I'm assuming players are heavily incentivized to regrade?
Regrade or die.
You weren't successful at all in Archeage unless you were using gear that had been decently regraded. You didn't need to do it yourself, but if you bought it, you paid a lot for it.
For all the games faults, Archeage had easily the best economy of any MMO other than EVE.
I'd say if Intrepid won't do decay then they will have to:
1 Massively incentivise enchanting
2 Make enchanting beneficial to everyone. Including and especially low level players.
3 Make repairs very cost prohibitive.
4 Make sure that multiple sets of gear are needed to do different types of content.
5 Be extremely active in introducing new content that high level characters need new gear for.
The first point here is the only one of them that is needed - though it doesn't need to be a "massive" incentive.
The second point is very minor, considering how little time is spent playing MMO's at anything other than max level.
The third point would just dissuade people from running content or taking risk. This is a death penalty rather than an economic measure.
The fourth point - while something I like - just takes away from the better gear you have. Players aren't going to invest more time in their gear than they feel they can allocate to it, if players can invest all of their time in to one set of gear and still not hit the cap, there is no need to require them to invest in multiple sets of gear. All that would do is lower the investment they put in to their main set of gear. While requiring players to have multiple gear sets is not a bad thing (and again, something I like), the over all investment - and thus economic activity - would remain the same.
The fifth point is again something I would like to see, but isn't necessary. Archeage was incerdibly slow at adding new content. All that is actually necessary is for players to not hit the gear ceiling - and literally no one in Archeage got even close.
In fact, I don't think any actual best in slot items actually existed on any server I played. While there were a few items that were regraded to the regrade cap (I saw perhaps 12 items total in my years playing Archeage), it was never done with the best base items.
You are talking about each as if they are separate. They are not, they all combine to make up for the fact that nothing leaves the economy.
You even said it with Archeage, you cannot succeed unless you heavily regrade. In other words a lot of items leave the economy.
So the two examples of great economies recycle items, all the examples of bad economies don't.
I know people don't want to lose stuff or consume stuff, but this isn't a 60 hour single player game. It's a 10,000 hour mmo. The economic issues won't crop up until 2 or 3 years later.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
No one but yourself can validate you for all the posts you *didn't* write.
The economic issues won't crop up until 2 or 3 years later.
bwahaha!!
Well here, I'll expand on what I mean:
None of this matters year one.
- The game releases, everyone is low level, so everyone needs gear at all stages. Gear economy fine. And lets assume the game is a success.
- First 6 to 8 months, players are leveling and behind them new players are coming in.
- 8 months to 1 year, the game's real test happens when a massive number of players are fully into the end game. Lets assume it's a success and people still love the game after leveling.
- 1 year to 1.5 year, the now proven success of the game brings in even more players and they will of course need all levels of gear. Gear economy still great.
- 1.5 year to 2 year, the game is still a success but new player influx is less extreme due to a lot of players that would play, are already playing. New players are still leveling but not quite as many as that initial explosion. Gear economy still good, but demand starts to decrease due to most items from 2 years ago still being around.
- 2 year to 2 1/2 year. A massive amount of players are at max level so the demand for lower level gear starts to wane a bit and if the game doesn't have enough sinks, inflation kicks in since all the vets are loaded. You can get low to mid level gear, but its not as prevalent and not as affordable as it used to be. Now gear programs spring up and become a selling point for guilds and nodes to attract new players, further distorting the low to mid range market.
- 2 1/2 to 3 year. The high level gear market begins to flood, guilds and nodes start to have full blown gear for work programs and inflation starts to take over. This is where you start to reach the "just mine a bunch of resources at lvl 10 and sell them for millions" to catch up to the market territory.
And so on.
If items are leaving the economy in adequate numbers then you don't reach this point, and it becomes easier to solve economy issues when they arise. The number of items being produced always match what is being demanded and the entire structure isn't being weighed down by items produced 3 years ago.
But as Homer Simpons says "That's a problem for future Homer, man I don't envy that guy!"
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
For those of you that are worried about losing valuable gear, make that gear not decay. The "Epics" and "Legendaries" (how ever they get organized in game) don't decay. The common to uncommon slowly decay with every repair. Make it slow enough that you get your use out of it before you need to otherwise upgrade. That way it disappears but players are not bogged down with constant gear replacements.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
not necessarily always a level cap increase. you can add better gear without increasing the level cap.
low level crafters will eventually reach high level..and low level players as well...
For those of you that are worried about losing valuable gear, make that gear not decay. The "Epics" and "Legendaries" (how ever they get organized in game) don't decay. The common to uncommon slowly decay with every repair. Make it slow enough that you get your use out of it before you need to otherwise upgrade. That way it disappears but players are not bogged down with constant gear replacements.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
but its the same. what when everybody has the epic and legendary gear? you are contradicting yourself.
For those of you that are worried about losing valuable gear, make that gear not decay. The "Epics" and "Legendaries" (how ever they get organized in game) don't decay. The common to uncommon slowly decay with every repair. Make it slow enough that you get your use out of it before you need to otherwise upgrade. That way it disappears but players are not bogged down with constant gear replacements.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
but its the same. what when everybody has the epic and legendary gear? you are contradicting yourself.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
not necessarily always a level cap increase. you can add better gear without increasing the level cap.
low level crafters will eventually reach high level..and low level players as well...
This is the disconnect. You are effectively acknowledging that this is in fact an issue, but you don't think it's a problem because everyone will live at max level. Assuming that everyone that joins after the first 3 years makes it to max lvl, is a bold assumption given the history of MMOs over the last ten years. And if would-be crafters join to find a months long grind just to sell anything for a profit then they will be even less likely to stay, making the issue even worse.
I'm giving pretty specific examples of how it plays out based on how it's actually played out over the last 20 years. You are sort of just giving vague assurance of "oh, don't worry, it'll be fine". It's clearly not been fine in most MMOs.
It won't really be an issue for you or me, since we are going to be here day 1 and will be rich by the time this plays out. But it will surely be an issue for the long term health of the game, just like it has for every other MMO that has let it's players keep all of their stuff for all of their lives.
For those of you that are worried about losing valuable gear, make that gear not decay. The "Epics" and "Legendaries" (how ever they get organized in game) don't decay. The common to uncommon slowly decay with every repair. Make it slow enough that you get your use out of it before you need to otherwise upgrade. That way it disappears but players are not bogged down with constant gear replacements.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
but its the same. what when everybody has the epic and legendary gear? you are contradicting yourself.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
not necessarily always a level cap increase. you can add better gear without increasing the level cap.
low level crafters will eventually reach high level..and low level players as well...
This is the disconnect. You are effectively acknowledging that this is in fact an issue, but you don't think it's a problem because everyone will live at max level. Assuming that everyone that joins after the first 3 years makes it to max lvl, is a bold assumption given the history of MMOs over the last ten years. And if would-be crafters join to find a months long grind just to sell anything for a profit then they will be even less likely to stay, making the issue even worse.
I'm giving pretty specific examples of how it plays out based on how it's actually played out over the last 20 years. You are sort of just giving vague assurance of "oh, don't worry, it'll be fine". It's clearly not been fine in most MMOs.
It won't really be an issue for you or me, since we are going to be here day 1 and will be rich by the time this plays out. But it will surely be an issue for the long term health of the game, just like it has for every other MMO that has let it's players keep all of their stuff for all of their lives.
you are changing the argument now. the original argument is that at some point, everybody will have their final gear and wont need to buy more items, therefore there wont be an economy because no one will buy anything since they will already have everything. the proposed solution is that equipped gear is to be destroyed to keep people buying stuff. this solution is presented as the only possible solution to this problem. I'm saying it isn't the only feasible solution, and now you are saying that new players who want to become crafters will struggle to make money.
ok lets go there then.
when new players join, sure you can say that new crafters will have issues making money early on, but everybody else will have an easier time gearing up and progressing since things will be cheaper. so who who is more important here? who got more numbers, future crafters or future anything else. also, crafters will benefit greatly from this.
even if there was gear destruction, why would a level 50 buy level 10 gear? new crafters wont be selling low level stuff much. they will still have to max out their craft to participate. so the issue isn't low level crafting, its the time it would take you to max it out to participate. you can still do that faster than it would take you to gear up. remember that because everybody has everything, everything that is being sold is cheaper now since nobody wants it. this helps new players gear up faster to progress and catch up and crafters to get materials faster to max out crafting. if it would take you 30 hours to farm the gold to buy iron to make 100 iron swords to progress to the next tier in your craft, it will take you 5 hours now since no one wants the iron ore now.
you are also saying that the only way to make money would be to craft. that's like me saying I want to make money and become rich killing low level monsters I can one shot when they barely drop any gold, and if the game doesn't allow me to do that, then its flawed. there are many activities to make money from, not just crafting. and then you can eventually craft the stuff you want to sell at the new end game in the current patch.
you are also mentioning mmorpg history, but you are forgetting that as time goes on, the mmorpg become easier for new players (at least the old content). if it would take you 3 months to hit level 50, then 3 years later it would take you 3 days to hit level 50. new players will be participating at the new end game stuff (including crafter) much faster.
I'm not really sure why you say that it would take new players longer to participate in the new endgame at the current patch, since history has shown us that you can get there faster and faster with every patch.
I think there is an overstated importance to "Gear" as it relates to the player driven economy in Ashes. Nodes will need vast resources to upgrade buildings, Nodes will need vast resources to prepare for a node siege (building siege weapons, etc.), nodes will need vast resources to prepare to defend a node siege, Castle sieges, free hold buildings, social organizations, when we get there, will need resources no doubt.
Is dropping your gear when you die really that terrible?
Yes.
It's a thing that I actually couldn't get over in Albion. I didn't want to venture out to black zones, because I would've lost gear. Losing my gear means losing time. I spent hours getting something, and I lose it in a few moments.
Now I have to spend a few hours again, to then lose it in a few moments.
This just made me play in "safe" zones, which means you can't get anywhere in the game, as all the "good stuff" is in black zones. When I decided to venture out finally, I just didn't have fun having to constantly watch out for other players.
This gameplay loop is just not enjoyable for me, at all. No attachment to character or gear, gear acting as a consumable, etc. I just disliked it.
And this is especially going to be a problem in games like Ashes, where gear will be way more valuable. Losing it would only hurt even more.
If you attack a caravan, or even defend a caravan and you die, should you not have risk? Maybe you steal the caravan and make tons of money. Maybe you die and lose a gear set. Regear and move on. Its more of a mind set.
Absolutely, if you die as purple, when you flag on a caravan, you should have some risk of losing something.
"Re-gear and move on" is going to potentially take quite a while in this game. I'm just not fine with potentially losing weeks of my time, just because someone killed me in a fight that took a few minutes at most.
In Eve if you lose a ship, its frustrating, but its a consumable. In Albion, you dont get attached to gear sets since eventually you will lose it. There are ways in both games to be safe and never lose them, but then you never have access to the hardest content, or best crafting resources. Its risk vs reward and a chance in mind set.
Well, that's the thing, in most MMOs, you do get attached to your gear. In Ashes, you will most probably get attached to your gear.
It's the time commitment, the effort of getting that piece of gear that makes it important, an achievement. That's why gear is important, and why you get attached to it.
A LOT of people play MMOs because of that, attachment to their character, which includes gear. It takes time and effort to level up your character, to gear it, to get important items for it, to unlock stuff, etc.
Regarding Archeage's economy: I think it's pretty good, though it had it's flaws. Many systems were designed around p2w stuff, bots were both good and bad for the economy, some stuff was just not that well designed, which the AA Classic server just showed (due to removing p2w stuff that impacted the economy, without actually putting something as a replacement, to fill the void if you will).
But in terms of how big it was, where you could do crafting, gathering, mob farming, using your land to farm gold, moving packs, etc. to make gold, which you could use to buy gear, or to buy more land to make more money, it was great.
The gearing part of Archeage though, wasn't. The sheer rng was borderline insane, up to a point it's a decent system, but the time and effort required after a certain point was just unreachable for non-hardcore players. And the thing is, once you had players at that level, they were unkillable, while being able to just delete you in seconds. It's just not fun. (Though I am talking about 3.0 and below versions of the game, had no experience with Hiram gear or all that other bs that was introduced after 3.5).
Besides gear, Archeage had so many gold sinks, which is what made it great imo. You could focus solely on gear, but there was so much other stuff like buying more land, upgrading your farmhouse, getting ships and upgrading them, getting a farmcart, gliders, a car, etc. Sadly, a lot of stuff was also heavily RNG dependent, just like regrading.
I don't think RNG is always bad, but the way it was done in Archeage is just frustrating to say the least.
I think Ashes could definitely implement something similar, that just isn't so badly done. Like the actual rng and gear breaking part should be only for the very top levels of gear, if you really want to push for those marginal gains. Everything below that, should just require time and effort, rather than RNG luck.
For those of you that are worried about losing valuable gear, make that gear not decay. The "Epics" and "Legendaries" (how ever they get organized in game) don't decay. The common to uncommon slowly decay with every repair. Make it slow enough that you get your use out of it before you need to otherwise upgrade. That way it disappears but players are not bogged down with constant gear replacements.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
but its the same. what when everybody has the epic and legendary gear? you are contradicting yourself.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
not necessarily always a level cap increase. you can add better gear without increasing the level cap.
low level crafters will eventually reach high level..and low level players as well...
This is the disconnect. You are effectively acknowledging that this is in fact an issue, but you don't think it's a problem because everyone will live at max level. Assuming that everyone that joins after the first 3 years makes it to max lvl, is a bold assumption given the history of MMOs over the last ten years. And if would-be crafters join to find a months long grind just to sell anything for a profit then they will be even less likely to stay, making the issue even worse.
I'm giving pretty specific examples of how it plays out based on how it's actually played out over the last 20 years. You are sort of just giving vague assurance of "oh, don't worry, it'll be fine". It's clearly not been fine in most MMOs.
It won't really be an issue for you or me, since we are going to be here day 1 and will be rich by the time this plays out. But it will surely be an issue for the long term health of the game, just like it has for every other MMO that has let it's players keep all of their stuff for all of their lives.
you are changing the argument now. the original argument is that at some point, everybody will have their final gear and wont need to buy more items, therefore there wont be an economy because no one will buy anything since they will already have everything. the proposed solution is that equipped gear is to be destroyed to keep people buying stuff. this solution is presented as the only possible solution to this problem. I'm saying it isn't the only feasible solution, and now you are saying that new players who want to become crafters will struggle to make money.
ok lets go there then.
when new players join, sure you can say that new crafters will have issues making money early on, but everybody else will have an easier time gearing up and progressing since things will be cheaper. so who who is more important here? who got more numbers, future crafters or future anything else. also, crafters will benefit greatly from this.
I'm not changing anything. You are saying early to mid level crafting should be sacrificed to make sure I don't ever have to lose anything. I'm disagreeing and saying this damages the game, like it has in every other game without adequate gear sinks.
To answer the questing in that last paragraph, the early to mid game crafter is more important. By miles. I don't want gear to be 10 times easier to get 3 years down the line. Players joining three years from now should go through the same leveling and gear acquisition process that I went through, and you went through. The early game crafters should have the same opportunities, 3 years in, that crafters did on day one. You have to earn your stuff, not have it handed to you because some loaded vet will just hand it to you. Also, and most important, the economy needs to be healthy at all lvls to be functional long term.
You are talking about each as if they are separate. They are not, they all combine to make up for the fact that nothing leaves the economy.
They are seperate, because a game doesn't need all of them.
A game can have all of them, but doesn't need all of them.
You even said it with Archeage, you cannot succeed unless you heavily regrade. In other words a lot of items leave the economy
Yes, I am talking about the system in Archeage, which is the same system in Ashes.
Are you talking about a different system? If so, why?
No I'm not talking about something different. I'm only making the point that, as far as I can see, the successful MMO economies ALL have gear sinks. The ones that don't have them, but try to focus on other methods, don't succeed.
I'm saying that you 100% percent have to have meaningful sinks. Items have to leave. You can make it less severe by using other methods to SUPPLEMENT the gear loss, but the gear loss has to be the main driver. That's the lever you have to adjust first. All evidence points to that, all successful game economies have that one thing in common. It's not what people want (although I would argue that it promotes a healthier in game mentality), but that's how it is. You can have a healthy economy or you can have World of Warcraft and FFXIV where the answer to everything is "just grind to max lvl, then make only BiS".
For those of you that are worried about losing valuable gear, make that gear not decay. The "Epics" and "Legendaries" (how ever they get organized in game) don't decay. The common to uncommon slowly decay with every repair. Make it slow enough that you get your use out of it before you need to otherwise upgrade. That way it disappears but players are not bogged down with constant gear replacements.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
but its the same. what when everybody has the epic and legendary gear? you are contradicting yourself.
Looking through the wiki and listening to stream one question keeps popping up regarding a player driven economy. What is going to destroy gear? In order for people to keep needing gear, it has to be destroyed. In games like albion and eve online, when a player is killed, half of the gear is destroyed and the other half is dropped. These are both very PVP focused games, but they both have realistic economies and they are player driven.
What is the plan with AoC? I see that some gear may drop if you go corrupted, but that doesnt destroy gear. Repair might take resources and even rare or unique resources, but in order to train artisans, you need new orders for them to build? Repair requires them to have the broken gear.
My concern is that as the servers mature, the market will die off as people get all the gear they could want. New players will not have a reason to craft as most players will have everything they need and getting repairs will become very hard.
Items need to leave an economy to make room for new items. But gamers have a hard time with that.
not necessarily. coke didnt have to leave the market for pepsi to come in and sell.
sure mmorpg are a bit different, but again, you dont need (main) gear destruction. new items can be introduced before everybody gets 100% of the current items. that keeps the economy going forever without having to re farm your main gear every 2 days instead of doing something else when you are in game.
I agree with all the other points made in favour of Ashes' economy; this one I think is the weakest. You're removing the incentive for new players to engage in the content older players did to craft their gear, if you just let them pass it on as new expensive stuff gets released. The low-levelled or cheaply equipped players are the backbone of the economy. If they don't have to work to loot and maintain their gear, the only one spending resources are the rich players who can spend them effortlessly, and no one has to earn anything.
Keeping repair costs high, and requiring high-effort rare resources and high crafting skill for repairs of high-tier equipment will be essential, and cannot be replaced by power creep.
how am i removing the incentives for new players? they still need to gear up. doesnt matter how you acquire the gear.
its also a good thing that a rich player could buy gear and help someone new. this would help that person be on par with veteran players faster, which is a big challenge games with collectibles face.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
it doesnt matter if bob or joe buy my sword, what matters to me (and the economy) is that someone buys it.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
not necessarily always a level cap increase. you can add better gear without increasing the level cap.
low level crafters will eventually reach high level..and low level players as well...
This is the disconnect. You are effectively acknowledging that this is in fact an issue, but you don't think it's a problem because everyone will live at max level. Assuming that everyone that joins after the first 3 years makes it to max lvl, is a bold assumption given the history of MMOs over the last ten years. And if would-be crafters join to find a months long grind just to sell anything for a profit then they will be even less likely to stay, making the issue even worse.
I'm giving pretty specific examples of how it plays out based on how it's actually played out over the last 20 years. You are sort of just giving vague assurance of "oh, don't worry, it'll be fine". It's clearly not been fine in most MMOs.
It won't really be an issue for you or me, since we are going to be here day 1 and will be rich by the time this plays out. But it will surely be an issue for the long term health of the game, just like it has for every other MMO that has let it's players keep all of their stuff for all of their lives.
you are changing the argument now. the original argument is that at some point, everybody will have their final gear and wont need to buy more items, therefore there wont be an economy because no one will buy anything since they will already have everything. the proposed solution is that equipped gear is to be destroyed to keep people buying stuff. this solution is presented as the only possible solution to this problem. I'm saying it isn't the only feasible solution, and now you are saying that new players who want to become crafters will struggle to make money.
ok lets go there then.
when new players join, sure you can say that new crafters will have issues making money early on, but everybody else will have an easier time gearing up and progressing since things will be cheaper. so who who is more important here? who got more numbers, future crafters or future anything else. also, crafters will benefit greatly from this.
I'm not changing anything. You are saying early to mid level crafting should be sacrificed to make sure I don't ever have to lose anything. I'm disagreeing and saying this damages the game, like it has in every other game without adequate gear sinks.
To answer the questing in that last paragraph, the early to mid game crafter is more important. By miles. I don't want gear to be 10 times easier to get 3 years down the line. Players joining three years from now should go through the same leveling and gear acquisition process that I went through, and you went through. The early game crafters should have the same opportunities, 3 years in, that crafters did on day one. You have to earn your stuff, not have it handed to you because some loaded vet will just hand it to you. Also, and most important, the economy needs to be healthy at all lvls to be functional long term.
I never said early-mid crafting should be sacrificed. i said if the best gear takes long enough to get such that 100% of players wont finish gearing up before the new expansion comes in (or at least not long before the patch comes in), then you will always have people trying to buy gear (there are things in the economy other than gear, so you can still have an economy regardless, but we are talking about gear in isolation here, so ill stick to that). there also doesn't need to be low and mdi tiered crafting in terms of crafting progression. there is in ashes so its not worth discussing this, but this is also an alternative.
for example, in l2, while people will spend most of their time concentrated in high level gear, new players will need low level gear and soulsshots to even get there. a new crafter will have an opportunity to make some money there.
in ragnarok, carded weapons are better than crafted elemental weapons, but elemental weapons are waayyy cheaper. crafters will always have a chance to make money selling elemental weapons aimed at new players.
2- early to mid crafting isn't more important (you could say it depends on the game). in ashes, crafting gear servers a purpose. you want the gear to do combat. combat is the most important part. any single player (new or not) could even skip crafting completely and just buy the gear from someone else (even if you need someone else to make that gear). hell, you could even completely remove the artisan system and the game still works. i know of mmorpg without a crafting system, but I don't know of any mmorpg where you do pvp and pve combat without a combat system. ashes isn't a crafting oriented game. those games exist tho.
players who join 3 years from now shouldn't go through the same everything as players on day one. you are basically saying that they will need 3 years to catch up, so basically day 1 players will be on year 6 and everybody else will be on year 1,2,3,4,5. they will never catch up. getting newer players up to speed with veteran players has been a challenge for games with collectibles (mmorpg, trading card games). so no, new players shouldn't need 3 years to catch up. that's just an opinion that is far from =what game designers do and doesn't take into account certain issues.
you can still have the same opportunities to make money. instead of selling "low tier iron sword" you sell "super awesome dragon slayer", so it doesn't really matter. you sell what people want, not what you want. and people want the new patch items, not the old patch items. game helps new players get to the new patch items faster and that's a good thing.
There are two types of content that exist. Horizontal and Vertical. Vertical content invalidates earlier content. This is what you are talking about. Why make lv 1 gear because no one buys it when you can make level 50 gear...or the new patch comes out level 60 gear. Its one of the reasons WoW got so bloated. No one wants level 50 gear because level 60 gear exists.
Horizonal content would be something like enchanments. It takes different skills and different materials, but doesnt invalidate anything that exists. You still need the same gear as before to enchant, but now you can enchant it.
If you make it so lv 1-50 doesnt matter to a crafter, they probably wont grind through it just to make the "super awesome dragon slayer" because that only starts after 50.
If ashes wants a player driven economy, it needs gear sinks. If they want things to be reasonably priced, they need gold sinks. Lost Ark and other RNG driven games lose people because RNG for the sake of a sink is shitty.
Does it suck to lose a gear set because someone fights you? Sometimes. Does it lead to better stories? Usually. Does it add to the risk factor? Most certainly.
Risk and reward is constantly said in terms of AoC. Does going to get a top tier crafting material add risk? It should. Could you lose your gear doing it? Maybe. But should the rewards also match? yes. This can all be balanced. But a gear sink is what allows crafters to provide meaningful contributions.
For those who are saying that isnt what AoC is about, you are wrong. Steven has said that it is for people who want to craft or gather or RP. That wont be the only aspect of the game, but one of many.
There are two types of content that exist. Horizontal and Vertical. Vertical content invalidates earlier content. This is what you are talking about. Why make lv 1 gear because no one buys it when you can make level 50 gear...or the new patch comes out level 60 gear. Its one of the reasons WoW got so bloated. No one wants level 50 gear because level 60 gear exists.
Horizonal content would be something like enchanments. It takes different skills and different materials, but doesnt invalidate anything that exists. You still need the same gear as before to enchant, but now you can enchant it.
If you make it so lv 1-50 doesnt matter to a crafter, they probably wont grind through it just to make the "super awesome dragon slayer" because that only starts after 50.
If ashes wants a player driven economy, it needs gear sinks. If they want things to be reasonably priced, they need gold sinks. Lost Ark and other RNG driven games lose people because RNG for the sake of a sink is shitty.
Does it suck to lose a gear set because someone fights you? Sometimes. Does it lead to better stories? Usually. Does it add to the risk factor? Most certainly.
Risk and reward is constantly said in terms of AoC. Does going to get a top tier crafting material add risk? It should. Could you lose your gear doing it? Maybe. But should the rewards also match? yes. This can all be balanced. But a gear sink is what allows crafters to provide meaningful contributions.
For those who are saying that isnt what AoC is about, you are wrong. Steven has said that it is for people who want to craft or gather or RP. That wont be the only aspect of the game, but one of many.
I think I do agree with most of what you said, but I don't think we have the same conclusion/solution for it.
From what I got, you're in favor of losing/dropping gear.
I'm against that, unless it's a very specific circumstance (a chance of corrupted players dropping a piece of gear on death).
Does it suck to lose a gear set because someone fights you? Sometimes.
For me it's not "sometimes", it's ABSOLUTELY.
There should be a different system in place.
There are other ways to create a gear sink.
I could think of a few right now, but they sound annoying to deal with, though not as much as actually losing gear, so idk.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Steven says that in Ashes, Crafters are the Shit!.
Basically, Crafters are the backbone of everything people are doing, so...
Player economy should be satisfactory.
I'm saying that you 100% percent have to have meaningful sinks.
Ashes has gear loss via enchanting.
That is a sink. That is the same sink Archeage has. It is enough.
I hope so. It comes down to how much it's incentivized and leveraged. If it's required in order to be successful and it includes low to mid level gear, to get some of that out of circulation too, then great. If it's just a casual, "you don't really need this" sort if thing, then no.
I'm saying that you 100% percent have to have meaningful sinks.
Ashes has gear loss via enchanting.
That is a sink. That is the same sink Archeage has. It is enough.
I hope so. It comes down to how much it's incentivized and leveraged. If it's required in order to be successful and it includes low to mid level gear, to get some of that out of circulation too, then great. If it's just a casual, "you don't really need this" sort if thing, then no.
The way to get lower to mid tier gear out of circulation is to require it as a component in top tier gear.
Then, not only are you taking it our of circulation, you are maintaining a healthy market for it from top tier players.
Keep in mind, and market that isn't driven by players at the level cap can just be skipped.
The above is what Archeage did, and what Steven has suggested is his goal with Ashes (though he hasn't outright stated it).
I'm saying that you 100% percent have to have meaningful sinks.
Ashes has gear loss via enchanting.
That is a sink. That is the same sink Archeage has. It is enough.
I hope so. It comes down to how much it's incentivized and leveraged. If it's required in order to be successful and it includes low to mid level gear, to get some of that out of circulation too, then great. If it's just a casual, "you don't really need this" sort if thing, then no.
The way to get lower to mid tier gear out of circulation is to require it as a component in top tier gear.
Then, not only are you taking it our of circulation, you are maintaining a healthy market for it from top tier players.
Keep in mind, and market that isn't driven by players at the level cap can just be skipped.
The above is what Archeage did, and what Steven has suggested is his goal with Ashes (though he hasn't outright stated it).
That's fine too. As long as it's consistently being consumed and exiting. If it can be a positive choice like crafting and enchanting, instead of a negative consequence like durability all the better.
This is still concerning how much some People concern themselves over things they should have no Business being concerned with.
The Game is not even in Alpha Two yet. And yet, this concerning Development of probably fear-based concern is concerning our Community in the Forum.
These are exactly the things we should be bringing up. It deals with the design direction they are taking. Decisions they are finalizing now. Better to hear our concerns ahead of time.
This is still concerning how much some People concern themselves over things they should have no Business being concerned with.
The Game is not even in Alpha Two yet. And yet, this concerning Development of probably fear-based concern is concerning our Community in the Forum.
I asked a question about how the game is suppose to work. I enjoy crafting and I enjoy the player driven economy. I know that if an appropriate gear sink does not exist, then it will fail and I will not like the game.
The purpose of having forums before the game exists is to bring up stuff like this, to give feedback, and to provide insight into why we think it is important.
Your comment is not adding anything to this discussion.
Comments
You are talking about each as if they are separate. They are not, they all combine to make up for the fact that nothing leaves the economy.
You even said it with Archeage, you cannot succeed unless you heavily regrade. In other words a lot of items leave the economy.
So the two examples of great economies recycle items, all the examples of bad economies don't.
I know people don't want to lose stuff or consume stuff, but this isn't a 60 hour single player game. It's a 10,000 hour mmo. The economic issues won't crop up until 2 or 3 years later.
So don't worry about economics until we can't do anything about it?
Of course it matters how you acquire the gear. If people are selling old legendary swords for pennies because everyone has them, no one spends money or time on that part of the economy loop.
Whereas if they had to be crafted, maintained, and enchanted/upgraded with legendary resources of the level & tier group they belong to, then they would always remain relatively valuable.
Again, I agree with all the other points that were brought up in Ashes' favour, just your power creep argument is relatively weak.
But no one will, because everyone will already have them, because low tier gear will abound if every high-tier player abandons their gear every few months when new stuff gets released...
The point is, the economy would be more alive if everyone always needed gear, and no one ever had much of a surplus, and power creep actively creates leftover surplus left and right.
Anyway, I'm redirecting more attention to this than there's any need to. Let's just let the others talk...
Well here, I'll expand on what I mean:
None of this matters year one.
- The game releases, everyone is low level, so everyone needs gear at all stages. Gear economy fine. And lets assume the game is a success.
- First 6 to 8 months, players are leveling and behind them new players are coming in.
- 8 months to 1 year, the game's real test happens when a massive number of players are fully into the end game. Lets assume it's a success and people still love the game after leveling.
- 1 year to 1.5 year, the now proven success of the game brings in even more players and they will of course need all levels of gear. Gear economy still great.
- 1.5 year to 2 year, the game is still a success but new player influx is less extreme due to a lot of players that would play, are already playing. New players are still leveling but not quite as many as that initial explosion. Gear economy still good, but demand starts to decrease due to most items from 2 years ago still being around.
- 2 year to 2 1/2 year. A massive amount of players are at max level so the demand for lower level gear starts to wane a bit and if the game doesn't have enough sinks, inflation kicks in since all the vets are loaded. You can get low to mid level gear, but its not as prevalent and not as affordable as it used to be. Now gear programs spring up and become a selling point for guilds and nodes to attract new players, further distorting the low to mid range market.
- 2 1/2 to 3 year. The high level gear market begins to flood, guilds and nodes start to have full blown gear for work programs and inflation starts to take over. This is where you start to reach the "just mine a bunch of resources at lvl 10 and sell them for millions" to catch up to the market territory.
And so on.
If items are leaving the economy in adequate numbers then you don't reach this point, and it becomes easier to solve economy issues when they arise. The number of items being produced always match what is being demanded and the entire structure isn't being weighed down by items produced 3 years ago.
But as Homer Simpons says "That's a problem for future Homer, man I don't envy that guy!"
Always remember - > every single time You are concerned over something that You should probably not be concerned with,
Sir Steven will delay and push Ashes of Creation One Week further into the Future. (lol)
Don't be concerned.
This would be very concerning.
What then would set Events into Motion we should not concern ourselves with.
bruh u didn't get it. if there are people selling legendary swords for pennies, its because better items have been introduced already. read my past in the previous pages. you can simply make it slow enough for everybody in the server to gear up so that when everybody has their stuff, new stuff come out and you keep the economy going. you don't have to destroy whats already equipped.
your reply tells me you didn't read what I explained =_=
You are describing the issue. In your version the only items that have a functioning economy are the highest level items. Your example of people selling legendary swords for pennies is the malfunction. Letting "everyone level up" also doesn't make sense because a server that only has high level players (meaning no new players are coming in) is a dying server. Lower level crafters have nothing to make and sell, they can only grind up to max in that scenario. That is what you see in FFXIV, the faltering economy only comprises of crafters selling to each other.
If you are only taking a week or two to level up then this is not an issue. If it is taking 2 months to level up this is a problem, and crafters have nothing to make that will net a profit. FFXIV has to make up for this by giving the players all the gear they will ever need as they complete the MSQ. And the only times they have a healthy economy is the brief time right after an expansion, and that is only at the new levels. Low lvl economy still does not exist.
In your example crafters are replaced by adventurers.
oh so low level players don't need to gear up?
what I'm talking about is a game where progress takes long. you will spend months leveling up and trying to get gear then more months leveling up then more gear etc.
and even if you could get to max level fast (2 weeks or 2 months), you can still make the best few tiers of gear hard to get. new players come in and they will need to gear up as well. level up fast with msq gear and that becomes the lowest max level gear, then after that, players will take a while to get better stuff..then new patch comes out. economy keeps rolling. you can even do that with bond items lol.
destroying your equipped armor isn't the only solution. and I only gave the pennies example replying to the other dude since he mentioned it. there is more than one solution to a problem.
Your solution is to constantly raise the lvl cap and have people chase the new gear while passing down the old gear. That means after a few years low lvl crafters have nothing to sell, since there is an abundance of low lvl gear to be had from existing players. That gear may even be better since it was rolled on and enhanced by those players. A top heavy economy is what you want to avoid. How many new crafters will you see in the game, if eventually the only road to success is to spend a few months grinding to max so they can compete with gear from non crafters?
You can get away with this in games with shorter leveling times, but not here. Without any sinks at all you wind up with a player driven economy, but only the original players.
If you do this, the items still disappear and crafted gear is always more valuable than used common or uncommon gear since it has its full use.
Edit: Or even calculate it so that two players could use it to level through a leveling range. That way one of your alts could use it too.
not necessarily always a level cap increase. you can add better gear without increasing the level cap.
low level crafters will eventually reach high level..and low level players as well...
but its the same. what when everybody has the epic and legendary gear? you are contradicting yourself.
This is the disconnect. You are effectively acknowledging that this is in fact an issue, but you don't think it's a problem because everyone will live at max level. Assuming that everyone that joins after the first 3 years makes it to max lvl, is a bold assumption given the history of MMOs over the last ten years. And if would-be crafters join to find a months long grind just to sell anything for a profit then they will be even less likely to stay, making the issue even worse.
I'm giving pretty specific examples of how it plays out based on how it's actually played out over the last 20 years. You are sort of just giving vague assurance of "oh, don't worry, it'll be fine". It's clearly not been fine in most MMOs.
It won't really be an issue for you or me, since we are going to be here day 1 and will be rich by the time this plays out. But it will surely be an issue for the long term health of the game, just like it has for every other MMO that has let it's players keep all of their stuff for all of their lives.
you are changing the argument now. the original argument is that at some point, everybody will have their final gear and wont need to buy more items, therefore there wont be an economy because no one will buy anything since they will already have everything. the proposed solution is that equipped gear is to be destroyed to keep people buying stuff. this solution is presented as the only possible solution to this problem. I'm saying it isn't the only feasible solution, and now you are saying that new players who want to become crafters will struggle to make money.
ok lets go there then.
when new players join, sure you can say that new crafters will have issues making money early on, but everybody else will have an easier time gearing up and progressing since things will be cheaper. so who who is more important here? who got more numbers, future crafters or future anything else. also, crafters will benefit greatly from this.
even if there was gear destruction, why would a level 50 buy level 10 gear? new crafters wont be selling low level stuff much. they will still have to max out their craft to participate. so the issue isn't low level crafting, its the time it would take you to max it out to participate. you can still do that faster than it would take you to gear up. remember that because everybody has everything, everything that is being sold is cheaper now since nobody wants it. this helps new players gear up faster to progress and catch up and crafters to get materials faster to max out crafting. if it would take you 30 hours to farm the gold to buy iron to make 100 iron swords to progress to the next tier in your craft, it will take you 5 hours now since no one wants the iron ore now.
you are also saying that the only way to make money would be to craft. that's like me saying I want to make money and become rich killing low level monsters I can one shot when they barely drop any gold, and if the game doesn't allow me to do that, then its flawed. there are many activities to make money from, not just crafting. and then you can eventually craft the stuff you want to sell at the new end game in the current patch.
you are also mentioning mmorpg history, but you are forgetting that as time goes on, the mmorpg become easier for new players (at least the old content). if it would take you 3 months to hit level 50, then 3 years later it would take you 3 days to hit level 50. new players will be participating at the new end game stuff (including crafter) much faster.
I'm not really sure why you say that it would take new players longer to participate in the new endgame at the current patch, since history has shown us that you can get there faster and faster with every patch.
A game can have all of them, but doesn't need all of them. Yes, I am talking about the system in Archeage, which is the same system in Ashes.
Are you talking about a different system? If so, why?
Yes.
It's a thing that I actually couldn't get over in Albion. I didn't want to venture out to black zones, because I would've lost gear. Losing my gear means losing time. I spent hours getting something, and I lose it in a few moments.
Now I have to spend a few hours again, to then lose it in a few moments.
This just made me play in "safe" zones, which means you can't get anywhere in the game, as all the "good stuff" is in black zones. When I decided to venture out finally, I just didn't have fun having to constantly watch out for other players.
This gameplay loop is just not enjoyable for me, at all. No attachment to character or gear, gear acting as a consumable, etc. I just disliked it.
And this is especially going to be a problem in games like Ashes, where gear will be way more valuable. Losing it would only hurt even more.
Absolutely, if you die as purple, when you flag on a caravan, you should have some risk of losing something.
"Re-gear and move on" is going to potentially take quite a while in this game. I'm just not fine with potentially losing weeks of my time, just because someone killed me in a fight that took a few minutes at most.
Well, that's the thing, in most MMOs, you do get attached to your gear. In Ashes, you will most probably get attached to your gear.
It's the time commitment, the effort of getting that piece of gear that makes it important, an achievement. That's why gear is important, and why you get attached to it.
A LOT of people play MMOs because of that, attachment to their character, which includes gear. It takes time and effort to level up your character, to gear it, to get important items for it, to unlock stuff, etc.
Regarding Archeage's economy: I think it's pretty good, though it had it's flaws. Many systems were designed around p2w stuff, bots were both good and bad for the economy, some stuff was just not that well designed, which the AA Classic server just showed (due to removing p2w stuff that impacted the economy, without actually putting something as a replacement, to fill the void if you will).
But in terms of how big it was, where you could do crafting, gathering, mob farming, using your land to farm gold, moving packs, etc. to make gold, which you could use to buy gear, or to buy more land to make more money, it was great.
The gearing part of Archeage though, wasn't. The sheer rng was borderline insane, up to a point it's a decent system, but the time and effort required after a certain point was just unreachable for non-hardcore players. And the thing is, once you had players at that level, they were unkillable, while being able to just delete you in seconds. It's just not fun. (Though I am talking about 3.0 and below versions of the game, had no experience with Hiram gear or all that other bs that was introduced after 3.5).
Besides gear, Archeage had so many gold sinks, which is what made it great imo. You could focus solely on gear, but there was so much other stuff like buying more land, upgrading your farmhouse, getting ships and upgrading them, getting a farmcart, gliders, a car, etc. Sadly, a lot of stuff was also heavily RNG dependent, just like regrading.
I don't think RNG is always bad, but the way it was done in Archeage is just frustrating to say the least.
I think Ashes could definitely implement something similar, that just isn't so badly done. Like the actual rng and gear breaking part should be only for the very top levels of gear, if you really want to push for those marginal gains. Everything below that, should just require time and effort, rather than RNG luck.
I'm not changing anything. You are saying early to mid level crafting should be sacrificed to make sure I don't ever have to lose anything. I'm disagreeing and saying this damages the game, like it has in every other game without adequate gear sinks.
To answer the questing in that last paragraph, the early to mid game crafter is more important. By miles. I don't want gear to be 10 times easier to get 3 years down the line. Players joining three years from now should go through the same leveling and gear acquisition process that I went through, and you went through. The early game crafters should have the same opportunities, 3 years in, that crafters did on day one. You have to earn your stuff, not have it handed to you because some loaded vet will just hand it to you. Also, and most important, the economy needs to be healthy at all lvls to be functional long term.
No I'm not talking about something different. I'm only making the point that, as far as I can see, the successful MMO economies ALL have gear sinks. The ones that don't have them, but try to focus on other methods, don't succeed.
I'm saying that you 100% percent have to have meaningful sinks. Items have to leave. You can make it less severe by using other methods to SUPPLEMENT the gear loss, but the gear loss has to be the main driver. That's the lever you have to adjust first. All evidence points to that, all successful game economies have that one thing in common. It's not what people want (although I would argue that it promotes a healthier in game mentality), but that's how it is. You can have a healthy economy or you can have World of Warcraft and FFXIV where the answer to everything is "just grind to max lvl, then make only BiS".
I never said early-mid crafting should be sacrificed. i said if the best gear takes long enough to get such that 100% of players wont finish gearing up before the new expansion comes in (or at least not long before the patch comes in), then you will always have people trying to buy gear (there are things in the economy other than gear, so you can still have an economy regardless, but we are talking about gear in isolation here, so ill stick to that). there also doesn't need to be low and mdi tiered crafting in terms of crafting progression. there is in ashes so its not worth discussing this, but this is also an alternative.
for example, in l2, while people will spend most of their time concentrated in high level gear, new players will need low level gear and soulsshots to even get there. a new crafter will have an opportunity to make some money there.
in ragnarok, carded weapons are better than crafted elemental weapons, but elemental weapons are waayyy cheaper. crafters will always have a chance to make money selling elemental weapons aimed at new players.
2- early to mid crafting isn't more important (you could say it depends on the game). in ashes, crafting gear servers a purpose. you want the gear to do combat. combat is the most important part. any single player (new or not) could even skip crafting completely and just buy the gear from someone else (even if you need someone else to make that gear). hell, you could even completely remove the artisan system and the game still works. i know of mmorpg without a crafting system, but I don't know of any mmorpg where you do pvp and pve combat without a combat system. ashes isn't a crafting oriented game. those games exist tho.
players who join 3 years from now shouldn't go through the same everything as players on day one. you are basically saying that they will need 3 years to catch up, so basically day 1 players will be on year 6 and everybody else will be on year 1,2,3,4,5. they will never catch up. getting newer players up to speed with veteran players has been a challenge for games with collectibles (mmorpg, trading card games). so no, new players shouldn't need 3 years to catch up. that's just an opinion that is far from =what game designers do and doesn't take into account certain issues.
you can still have the same opportunities to make money. instead of selling "low tier iron sword" you sell "super awesome dragon slayer", so it doesn't really matter. you sell what people want, not what you want. and people want the new patch items, not the old patch items. game helps new players get to the new patch items faster and that's a good thing.
Horizonal content would be something like enchanments. It takes different skills and different materials, but doesnt invalidate anything that exists. You still need the same gear as before to enchant, but now you can enchant it.
If you make it so lv 1-50 doesnt matter to a crafter, they probably wont grind through it just to make the "super awesome dragon slayer" because that only starts after 50.
If ashes wants a player driven economy, it needs gear sinks. If they want things to be reasonably priced, they need gold sinks. Lost Ark and other RNG driven games lose people because RNG for the sake of a sink is shitty.
Does it suck to lose a gear set because someone fights you? Sometimes. Does it lead to better stories? Usually. Does it add to the risk factor? Most certainly.
Risk and reward is constantly said in terms of AoC. Does going to get a top tier crafting material add risk? It should. Could you lose your gear doing it? Maybe. But should the rewards also match? yes. This can all be balanced. But a gear sink is what allows crafters to provide meaningful contributions.
For those who are saying that isnt what AoC is about, you are wrong. Steven has said that it is for people who want to craft or gather or RP. That wont be the only aspect of the game, but one of many.
I think I do agree with most of what you said, but I don't think we have the same conclusion/solution for it.
From what I got, you're in favor of losing/dropping gear.
I'm against that, unless it's a very specific circumstance (a chance of corrupted players dropping a piece of gear on death).
For me it's not "sometimes", it's ABSOLUTELY.
There should be a different system in place.
There are other ways to create a gear sink.
I could think of a few right now, but they sound annoying to deal with, though not as much as actually losing gear, so idk.
Basically, Crafters are the backbone of everything people are doing, so...
Player economy should be satisfactory.
That is a sink. That is the same sink Archeage has. It is enough.
I hope so. It comes down to how much it's incentivized and leveraged. If it's required in order to be successful and it includes low to mid level gear, to get some of that out of circulation too, then great. If it's just a casual, "you don't really need this" sort if thing, then no.
The way to get lower to mid tier gear out of circulation is to require it as a component in top tier gear.
Then, not only are you taking it our of circulation, you are maintaining a healthy market for it from top tier players.
Keep in mind, and market that isn't driven by players at the level cap can just be skipped.
The above is what Archeage did, and what Steven has suggested is his goal with Ashes (though he hasn't outright stated it).
That's fine too. As long as it's consistently being consumed and exiting. If it can be a positive choice like crafting and enchanting, instead of a negative consequence like durability all the better.
The Game is not even in Alpha Two yet. And yet, this concerning Development of probably fear-based concern is concerning our Community in the Forum.
These are exactly the things we should be bringing up. It deals with the design direction they are taking. Decisions they are finalizing now. Better to hear our concerns ahead of time.
I asked a question about how the game is suppose to work. I enjoy crafting and I enjoy the player driven economy. I know that if an appropriate gear sink does not exist, then it will fail and I will not like the game.
The purpose of having forums before the game exists is to bring up stuff like this, to give feedback, and to provide insight into why we think it is important.
Your comment is not adding anything to this discussion.