Key to a succesful economy

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Good to know. We finally circle back to the good ol' "this game might not be for you". As much of a meme as it is, it always seems to apply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Maybe try looking at it from a slightly different angle.

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

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

EVE, FFXI, ArcheAge.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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