Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Economic endurance and interdependence
GrayingGamer
Member
Since starting with MMOs in the late 90s with UO, I've always been interested in the economic side of things. I remember running a little vendor outside a popular dungeon for a while - it was a blast. I like being a cog in a big, virtual world occupied by other people, constantly assessing and adapting to various opportunities in supply and demand.
WoW is mostly what I play these days (MMO-wise), and the economy in WoW leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least. Here are two problems I'm wondering how AoC will solve:
1. Interdependence - in WoW, it's relatively easy to just raise up a whole army of alts that can handle all of your economic-production needs. In a short amount of time, anyone who wants to can do everything. There's really no economic community in WoW. I know AoC is emphasizing grouping/interdependence for the adventuring/combat side of things, but I haven't seen anything about creating long-term specialization and interdependence on the economic side. I admit I haven't really kept up on these details over the last few years - what is AoC doing to foster economic interdependence?
2. Endurance - the WoW economy is very much "boom after an expansion/patch, then trending to total bust," mostly because once you have a created item, it never goes away. There's only upgrades and a few consumables, but there's very little destruction, so the game world is creating new raw materials at a much higher rate than it uses them up. The opposite of this would be something like Eve online, where tons of assets are constantly being lost, mostly due to pvp. Will AoC have a more healthy long-term economy?
Thanks for your time.
WoW is mostly what I play these days (MMO-wise), and the economy in WoW leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least. Here are two problems I'm wondering how AoC will solve:
1. Interdependence - in WoW, it's relatively easy to just raise up a whole army of alts that can handle all of your economic-production needs. In a short amount of time, anyone who wants to can do everything. There's really no economic community in WoW. I know AoC is emphasizing grouping/interdependence for the adventuring/combat side of things, but I haven't seen anything about creating long-term specialization and interdependence on the economic side. I admit I haven't really kept up on these details over the last few years - what is AoC doing to foster economic interdependence?
2. Endurance - the WoW economy is very much "boom after an expansion/patch, then trending to total bust," mostly because once you have a created item, it never goes away. There's only upgrades and a few consumables, but there's very little destruction, so the game world is creating new raw materials at a much higher rate than it uses them up. The opposite of this would be something like Eve online, where tons of assets are constantly being lost, mostly due to pvp. Will AoC have a more healthy long-term economy?
Thanks for your time.
0
Comments
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes#Artisan_supply_chain
Question 2 is answered here:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Economy#Item_sinks
My question 1 wasn't answered at that precise spot from that link, but it was handled elsewhere:
" Q: How do you feel about players creating alts that allow them to cover every profession?
A: I think that's fine and I think that when we design the game, we design with that in mind as well; and that's why we have certain restrictions on the number of Grandmaster professions that one particular character can do"
Not very encouraging.
I can see how they have some ideas on how to handle question 2, but I'm not convinced they'll be very effective. I guess we'll see.
do you have any suggestion/possible solutions for question 2?
For #2, my solutions are pretty much beyond the scope of what AoC is doing/attempting.
MMO housing should be far more "piece" based, so that players are actually building something unique. With a system like this, housing becomes a huge material sink (that is nonetheless a luxury, so it doesn't hurt the casual player), as players build more unique and/or impressive homes, and as they redesign and only partially recycle existing pieces. Obviously houses like this wouldn't exist in the standard game world, there would have to be special circumstances, but it's definitely the way to go for MMOs of the future. Prefab housing is totally meh IMHO. I wrote a whole essay on the wow forums a couple years ago on this subject, it's worth a look if you're interested in MMO housing (https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/a-return-to-glory-–-an-essay-on-how-player-housing-can-make-wow-a-household-name-again-and-maybe/1237601)
The other major material sink would be associate with another MMO evolution that desperately needs to take place - NPCs. Without going into another whole essay about how this should go, basically players would spend resources to outfit NPCs for various tasks, and there would be various losses over time associated with these activities. Not all that different from "my sword wore out," but more interesting and compelling.