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.
How to solve the problem of levelling the Economy and Adventuring at the same time.
RedLeader1
Member, Alpha Two
1. Levelling professions is very slow, and doesn't yield much adventuring XP. That is by design.
2. Levelling adventuring has to be a lot faster.
3. You need players levelling professions at roughly the same rate as players and nodes level, in order to have a player driven economy.
The only way you can do this is make people focus on one profession at a time. It should be possible to level a single profession to max level in the time it takes to level adventuring to max level, alongside the adventuring. You should need to do that, even if it is just 1 gathering skill, to be able to afford adventuring.
I think you need to change the paradigm of MMO crafting, in which you do everything and slowly specialize, to one where you have to specialize, and then slowly expand. You end up at the same place, with a maximum number of professions at each level but you get there a different way.
It also establishes an interdependence of professions, and specialization, right from the start of the game. There is no hope that a player is going to be able to gather, process, and craft their own gear, and keep up with levelling.
I think if you do this you need to turn commissions around. If I am holding 20 rubies, and I want a jewel-crafter to cut them to go into jewelry, I need to deposit them at a crafting station, and make an offer to an artisan to cut them, paying for it in material or money. That commission sits there until a jewel-crafter comes along with fuel and does it. Any individual can then "craft their own gear" by employing the services of all the craftsmen and processors, right from gathering/buying that heroic gem or fabric or whatever material.
Of course if the processor is paid in material, they then get some rubies or whatever to cut for themselves and turn into gear, for them. If it is a 3 step profession, the process continues up the chain.
If you don't make the professions self-contained right at the start, you are not going to be able to make them self-contained at end-game. And if you don't force people to specialize, they are going to want to level everything at the start, and nobody is going to get anywhere, because specialization is what makes an economy efficient.
It should be possible to work out mathematically: if you have 22 players spread evenly among the archetypes, and each took a unique artisan class, how much output would be required from each artisan in order to meet the expected demand from the group over 10 levels (say getting a new set of gear every 5 levels etc.). You should then be able to create an artisanship system that might meet that demand, even if that entails gathering 200 copper from every node of copper, processing 200 copper fragments from a single copper ore, or being able to craft 100 copper rings from every copper fragment. Or at least balance it to meeting that demand at maximum efficiency.
You could even program it into your node log monitoring thingy and create a feedback loop during Alpha2 measuring supply and production efficiency for each artisan class, and see where it settles.
Of course this may be what you had in mind all along...
2. Levelling adventuring has to be a lot faster.
3. You need players levelling professions at roughly the same rate as players and nodes level, in order to have a player driven economy.
The only way you can do this is make people focus on one profession at a time. It should be possible to level a single profession to max level in the time it takes to level adventuring to max level, alongside the adventuring. You should need to do that, even if it is just 1 gathering skill, to be able to afford adventuring.
I think you need to change the paradigm of MMO crafting, in which you do everything and slowly specialize, to one where you have to specialize, and then slowly expand. You end up at the same place, with a maximum number of professions at each level but you get there a different way.
It also establishes an interdependence of professions, and specialization, right from the start of the game. There is no hope that a player is going to be able to gather, process, and craft their own gear, and keep up with levelling.
I think if you do this you need to turn commissions around. If I am holding 20 rubies, and I want a jewel-crafter to cut them to go into jewelry, I need to deposit them at a crafting station, and make an offer to an artisan to cut them, paying for it in material or money. That commission sits there until a jewel-crafter comes along with fuel and does it. Any individual can then "craft their own gear" by employing the services of all the craftsmen and processors, right from gathering/buying that heroic gem or fabric or whatever material.
Of course if the processor is paid in material, they then get some rubies or whatever to cut for themselves and turn into gear, for them. If it is a 3 step profession, the process continues up the chain.
If you don't make the professions self-contained right at the start, you are not going to be able to make them self-contained at end-game. And if you don't force people to specialize, they are going to want to level everything at the start, and nobody is going to get anywhere, because specialization is what makes an economy efficient.
It should be possible to work out mathematically: if you have 22 players spread evenly among the archetypes, and each took a unique artisan class, how much output would be required from each artisan in order to meet the expected demand from the group over 10 levels (say getting a new set of gear every 5 levels etc.). You should then be able to create an artisanship system that might meet that demand, even if that entails gathering 200 copper from every node of copper, processing 200 copper fragments from a single copper ore, or being able to craft 100 copper rings from every copper fragment. Or at least balance it to meeting that demand at maximum efficiency.
You could even program it into your node log monitoring thingy and create a feedback loop during Alpha2 measuring supply and production efficiency for each artisan class, and see where it settles.
Of course this may be what you had in mind all along...
0
Comments
Lumberjacking + Mill
Mining + Metalworking
Mining + Stonemasonry
etc
Therefor the Crafters will need to buy ingredients from multiple processors. And sometimes Processors will need to buy mats from other gatherers.
not everyone should be able to mine, lumberjack, fish, herb and hunt. Should be specialized.
It's gonna take a community to work together and the community to build the economy.
No. The original plan was you can be _only_ Gatherer or _only_ Processor or _only_ Crafter. You'd pick any 2 skills in that one branch (ie: Mining + Logging _or_ Metalsmith + Stoneworker _or_ Weaponsmith + Armorsmith). This creates a dependency between each layer.
They've now allowed you to pick any 5 to get better in (but only 2 up to Grandmaster), which allows some amount of 'do it yourself'. You can toally be miner+metalworker+stoneworker+weaponsmith to get a very large amount of the chain all by yourself (but not truly everything - and you'll get capped when you have to select your 2 Grand Master skills)
There was never a time when it was 1 gather + 1 processor. That's Wow's thing.
Yeah, that is exactly what I'm talking about. If I gather or acquire material(s) to make my "awesome wand of slaying", I'm going to have to employ processors and craftsmen to do all the steps. I am not going to be able to rollup to the crafting tables and do that myself. Surely I need to place my mats at the crafting table, select the recipe, and then have the artisan that can process the job roll up with the fuel to do it. Then I collect the completed job.
As the customer, I have to control the transaction with each artisan in turn. If you want a working economy, you have to facilitate supply as well as demand. The economy is never going to be efficient enough otherwise.
it kinda works this way at max level
you get 2 grandmaster skills 1 Master 1 jounryeman 1 apprentice
So u can pick any combination but at lvl 40 harvestables u will only be able 2 harvest 1-2 types if you do 2 u can process anything or craft anything if you take 1 u can harvest amd process them but wont be able to craft with them and so on.
lvl 30 resources u can do all 3 gather/process/craft with them however u will need to buy the components from the other profession required to craft the piece since u typicaly need items from 1-2 other processing professions too which u wont be able to do
at lvl 1 level u can do it all urself but at lvl 10 u need to start looking for outside help since some items can be done via 5 apprentice levels but some cant but after that u 100% need atleat 1 other person stuff to craft with
But make the item stat change with your lvl of the profession will help more.
Lvl 1 Item give for example 10 Armor, if I craft it at lvl 1 I have 10 armor, but if the crafter can make the item of the lvl he wants? I have lvl 10 armorsmith ok I can procude item from 1 to 10 and let me choise witch lvl I want to put and the item and the item will have that lvl like minimun lvl require.
CLICCA QUI PER UNIRTI ALL'ORDINE
But, I think that if you're killing humanoids for gear and not gathering then artisan level shouldn't match adventuring level.
Personally, I think that hours invested (adventuring vs gathering) should be roughly the same. Processing and crafting are tough to figure out in an "hours".
I meant that if you want a player driven economy then the primary source of gear will have to be artisanship. You are not going to want adventurers unable to level because the supply of gear is inadequate. Gear drops have to be reduced greatly as we move towards release, or it isn't worth the development time for a player driven economy, because it will be irrelevant.
Nah, player driven economy doesn't actually require that the primary source of gear is artisanship. That's 'gear-crafter-driven' economy.
And generally, people don't lose the ability to level because of lower gear supplies anyway, they work around it, or devote more energy toward gearing up instead of gaining Adventuring Exp.
It's true that this isn't how Ashes works right now, but we have many examples of games where the developers and designers just started from first principles (or got lucky) and built out a whole system where things work even with the gear source being about equally split between Quest/Story Reward and actual crafting.
In fact, a 50-50 split is just about the easiest way to do that and control it, because it allows players the freedom of spending half their time 'earning money to pay crafters or personally crafting' and the other half 'earning gear by being out in the world'.
It would work fine in Ashes too, I'd bet you 10k gil/10 Lucent.