Key to a succesful economy

I think simple solution would be to make:

1. Ore vein to drop 1 item. Reason: because it makes things more simple. I think that New World economy collapsed because it was hard to put prices because vein dropped 40-60 ores (its more realistic, but it makes problems), solution would be magical veins that drop 1 simple magical ore.
Same goes for herbs or leather via skinning.

I think this is the ultimate reason as why Vanilla WoW has the best possible econony - everything was expensive and it felt worthiness of every item/consumable.
For skinning, some mobs could drop 1 leather, other leather scraps (x5 scraps form 1 leather)

2. Make non profession items similar to wow vanilla dark runes, droppable only in dungeon that provides either mana like mana potion which does not share cd with potions or some strong buff for 10seconds. (X3 drops per dungeon run, BOE and only 3 drops - that means people have to roll for it. (Make mana spending like EQ or vanilla WoW in order for these to be valuable)

3. Mana potions drop only from chests/human mobs (depending on lvl and area how strong mana pots are). For end game, make recipes 6% drop chance from PvE dungeon bosses - possibly from humanoid for immersion and to follow tradition of RPG games. (Mana spending should be like EQ or Vanilla Wow)

Why I am talking this? Because of simplicity. Everything is easier to organize if its simple.
Why making things harder? Because then these items/consumables are more valuable.

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VekoKrava

They are not clear enough, I thought this is new and more modern old school approach to MMO genre, that will go back to roots and set new standard for every upcoming MMO.... lame marketing if they are aiming for theme ark mmo style.

Azherae

VekoCrnogorac wrote: »

They are not clear enough, I thought this is new and more modern old school approach to MMO genre, that will go back to roots and set new standard for every upcoming MMO.... lame marketing if they are aiming for theme ark mmo style.

You have jumped to so many conclusions over the last few days that I feel you are challenging certain other posters for top spot in that category.

From a game design economics standpoint, your concerns are exaggerated, in my opinion, and that's why you are getting the responses you are getting. You might also be assuming that other people are more negative toward the thing you are trying to say than they actually are.

You have to take everyone's perspectives into account if you want to actually have a discussion on these things, and figure out if the thing you want needs to be exactly that way for the effect you want, or if people who would like different experiences could still get those experiences somehow without losing the main one.

In this case, I will say you're wrong. You are falling into the trap of so many fledgling designers of 'taking something you only understand half of' and ascribing the effect to something that is only part of the causal chain.

Or at least, right now, you're not managing to express yourself in a way that goes past that, even to me. But NOW you're slighting Intrepid and that means I have opinions.

You do not get to just make assumptions about what Ashes will do in the future or the appropriateness of their work (Margaret's work I GUESS?) based on your misunderstanding of consumables, and not get pushback. You can choose to get it from me, or from people who don't understand the flaw in your Econ understanding as well as I do, and who will just call you out for disparaging Intrepid pointlessly.

Arya_Yeshe

@Azherae spot on

bloodprophet

They have stated they are looking to go towards a Star Wars Galaxy's type crafting system.
Look in to that and hopefully we can see the direction they are intending.
Personally I hope they go heavily that way but time will tell. A2 can't come soon enough.

VekoKrava

Again I do not understand why you guys play MMOs if you dont want to grind and do meaningful professions that matter, including professions that give consumables. Wow had simple and casual approach. Right now I am playing Gloria Victis with way more complex crafting then WoW, it takes around 2hours for me to level only 2 points of tailoring. If you overcomplicate things then it only creates more grind, this is reason why I prefer WoW route, where you can do professions with ease while lvling and not be stuck for 10hours because you want your profession to be tie to tie to your level... @Arya_Yeshe wants less grind, but contradicts herself because she does not understand how simple WoW crafting was yet it was so meaningful especially consumables.

bloodprophet

Gonna admit I don't understand why you want to grind endless hours vs doing something fun.

Arya_Yeshe

@VekoCrnogorac grind is stupid, boring, mind numbing, feels like a second job and people grinding could be replaced by bots and nobody would notice it

since when MMOs are about grind? Since that poor excuse of a game called WoW brought this to the table

Well, I was a crafter in WoW in all my characters, I know what I am saying

GOOD CRAFTING:
1) Star Wars Galaxies
2) EVE Online

Simple crafting where you make 100 of this item and then 100 of that item, is plainly stupid and grindy and sad

If the player who is crafting could be replaced but a bot, then the crafting system is uninteresting
People should be better than bots

Star Wars Galaxies has the most meaningful crafting there is, crafting not only should be meaningul but also fluid like EVE

VekoKrava

You literally said in comment the other day that materials in EvE are worth more then craft, economy collapsed simply because its too complex for average player like me.

I am not for grind that is useless like retail WoW elements, but I am all for open world grind, especially in full loot PvP mmo. Why would you roam without gathering searching for PvP.... this is why old school WoW was fun, simply because of PvP and player interaction...

If you want lobby type of game where you dont need to grind, I assume you assumed wrong for what AoC is going to deliver. Just look at all dev streams, Steven is literally speaking that best gearing comes from professions and doing professions is grind. I just wanted to let them know that the biggest gold sink can be consumables and losing durability on gear, one idea is from WoW and other one is from Gloria Victis...

It seems as if you guys are arguing with me only because I am WoW vanilla fan.

Azherae

VekoCrnogorac wrote: »

It seems as if you guys are arguing with me only because I am WoW vanilla fan.

We are 'arguing with you' because you THINK this is the reason we are 'arguing with you'.

VekoKrava

I am not a guy that will tell others that they sre trolls, but I am really thinking hard to understand why are you arguing with me. It seems you either missed idea of what Intreoid is aiming for or you are trolling me because I am WoW fan and because I dont know many MMOs...

Ludullu

VekoCrnogorac wrote: »

I am not a guy that will tell others that they sre trolls, but I am really thinking hard to understand why are you arguing with me. It seems you either missed idea of what Intreoid is aiming for or you are trolling me because I am WoW fan and because I dont know many MMOs...

And yet when we've given examples or explanations to why we disagree you usually just go back to "wow did it great imo so Intrepid should do smth similar/same".

This is why we keep coming back to "wow is not perfect and other games have done better or at least the same".

Azherae

VekoCrnogorac wrote: »

I am not a guy that will tell others that they sre trolls, but I am really thinking hard to understand why are you arguing with me. It seems you either missed idea of what Intreoid is aiming for or you are trolling me because I am WoW fan and because I dont know many MMOs...

Maybe try looking at it from a slightly different angle.

You don't know many MMOs, so maybe there's some MMOs that are 'like WoW, but better', and maybe Ashes took its inspiration from those MMOs instead.

So if those MMOs were better at the same thing you want than WoW, when you say 'hey guys let's make it like WoW', someone will say 'it's already like WoW, and WoW didn't do it that well anyway, and the thing you think was important that WoW did, that's not actually the important thing, these other games showed it'.

EVE, FFXI, ArcheAge.

These games, as far as I know, all have or had excellent economies, itemization, and player incentive goals. WoW might have been good too, but we don't know for sure and we don't NEED to know for sure, because the thing you talk about is stuff we are familiar with already.

Just imagine a world where it might be done better... can you? You're here to think about Ashes, after all, right?

VekoKrava

Ok I got it, I had to read every comment from beginning. I just think MMO economies collapse because of too many numbers / lack of simplicity. Game should not be treated as IRL because its not same, not even close. We want gold spending in games, while IRL we need less spending.

I would rather grind 2h per day for content that I play then saving gold and doing same content without consumables, this is wow situation, it was not mandatory, but people did it for sake of fun.

We see collapse of EVE online economy yet they hired businessman ... lol i think its funny. Not even similar to IRL.

Noaani

I mean, if you like WoW's economy because it is simple, just say you like WoW's economy because it is simple.

Dont tey and say it is better or worse than any other games economy, because that is literally only better to people that want a simple game economy.

Anyone that doesnt want a dead simple economy in Ashes (which seems to include Steven) will obviously argue the point that SoWs economy wasnt better, because it was so simple.

Azherae

VekoCrnogorac wrote: »

Ok I got it, I had to read every comment from beginning. I just think MMO economies collapse because of too many numbers / lack of simplicity. Game should not be treated as IRL because its not same, not even close. We want gold spending in games, while IRL we need less spending.

I would rather grind 2h per day for content that I play then saving gold and doing same content without consumables, this is wow situation, it was not mandatory, but people did it for sake of fun.

We see collapse of EVE online economy yet they hired businessman ... lol i think its funny. Not even similar to IRL.

Well, that's not weird, businessmen don't keep the real world economy from collapsing either, they just tell you when and how it will. Also, you probably meant economists but I'm not actually sure.

There are many reasons why game economies don't work like IRL ones, and multiple things that Economy designers have to learn about those differences before they can consistently make good game economies.

But it isn't right to say that they aren't similar, either. They follow a specific set of rules which a designer can learn, and then apply the game's actual design goals to, deciding which rules need to be followed and which ones shouldn't.

WoW did a good job of this, I think, but the design goals of WoW lead to an Economy design that most people don't want to see any more, I think that is why they changed it over time. So instead, I'll just tell you this. Steven wants every player to master only 2 or 3 Artisan professions, and he also wants people to be able to play the game while focused on Artisanship.

Alchemy and Cooking (which produce Consumables) are two of those professions. So Steven wants those to be necessary enough for people to spend a large amount of their time doing those professions. The difference between your model and the model I know (I will speak about FFXI because it is the one I know the best personally), is that a player chooses ONE thing they want to 'grind', because they enjoy it and it doesn't feel like 'grinding' to them, and then they pay other people for other products.

So, only about 1 in 10 people would 'grind to make consumables'. Everyone else would 'grind to earn consumables', or 'do content that doesn't require consumables'. But Ashes' Economy designer would need to make sure that SOME content 'required consumables' or there would be no need for Cooks and Alchemists (probably Fishers, Gatherers, and Farmers too) and I don't think Steven would want that.

MMO economies do not collapse because of too many numbers. They collapse because of design flaws, and sometimes because of a game's goals, 'too many numbers' is a design flaw. Probably not here.

DarkTides

VekoKrava

Yes I meant economics. Why IRL is not same is that in IRL when you buy a jacket, you don't want it to be destroyed after some time, therefore games are not same. In games you want things to be destroyed or to sustain your character in some way to dump gold, because if you did not need anything (consumables) you would not spend your gold thus meaning gold is useless. I am speaking of consumables as main gold spender because I had so many great memories farming for them or obtaining them in vanilla WoW, plus on top of progression / grinding fun there is a thrill of going in open world and PvP, you risk yourself dying and that is fun, you always had to be cautious, especially in a game like AoC with immersive gatherings and economy and all the systems that make game way more immersive then WoW (including great graphics) I think it would be waste if they designed consumables to be worthless... Just my point, I don't know why so many people are against grind when the whole philosophy of MMO genre is to progress and do more progress after you reach certain point.

There are MMOs that don't require grind, for example retail WoW. You had to do main questline and covenants in Shadowlands, but it was timegated, every week you did 1h of questing to learn story and progress your character, after you do it, you are done. People complained about gear, but let's be honest now, is 3h of farming battlegrounds a lot to get decent gear to PVP casually? Only those that were on top tier list had to grind longer, but even then it could be done within 10 hours, this is peace of cake and its damn too easy. They designed game to be easier and less grindy. In classic people were grinding for the best gear for 3 damn months 12h per day, but again it was not mandatory since classic had sandbox gearing and scaling.

MMOs became less grindy over the years, you are pretty much clueless if you say that EQ99 was less grindy then newer MMOs after WoW because WoW had an impact on those games... Compare gw2 grind that came in 2012, or ESO... lvling is easy and gearing was easy. I am not sure about ESO professions, but one thing I am sure is that gw2 professions and NW professions suck and I would like not to have these economies in AoC. How to do that? Make materials for high end craft harder to get and do not create more materials in order to craft item. Simply by making rare material that drops once per 5hours will do it. Smaller numbers leads to more reasonable economy because we feel like if potion is 5-10g its much more reasonable then it being 0.5g, if we could buy 20 potions per 1 hour of farming it would be much more reasonable then if you could buy 1000 potions per hour of farming, this is my point, make economy reasonable and expensive, do not dump gold on useless thing and make us farm 1h for 2 weeks of gameplay, make it more grindy because of full loot PvP and good gathering, it will be so much more fun to gather and prepare for yourself while doing PvP then just roaming and doing PvP, because you are having this sense of progression which is tradition of every MMO, idk why are you complaining about this, MMOs should have this kind of survival/ish vibe where you gather and prepare yourself all the time. Think of it as if potions were important to us IRL, would you pay 1 dollar for something so important or would you create economy much more expensive since everyone needs it and depends on it... Its insane as why New World potions are so cheap when they need rare materials that are hard to get, idk how it happened, I hope someone can explain this, because we should all aim to avoid this problem and help devs create better economy for consumables.

Azherae

This is a perfect example of 'understanding only half of something and recreating it without understanding it'.

So, sure, since I'm thinking about it, for those interested.

The 'Key to a successful economy' in a game with no Fiat Magarin (the economic structure based on Land Ownership that comes about in feudal societies but does not actually exist in MMOS) is to make everyone's time worth the same ON THE MARKET.

Players will then go 'I make money about the same no matter what I'm doing, so I should do the thing I enjoy the most'. If you find an activity that no one likes doing even when it has good returns, that content isn't fun enough, or something is stopping the people that would enjoy it from being able to enjoy it. Investigate why.

For activities you don't want people to constantly repeat BUT don't want to be luck, gate that behind 'doing something else that the resources material benefits from, and put some sort of item drop within that activity that slowly generates 'keys' and when you have enough keys you can do the 'limited content'. Adapt the 'key drop' content value accordingly as needed.

Players will do whatever suits them, with some random fluctuation and luck. Players who have a rarer 'thing they enjoy' will make more money until all the ambivalent people realize 'hey, that activity is more money right now!' and go do that. Then someone else will make more money. People who do the same thing 24/7 will make more money OVERALL but they were going to do that anyway, and sometimes if they oversupply, they LOSE money anyway.

Everyone gets their little dopamine hit feelings of reward, not because 'I made lots of money today! I bet I made more than anyone else!' but because 'Wow I made decent money today and I had lots of fun too, this game is great'.

This applies to any game, because you can add or subtract as many fun activities as you like, at the base level.

Myosotys

NiKr wrote: »

The quantity doesn't matter at all, as long as any and all material sinks account for said quantity. Crafting recipes could take 5 items, when you could only gather 1 item per resource instance, or those recipes could use 200 items if you collected 40 per instance.

It's not about how much you gather, it's about how the devs balance that amount against all the things that are related to it. And it's obvious as fuck that NW's devs had no clue what they were doing, even before all the exploits and abuses of their systems.

Almost true but you forget that massive loots makes full bags and storages all the time. Then players are not crafting for pleasure but they are forced to craft to make space and then sell their crated items cheap.
Players also sell their tons of ingredients a super cheap price to make space.

As a result the economy sux.

VekoKrava

Myosotys wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

The quantity doesn't matter at all, as long as any and all material sinks account for said quantity. Crafting recipes could take 5 items, when you could only gather 1 item per resource instance, or those recipes could use 200 items if you collected 40 per instance.

It's not about how much you gather, it's about how the devs balance that amount against all the things that are related to it. And it's obvious as fuck that NW's devs had no clue what they were doing, even before all the exploits and abuses of their systems.

Almost true but you forget that massive loots makes full bags and storages all the time. Then players are not crafting for pleasure but they are forced to craft to make space and then sell their crated items cheap.
Players also sell their tons of ingredients a super cheap price to make space.

As a result the economy sux.

What if intrepid designed professions to not have skill ups, but instead make them meaningul and make very good gold sink via recipes, ones would need master to learn other can be crafted via normal profession.

We do not need so many progression in games anymore, rather to play for fun. But if you made everything meaningul people will do it and have meanig to do it and also have progression.

Child Item