (I thiiink this feature was present early on, but not 100% sure).
This is a complete fail. There were treasure chests, but they were usually farmed for Enhancement scrolls, which could be considered as "a great way to earn money", but those chests were only openable by dagger classes (one of them literally named Treasure Hunter
Yep, early versions had none of that afaik. Later stuff implemented it, cause fucking of course it did.
L2 had not only region, but also lvl (which kinda correlate too). You can look at parentheses for mob lvls and as you'll see, it's all over the place. And this is the drop/spoil list for one of the most used general mats in the game (it could also be crafted from 2 mats of lower tier, which also had a similar range of acquisition sources). Lvl80 was the max for this update, so mid lvls had the best spots to farm this material.
This is also a fail. Pretty much a total one, cause not only could you gain access to TPs into the depth of dungeons, but you also had TP scrolls back to town.
Read 7. And if you were a high lvl crafter, you'd usually be provided those mats by guildies, who in turn would usually just buy them (well, at least in my experience).
This is sadly a fail too. Though, funnily enough you could craft some buff potions by fishing
If I understand this one correctly, then it's a fail too, cause gear mats would only churn through failed crafts, OE burn or item deconstruction for its crystals.
Utter fail cause you had to be a specific class for proper crafting.
You already know
Yep. I've experienced quite a lot of days where the entire damn market was missing an item I wanted because people either hadn't farmed enough of said item recently, or I just got a very unlucky timing and those items were completely bought out (also kinda implying that people hadn't farmed enough of them).
This could also apply to a huge variety of items, from the most basic lowest tier of general mats up to the highest tier gear mats.
So, overall around 6-7 points. And yeah, from this pov I can see how Ashes would have a much deeper system. And if Noaani says that AA is 8.5, then I'd assume it's the caravans and probably existence of food and maybe low consumable use? Crafting is probably freer too, so maybe it has some fails in other places?
There are also region specific trade packs, but that is crafting, not materials.
It did have a bonus and penalties to some materials in every region in the game which is what I was thinking of when I excluded region specific materials - as it wasn't an exclusivity thing, just a speed boost.
There was also one other material that was only available in one location that I forgot about, despite it being something I had to go and get myself when I needed it, as it was often not on the auction house at all.
I also didn't factor in trade packs at all, as there wasn't a clear place for them to be an individual factor. If we were to add purposeful transport of materials as a new point, that would add another to both Archeage and Ashes - putting Ashes at 10.5/10 if we assumed this new point as an inclusion.
If 5 fails, then for complex reasons, 9 isn't good.
If 9 isn't good, then 12 isn't usually a big economic factor. Even if 9 is fine, if 12 fails, 14 fails in most games.
So L2 'lost its points' for 9 and 14 for me, but since I wasn't actually sure, I mentally 'gave the benefit of the doubt' and therefore didn't give a very clear 'number'. I just knew it was 'better than BDO's nonsense' but 'not by much'.
Afaik AA is definitely a 10, but AA is also very variable in exactly how MUCH it commits to any of them.
I'd definitely choose to play it over most games, though, if not for the fact that its social interactions are kind of odd for me personally, especially as you get higher into the P2W tiers.
Save us, Jake Song!
As for this thread therefore, Ashes vs AA or L2...
I fear that Ashes will fail '5' and therefore the dominoes will fall same as L2. The reason why Treasure Chest money or 'Elite Mob drops money' tends to be ok is that the Devs completely control this particular 'gold faucet' with minimal effort.
When every mob drops a 'reasonable' amount of cash, then you've tied 'number of players' to 'economy input'. Not 'gold in economy', just 'input'. It's a valve that players open or close much more directly than the treasure chest ones.
The same goes for bosses and that brings us to the concept where Ashes might get weird even with 5 'mostly implemented', because it puts us back at 'weird confidence intervals'. If you think 'I can get hard cash by going down into this dungeon and farming X elites', and you go down and there's competition, in a PvE-only game what happens is that one person/group gets it, others lose only time.
In Ashes, one person/group gets it, everyone loses exp, durability, consumables (beyond whatever their planned losses were).
Chaos ensues.
For some, this chaos IS the gameplay, so technically, it has instantly balanced out the 'risk' (taking your time to go there) with a 'reward' (the clash, social interaction, fun test of skill). But this is not a useful thing to consider for an MMO economy because this is so easily obtained for 'free' in other games where you don't need to actually progress in Economy to remain relevant.
Basically, if you tell me 'but you can compete for objectives and test your skill and be rewarded' I'm still going to play Predecessor for that experience, an MMO does not hold much draw for it, for me personally.
Throne and Liberty, for example, has already failed 5, so I know I'm unlikely to take it very seriously. Just waiting to see if Ashes will too.
Trade runs are an example - obviously Archeage has them. But it also has a massive amount of dead easy fast travel.
Mob drops for reward can also be a question for Ashes. You can farm and farm as much as you want and get more coin purses, but then you need labor to open them, and the results need to be sold to other players.
As per my above post, supply of resources by region exists - but is very limited (I can only think of three items from when I played).
Then you have the need for lower level items - but it is as feasable to make them yourself as any other option.
I'm sure it was both exciting and rewarding when dragon got first enabled. Just shows how different item design and risk/reward can be, how much weight an item can carry, social and political aspects of it. How different is our perspective and mentality. Getting Ring of Baium 4 years after release would probably still be more exciting than getting dragon weapon 2 weeks after. It's that different. Yep, who needs that extra depth an meaning!? Why keep content relevant!? After all, you have to add an ⬆️ item for people to have a reason to P2W more, right!?
L2's bosses also had huge bags of cash on them, so there's a chance that boss certificates would cost a shitton as well (and it's kinda logical to assume this imo), at which point we'll have exactly what you described.
Could world manager's control of certificate drop values be considered a dev-controlled faucet? I feel like that would be the only saving grace of this setup, because if mobs dropped money you'd be constantly getting richer even if you farmed the same mob for days on end. But with certificates the cost of that mob's cert might fall within a few hours of you farming it, so you wouldn't get a linear increase in your wealth. And if I understand correctly that is what point 5 is about, right?
* Nom nom nom * , Thanks.
Just an Idea that probably goes well with my somewhat edgy Avatar,
what about Events, " random " , " without Warning " - like for Example a HUGE outbreak in some kind of Pestilence, Curse, Plague, etc. -> resulting in an incredibly huge Group, if not "Army" of Undead ?
The Effect ? -> It could (should?) be designed in a way, that it " forces " Players nearby Towns, Cities, Trade-Routes, etc.,
to work and travel together in Groups - where they would easily normally be able to do their things alone.
Players who work as Woodcutters, ( Wood )
Hunters, ( Flesh, Leather, etc. )
Miners, ( Stone, Jewels, Minerals like Gold, Silver, )
such Players who could usually do their Routine easily and relatively undisturbed if not for the Threat of Rogue Enemy Players,
could SUDDENLY find themselves in the Danger of being swarmed by some Groups of Undeads, Infecteds, Zombies, etc.
Wouldn't it be " EPIC " to see a City besieged by a ridiculously huge Army of Undead - hungering for the sweet, fresh (lol) Flesh and Blood of the living ?
And if it's just rare, huge and dangerous enough - it could be something that more or less "forces" several Player Nodes, Towns, Guilds, Cities whatever you call it, to work together "ALONGSIDE" the concerned Cities' Guards, to fend off this huge Threat.
I am aware, this would need to be something like a big World Event. But imagine this kind of thing happening somewhere,
WITHOUT WARNING before. That it can surprise Players randomly ingame at Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter.
A thing that doesn't have Regards and/or Consideration if for Example there are " TWO " Nodes/Cities nearby, fighting for Control over a single Territory and both Sides want control over the other Node/City.
Imagine if the undead Plague would "feed" on the fallen Players and/or NPC's of possible Battlefields of the Conflict as well ... ... ...
I could imagine that easily as dangerous as for Example a pissed off Group of grown, huge Dragons. Who would come down from whereever their Lairs are, to kick the Butts of one or several Cities of cocky Humanoids who think they conquered the whole World. x'D
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)