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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Key to a succesful economy
VekoKrava
Member
I think simple solution would be to make:
1. Ore vein to drop 1 item. Reason: because it makes things more simple. I think that New World economy collapsed because it was hard to put prices because vein dropped 40-60 ores (its more realistic, but it makes problems), solution would be magical veins that drop 1 simple magical ore.
Same goes for herbs or leather via skinning.
I think this is the ultimate reason as why Vanilla WoW has the best possible econony - everything was expensive and it felt worthiness of every item/consumable.
For skinning, some mobs could drop 1 leather, other leather scraps (x5 scraps form 1 leather)
2. Make non profession items similar to wow vanilla dark runes, droppable only in dungeon that provides either mana like mana potion which does not share cd with potions or some strong buff for 10seconds. (X3 drops per dungeon run, BOE and only 3 drops - that means people have to roll for it. (Make mana spending like EQ or vanilla WoW in order for these to be valuable)
3. Mana potions drop only from chests/human mobs (depending on lvl and area how strong mana pots are). For end game, make recipes 6% drop chance from PvE dungeon bosses - possibly from humanoid for immersion and to follow tradition of RPG games. (Mana spending should be like EQ or Vanilla Wow)
Why I am talking this? Because of simplicity. Everything is easier to organize if its simple.
Why making things harder? Because then these items/consumables are more valuable.
1. Ore vein to drop 1 item. Reason: because it makes things more simple. I think that New World economy collapsed because it was hard to put prices because vein dropped 40-60 ores (its more realistic, but it makes problems), solution would be magical veins that drop 1 simple magical ore.
Same goes for herbs or leather via skinning.
I think this is the ultimate reason as why Vanilla WoW has the best possible econony - everything was expensive and it felt worthiness of every item/consumable.
For skinning, some mobs could drop 1 leather, other leather scraps (x5 scraps form 1 leather)
2. Make non profession items similar to wow vanilla dark runes, droppable only in dungeon that provides either mana like mana potion which does not share cd with potions or some strong buff for 10seconds. (X3 drops per dungeon run, BOE and only 3 drops - that means people have to roll for it. (Make mana spending like EQ or vanilla WoW in order for these to be valuable)
3. Mana potions drop only from chests/human mobs (depending on lvl and area how strong mana pots are). For end game, make recipes 6% drop chance from PvE dungeon bosses - possibly from humanoid for immersion and to follow tradition of RPG games. (Mana spending should be like EQ or Vanilla Wow)
Why I am talking this? Because of simplicity. Everything is easier to organize if its simple.
Why making things harder? Because then these items/consumables are more valuable.
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Comments
Part of the problem is WoW had an extremely lackluster crafting system, The economy crash in new world had nothing to do with drop rates and more about how they decided to map out tiered systems.
I'd hope they would look at Vanilla WoW, note some things they like and move along as this game should not try to re-create WoW or EQ.
I am mainly speaking this to make things valuable. If you make 60 ores to drop fom one vein it will be less valuable then if it dropped one. It also creates many problems on decising prices at early stage. You will need to have a calculator to do prices properly,but if you had these simple drops you would put prices easily out from your head.
I hope they make economy similar to vanilla, not gameplay. Economy means only numbers (gold) not to copy professions. I did give some examples on how to make more varieties to farm or make things more valuable and it is true if something is hsrder to get/less to get, economy will have more reasonable numbers, more familiar to IRL. 1g per ore feels much more realistic then 250g per ore, I hope you understand me now.
Don't worry I am quite aware you mean economy only, but I don't think Ashes and the Intrepid team stand to gain anything from copying a 20 year dated formula. I realize for it's time it was the "best" we had in terms of economy but it was a (This is grossly my biased opinion as I am aware many people liked it) mildly bad minigame. I don't think units per drop has much meaning because it boils down to needing X amount of a resource and the numbers the system uses will be smaller but that doesn't change that you are getting X% of what you need per vein.
I do truly hope Ashes creates a robust crafting and gathering system, which by going off October's Livestream they certainly are (land management is an entirely different conversation) creating something that seems exciting and variable and means to create a good deal of friction and interaction but until we hit the ground in A2 we will have no idea but I can't help but feel I'd be severely underwhelmed if they just plugged some Vanilla WoW economy clone in.
It's not about how much you gather, it's about how the devs balance that amount against all the things that are related to it. And it's obvious as fuck that NW's devs had no clue what they were doing, even before all the exploits and abuses of their systems.
I hate when I've studied something so hard that it's become axiomatic and I've forgotten how to explain the proof.
It leads to the sort of dumb situation we're about to be in.
This isn't true.
Unfortunately I forgot how to prove it and would have to re-derive it from first principles. Ugh.
If you know anyone qualified, feel free to send them here! https://intrepidstudios.com/careers
Eh, it doesn't matter anyway, I will just count on whoever Intrepid hires knowing it. It's not as if me writing it out on the forum was going to save them any time anyway even if I could remember it all.
Game economy design is very specific, which is why you don't just 'hire a real-world economist to do it'. Plus, I'm just 'really confident', not 'sure'. If I was 'sure', I'd remember the proof, and even then it'd be a waste of time to try giving it, I bet.
So I'll only mention the following and if this doesn't 'jiggle' your mind, so be it @NiKr.
"The more of something there is, the lower its cost is relative to currency, and the more likely the value is to stay static because of the loss of gradients in price control of singles/small stacks."
I'm counting on you, future Senior Economy Designer!
I feel this!
I can only assume, that, like me, are entering the boomer stages
Heh not exactly, let's just say I got a few years head start on various educations.
If it is, then yeah, I get what you're saying. Even if every single use of those mats utilized dozens of them at a time, the trading market would be shit because you'd have to counterweigh those "dozens" with some type of sub-currency that was only used in trading of mats, while everything else costed "normal currency". At which point you're starting to have issues with currency inflows relative to mat drop values and it all goes out of whack.
If that is somewhat correct, then yeah, I was wrong about mat quantities not impacting the economy at its bigger scale. If that's wrong, then I guess there wasn't enough jiggle in my mind
You got it. There's ways to solve it, but game designers PROBABLY should never solve it in those ways because...
Well, by now I've repeated it enough times that you know where it ends up.
It has a big impact on how many gold something will cost, simply because of simllicity. New World is newer game and its economy failed so much that you dont need to farm gold in order to sustain yourself. Many games newer then wow have exactly the same problem. Wow is a masterpiece in every aspect.
You are taking a more complex set of problems New World had and boiling it down to "My Memory of Vanilla WoW is better than an experience I had recently". Vanilla WoW had a ton of problems, but again this game will not be WoW and they have stated as such. The closer they push to be like WoW the more people will leave and go play WoW. It's how it's stayed relevant for 20 years.
It really would not have been even slightly worth it. BDO is useful ONLY as a sign of what not to do, and the tragedy of watching a few sapient devs/designers trying their ABSOLUTE HARDEST to fight the encroaching simplicity of Corporate and losing inch by inch.
Every other new update is a new heartbreak point for the sort of people who like L2/hang around here. Never put yourself through it, sometimes they break it faster than people can even understand.
I really cannot say it better then I did. Because of simplicity people wontbe using calculator which means it will be much stable economy.
I did not play Vanilla during original days, I played retail only until Vanilla classic in 2019, then I saw significant change in economy and the way of playing in open world - to sustain your character. This was eye opening for me because until then I did not know for better.
Then I quit WoW in 2021 and started new mmos because I could not stand retail wow. Played new mmos and did not like them only because of economy. Everything feels worthless. I already said statement for NW, but gw2 also sucks so much. You can level profession with 30g only, which is 1h of gameplay. In vanilla, it would take around 10 hours of farming to level the most expensive profession by buying mats.
Vanilla was masterpiece because it was simple and casual friendly yet enough hard core.
A real economy needs to balance inflows of resources with outflows. Even Eve Online had problems with this, and that was a full loot, item destruction game. Titans, which were meant to be the ultimate ship, taking months to build, ended up proliferating in the thousands since they just weren't getting destroyed that much.
Like most of what sucked about New World, their economy was based on it being a full loot survival game, that they tried to change into a themepark at the last minute. If they had made all the changes they did in the first year of release, the game would have been successful.
solution A : vein drops 1 ore > you need 10 ores to craft = you need to farm 10 veins. 10 veins worth of ores cost 10 gold
solution B: vein drops 10 ores > you need 100 ores to craft = you need to farm 10 veins. 10 veins worth of ores cost 10 gold
solution C: vein drops 100 ores > you need 1000 ores to craft = you need to farm 10 veins. 10 veins worth of ores cost 10 gold
the problem isn't how many ores a vein drops .-.
when you say you played new MMOs, do you mean new to you or that came out new in 2021-2022?
if you are referring new to you...those games, such as gw2, have been out for years, if not a decade. everybody has everything and no one wanna bu yanything, ofc gold feels pointless. the way you can stop that is by making things useful every x amount of times so people will have to keep farming and buying..
Wait how runes are pointless and sigils for weapons? these things matter a lot yet I can get full set of runes from 1 hour playing farming. This is reason why gw2 sucks and all other games, in vanilla wow one enchant costs around 30min-1h of your farming, 1 flask costs 1h of farming and you need 2 for raid at beginning without gear, 1 health potion costs around 2-5g and you farm 50-120g per hour, in New World 1 health potion costs 2g and you farm 5k per hour on some lower ilvl farm - rawhides, you can farm a lot more in elite areas solo farming orchalicum ores with full luck gear/trophies. Consider that you will use at least 5 potions each battleground that lasts 20min that is around 10g - in vanilla.
Idk if you are following me or anyone else, but in every mmo economy is worthless, this is a fact and I played it, and I know how vanilla economy is since I played it and leveled multiple times. Every mmo is not even close to that feeling of worthiness of any item. You can also farm in 30lvl zones and get 50g or go to end game zone and get 75g, even if you farmed in 30lvl zones for example free action potions, you would be making good money since every PVPer is stacking these potions for daily PVP (it makes you immune to stuns for 30sec) or you would be making resistance potions to defend you from spell resistance (frost,fire,nature etc..) 4k dmg for 2min - this can be a life savior in raids in many fights, 5 these cost around 40g i think and you need around 5 to finish raid. -so 40g for resist potions, 2 flasks around 200g, health / mana potions around 15g, food (if you are tank then 100g) if you are healer/dps (around 20g), enchants for gear (weapons alone can cost 100g+, other enchants around 30-40g per item - all slots can be enchanted 30gx8 items) etc... there is so much gold spending, not to forget ammo for hunters, the better ammo then from vendors (not mandatory but it gives you slight bonus dmg buff), cloth for first aid (3-4g), this all is per raid, and again you can farm 75g on usual farm that everyone does or you can farm 120g sometimes less 90g in elite areas farm, but there is a lot of PVP going on in these areas. Only if you were mage you could farm 250g per hour, but some pservers ban this kind of farming, even blizzard official Season of Mastery nerfed this farm and it was not doable.
As an example ill use new world and harvesting tools. after about the first month these items were pointless to craft simply cause every player only ever needs 1 of them. so there was good profit if u rushed and was first one to hit the next tier up since everyone wanted upgraded tools, now once everyone got those tool there 0 market for tools every again. Same thing with armor and weapon, once u get the best item there you never ever have to replace it so there no longer market for said crafted items once everyone hits that point. Armor was harder to get BIS compared to tools though due to hated RNG.
So ashes of creation needs item decay where you have to replace your gear in some way or form so there a constant supply and demand for items.
Albion online probaly does this the best in mainstream economy since dieing in PvP has 25% chance to trash an item which removes those items from the market however i think we need to do better here since only so much item sink from pvp deaths can occur compared to how much you can craft the items. The issue here is there no effect on PvE players since aslong as u dont die in red/black zones (pvp zones) this never occurs
A game called mabinogi i think may be the key here with economy there system is gear has x durability for this example we will use 100 max dura. So every time u repaired a single point of durability there was a chance for the repair to fail and instead of regaining that durability it will be removed the the max durability amount, i beleive the % was around 95% success so every point of dura repaired had a 5% chance to fail and lower max dura so effectivly roughtly every 20 dura repaired will result in 1 max dura reduction which can never be regained. I feel this system would be ideal for Ashes of creation since it also allows for quite a bit of customisation with crafting professions and NPC for example NPC might get a 80% success rate however going to a player (Or player crafted NPC that is non transferable that can be placed on freehold that offers the same repair chance as the player just so they can be out doing things and people can come get repairs from the freehold) could increase this up to 95% (Never 100% though). After gear max dura drops to like 25% of it max it become scrap and no longer any good this is more to let players know they should be replacing their gear soon so they get ample warning and shouldnt break in the field on them.
I will open a post for devs to read about this topic you spoke about durability. I played similar game - gloria victis, with same durability design, it was so good because you would lose item after some time therefore you needed to craft new one, especially tools would lose durability fast.
problem with new world is gear never decays so once everyone gets BIS or close enough there no longer a market for said items, this is why most crafting economies fail because gear last for basicly eternity and can be repaired indefinitely, if you want a crafting based economy all gear needs to eventually break and get destroyed in come way or form so it needs to be purchased again.
Tools in new world only had a market for a month basicly and then everyone had max tier tools and that was it for said crafters. :P
The economy in the other hand wasn't so great in NW, but every reason why it was so bad is fixed on Ashes of creation, no fast travel to move goods into a central marketplace, bigger map with meaningful biomes, continent and a lot more things to build, craft like ships or houses instead of only gear.
Also we haven't even tested the Alphas so there is no way to know if AOC's system is bad or not, everything points to say it will be great compared to our previous experiences. Just wait to test it before trying to change everything because you miss your old days from another game
WoW i think is a bad example here since WoW economy is not crafting base, atleast when i played it was since crafted gear was always outdone by raiding gear so generaly it was pointless to even level with exception of consumables.
AoC is going with crafting based economy so what ever system they go with means items need to be destroyed after some amount of use in some way or form to be removed from the game so they need to be bought again from crafters keeping the crafters in the game loop. If they dont get destroyed there crafted good become useless later on when everyone has the equipment they need. Devs i think need to look at albion online, Mabinogi and PvP games such as darkfall where gear couldnt be repaired.
Long story short gear has to be destroyed in some way or form frequently enough to keep crafters in demand to replace said gear if they want a crafting based economy to work. PvE player tend to hate this though because there so use to raid gear progression so they get attached to gear.