Fungibility, Farming, and Degenerate Economic Efficiency

Wow. This has reminded me again of the vast difference in economic experiences offered by MMOs.

I thought it was 'clear' that Ashes mobs would drop crafting mats and not things you could just sell for coin to NPCs.

I realize now that it does not explicitly say that. But for clarity that is what my understanding, models, and FFXI's gameplay loop are based on.

You take the 'certificate' halfway across the map because the people there don't have any crabs to kill for crab meat. Not because an NPC will just give you gold for crab meat.

Next month's Q&A question I guess.

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I believe that daily style quests offered by players who are citizens of a node would offer enough guidance for the type of player that normally needs the game to have them.

Yeah that's entirely my bad and a perfect example of tunnel visioning into what one wants the game to be instead of their vision.

In the end I guess this is what I get for being lazy and not wanting to make the game myself.

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Forgive me this time for not wanting to go deeper into that, I'm honestly kinda bummed out now.

There's a whole lot that I have to restructure and work on based on the realization I just had, and I'd rather spend the time I was devoting to Ashes, back to Cardinal.

Short version if you wanna discuss it yourself:

When currency is based on some questline, then I can control currency by 'number of players x number of quests' and then add whatever faucets I like as necessary.

When it is based on drops, I can't control it because it's now 'number of player hours x value of drops'.

That's what I was telling you before. I have made less money in FFXI from selling goods to an NPC over the years I have played it, than I probably have opening treasure chests in dungeons. And I know I've opened less than 100 treasure chests.

Have fun. I may drift in and out, but I'm gonna go channel all this weird emotion into doing design work.

Yes I get it all.

I don't like the design, that's all.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect the game design I like, in 202X.

But for clarity, quests in FFXI don't usually give you cash nor exp. "Fame", maps, and occasionally some standard armor (which can be sold but tends to suck in NPC price), sometimes some other item that is used somewhere else and can be sold, but not currency.

So it's another place where my experience doesn't match up. "Players can just generate money by doing quests"? Sure, a little, but...

"Back in my day we had to walk fifteen malms through Bhaflau Thickets just to get a lady to teach you how to cook a dessert!"

I recognize that this is not the game most people want to play, I just got all starry eyed at the possibility that maybe people did, and Ashes was going to be close to it.

And for clarity on why I realized I've made a mistake:

Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.[2]
Don't like this.

The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.[4][2]
Definitely don't like this.

The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.[4]
Feeling pretty stupid for not paying enough attention to the loot concept to notice this and geting all excited, but it's important to forgive oneself for one's mistakes.

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I think it's a testament to your (our?) tenacity for discussion that we managed to reach a point of agreement on something without even actually having the same priors.

The question now is, what's the better course of action? Should we assume that this design concept is 'just what is enough to make the caravan system work'? Should we give negative feedback (beyond what this thread amounts to)?

I usually don't do that because I like my games too hardcore, too complicated, and this is often not fun for others. Now I'd have to try to figure out if this whole 'go to node 52 and kill a bunch of stuff and then caravan certificates all back to node-17' is something other people need to have fun.

Now I've absorbed all your concerns twice over. World manager algorithm? For every certificate across 103 nodes? One bug or 'too safe' route and this whole thing is back to optimizer hell. In the end all I can say to it is, that I don't see why it is necessary to be carting around certificates for '4-5 times the return' as your cash flow in a 'risk-vs-reward' 'player driven economy' game.

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Noted. The other concern here is something else that my group has been sitting on for a really long time but I keep telling people 'don't go fussing about it until we see Alpha-2'. The gist of it is 'is your Freehold safe?', and 'if you can generate economic returns from your safe Freehold, then isn't this the least risky action possible?'

The assumptions I would have made before were 'of course Freeholds won't be very safe' (I'm not counting the fact that they can be destroyed if the node falls, because you can't siege nodes often enough) and 'Of course you won't be able to just generate most materials in your Freehold'.

Starting to feel like I shouldn't assume either of those, either. Another question to throw on the pile for next month's Dev Discussion Q&A.

Don't you only get one freehold per account though?

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As has been discussed for most of the past 5 pages, the problem is that the certificates generate an uncontrolled amount of total gold on the server dependent entirely on player time investment. This will make your economy spin out of control into inflation, because there's no true limit to the money supply, and any sinks you add will only hurt players who aren't min/maxing on certificate farming.