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.
Two artisan outputs: creating a healthy economy
neuroguy
Member, Alpha Two
The economy, artisan system and caravans need to be synergistically set up with each other in mind. Gold and resource sinks & sources need to be balanced. Here I propose a skeletal structure of how these systems can be set up synergistically and the key design decisions that will enable that. I think that monster certificates/glint having a big role in caravan use is great and something I advocated for before, but I think the artisanship side of the game could also be better tied into it. The main text will have a design choice with an explanation of what it achieves in spoilers.
In TLDR format, this system involves...
As mentioned, this system involves separating artisanship output for two major purposes, for world building and player-use items. In terms of world building...
1. Nodes should require a large amount of raw, processed and crafted resources (in that order) to advance stages beyond node stage '1'. Buildings in nodes (especially at metropolis stage) should also require resources.
2. These resources can either be delivered through player inventory at a node for little monetary gain for the player (this will only be done by citizens or those with vested interest in the node) OR alternatively, via caravans for which the delivering player will receive gold based on a number of variables like distance travelled by caravan... so, basically like the commodities. This can be supplemented by bonus gold through mayoral policies (from taxes) to encourage deliveries to that particular node. These delivery caravans can only be done (or receive a large bonus to heavily incentivize) for nodes with trade treaties.
3. Node resource requirements will be very bottom heavy, meaning that higher tier resources/goods will be needed at much much lower volumes. Furthermore, the NPC population of nodes should have random and cyclically changing demands for limited volumes of commodities and crafted items providing large monetary incentive for those that can meet them.
In terms of player-use items, meaning crafting gear and consumables...
1. Resource demand for creating items should be tiny compared to the world-building demand. There should be a large emphasis on quality vs quantity for crafted goods with player-use in mind.
2. There should be interesting decisions at both the processing and crafting stages. An example of such a system: at the processing stage, different 'secondary materials' can be (optionally) used to imbue the output (e.g. bars or leather) with some primary stat property like intelligence, strength or dexterity. Then at the crafting stage, this primary stat property can be turned into secondary stats on the item. For example intelligence can be turned into mana regen, cool down reduction etc, while strength can become armor penetration and dex could become crit chance.
3. These rare 'secondary materials' should be most often/most optimally acquired by specialized 'expert' gatherers. They should be most often/optimally gathered from group content like dungeons, raids, world bosses etc.
*note this is just a scaffold for crafting, it can be done differently as long is follows these basic principles
To recap, this system allows for simultaneous abundance and high volume gathering/transport/crafting for node progression with a high variety of rare/high quality resources used for crafting meaningful items. It enables caravans to be critical for individual player economic success in a risk-reward manner making them highly relevant and contested events. Having the value of resources being mostly realized through transportation makes it the bottle neck and reduces the tragedy of the commons. Low tier resources retain their value due to their high demand in world development. This avoids needing to use low tier resources to acquire high tier resources (like new world does for example) which would create large problems for the relevance of caravans. It also makes engagement with the artisanship system worthwhile and profitable (and even necessary for world progression) even at low levels of engagement without encroaching on the value provided by highly specialized artisans (gatherers, processors, crafters) who will still be required for creating high quality items for player use.
In TLDR format, this system involves...
- the artisanship system having 2 roles: world/node development and creation of items for player-use
- a large majority of gathered/processed/crafted goods will be used for world/node development, while a small % will be of sufficient quality & desirable for player-use
- the caravan system being fundamental to the value of resources and goods (you should NEED to use caravans to realize the monetary value of most resources/goods)
- high general resource availability with simultaneously sparse high-quality resources used for "player-use" crafting to prevent flooding the market with useful items and thus devaluing them
As mentioned, this system involves separating artisanship output for two major purposes, for world building and player-use items. In terms of world building...
1. Nodes should require a large amount of raw, processed and crafted resources (in that order) to advance stages beyond node stage '1'. Buildings in nodes (especially at metropolis stage) should also require resources.
This will make artisan classes important for node progression and world development. It can also slow down rushing node level ups via combat exp only... leveling a node will require parallel combat and artisan progress. In order to account for more node growth than destruction, I think high level nodes should require large resources for buildings too in order to keep the demand high without relying on constant successful sieges.
2. These resources can either be delivered through player inventory at a node for little monetary gain for the player (this will only be done by citizens or those with vested interest in the node) OR alternatively, via caravans for which the delivering player will receive gold based on a number of variables like distance travelled by caravan... so, basically like the commodities. This can be supplemented by bonus gold through mayoral policies (from taxes) to encourage deliveries to that particular node. These delivery caravans can only be done (or receive a large bonus to heavily incentivize) for nodes with trade treaties.
This provides rationale to transport raw materials and not just processed goods that are more weight-to-value efficient. This will make organized concentrated effort (e.g. by guilds) to advance single nodes come at the cost of economic prosperity for the individual players. It also provides some baseline value for resources that can ONLY be achieved through caravan usage avoiding depreciation of the value of resources, despite their abundance (a gold source + resource sink that doesn't rely on player demand).
3. Node resource requirements will be very bottom heavy, meaning that higher tier resources/goods will be needed at much much lower volumes. Furthermore, the NPC population of nodes should have random and cyclically changing demands for limited volumes of commodities and crafted items providing large monetary incentive for those that can meet them.
This retains a high market value for low tier resources making low tier gathering/processing/crafting still highly relevant throughout the game's life as nodes rise and fall. High tier resources can be kept more rare for player-gear crafting without heavily gating node progression. The random item demand will provide 'gold-rush' events allowing for high risk-reward and high friction/PvP susceptible gameplay.
In terms of player-use items, meaning crafting gear and consumables...
1. Resource demand for creating items should be tiny compared to the world-building demand. There should be a large emphasis on quality vs quantity for crafted goods with player-use in mind.
The high volumes of available resources should not create goods worthy of player-use. Players will use items of a higher quality than those demanded by nodes for their progress. Separating items for these purposes will allow for high volume crafting (e.g. for exp progression) to have an economic purpose (node progression) while preventing the over-saturation of powerful crafted items (see next points as to how this may be achieved) allowing for an interesting player-driven economy.
2. There should be interesting decisions at both the processing and crafting stages. An example of such a system: at the processing stage, different 'secondary materials' can be (optionally) used to imbue the output (e.g. bars or leather) with some primary stat property like intelligence, strength or dexterity. Then at the crafting stage, this primary stat property can be turned into secondary stats on the item. For example intelligence can be turned into mana regen, cool down reduction etc, while strength can become armor penetration and dex could become crit chance.
This will, again, discourage even high quality/rarity resources from necessarily being processed before transport. It also allows for a rich diversity of final crafted items based on the initial resources and processing steps, with demand shifting with the current meta and other variables. This will avoid crafting recipes from requiring large volumes of resources as the rarity of secondary materials will prevent over-saturation of the market with useful items.
It also enables a simultaneously abundant and rare artisanship system, with base resources being highly abundant while these optional secondary resources that can imbue base resources with properties being rare and only necessary for goods meant for player use.
It also enables a simultaneously abundant and rare artisanship system, with base resources being highly abundant while these optional secondary resources that can imbue base resources with properties being rare and only necessary for goods meant for player use.
3. These rare 'secondary materials' should be most often/most optimally acquired by specialized 'expert' gatherers. They should be most often/optimally gathered from group content like dungeons, raids, world bosses etc.
This allows for non-specialized gatherers to still be highly relevant due to the high demand of basic resources while giving expert/specialized gatherers a more critical role in crafting high quality items meant for player-use. It should also encourage higher risk group play such that a solo gatherer is not going to be swimming in these rarer secondary materials, no matter their specialization and mastery. Ultimately, this makes engagement with the artisan system rewarding at both low and high levels of investment/specialization while also promoting group play and content.
*note this is just a scaffold for crafting, it can be done differently as long is follows these basic principles
For example, you can plug in a simplified version of SWG crafting here and have it work just fine too. Resources can have qualities:
-Quality 0 resources are basic (average at all properties) and most common.
-Quality 1-5 resources will be rarer and have 1-5 above average properties with the properties having some numeric range which can be maximized at the processing stage.
Some properties may be exclusive to certain biomes. So iron may be quality 0 (most useful for world building crafting) while a quality 1 iron can have higher 'durability' or 'malleability' or a biome specific 'cold affinity property' which can be +cold damage on weapons or +cold resist for armor. A quality 3 iron mined in the tundra may have all 3 properties (2 general and 1 biome specific in this example). The processing/crafting stage would then determine the actual numeric values of the stats. Again, this is just another example of the crafting system details. The key is to have a high % of resources be normal or average, with a small % being useful for crafting items players will actually use.
-Quality 0 resources are basic (average at all properties) and most common.
-Quality 1-5 resources will be rarer and have 1-5 above average properties with the properties having some numeric range which can be maximized at the processing stage.
Some properties may be exclusive to certain biomes. So iron may be quality 0 (most useful for world building crafting) while a quality 1 iron can have higher 'durability' or 'malleability' or a biome specific 'cold affinity property' which can be +cold damage on weapons or +cold resist for armor. A quality 3 iron mined in the tundra may have all 3 properties (2 general and 1 biome specific in this example). The processing/crafting stage would then determine the actual numeric values of the stats. Again, this is just another example of the crafting system details. The key is to have a high % of resources be normal or average, with a small % being useful for crafting items players will actually use.
To recap, this system allows for simultaneous abundance and high volume gathering/transport/crafting for node progression with a high variety of rare/high quality resources used for crafting meaningful items. It enables caravans to be critical for individual player economic success in a risk-reward manner making them highly relevant and contested events. Having the value of resources being mostly realized through transportation makes it the bottle neck and reduces the tragedy of the commons. Low tier resources retain their value due to their high demand in world development. This avoids needing to use low tier resources to acquire high tier resources (like new world does for example) which would create large problems for the relevance of caravans. It also makes engagement with the artisanship system worthwhile and profitable (and even necessary for world progression) even at low levels of engagement without encroaching on the value provided by highly specialized artisans (gatherers, processors, crafters) who will still be required for creating high quality items for player use.
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Didn't want to scare people with an even larger wall of text :P. Wrote this a year ago, thought it may be worth sharing with the new livestream.