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My feedback on the economy and crafting system so far.

spungwaspungwa Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
Scarcity : Why does it exist in the gathering at all

So I don't see why the gathering system has a scarcity in this game at all. That is just a frustration and unfun game loop for gathers. Gathering should just be a function of player time. "common" anything should not be hard to find at anytime, that is the definition of common..... You may have to go a specific places to get something and in that place it respawns at rates that mean you never run out. Maybe you need protection to fight for gathering in that spot, as per the PvX philosophy.

Maybe the amount of materials needed would need to be changed to be higher for a no scarcity economy but it would be more fun.

Rarity : Why, in the long term, do I want anything but common or legendary

The way rarity spawns is mad, unfair to people that can not login straight after a restart and find the best spawns and camp them. Rarity should just be random from ANY spawn based on RNG and your gear (and maybe artisan perks when they are added)
This link will tell you more - https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/65750/ashes-gathering-that-will-kill-alpha#latest

So I actually do see the point, better crafters/processing can make top tier items with lower grade materials, thus make them cheaper.
As everyone want the best (legendary) item and maybe a few "decent" (rare) cheap sets for corruption killing in.
Or they want common for node hand ins, for XP grinding etc. I assume later there will other item sinks like for siege warfare stuff etc.

So if it mainly just about making stuff cheaper (as everyone wants the end result to be the best) then lean into that and allow processers to process X tier N to make 1 tier N+1, X is up for balancing, but maybe it is full stack of 20. This should be able to be done at each any step of the processed, eg not just wood but combine woodchips into higher rarity woodchips, this will help have a market for all materials not just raw materials, and would be needed if you add salvaging that has been mentioned.

Player Economy : Why am I selling so much to the vendor?

In an MMO that says it wants a player economy why am I selling so much stuff to the vendor.
Why does the vendor even want all that stuff? - This just makes a huge gold faucet that needs to sink to balance.

So here is the reasons I sell to the vendor
1) Storage is too limited, so I sell stuff I can't store.
2) I only store rare+ because of 1 and as mentioned above people don't want what I have gathered see above.
3) Node hand ins already don't need tier 1 goods and so you have to collect the gatherable (with the scarcity), process them into whatever the node wants and then hand in within the 3 days. Given you are not able to store much as per 1 which would cut out step 1 as you could already have a stockpile, the longest step.

I would suggest that node storage needs no limits per se. Just have it as it is but stacks are infinite, or 99999 if that is easier to implement. Siege warfare could make this a loot for the victor, maybe like now, 25% destroyed, 25 dropped for siege victor, 50% gets left but is unavailable until node has the infrastructure to have node storage again.

Stop the vendor buying your trash, have another mechanism that does not generate gold to remove trash for some other benefit. Maybe have the nodes except a 20 stack of ANYTHING that is a mechanism beyond the buy orders for 1 reputation with that node, just as an infinite item sink that is not a gold faucet.

Regards
Spungwa

Comments

  • GizbanGizban Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    +1
  • VolgarisVolgaris Member, Alpha Two
    It's alpha, I hate getting that answer and giving it gives me chills. But it is the truth, a lot of features aren't in. And basically none of it is tuned. Some of the things you want though like the infinite stacks in storage will never happen, nor should it. You can do a player market and sell things to other players. There's already too many mechanics that require gathering, from crafting, war prep, work orders, buildings, art job board... probably more. Lots of ways to target gathering and dump your materials. None of which are fun, they're just huge time sinks. I hope they get better.

  • spungwaspungwa Member, Alpha Two
    I understand this is alpha, that why I am giving MY feedback on my current experience with crafting and the economy, isn't that why we are here?
    Hoping this information helps the developers when choosing how to iterate on the current systems.
    Volgaris wrote: »
    Some of the things you want though like the infinite stacks in storage will never happen, nor should it. You can do a player market and sell things to other players. There's already too many mechanics that require gathering, from crafting, war prep, work orders, buildings, art job board... probably more.

    You are welcome your opinion, but let me address these points and why to ME this means I NEED ALOT more storage for facilitate these.
    Also you don't actually say WHY " infinite stacks in storage will never happen, nor should it". Eve, which I personally think has be best economy and logistics mechanics of all MMOs, has unlimited storage, but importantly not instant logistics, and no infinite storage for movement of materials. So having huge stockpiles is only useful when you have used the time and effort in logistics to get those stockpiles to where you need them.

    "You can do a player market and sell things to other players"

    I can only sell 20 stacks of things per node to players and only for 3 days. So if I gather multiple rarities (lets say I get 4 rarities) of 10 different thing, I have 40- stacks!!. This I can do easily in even just a run between 2 distant nodes. These are separate stacks and probably not full stacks. I would rather stockpile and sell once I had full stacks to sell so I don't have to continually restock the market and keep going between nodes, and in restocking I gather more stuff travelling between nodes and the cycle continues and gets worse and worse, until I choose to sell to the vendor stuff I would have stockpiled for other mechanisms causing gold inflation.

    There's already too many mechanics that require gathering, from crafting, war prep, work orders, buildings, art job board... probably more.

    Let take these one at time

    Crafting :: For some recipes I need 20 willow logs, the chances of me gathering 20 willow logs in day is next to zero. Maybe if they got rid of the scarcity as I suggest this is fine. But currently I need to store all that willow of the rarities I need for my craft until I have enough for crafting.

    Wat Prep : Surely this will be something you do when you need to, you know, war prep. Therefore you need to store that resource ready for when you need them for when your node is sieged or whatever that mechanic is. Basically without storage there is not war prep, there is only war "run around like a headless chicken" gathering as much as you can in the short time between when you know first know those materials are needed and when they are actually needed. How is that preparation, that is just in time.... If we want war logistics to be a thing, then war logistics and PLANNING is needed, for planning, stockpiling is needed.

    work orders/buildings : I assume you mean the node buy orders, I already said that for this you 3 day notice (unless you are one of 8 people that are a mayor). Without stockpiling of resources, I have to gather and process the resources in that time. With stockpiling I only have to process the stuff, remembering that professions are restricted so there is not always buy orders I can fulfill, so I would like to stockpile materials for the buy orders I can fulfil when the mayor deems the node needs them.

    Regards
    Spungwa
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    edited February 15
    the needless bloat in processing make thing a pain to sell for example with lumbermilling

    atm you have braidwood planks
    then dried braidwood planks

    some items need braidwood planks and some need dried braidwood planks now i gotta make some dried and some non dried ones to list on vendors for people to buy some people will be looking for dried planks but only find normal planks and vice versa for others. Having one type of varient for planks/beams/boards and so on is enough why are we making item bloat that doesnt contribute to anything and makes selling stuff so much harder :D

    the other issue is tied to gathering
    ive done nothing but gather braidwood for last 2 weekends i have over 900 pieces of braidwood and i consider 50 of those 900 actualy usable for crafting which are 39 heroic, 6 epics a 5 legendary versions everything below heroic has minimal use since it on par with mob drops. Atm there nothing i can practicaly do here with the materials and it feels bad spending 1 hour running around to find like 3 tree that give useless materials that you may aswell sell to a vendor. You need to make these low quality materials more useful imo you should be able to convert low quality resources to higher quality even it a real bad ratio like 10 white makes 1 green, 10 green makes 1 blue, 10 blues makes 1 heroic, 10 heroics make 1 epic and 10 epics make 1 legendary atleast then the low quality resources have a use to feed into something usable for crafting.
  • spungwaspungwa Member, Alpha Two
    Veeshan wrote: »
    the needless bloat in processing make thing a pain to sell for example with lumbermilling

    some items need braidwood planks and some need dried braidwood planks now i gotta make some dried and some non dried ones to list on vendors for people to buy some people will be looking for dried planks but only find normal planks and vice versa for others. Having one type of varient for planks/beams/boards and so on is enough why are we making item bloat that doesnt contribute to anything and makes selling stuff so much harder :D

    Very true, it would be better if there was a smaller pool of intermediaries. If that mean extending the processing time to keep crafting machine slot economy relevant then so be it. But for the market it would better to have a smaller well defined set of intermediaries that are ideal stage to trade. Think of it like a hour glass, at the bottom there is lots of items then these process to a much smaller set of intermediaries. Then these smaller set of intermediaries explode out into lots of different items you can craft. This way the bottleneck of the hour glass is place where all the professions trade items among themselves. But as it is a small set there is always a reasonable supply and demand, regardless of the supply and demand of the individual materials and items below and above it.
    Veeshan wrote: »
    the needless bloat in processing make thing a pain to sell for example with lumbermilling
    You need to make these low quality materials more useful imo you should be able to convert low quality resources to higher quality even it a real bad ratio like 10 white makes 1 green, 10 green makes 1 blue, 10 blues makes 1 heroic, 10 heroics make 1 epic and 10 epics make 1 legendary at least then the low quality resources have a use to feed into something usable for crafting.

    I said this in my post, though I offered 20 as the number, but as I said that is balancing choice. I think the balancing choice should be worse than the rarity chance. ie if it 10 time less likely to get uncommon than common, then the conversion should be grater than 10.
  • VeeshanVeeshan Member, Alpha Two
    edited February 17
    spungwa wrote: »
    Veeshan wrote: »
    the needless bloat in processing make thing a pain to sell for example with lumbermilling

    some items need braidwood planks and some need dried braidwood planks now i gotta make some dried and some non dried ones to list on vendors for people to buy some people will be looking for dried planks but only find normal planks and vice versa for others. Having one type of varient for planks/beams/boards and so on is enough why are we making item bloat that doesnt contribute to anything and makes selling stuff so much harder :D

    Very true, it would be better if there was a smaller pool of intermediaries. If that mean extending the processing time to keep crafting machine slot economy relevant then so be it. But for the market it would better to have a smaller well defined set of intermediaries that are ideal stage to trade. Think of it like a hour glass, at the bottom there is lots of items then these process to a much smaller set of intermediaries. Then these smaller set of intermediaries explode out into lots of different items you can craft. This way the bottleneck of the hour glass is place where all the professions trade items among themselves. But as it is a small set there is always a reasonable supply and demand, regardless of the supply and demand of the individual materials and items below and above it.


    They can keep the timers long if they wanted to owithout the boat like they can make briarwood planks/board/beams and all that take 2 minutes per instead of 1 minute for plank then 1 minute for drying it just the more item bloat just makes it harder to store/manage and sell pieces to other crafters due to taking all slots on stores for a single quality haha
    they can simply make higher tier recipes take more time to process for 1 step instead of processing the same item 5 times to get a new item.
    Like novice was wood > timber
    Apprentice was Wood > timber > planks
    JM is wood > timber > planks > dried planks
    Whats next there adding a new process per level so at this it be something like this lol
    Master wood > timber > planks > dried planks > oiled planks
    Grandmaster wood > timber > planks > dried planks > oiled planks > polished planks?

    Like where is the line drawn especialy when they add random recipes that need dried planks other normal planks some vanished planks and so on lol

    Just make the timer longer per level for craft if they want to keep the time increase per level but just leave it at planks/beams and boards and so on lol
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