🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Economy and Stat Rebalance

I like the intent of most things but still have nearly no love for the implementation, and I fear that the new one overcomplicates things for 'customers' which in my experience always makes systems 'worse'.

I'd like to take this chance to echo a sentiment I've seen around that the game might need some ingame information repository (even if it is only in a Node) of what-drops-what because if you don't have it, you'll end up with that terrible MMORPG fate of 'not wanting to change what something drops because of not being able to communicate it to the playerbase', and then leaving legacy cruft because of that.

What aspects of the current crafting system do you like and dislike?
Things I Like
Compared to:
FF11 - I like the effort being put in to ensure that Crafters have continual reasons to craft even when it's gear.
MineCraft - I like the effort being made to have different tiers of gear relative to open world drops.
Black Desert Online - I like the implication that crafters will not all be the equivalent of BDO's serf-like Workers (but I may be imagining this).
Throne and Liberty - I like the idea that in the future, Crafters will have some control over the outcomes of their efforts.
Things I Dislike
Compared to:
FF11 - I don't like the Artisanship categories and this rebalance reminds me of how the current ones are getting in the way of a good Econ experience. I'm a Processor, in 'your' model', and this kind of sucks, actually.
MineCraft - I don't like the pathway that leads to less integration and over-reliance on non-intuitive/low-discoverability information (rare gear drops in open world).
Black Desert Online - No comparison here, nearly anything is better than BDO...
Throne and Liberty - I don't like the dual gear grading concept at all. This is probably huge bias but Ashes really seems like it should have a more TL-like system (where you combine two instances of the item to improve its traits) instead of trying to find some other solution to balance both 'gear drops in the world' and 'relevance of crafters'. Maybe I'm not creative enough yet but seriously can't see how TL's implementation doesn't blow any potential outcome on this path out of the water for both Crafters and Customers.

What makes a crafting, gathering, and vendor system fun for you?
CRAFTING:
Compared to:
FF11 - I enjoyed knowing how to make things and those things being part of the economy consistently, FF11 had good Econ Slots after about 2 years and the Devs made consistent effort to improve them right up until Econ 'end of life' (Abyssea Expansion). I like having 'Crystals' and similar reagents to think about relative to the world.
MineCraft - Crafting is fun in MineCraft when you add something like the Create mod with multiple steps and capacity for combination, specialization and improvement that isn't just 'plug and forget'
Black Desert Online - There's basically nothing enjoyable about crafting in BDO (as of 2022 when I gave up even studying it), Farming is nice for reasons given above, but I don't count it.
Throne and Liberty - Have to wait and see if/how badly they fudge the Housing Update's Crafting flows/incentives, but the massive improvements to Cooking have really helped me feel more connected to the world, even if we still lack certain specialization points.

GATHERING:
Compared to:
FF11 - I really like Chocobo Digging, and Fishing. I found other gathering to be too unrewarding because the game uses not only the same tools for all tiers, it also doesn't really spread out the outcomes well other than for Mining. Both Chocobo Digging and Fishing are about preparation and understanding of the world's dynamism, particularly weather and time of day/moon phase.
MineCraft - I absolutely love gathering rarer resources for my group in MineCraft, exploring to know where to find deposits, and bringing them back for builders. Ironically, I hate the Mining aspect and don't like being underground in that game, but I will do it for the team! So my love of gathering rare treasure trumps my dislike of the biomes I sometimes need to go to. This does not apply to Wood.
Black Desert Online - I find it difficult to enjoy Gathering in BDO mostly because of the constant looming knowledge that it's all a Ponzi scheme and they care almost entirely about playtime metrics rather than fun, but the act of actually running around from tree to tree or checking if the rare mining spots in the caves are active is still kind of nice. Fishing is okay... barely (other than the aforementioned).
Throne and Liberty - Again, mostly have to see how the Housing Update turns out, but I can predict based on the above that if they prioritize 'accessibility' and 'simplicity' over dynamism and knowledge, I'll be disappointed in the Gathering aspect of that update. Right now, Fishing is really working well for me, and I have some gathering loops based around getting bait and food ingredients that I enjoy a lot. I am hoping for more variety in gathering [b[paths[/b], e.g. I don't mind that they reduced 'number of types of Mushrooms you can get' (assuming/hoping that even rarer ones will come later) for what I assume was simplicity, but I do hope for things like Gold and Silver to appear, or different Seeds from different areas if they ever add Farming, because this would not overcomplicate any given path's requisite knowledge. Also, their recent change to make your gatherables inventory separate from other inventory is nice, reminding me how much I like this in Ashes.

VENDORING:
Compared to:
FF11 - It's treated as a price floor. An integral part of the economy that you hope to never have to interact with. When buying things from Vendors... in FF11 this was basically things that were too cheap for anyone to even care about wasting AH slots on. So technically another 'price floor'. We didn't do much with Vendors in FF11 as serious Artisans, Vendors are there for non-Artisans.
MineCraft - Did you know you can mod Villager Trades to whatever you want to enhance your own game loops? I've been having fun with this for months. Further detail is unhelpful.
Black Desert Online - Obnoxious.
Throne and Liberty - Provides Sollant, the game's 'character progression currency'. Really, really good as the way to sell duplicates of special items and cosmetics. Currently also acting as a stand-in for sources of things that might eventually come from Farming? I actually quite like the 'vibe' of interacting with Vendors, mostly it's just unfortunate that the 'legacy' Vendors of certain things like White Grade gear don't have any 'purpose' now. Due to how Ashes works, this comparison is only relevant because I can say with certainty that I am going to continue to prefer the separation of 'character progression currency' from 'Trade-enabling currency'. I am not looking forward to your many battles with RMT in the future, Intrepid.

What kind of scenarios would you like to see included through the system?
Compared to:
FF11 - I want to go back to the days of seeing someone shout in chat for a Crafter that can do what they need, of knowing that people are making trade deals for wholesale suppliers for their Ingots and Beeswax, and I want to see the return of 'do this crafting work for this NPC to gain a bit of prestige or reputation that can rise or fall/be spent instead of just the stupid 'do this until you cap out a number and then feel good because number went up'.
MineCraft - Ever watched HermitCraft? Shopping District.
Black Desert Online - Surprisingly BDO actually did have a slightly cool aspect to this, because you could get control of a Workshop that produced a specialty item that you could then put in your Wagon/Caravan to travel across the world. Was this fun as it was actually implemented? No! Was Bartering any better? Absolutely not! Would a proper implementation of this be awesome? Absolutely.
Throne and Liberty - This is moreso a combination of an unprovable FF11 concept, TL's world structure, and 'imagination'. TL's Sanctum of Desire contains four elemental Altars. They don't serve any serious purpose right now. FF11 has six of something similar. They serve a purpose that is only related to Crafting if you believe heavily in the effect of Elemental Weather infused/assisted Crafting. But people did it. People making big ticket rare items did travel all the way to the Cloister of Wind to craft certain things there for that extra % chance of a High Quality result. Ashes will have some of this in Nodes, I want to see it in the equivalent of TL's Elemental Altars and Laboratory rooms and Steam Forge areas which are in Dungeons/POIs .

How do you feel about the timing of material gathering? Do you feel each biome is unique with what materials spawn?
Compared to:
FF11 - Seems okay. As a Chocobo Digger it's hard to feel it by comparison, but I bet this will be true no matter what you do. Chocobo Digging is, by nature, the most diverse gathering aspect of the game, for better or worse. Just keep doing your best with the Econ Slots and the biomes will handle themselves, I'd think.
MineCraft - Once again, basically okay. It requires a mod or two to change MineCraft to actually have biome-dependent material spawns when it comes to 'basic rocks' instead of Ores and such, but obv for everything else it manages, that's what the game specializes in, after all. More mods like to add more gems and such, which is nice. Hope someone on staff likes Geology!
Black Desert Online - I think BDO actually wins out here, surprisingly. Sure, it 'feels' terrible for reasons mentioned in previous comparisons, but they really did put in quite a lot of effort for this and their placement of such things is probably the reason the game became so well known as having a 'cozy lifeskilling' path even though the Econ aspect of it was terrible for long stretches at a time. This could be my bias too, somehow the lack of different 'lanes' just feels suffocating after a while, and they keep making everything shallower and easier to compensate, but if you were to put Ashes' intent on top of BDO's foundation it would probably be slightly better than what Ashes has now, which makes sense given that this is Alpha.
Throne and Liberty - Housing update again mostly, but actually, TL has a lot of attention paid to items that obviously can be changed to act as unique biome materials (Cacti, sleep herbs, Coral, some other plant and tree models that actually don't have a gatherable associated at all), and at least equal attention to detail as BDO for 'where certain things spawn'. I absolutely enjoy the timing of material gathering in TL at the moment, with a nearly perfect spread of players gathering vs items they want during the middle period. If anything my disappointment here is with the lack of Gryphons in Talandre's mountain ranges. This may seem minor but it actually affects the feeling of Material Gathering quite a lot. You need other ecological uniqueness to go with the gathering points or you get 'the spots in BDO that are so bad that no one goes there'. It's just too 'boring' to run up the same hill and see the same enemies as everywhere else or to just have one huge biome with minimal mob variety even when your goal is not the mobs . There are areas that are quite good, and then there's Quietis' Demesne... (that area is acceptable for a different reason, but it does only get me to go there during Events and half of that is because of the stuff that only appears because the whole zone freezes over)

Do you feel the rebalanced stats on gear and gear levels has improved?
No, I don't like the stats in this game, but in this case I don't consider it worth comparing. For why I don't feel like they improved as a whole though, I will reiterate the 'I think y'all just want to use TL's method or something close' observation above. I see the Stat design and the Crafting design as contradictory and the new approach to gear and gear levels as even more contradictory than before .

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying that if you increase contradiction between the two halves, one of them is going to 'give'. If Crafters are supposed to be important and that pillar 'can't give', then I think this approach to gear and gear levels is categorically worse and will lead to what I've seen most people say they don't want.

Do you like the changes? If not, why?
Now for personal opinions...

This is a PvP game when it comes to gearing. We can call it a PvX game but in terms of gearing, PvX only lasts as long as an undergeared/underleveled person's HP bar.

There are so many flaws (for me) in the very concept of 'gear that has both a level component and a rarity-power' component that idk where to start with my 'complaints'. Why do we even need this? So people can 'see number go up'? I'm not even against gear progression, not one bit, but at least make it a little more 'intentional'. To be clear I am saying that I will take the TL traiting-style advancement over this in every case but even if that is a no-go, there's still something I can contribute maybe:

There are so many paths you could take to make gearing formulae that makes low level gear still good at mid-level and mid level gear still good at high level and 'balances out the advantages of absolutely top gear relative to high level'. I will hope to see something on the tier of TL's "Ok so blue gear gives lower defense but higher offensive cantrips like attack speed" and "T2 Purple tends to be very straightforward while T1 Purple is often creative or esoteric and therefore doesn't actually even outright replace Blue in every situation" which then leads to "If the esoteric aspect of T1 Purple is really good for your build you might not even replace it with a straightforward T2 Purple" and all the other cool and complex interactions they can branch into from there .

How about Lower level gear gives access to Augment-like skill options early before you can probably unlock the advanced version of the skill, for example? I want playstyles, not numbers, from those Level 15 Rares.

I think I kept it under 2500 words. I hope that this was somehow close to what y'all are looking for.

I'm confused.

When this post was announced in Discord, it was accompanied by a link to an article on the main Ashes website, which lays out the rebalancing plan that you're referring to. Without that context, people won't be able to give relevant feedback. Was this a mistake?

If you're intentionally not linking the article, you should probably delete this thread altogether, because you're not going to get much good out of it...

Anyway, reading the article didn't tell me all that much, so this post is a placeholder until I get more information.

Unless there's been some recent change to artisanship categories, I'm not sure of relevance of the article to me personally, since I'm mostly interested in skills like cooking, rather than crafting gear. I don't see exactly how this would apply to cooking.

Otherwise, it seems like Ashes' gathering is catching up to Minecraft's.

I've read the article, but it seems like it's mostly just basic boilerplate. Even still, I can't say that I like what I see. But as a result, I'm not really sure how to give useful feedback at the moment.

Perhaps this... You must understand that Crafters and Adventurers serve different purposes within an economic structure. If you do not, you will eliminate the difference and remove the need for crafters altogether, whether you intend to or not.

Vendors selling gear for ever grade - disgustingly awful.

Mobs dropping gear frequently (including high tier stuff) - awful.

Naming scheme - awful.

Recipes requiring only a certain regional material - bad.

Lootboxes as rewards - bad.

Full gear as quest rewards - bad.

Still 0 info about the gear scaling across grades - bad for giving feedback about the system.

Recipes requiring specific mob mats - great.

Local spots having proper spawners for gatherables - great (depending on the execution of course).

Now for some explanations for those marks.

Vendors selling gear AT EVERY GRADE sounds like the most counterproductive thing ever thought up, considering you're trying to have crafters in the game. Who, in their right mind, would participate in the super complicated crafting system (the complexity is good btw, and could even go deeper at higher lvls) when they can literally buy shit?

We also have no clue how hard the PvE will be, but considering its state right now - it sure as hell is not hard enough to warrant spending countless people-hours to craft a few items, instead of literally just buying the low tier item of your current grade and boosting yourself through the lvls.

"4h of mob grind is ~= to 4h of crafting" . I got no god damn clue how this equation is supposed to work out. Whose 4h are we counting here? How are we counting them? Is it a party grind vs party crafting situation? How exactly is that calculated? Is it "4h of pure directed mob grind vs 3.9h of gathering and 0.1 of clicking on processing and crafting buttons?" or is it something else? How do you count the gathering hours? Is it "all 8 people gathering and then offloading it to a guild proc/crafter"? Is it something else? Does this only apply to party-power mobs? What about soloable ones vs trying to craft solo?

Oh, also, what about the glint that you get in those 4h? Does that count towards the equation? Cause that glint could be then sold and the money used to buy items directly. And with gold being tradeable - that's 8 people pooling money to buy items after their 4h grind.

In other words, how exactly is 4h of mob grind (the most direct activity in the game) supposed to be equated to a complex activity of "crafting", while also somehow matching its pace?

Oh, and, considering we can get lucky and drop high tier stuff from mobs - is that rng included in the "average 4h grind"?

This then brings me to a jump over a few other points for better context. Full gear for quests . Is that also a "4h equivalent"? What about repeatable quests? What tiers of gear are we getting for quests?

All of this just yells to me "CRAFTERS ONLY MATTER AFTER LVL50".

Naming Scheme . I know that people love their fantasy names and stuff (shout out to all the "Tank" haters), but having 2 completely different names for craft lvls and items crafted at those lvls is just needlessly convoluted. I'd bet money, if I had any, that people will just stick to a single side of the naming scheme and will only use that. And what's even more likely is us using "G2T3" scheme in all our communications. And the likelyhood of that happening has gone up as soon as you said that the naming schemes for this stuff will be separate. If it was just "apprentice lvl artisans make apprentice lvl things" - way more people would be way more likely to use "apprentice" to reference the whole process.

Recipes and regional mats . I consider this to be a bad thing because the article made it sounds like you CANNOT craft an item in a desert recipe w/o using desert mats. I had thought that we'd something close to "item A will have 3 fire attribute if you use desert mats, but will have 3 earth att if you use anvils mats". The economic push of "maybe people here want different stats on their gear, so transfering local mats to that location is viable" is still there, but people who don't care about that can use the recipes at any point on the map.

Lootboxes ... I just hate what their existence implies and what I've seen it lead to. It should've been under awful, but I'm giving you the slightest benefit of the doubt.

W/o knowing about gear scaling it's impossible to assess how valuable the crafters will be before lvl50. We've already seen that hardcore players can boost their lvls with insane speed. Even if you slow down leveling even more - they'll still always outpace node progression (let alone node building progress). If those players can then easily just replace their gear with mob loot (god forbid basic vendors can sell each grade w/o proper node buildings being built up) - why in the hell would they waste time on crafting? And if even the hardcore players don't care about crafting - why should casuals (obviously outside of people that simply love crafting)? If anything, for a casual player who's just fighting mobs at their lvl of slightly below - they wouldn't even need better gear than the low tier of their grade. And when they can just drop it or buy it - why involve themselves in a super complicated system that also requires either very good social connections or a long active search for a proper proccessor/crafter at the correct node?

The scaling of this question is mostly this: how much stronger is a Low Tier Grade 2 item than a High Tier Grade 1 one? Because if it's even exactly the same - there's no damn reason to try and craft that high tier item. The "4h to 4h" thing goes out the window immediately, because I'd sure as hell imagine that crafting a single high tier item will not take 4h, while dropping a low tier item (most likely several) is exactly what you've just promised in this article.

As for great stuff . Specific mob mats are great, because it creates directed goal-based grinding gameplay, instead of just "farm mobs for glint". And proper logical gatherables spawners are just a basic thing that should've been in from the start, but I assume it was hard to implement, so it's great that it's finally coming.

P.S. what I'd prefer .

• No gear at vendors
• No mats at vendors
• No full drops from mobs (or insaaaanely rare ones)
• Quests reward recipes
• Commissions reward the same mats that the mobs that the commission wants you to hunt (ideally no rng on commission choices on the board either)
• Recipes use material types, instead of specific mats (i.e. a bow needs wood and thread, but there's 20 kinds of wood and 10 kinds of thread - any and all combo of those things produce their own results from the same recipe)
• Gear scaling is super tight (potentially smth like the pic below, if not tighter)