The problem with having crates/caravans as a spammable gold faucet (ideas for replacement)

I'm not sure what the general opinion is on this, but I see a big issue with gold as a reward for crates and caravans—it's basically an endless gold faucet that causes huge inflation in the economy. This also makes it a prime target for cheaters and RMT'ers.

Does anyone have ideas for other highly desirable rewards that these systems could offer without injecting new gold into the economy?

Suggestion: introduce tradeable items that bypass gold sinks, such as tickets to cover NPC fees of all types [IE repairs, fuel, processing fees, and so on]. By definition, these items will always sell to other players for the NPC price or less, and supply and demand would balance things out naturally and regionally. On top of that, you could add other appealing rewards such as scrolls you can pop for guild or artisan tree XP, crafting or processing aids, or temporary group/guild buffs—all of which could be traded with other players, making them profitable without any new gold/inflation entering the economy, even if those crates/caravans are being run 24/7—supply and demand will keep prices in check.

I really think there's a way to make caravan and crate rewards feel highly rewarding and profitable without the huge inflation problem we have right now. Curious to hear what others think.

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lamina5432

My take on it is that the money from a caravan shouldn't come out of nowhere like it currently does. They should circulate the goods so that settlements actually exist in the economy. Meaning That the settlement gold is what pays out a caravan.

This could lead to the actual proper fluctuation on how much a caravan net's you based on the value the materials it is made of mean to the settlement and the overall funds it has available. Also can lead someone to make a different decision when making a caravan to just transport the materials up to the player market to make more money.

I also think there needs to be more interaction with what those materials sitting in a settlement do. A processing and then crafting commission would do a heck of a lot for immersion. Also allowing processor's and crafter's to earn settlement currency while boosting their skills.

Again all this if the settlements actually tracked what resources they had and used which might be asking a lot but I think is more in line with Ashes vision.

Ludullu

Just limit the payout to the amount of taxes collected in the node.

Players paid 200g in taxes yesterday? Half of that is used to building upkeep and the other half goes to any commodities coming in (first come, first served).

The timing of that money distribution is tied to prime-time and not server reset.

Make commodities available only at the same time, to avoid people sitting with dozens of crates right at the npc, waiting for the hour to tick over.

Everyone that wants to make big money fast will try going to bigger settlements, cause you'd have a higher chance of success (given you're fast enough), while smaller ones can still pay out a bit here and there.

Hell, let mayors control the ratio of money used for buildings and for commodities payouts and also tie that shit to the settlement type, and you got yourself a player-driven movement, cause if a mayor announces that their big city will have massive taxes for a day - tomorrow it's gonna be a whole-ass event of people going there with caravans/crates.

Brought commodities should be used when building stations and when setting citizen benefits in node currency shops. This way higher taxes could be justified, cause citizens will directly benefit. Could even put a slight multiplier on commodities if they're brought in by one of the citizens, so people can recoup their taxes a bit.

The faucet becomes much much weaker, while also way more beneficial for people overall, rather than just "grind mobs for glint, buy random otherwise-useless items, bring them to a settlement, multiply your glint Xfold".

Azherae

The problem with all that (assuming that things are starting to shift) is the demographic change.

To get enough of an audience for that gameplay type, you really have to lean into the sort of player whose enjoyment focuses heavily on 'the world changing'.

Unfortunately that player type focuses on that aspect so heavily, in my experience, that many other aspects of Ashes are negatives/detrimental for them.

If the target demographic didn't change, then I'd expect a lot of focus on finding the right types of 'rules' to represent 'sensible behaviour' (World Manager stuff) like what you're suggesting, but then how would that stand up to the current Guild Design? (genuinely wondering/asking, this isn't something I'd ever risk because I don't have the design skill level to conclude 'this is possible').

300 person guilds of 'people who are more interested in reacting to dynamism in a world than in dominance'? On multiple servers? That's not exactly a sure bet.

Volgaris

Was just think if a mega group came to a Settlement and instead of attacking it just trashed it with bad policies if given the tools like Ludullu said. If alts are able to vote in elections it'll be a problem, even bigger than it is now. Imagine a 2,000+ mega group (plus their alts) comes to a single settlement and votes out the Mayor and start turning all the dials in the wrong direction, you wouldn't even need to attack it lol. It's a good idea though for the Mayor to have some control over that. Just need to look at alt voting, because that's ripe for exploitation.

I can't think of another way to do rewards though. Maybe give selectable rewards, like, gold or materials. Maybe guild exp, or settlement exp. What else can they give the player? You wouldn't want to reward anything that's craftable for sure. The best thing is probably limiting gold rewards based of other factors in the source settlement and the destination settlement. Which I'm sure there's already some of that going on.

Couple of ideas:
Running a caravan from settlement A which is still developing to settlement B which is more developed give some boost settlement A.
If it's a guild caravan having it reward some guild exp.
Reward some player exp? (not a fan of this though) but would give a reason to run them as you level.
Reputation with both settlements.
Keep it selectable so you can choose your reward.

Maybe there's supposed to be high gold rewards from the caravans, with everything costing so much maybe you should have 20k gold at level 25...? I don't the point in having copper, silver or other pieces then. In the beginning levels you're broke as shit, so 1 gold is a lot, but after a little work 1 gold is nothing.

Caravans are an odd concept for me in Ashes. I'm moving commodities from point a to point b. But why? Is that supposed to fun? I'm a truck driver and everyone who's not in my guild is a potential attacker... I don't get it. Because it generates the gold in the game you'll have to do enough of it to what you actually want to do. Unless you can get gold another way.

SloanEQ

Unfortunately, I am not sure if they are even considering the economic side of gold creation out of thin air...and I am glad there are others here who are pointing out why it is a major problem. Gold creation has to be tied to 'production' of some sort.

Now if they are set on the current system it COULD work if there were adequate gold sinks to counter all the gold creation or if the risk was there to lose caravans. Ironically, they are there but gold duping and caravan cheating has made them irrelevant (processing and component fees for journeyman crafting, assume it will get even more expensive for master and caravan poofing, speed hacking etc.). Hopefully the crate dupe has been fixed so that the balance of gold creation and gold sink can properly be tested.

Zapatos80

SloanEQ wrote: »

Unfortunately, I am not sure if they are even considering the economic side of gold creation out of thin air...and I am glad there are others here who are pointing out why it is a major problem. Gold creation has to be tied to 'production' of some sort.

I think you're right; they're not really focused on gold faucets/sinks at the moment, which is why inflation is such a mess. I personally think the first influx of gold should come from one-time quests you do as you level up (when there are enough of them). This way, everybody gets a good chunk of gold to get the economy started, and it allows casuals to have a meaningful amount as well. Then they need to monitor faucets/sinks extremely carefully. The current inflation is just out of control.

AirborneBerserker

Zapatos80 wrote: »

I'm not sure what the general opinion is on this, but I see a big issue with gold as a reward for crates and caravans—it's basically an endless gold faucet that causes huge inflation in the economy. This also makes it a prime target for cheaters and RMT'ers.

Does anyone have ideas for other highly desirable rewards that these systems could offer without injecting new gold into the economy?

Suggestion: introduce tradeable items that bypass gold sinks, such as tickets to cover NPC fees of all types [IE repairs, fuel, processing fees, and so on]. By definition, these items will always sell to other players for the NPC price or less, and supply and demand would balance things out naturally and regionally. On top of that, you could add other appealing rewards such as scrolls you can pop for guild or artisan tree XP, crafting or processing aids, or temporary group/guild buffs—all of which could be traded with other players, making them profitable without any new gold/inflation entering the economy, even if those crates/caravans are being run 24/7—supply and demand will keep prices in check.

I really think there's a way to make caravan and crate rewards feel highly rewarding and profitable without the huge inflation problem we have right now. Curious to hear what others think.

the problem is if you don't make it super beneficial then people wont use it at all. Which means you change the problem to something else rather then solving the problem.

lamina5432

new gold faucet just dropped. Apparently sports fishing is only to make gold and doesn't do anything else for now. Further disliking the pure create gold mentality Intrepid has had.

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