-Resolved AH Suggestion-

Edit: player stalls and bulletin boards will fill this role instead so this is fine.

Just saw from the AMA stream that Auction Houses will be introduced at some point during phase 3, but I dont think this is very good for players trying to engage in this testing. Without it you will have a really chaotic and slow economy that will not correctly represent the values of many different items. Because its extremely tedious to trade with other players especially when you have a game built to be massive. I know the area is much smaller than the actual game but still.

Probably not too clear, sorry about that but I really do think this is a mistake to not have earlier in the testing. It helps broadcast and normalize the value of items and works as a form of player quest creation if you have buy orders implemented.

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Ludullu

Phase 3 is the one that will go on for potentially years, with probably a wipe right before it. So getting a good economy for the persistent test is the right thing to do.

You won't see much proper economic movement during weekend and weekday tests. At least nowhere near the persistent scale.

ChaosFactor

Like many other things over the course of testing, we are truly just testing. Incredibly granular things like how item values are decided, how the player economy flows, and how you can earn income through player trade... Will not be tested any time soon.

We will not have a true grip on the function of player economy for a long, long time. Economy during Alpha 2 for certain, and likely into Betas as well, will be absolute chaos. I'm sure that they will use their expertise to mitigate that as much as possible, but they're primary introducing the auction house purely to test it for functionality and bugs.

Hopefully that helps!

TheAshen

I partially agree, only from the perspective of what we'll be testing. It was stated in the roadmap phase 2 would involve economy testing which will only be partial without a function auction house but perhaps they want to test how it will function outside of that feature.

As for the other reasoning, I imagine testing crafting will likely be more difficult (at least at scale) without access to resources through the auction house. But they didn't state a specific phase for this to be tested.

My argument not to introduce it and other features too soon is to focus on the particular areas they need tested, for example having people delve into each artisan branch rather than focusing one and sourcing through the auction house will give them more data.

Diamaht

It's not as if the game will go into beta, then launch right after phase 3. I think the year or two (or three?) that the game spends in alpha/beta will be plenty of time.

bloodprophet

Auction houses will NOT be like in other games.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Auction_house

Auction house locations
Ashes of Creation concept art.[11]

Auction houses accompany unique node buildings in Economic nodes.[2]

Markets in Village level economic nodes have auction houses that allow raw resources and crafting materials to be posted.[2]
Exchanges in Town nodes have expanded auction houses that allow all goods/items to be posted.[2]
Economic nodes that have reached the metropolis stage unlock the linked economy superpower.[2]
Up to two economic metropolises may be linked in this manner.[12]
Metropolis level economic nodes enable worldwide sale prices for auction houses across Verra.[2]
Items listed in one linked economic node can be bid on from any other linked economic node.[2]
Linked economies also connect an economic metropolis and its vassal economic nodes.[8][2]

No need to have this on day one. Plus when the game truly launches and the masses join us anything you think you learned about what stuff should cost will be outdated and suspect at that point.

arkileo

Player shops are phase 2, and that's only 24 game days minimum from A2 launch, so it won't be trade-only for too long.

Taleof2Cities

bloodprophet wrote: »

Auction houses will NOT be like in other games.

Sathrago has been a long-time Forums member, @bloodprophet. I’m 100% sure he doesn’t need the Wiki quoted verbatim.

Most of us are very eager to see our favorite gameplay features in this iteration of Alpha 2 … so you’ll have to sometimes forgive cravings for more detail.

bloodprophet

Ya with to days stream there are a lot of threads about the up coming A2. But many have lost sight of what it really is.

No matter how many times they say this is a test and not playing the game even some of the long time posters get to excited. In the excitement they lose focus and forget what this really is.

This IS a testing phase, nothing more nothing less.

Khronus

I don't understand the issue with anything coming at at any time during alpha testing. Every single thing is subject to change and come out earlier or later depending on when it's ready.

Your argument could be said for any design. Not enough time if it comes out too late. Luckily, it's alpha and nothing will come out too late since there will be plenty of time to test it before the official launch.

Noaani

While I agree that there can't really be any test of how the game functions economically without the auction house in place, all thst means is that Intrepid can't test how the economy functions until they have it implemented.

It isn't an issue for us. We aren't playing during alpha, so we shouldn't necessarily expect to be able to treat it like we are playing a game.

The only way I see this being an issue is if Intrepid try to pull economic data from the game before the full economic feature set is implemented.

Sathrago

Well I'm coming from a little bit of horrible history when I suggest this. When MO2 first came out there was just player to player trading. It took them over a year to put in buy orders once they did have an auction house.

So when I think about it those early days it just felt like the entire game was worse off without it. So in my mind it's a requirement to get a proper read on the rest of the game.

However I believe the player stalls will cover the function I was mostly concerned about now that I looked back at them. So I guess this thread idea is moot.

Noaani

Sathrago wrote: »

So when I think about it those early days it just felt like the entire game was worse off without it. So in my mind it's a requirement to get a proper read on the rest of the game.

This is absolutely true.

The thing is, alpha testing isn't about getting a read on the game. It is about making sure things work as they should. If you talk to an NPC, is each dialog option hooked up correctly. Do quests update properly. Do mobs behave how they should. That kind of thing.

Beta testing is when you start looking at how the game feels to play, because that is when you can make the assumption that most things work how they should.

Sathrago

Noaani wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

So when I think about it those early days it just felt like the entire game was worse off without it. So in my mind it's a requirement to get a proper read on the rest of the game.

This is absolutely true.

The thing is, alpha testing isn't about getting a read on the game. It is about making sure things work as they should. If you talk to an NPC, is each dialog option hooked up correctly. Do quests update properly. Do mobs behave how they should. That kind of thing.

Beta testing is when you start looking at how the game feels to play, because that is when you can make the assumption that most things work how they should.

That's fair. I've only ever seen the beta testing side of things with games but that does seem to make sense.

Garrtok

An action house is anyways not available for every node and just locally. It's not that important as you might think.

Diamaht

I also think it's better to test material acquisition before you give people the option to just buy what they need.

RocketFarmer

Are you expecting to test features and systems or play a game?

I think Auction Houses some time during Wave 3 (which by the way doesn’t mean Start of Wave 3) is a correct decision in order to have the things that support it. The node progression and the resources to have a functional market.

As Alpha 2 Wave 3 will be years, Auction Houses could come in 2026 or 2027 or right before Beta 1. Plus I expect several iterations.

Noaani

Sathrago wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Sathrago wrote: »

So when I think about it those early days it just felt like the entire game was worse off without it. So in my mind it's a requirement to get a proper read on the rest of the game.

This is absolutely true.

The thing is, alpha testing isn't about getting a read on the game. It is about making sure things work as they should. If you talk to an NPC, is each dialog option hooked up correctly. Do quests update properly. Do mobs behave how they should. That kind of thing.

Beta testing is when you start looking at how the game feels to play, because that is when you can make the assumption that most things work how they should.

That's fair. I've only ever seen the beta testing side of things with games but that does seem to make sense.

Yeah, it is unusual for an alpha test to be done the way Ashes is. Usually they are kind of "friends and family" (which is to say, people that developers know) that do this testing before anyone without that direct connection gets their hands on the game at all.

The few actual alpha tests that I have been involved in have been hundreds of people total, not thousands concurrently like Intrepid is planning.

Sathrago

RocketFarmer wrote: »

Are you expecting to test features and systems or play a game?

I think Auction Houses some time during Wave 3 (which by the way doesn’t mean Start of Wave 3) is a correct decision in order to have the things that support it. The node progression and the resources to have a functional market.

As Alpha 2 Wave 3 will be years, Auction Houses could come in 2026 or 2027 or right before Beta 1. Plus I expect several iterations.

To be very clear on this I'm not even going to be in the alpha. Also, steven himself was clear when asked about this. He wants you to play the game and give feedback/report bugs. Not to mention this game so far is more feature complete than most beta/early access games I've seen.

Anyway what I want will be in the game early on so Its fine.

Smaashley

Why is it too late ? The game will probably have multiple wipes in Phase 1 and Phase 2, so they add economic systems when there won't be any wipe (hopefully)...

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