Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Ashes of Creation node resources and systems network (and 2.5 economic network failures)
Gimblewald
Member, Founder, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I was trying to understand the way nodes and resource systems work in Ashes to clarify my own (and hopefully others) understanding of the interplay of systems. I'm by no means the most veteran player here and I may have missed something but above is my (crappy paint) diagram of how I believe node resource and systems are integrated.
Nodes are occupied by players with roles and infrastructure.
There are two main types of node infrastructure that define the relationship of the means of production: the market and workstations. All players have a direct relationship to the market and a direct or indirect relationship with the workstations. All players have a bidirectional relationship between the market and gold, and all players require gear (and consumables, not shown as it effectively serves the same function as gear) from the market):
The marketplace - where all players have a bidirectional relationship with gold as a currency to sell what they produce and buy what they need
The workstations - this is the means of production of processors and crafters, built by raw and processed resources, and construction is directed by the mayor. The primary purpose is is to buy and sell gear and consumables. Workstations service processors and crafters and are ordered by the mayor.
I've split the players in the nodes into six roles. Three artisan roles and three combat roles and there are four external node resources: Friendly nodes, enemy nodes, resources, mobs. The artisan roles are:
Gatherers - they bring in raw materials, resources used to construct workstations per mayor buy orders or to refine into processed materials by processors.
Processors - these players require raw materials from gatherers which they may also purchase from the market. Their primary role is to refine raw materials into processed goods to supply crafters, construct future workstations (via buy orders) and sell to the market.
Crafters - crafters turn processed goods into gear. Gear is required for all players in all roles for all activities. Consumables occupy a roughly synonymous place with gear in this economy in terms of its relationship to other parts of the network: alchemy is processing but potions require processed materials that are sold to the market fulfilling the same purpose as gear. Crafters require recipes obtained from PvE. Crafters positions in the market are underpinned by gatherers and processors and are required to supply gear for combat oriented players.
The combat roles are:
PvE - The mob grinders and dungeon delvers. These players are in some ways the gatherers of combat players. Mobs primarily drop to items: glint and recipes. Gear can also drop but the role of the PvE players is not to supply the market with gear, those are lucky drops. Glint is often considered synonymous with money in ashes but with a 1000%+ return rate from caravans PvE players will never be gold farmers.
Caravans - These guys in my view are the processors of combat roles. They process raw glint from mobs into gold by caravanning supplies bought with raw glint to other friendly nodes. This is the primary way to bring gold into the game. If there are no caravans there will be no gold and the market stalls or descends into a barter economy. Hopefully, gold farmers can never compete
PvP - These players go out to (hopefully) enemy nodes and pick fights. Their primary resource are enemy node gatherers and PvE players. They may compete directly for resource nodes for their own node's gatherers and mob farmers or attack enemy gatherers and mob farmers directly to steal their resources and glint. They will sell their wares for gold and as with all node citizens purchase gear for that gold to become more efficient at their role.
The Mayor
There's only one Mayor so this isn't a role most players will occupy
The Mayor essentially directs node specialisation, by directing taxes generated from the market and resources from gatherers/processors into buildings via purchase orders.
For a brief summary:
Glint, recipes and raw materials are the primary resources imported to nodes
Raw materials are processed into refined materials, and both are used to upgrade node workstations
Recipes and workstations are required by crafting to output gear
Gear is required to engage in all content efficiently and especially combat
Caravans are the ultimate PvX activity requiring support of a strong artisan economy (to build the caravans) and a strong combatant economy (to harvest glint and ensure safe travels)
Caravan runs are a processing activity that processes glint into raw gold that is influxed into the economy which will pay the crafters who will pay the processors who will pay the gatherers who will buy gear and upgrade the node.
My secret evil agenda - to highlight the problems in 2.5 and the economy as a whole:
I hope this can function as a nice standalone piece to help others when talking about the Ashes economy but there was a point to this exercise that I believe is best expressed through diagrams. Phase 2.5 has been overshadowed by the great gear shortage. As you can see from my diagram (and is intuitive to every player), gear and gold underpin all economic activity in Ashes and the two primary resources are raw materials and glint.
Without gear everything grinds to a halt as gear is required to generate gold from caravanning and mob grinding and even improve artisanship. The PvE mob farmers are struggling and slowed (but not stopped) which lowers the influx of recipes and glint into nodes, lowering gold production and causing resource accumulation on the market but no trade between parties forcing barter. Gatherers can indiscriminately harvest all T1 resources meaning everyone has a bit of everything, and everyone is holding onto that valuable copper and zinc awaiting a buyer. Most players will struggle to accumulate enough resources of the type they need to level their desired crafting skills, and find it difficult to trade with other players as nobody has gold.
Guilds are the only winners in such an economy as they are capable of organising in such a way that takes advantage of barter economies by communally pooling resources and funnelling to crafters to beat the market and gear themselves. More gear and organisation facilitates levelling, allowing them to dominate the ultimate PvX activity – caravanning – and control all gold generation and influx. Solo crafters will soon be fully replaced by guild crafters once guild funds are used to buy up all materials from the market and funnel to their own crafting supply chains – outcompeting everybody else right from the off.
Processors and gatherers will finally experience some trickle down once the guilds establish buying power but crafting will be monopolised by guilds who will gear themselves first to control the trade routes and nodes. Crafting will essentially be impossible without something like a guild structure as guilds as we know them control both gold and gear. Guilds being the primary generators of both will control all market activity and nodes are destined to become proxies of guilds. Every mode of production is destined to be dominated by guilds in the current state as guilds will be able to outcompete open market processors and eventually use their gear advantage to dominate gathering as well. Being a node citizen in this economy is essentially meaningless and any member of the node not in a dominant guild is essentially a serf to the dominant guild.
2
Comments
Your point about guilds becoming the dominant force and regular node citizens becoming almost serfs to those organized groups is both interesting and concerning. It does feel like Ashes is simulating a medieval-like socio-economic structure where power naturally concentrates in organized, well-equipped groups.
I really appreciate your perspective. Posts like yours help the community reflect not only on mechanics but also on the potential player-driven dynamics that could emerge. Amazing feedback I hope that the economy dont become only guild-centric and start punishing solo players or small groups.
Great work, and again, thanks for sharing it.
Thanks for spending the time to read my wall of text and share your thoughts. I also shared this on Reddit and wrote a follow up post with potential solutions here but my ideas weren't incredibly well received. I thought a solution could be to give Nodes more power as "open membership guilds" to compete with guilds, guild and node membership to be mutually exclusive, and to separate the gear and gold economies - the two main "currencies" of Ashes between nodes and guilds respectively to promote real exchange and allow non-guilded players to organise in a manner that can meaningfully compete with guilds.
I'm really convinced my observations in this forum post are correct and I worry that the way the economy is set up that all the amazing systems Ashes came up with such as Nodes, Societies and the true player-driven aspect will just be "flavour fluff" with the real economies happening within guilds. However, perhaps my solutions are not the right ways to fix the problem. I don't want to get rid of guilds ofc, but I want every player, guildless or not to be able to contribute to their chosen community. Guilds just aren't it for a lot of players but Ashes doesn't - on paper at least - require guild participation for a player to not be a solo player. The guildless players should also be part of wider communities such as Nodes and Societies, in a meaningful manner, even if they choose not to join guilds.
Edit: I do think power should to a degree concentrate in well-organised groups but those groups should still need and desire to play against meaningful competition. They also shouldn't be able to grab all the power right from day 1. It should be impressive not inevitable.
I would appreciate any thoughts and feedback to continue the discussion honestly - I really think this has to be examined in real economic terms and look at how systems in place may end up inevitably making monopolies. Having the whole glint -> gold "processing skill" via caravans is a really cool way to ensure gold farmers will never be able to ruin this game, but tying this to an activity that will be de facto guild based will only ensure guilds not only dominate but consolidate insurmountable advantages that not just "solo players" but even smaller or would-be competitive guilds may never overcome.
Great work explaining the economic system, and thank you for putting this together!
It was also very interesting to read your Reddit post. The idea of something like a Node Army really caught my attention — I think the developers might have briefly mentioned something similar in the past, but I could be wrong. Either way, it’s definitely worth exploring further.
I’d like to add a few more thoughts that I believe could help reduce the risks of full monopolization and economic stagnation:
Guild and Alliance Size Limits
If the game can truly maintain a model with many smaller guilds instead of allowing mega-alliances of 400+ players (as often happens in other MMOs), this would naturally encourage competition. Active competition and PvP between rival guilds would significantly reduce the risk of a single group monopolizing the economy.
High Server Capacity and Active Playerbase
No economic model can thrive without a large number of active players. I hope the servers will be big enough to support a large, living world with constant player interaction, which in turn will fuel more guild competition. Unfortunately, the previously announced cap of 8,000 players per server feels a bit low. Hopefully, this is just the starting point and there are plans to scale this up over time.
Resource Diversification Across Nodes
I’ve expanded on this idea in a separate topic — https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/67444/biome-based-resource-placement-for-stronger-economy-and-player-engagement
In short, ensuring that each node specializes in unique local resources would naturally stimulate trade, caravan activity, and prevent any single guild or node from monopolizing or becoming fully self-sufficient and isolated.
This also strongly aligns with your idea of promoting meaningful trade between nodes, which you mentioned in your post. Combined with PvP competition over caravan routes and resource control, this could effectively prevent full monopolization by any single guild or alliance.
Once again, thanks for the excellent write-up. I hope the development team takes these points into consideration as well.
And what do you all think about the ideas I’ve shared above?
Yes to all, and imo and touching on the point of the alliances there's some server drama I wasn't aware of that all EU guilds formed a single alliance on Shol for a while then it broke down because they got bored. The "endgame content" atm is camping named mob spawns for BiS gear and some of the guilds decided they'd rather fight for it than compete with tags. Essentially - their alliance got so big it fractured as it wasn't work cooperating instead of competing. This is really good news for the game and how alliance dynamics could play out later.
Too early to say on server caps imo. It's difficult to predict how 8k players will really look like. 8000/100 nodes seems small at 80 per node but 8000/18 at 400+ per biome seems solid. I could share the Riverlands with 400 other people but are we all gonna live in one metropolis? What about smaller vassal nodes and such? Who'd ever wanna be a citizen of a vassal node.
I think there's already some resource diversification but in its current state it appears most resources are just reskins - I'm assuming there'll be additional functionality later? I'm talking about how every biome has different "rock" and different "wood" but with no clear functional difference. Except palm trees giving coconuts - it looks like cooking is already experiencing a lot of biome heterogeneity in resource gathering which is great. I'm not a cook and haven't played with it yet so I'm still unsure how it's playing out economically. There's probably not a load of demand to caravan a thousand coconuts from Jundark to Winstead yet lol.
thanks for the visual representation!
today i realised again how easy it is, for a non mayor guildmember, to forget about the whole node system and not interact with it.
the only idea that i came up with is that personal gains when spending time/resources to your node would make more players engage and maybe keep solo and smaller groups more relevant.
so far a lot of node realted systems exist but they are yet to be connected in an intuitive way imo.
id also like to know your ideas, since i couldnt get them really from your posts, on how to solve this issue.