Economy: A discussion, I want a struggle!
Hi everyone, I wanted to hear some of your thoughts on the AoC Economy and some of the systems that the developers are aiming for. Long story short i'm a vanilla WoW player and back in my day there was a struggle to obtain craftable materials and this struggle made the game fun.
Nowadays MMO's are like the cow level in Diablo 2 if you guys have played that game, literally gold/currency is pretty much free, take your high level character to older expansion raids and farm as much as you want, just like the cow level. I am tired of being a hero in MMO's, I am tired of having more than i can chew in terms of riches/materials. Does anyone else want a struggle? Make me a poor pleb in this world, make me put effort to obtain materials that way I can feel accomplished. what are your thoughts on this topic?
Nowadays MMO's are like the cow level in Diablo 2 if you guys have played that game, literally gold/currency is pretty much free, take your high level character to older expansion raids and farm as much as you want, just like the cow level. I am tired of being a hero in MMO's, I am tired of having more than i can chew in terms of riches/materials. Does anyone else want a struggle? Make me a poor pleb in this world, make me put effort to obtain materials that way I can feel accomplished. what are your thoughts on this topic?
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1] Logistics - I really want Ashes to take advantage of Logistics, in a meaningful way. Bagspace, guys lets stop giving everyone infinite bags, I want to be limited, I want to make the decision what I should carry and what I should not. The caravan system should be integral in moving materials to different places.
2] Spawn of materials - Lets take this seriously, materials should be scarce!
You have to gather then move the resources with costly caravans that aren't guaranteed to make it...for a chance at making your first items, is that it? Lots of people don't craft at all in FF14 because they can't be bothered and find it long. Imagine if getting a stack of low lv mat took them a month.
That or explain yourself better. Because it sure sounds like you want people to use caravans they can't afford to just start crafting low lv stuff.
The distinction is that this game is predicated on some/most BiS coming from crafting, so there is a reason to put in the effort.
Second, it very well should be that lower level crafting can be done from any low level 3 node, thus much smaller travel time & expense. If you can feasibly level from just crafting, as they've said, then ya there should be some work.
Third, materials don't have to come from just gathering. They could partly come from raiding others, raiding caravans, boss drops, etc.
Fourth, hopefully crafting supports the whole economy, not just equipment. Things like caravans, ships, metro building resources, etc.
I agree, for mid game (worth something when sold) or endgame stuff. It should be worth the trouble either to get it or buy it from someone who got it. But then I hope that would-be crafter can sustain their high costs for making better stuff by well, crafting. Not everybody will be pvping or gathering, some intend to specialize in crafting something specific, and the devs said that you'd have to choose at some point.
I also don't expect pve to be a big income, unless there are repeatable quests giving currency for them. The drops that aren't used to craft (trash) are usually not worth much.
Resources will be depleted from an area, we are lead to believe there will be no node hopping, so no come back in 5 minutes and you can tap away for your handful of resources, plus no sparkles to say here look at me, you will need to hunt for the materials you need. There will be competition for resources some people may want to defend what they have found and yet others will seek to take what you have gathered by force.
Perhaps it will not be too hard to find what you need to craft your gear, at least not for your lower end gear, high end gear should be a completely different story with rare hard to find materials being required, not to mention the need to find people who can gather, process and then finally craft the high end item you need. Rare materials as the name suggests will be hard to come by and demand a price befitting their rarity, such resources may need a gatherer who is a master focused on gathering, with both processor and final crafter needing to be similarly focused masters.
To build a metropolis, the sheer volume of materials needed to accomplish this may very well be in the millions of units. Those in power will determine how your taxes are spent, what buildings to build and in what order to build them, all of this will require raw materials and a lot of them. It is we the players who will provide what is needed and those materials not available locally will need to be purchase or harvested in distant nodes and then transported to where they are needed. Those competing nodes wont just sit by and let this happen seeking to disrupt progress where they can.
Personally I think there will be plenty of struggle, it will be very hard to do it all yourself.
I hope there doesn't end up being the one trade route that's the most profitable and everyone goes for it, making it pointless to explore any other route - some kind of supply and demand system would be cool.
I am not sure if this will happen as resources are supposed to be depleted and there is no guarantee they will spawn in the same location. So while node A may have a good supply of iron this week it may not next week, a new supply will need to be found if that is node C a new trade rout will be established to the new supply.
I think we will find to grow our nodes you will need a good amount of resources, while in the early stages this may come from the immediate node, later development will require larger and larger quantities that will need to come from nodes some distance away. Caravans will be a fairly common site on the roads of the more developed nodes.
Buildings don't build themselves!
City hall will collect taxes these taxes can be spent on buildings that will provide bonuses for the citizens of the node. There will be a requirement of materials needed to build these buildings, I think you may find deciding what is built within a node is more hands on for us the players, we will get to shape a nodes development.
The node will level up from experience gained by its citizens but there are some buildings that we the players can decide to build/upgrade that will require resources.
Source on this? I figure the taxes would be enough. In real life, when I buy a house, I pay the builders and they build. I don't need to bring my bricks too, its in the price.
I should have been may be, not will be, my bad.
The feeling I am getting from what I was reading here https://www.ashesofcreation.com/city-hall/ taxes will indeed pay for the materials needed but we the community will provide the materials through orders the city puts up requesting the needed materials.
To me a game that is supposed to be in large part driven by crafting and its economy not to require resources derived from its player base to build those buildings that provide bonuses to its citizens just doesn't seem to make sense to me. While you are right you pay someone to build your house you are not expected to provide your own bricks but those bricks need to be provided by someone they don't just appear out of thin air.
Thus a nodes taxes could be used to purchase materials off the player base to build those buildings they see fit for the betterment of the node.
It will be interesting to see how Intrepid's method will work.
Tried waiting around for 3 evening for others doing the same quest but not luck.
So went to look for gear upgrades on the auction house, and the cheapest single piece of equipment was over 150 times the amount of gold char had.
Checked AH for a few days, but prices didn't come down, and was constantly out bided, on the few items that allowed bidding, far beyond characters means.
So was basically stuck with progression for 6 evenings, and just stopped playing.
But I also really hope that in order to fund your characters gameplay adequately it does not require spending hours on hours farming things. People who put in the extra work should be rewarded obviously, but I don't want the game to feel as if it is needed that you break from your current quest or objective to go do something less fun and interesting in order to make some currency.
Actually I have friends, was even in a guild in ESO. The Problem is time zones. By the time I got home from work, talked with the wife monster, got dinner and then sat down to play, most people in bed for the night.