Not enough map space for 1 freehold per account.

Based on A1 being 10% the size of the map, I'd say there would be enough space for maybe 3000-5000 freeholds total. A1 maybe could hold 200-300 freeholds if you don't include the spaces for nodes, dungeons, npc camps, and the terrain being too steep. So even a generous amount would be 300*10 = 3000 total possible freehold locations, if you don't include the underground. That's with freeholds being back to back and no where to farm. People imagine open areas to farm mobs and recourses where you might see 1 or 2 freeholds every minute or so of travel. If this ideal is to be realized and about 10k players are per server, then the size of A1 being 5% of the map wouldn't even be enough space. If you guys don't want that big of a map and want to keep your promise on 1 account being able to place a freehold, it might be best to start a system where you can have channels, have something like Wildstar, and/or place rental plots in the wilderness for freeholds so that when you go out of a city, all you see aren't just freehold after freehold.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

arsnn

Voxtrium wrote: »

It doesn't make sense for IS to let us build a house in the middle of a area they built for farming EXP or resources, that logic alone indicates they will likely give people plenty of wilderness feel and I highly doubt that even 50% of the population will want a freehold. When talking about what might happen you have to give IS the benefit of the doubt, they are clearing not a bunch of trolls developing this game, lets give them the benefit of the doubt that they won't design the game to have freeholds every quarter mile.

The issue is that from the things we know there seems to be a conflict. The numbers dont really add up

For open area to exist:
-Either freeholds are gonna be very scarce and there is a lot of competition/conflict around them
-Or freeholds become a shared asset, many people will enjoy as group content
-Or we can cluster freeholds effectively. Which seems not to be the case atm, since freeholds are supposed to be distantant from each other
-Or all of those cases apply to some extent

One thing that i also want to point out, is that the quantity of freeholds is supposed to grow with the node´s level.
Which means big nodes, with more people and more demand for content have less space for "wild areas" to exist. Maybe vassal nodes take over the part of "wild areas" and high level nodes become essentially player hubs + a high level dungeon?

Feloki

Ultima Online had non-instanced housing, there were houses everywhere kinda cool, larger footprints = larger costs. But i wouldn't wish that for Ashes, some space for housing around nodes creating its own economy similar to how Albion Online does it would be great, if you're not willing to pay an upkeep/fullfill the requirements then instanced housing is available for you.

I'd hope they would include a setting to toggle building skins however, having a mish mash of different structures would ruin immersion. The mount skins are already starting to get a bit extreme.

Noaani

arsnn wrote: »

The issue is that from the things we know there seems to be a conflict. The numbers dont really add up

For open area to exist:
-Either freeholds are gonna be very scarce and there is a lot of competition/conflict around them
-Or freeholds become a shared asset, many people will enjoy as group content
-Or we can cluster freeholds effectively. Which seems not to be the case atm, since freeholds are supposed to be distantant from each other
-Or all of those cases apply to some extent

I think the idea is that all of these apply to some extent - except for clustering.

The idea absolutely is for players to fight over them to a degree. Steven has talked about real estate in game having value, so a freehold needs to have actual value, meaning there needs to be an amount of scarcity.

unknownsystemerror

All of this is trying to base off of numbers you don't know. Scarcity of freeholds is easily controlled by Intrepid. We know that the cost goes up for every license sold in a node for the permission to place. Those that buy early get the best deal, those that come later have to pay. Just like citizenship, at a certain point you will reach a cap for a particular node, because the cost will just be prohibitive vs worth. No one knows the individual node sizes, available land, placement restrictions, and a host of other issues. If they increase the map size, all your presumptions are thrown out. We can't even get them to answer our cosmetic questions on freeholds. Until they give more information, all of this is moot.

Tragnar

There needs to be ingame discouragement for owning freeholds and housing in general. There should be some period of time for npcs to reclaim the housing/freeholds - preferably those would dismantle the housing - just to avoid ghosttowns of people that lost interest in their housing or stopped playing entirely

Sheeta

unknownsystemerror wrote: »

No one knows the individual node sizes, available land, placement restrictions, and a host of other issues. If they increase the map size, all your presumptions are thrown out. We can't even get them to answer our cosmetic questions on freeholds. Until they give more information, all of this is moot.

What we know:
(Freeholds are approximately half an acre in size.
The footprint of a freehold does not change with node progression.
Expansions and upgrades become available as node progression allows.

Freeholds may be placed anywhere within the ZOI of a stage 3 node (or higher) so long as they are not in close proximity to any of the following:

Pathing routes (Roadways).
Dungeons and other points of interest (POIs) regardless of advancement.
Spawn areas.
Other freehold plots.
Hard terrain features, such as mountainsides or cliffs.) - https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Freeholds

(480 km2 (square kilometers) is the approximate world size at launch. This includes water and land content.

An additional 100 km2 may be taken up by the Underrealm.

There will be 103 regular node locations at launch with 15 additional castle nodes (5 castles x 3 castle nodes each) for a total of 118 nodes.

There were 9 node locations in Alpha-1.
Normally there would be 18-20 nodes in the same area.

The Alpha-1 map was approximately 70 km2 of playable area.
Traversing the width of the zone (10 km) on a mount would take about 30 minutes.) - https://ashesofcreation.wiki/World_size

So with this information, we can ROUGHLY estimate " individual node sizes, available land, placement restrictions, and a host of other issues". It's an informed estimate based off the information they have provided AND if you played A1. For goodness sake, I got from 1 to max level which doing the main story in A1 in 3-4 hours because I wanted to see how fast someone could speed run. If you played A1, you'd know the main story took you all through the map. This was the main reason why I was shocked to hear the size of A1 compared to the final map they plan. Small. I swear I would say it feels like it's 3/4 the size of vanilla WoW, and I'm including the underground.

If you played A1 long enough, you can understand the size of the node area if you double the amount of nodes in the playable A1 area. If you can't, then I can only say you didn't play much or....you didn't have a good feel of A1? No idea what else I can say on that one. *shrugs* Same with " available land" and "placement restrictions", based on what you saw in A1, you can just times that by 10 and there you go. I knew every mob camp, dungeon, ruins, quest npc camps, ect to imagine the whole A1 experience with freeholds put in with the restrictions above. Why do you think I'm even taking the time to write this to inform others of probable problems? Before they start and/or finish the map, from my experience and estimates, it is best to increase the map size to alleviate future problems like these.

TLDR: YES, I WANT the map size to increase so that my presumptions are thrown out. That's the point.

unknownsystemerror

You can quote the wiki back at me all day. Doesn't mean a thing. Steven changes stuff on a whim and nothing is set in stone. I have participated in every phase of testing of Ashes so far, from Alpha 0 on. And what I am telling you is that you are trying to make fetch happen. There may be changes to housing incoming and there may be changes to map size and how nodes function. They gave a great hint about the latter in the last livestream.
Edit: Whim is not fair, he changes stuff as development dictates.

Sheeta

I'm not trying to make anything specific happen other than maybe to hope for the map size to increase, as it is even in the title of this very forum post. Of course there may be changes in the future. That is the point of this very post, to help make better informed decisions/changes. I don't get your posts as all I'm really hearing is that you want to shoot me down due to your belief things will be better regardless. Isn't that the definition of copium or is it hopium?

unknownsystemerror

Maybe it is snowflaking or white knighting? Throw another buzzword.

Sheeta

Nah, I'm good. I was only pointing out that we were going nowhere productive with this. Me informing you about the copium thing was in hope that you may realize what you were doing. The first step in becoming a better person is self-reflection. I hope for the best. o7

CROW3

Well, the OP ‘problem’ isn’t a problem. It’s just conjecture based upon assumptions. Fine for ‘what if,’ but there’s nothing solid here to form an argument.

So, how about we wait for Alpha 2 to find out more?

Noaani

Sheeta wrote: »

Nah, I'm good. I was only pointing out that we were going nowhere productive with this.

I mean, this thread was always going no where.

At the end of the day, if Intrepid want freeholds to be scarce, they will make that happen. If they want to ensure all players that want one can get one, they will make that happen.

The only thing that matters is what Intrepid intend, and as Unknown pointed out, that changes based on what development dictates (glad he changed that from "on a whim").

Sheeta

Noaani wrote: »

Sheeta wrote: »

Nah, I'm good. I was only pointing out that we were going nowhere productive with this.

I mean, this thread was always going no where.

At the end of the day, if Intrepid want freeholds to be scarce, they will make that happen. If they want to ensure all players that want one can get one, they will make that happen.

The only thing that matters is what Intrepid intend, and as Unknown pointed out, that changes based on what development dictates (glad he changed that from "on a whim").

So, what you guys are saying is that I wasted my time to bring up a problem that might arise in the future because regardless of what I think or the community thinks, Intrepid won't listen? I heard it was the opposite, but I might be wrong on that one. *shrugs* I rest my case, then....since it won't be heard anyways.

Though, one last question before I go....Seriously...? How about we wait until A2 when the map would be completed to know more about it to THEN suggest they make the map bigger? I'm just going to SMH on that one.

Sigtyr

Worth pointing out as well that only a small percentage of freeholds will actually be in highly desirable areas, close to a metropolis node for example.

Noaani

Sheeta wrote: »

So, what you guys are saying is that I wasted my time to bring up a problem that might arise in the future because regardless of what I think or the community thinks, Intrepid won't listen?

Basically, yeah.

If the game design dictates that freeholds need to be rare, it doesn't really matter what players that have not played the game at all think.

If the game design dictates that freeholds need to be common, it doesn't really matter what players that have not played the game think at all.

Right now, YOU don't know how important a freehold will be. YOU don't know how expensive a freehold you will. YOU don't know how many people are likely to want one. YOU don't know how much competition Intrepid want over freehold space (is space for freeholds something they want people to declare sieges over? I don't know, but neither do YOU).

Why then, should Intrepid listen to YOU, when you use some broken math on some assumed numbers to support the claim that there will not be enough freehold space?

arsnn

Not sure what it is with people in this forum.

This thread is now more focused on why its dumb to highlight issues that may occur, than talking about the issue itself. This happens so often here lol

Noaani

arsnn wrote: »

Not sure what it is with people in this forum.

This thread is now more focused on why its dumb to highlight issues that may occur, than talking about the issue itself. This happens so often here lol

So, what is the issue this thread was even about?

Not enough space for freeholds?

How do we even know there isn't enough space for freeholds? How do we know if Intrepid want us to fight over them or not?

If we don't know these things, how can we discuss whether there is enough space for freeholds or not?

SongRune

My own calculations disagree.

Around 8-10k concurrent users per server is projected.[33][13][34][35]

Initially there will be a limited number of registered accounts (approximately 15,000) per server to help mitigate login queues.[36]
This limit will increase over time to around 50,000 registered accounts per server.[36][37][38]

(ref: Wiki: Servers > Server Population)

Freeholds are approximately half an acre in size.[6]

The footprint of a freehold does not change with node progression.[7]

(ref: Wiki: Freeholds)

480 km2 (square kilometers) is the approximate world size at launch.[32] This includes water and land content.[33]

(ref: Wiki: World map > World size)

According to Google, 1 Acre is 0.00404686 km², making a freehold 0.00404686 km² / 2 = 0.00202343 km². (Unfortunately, arsnn was off by an order of magnitude on this constant when they tried to do similar math.)

Based on this map, the world seems to be about 60% land. We're gonna call it 50%, in order to simplify the math, and be slightly conservative. If we get to the point where the numbers are "close", there'll be something to discuss regardless.

So let's do some math.

1. A freehold is 0.00202343 km².
2. Considering only the surface, the world is 480 km². (We'll remove water later.)
3. We see that this amount of space (before we reserve any of it for other things) can be divided into 480/0.00202343 = 237221 freehold plots.
4. With only 50% land (see above), we now have 237221/2 = 1163610.5 ERROR. See my post below for the correct analysis, as well as a broader discussion of the situation. freehold plots worth of space.
5. With 50,000 registered accounts per server, this leaves us with enough room to grant each player 1163610.5 / 50000 = 23.27221 freeholds.

Put another way, (1/23.27221 = ) 4.3% of the map would be occupied by freeholds if all players chose to have one, leaving 95.7% of the map free for node structures, wilderness, grind spots, and everything else. (Remember that we've already accounted for water, and we haven't used any of the space available in the under-realms, and of course remember that freeholds must be near nodes. They won't be out in the wilderness.)

arsnn

SongRune wrote: »

My own calculations disagree.

Around 8-10k concurrent users per server is projected.[33][13][34][35]

Initially there will be a limited number of registered accounts (approximately 15,000) per server to help mitigate login queues.[36]
This limit will increase over time to around 50,000 registered accounts per server.[36][37][38]

(ref: Wiki: Servers > Server Population)

Freeholds are approximately half an acre in size.[6]

The footprint of a freehold does not change with node progression.[7]

(ref: Wiki: Freeholds)

480 km2 (square kilometers) is the approximate world size at launch.[32] This includes water and land content.[33]

(ref: Wiki: World map > World size)

According to Google, 1 Acre is 0.00404686 km², making a freehold 0.00404686 km² / 2 = 0.00202343 km². (Unfortunately, arsnn was off by an order of magnitude on this constant when they tried to do similar math.)

Based on this map, the world seems to be about 60% land. We're gonna call it 50%, in order to simplify the math, and be slightly conservative. If we get to the point where the numbers are "close", there'll be something to discuss regardless.

So let's do some math.

1. A freehold is 0.00202343 km².
2. Considering only the surface, the world is 480 km². (We'll remove water later.)
3. We see that this amount of space (before we reserve any of it for other things) can be divided into 480/0.00202343 = 237221 freehold plots.
4. With only 50% land (see above), we now have 237221/2 = 1163610.5 freehold plots worth of space.
5. With 50,000 registered accounts per server, this leaves us with enough room to grant each player 1163610.5 / 50000 = 23.27221 freeholds.

Put another way, (1/23.27221 = ) 4.3% of the map would be occupied by freeholds if all players chose to have one, leaving 95.7% of the map free for node structures, wilderness, grind spots, and everything else. (Remember that we've already accounted for water, and we haven't used any of the space available in the under-realms, and of course remember that freeholds must be near nodes. They won't be out in the wilderness.)

You confused the hell out of me here

I did not make a conversion error, like a first thought.
What i did was i wrongly typed out "480km² divided by 0.05 km² = 96000"
The result was right, but i missed a 0 in 0.005km². And also what i did was round 0.4 to 0.5 to make it simpler.
The exact result for freehold plots that fit on the landmass is 118.610.
So why did our calculation diverge so much?
Unfortunately an error snkead into step 4 of yours. 237221/2 is= 118610 which is also roughly a magnitude smaller than your result

Which means we could place ~2,37 freeholds per player on the land mass.

But due to my concerns that:

Firstly, Half of the landmass is gonna be obstructed in some way, due to cliffs,mountains, rivers,lakes,nodes, roads and inefficiencies due to natural organic map layout
and secondly most of the map that is not obstructed , will primarly used for content,
i think its hard to arive at a number where casuals may partake in the freehold system on an individual level.

SongRune

arsnn wrote: »

SongRune wrote: »

My own calculations disagree.

Around 8-10k concurrent users per server is projected.[33][13][34][35]

Initially there will be a limited number of registered accounts (approximately 15,000) per server to help mitigate login queues.[36]
This limit will increase over time to around 50,000 registered accounts per server.[36][37][38]

(ref: Wiki: Servers > Server Population)

Freeholds are approximately half an acre in size.[6]

The footprint of a freehold does not change with node progression.[7]

(ref: Wiki: Freeholds)

480 km2 (square kilometers) is the approximate world size at launch.[32] This includes water and land content.[33]

(ref: Wiki: World map > World size)

According to Google, 1 Acre is 0.00404686 km², making a freehold 0.00404686 km² / 2 = 0.00202343 km². (Unfortunately, arsnn was off by an order of magnitude on this constant when they tried to do similar math.)

Based on this map, the world seems to be about 60% land. We're gonna call it 50%, in order to simplify the math, and be slightly conservative. If we get to the point where the numbers are "close", there'll be something to discuss regardless.

So let's do some math.

1. A freehold is 0.00202343 km².
2. Considering only the surface, the world is 480 km². (We'll remove water later.)
3. We see that this amount of space (before we reserve any of it for other things) can be divided into 480/0.00202343 = 237221 freehold plots.
4. With only 50% land (see above), we now have 237221/2 = 1163610.5 freehold plots worth of space.
5. With 50,000 registered accounts per server, this leaves us with enough room to grant each player 1163610.5 / 50000 = 23.27221 freeholds.

Put another way, (1/23.27221 = ) 4.3% of the map would be occupied by freeholds if all players chose to have one, leaving 95.7% of the map free for node structures, wilderness, grind spots, and everything else. (Remember that we've already accounted for water, and we haven't used any of the space available in the under-realms, and of course remember that freeholds must be near nodes. They won't be out in the wilderness.)

You confused the hell out of me here
I did not make a conversion error, like a first thought.
What i did was i wrongly typed out "480km² divided by 0.05 km² = 96000"
The result was right, but i missed a 0 in 0.005km². And also what i did was round 0.4 to 0.5 to make it simpler.
The exact result for freehold plots that fit on the landmass is 118.610.
So why did our calculation diverge so much?
Unfortunately an error snkead into step 4 of yours. 237221/2 is= 118610 which is also roughly a magnitude smaller than your result
Which means we could place ~2,37 freeholds per player on the land mass.

But due to my concerns that:

Firstly, Half of the landmass is gonna be obstructed by some way, due to cliffs,mountains, rivers,lakes,nodes, roads and inefficiencies due to natural organic map layout (PvE content might be placed in this area though)
and secondly most of the map that is not obstructed in some way will also be used for content,
i think its hard to arive at a number where casuals may partake in the freehold system on an individual level.

Entirely correct. My apologies. Rerunning my math from step 4, I get a quite different result.

4. With only 50% land (see above), we now have 237221/2 = 118610.5 freehold plots worth of space.
5. With 50,000 registered accounts per server, this leaves us with enough room to grant each player 118610.5 / 50000 = 2.37221 freeholds.

Put another way, (1/2.37221 = ) 42.2% of the map would be occupied by freeholds if all players chose to have one, leaving 57.8% of the map free for node structures, wilderness, grind spots, and everything else.

From this perspective I agree with the concern. The question is moreso what to do about it. There are obviously several options:

1. Decide that not everyone should have a freehold.
2. Require some minor upkeep on freeholds, and then assume that not all 50,000 registered accounts will be active players who will maintain a freehold. (And then presumably fall back to #1, if they're wrong.)
3. Expand the map.
4. Run out of space.

Obviously they're not going to choose "run out of space", which I think is what some posters here were getting at. It's relatively well-established that the number of freeholds any given node can support in its vicinity will be limited, so I'm not so concerned that you will have freeholds over 40% of the map.

Unfortunately, the size of the map is constrained by many other factors, some of the simplest of which are:

How far does a player have to walk to get to a new node?
How far does a player have to walk to get to a new 'biome'?
How many creatures of a given type should we have in one area (and therefore how bunched up or spread out do they need to be based on the size of that 'biome'?

There are more, but you can start to see how "number of freeholds" can't determine the actual scale of the map. At that point, all that's left to do is add new regions and push beyond the current borders, and one could make another long list of considerations there.

What I personally find most likely is that they will go with option 2, and specifically accept the consequence of option 1. Steven has said several times lately that Ashes will have winners and losers, and not everyone can be a winner. Between this and the incentive to band together to wreck a node to displace existing freeholds and take them for yourself (which plays right into the style of player driven conflict that Ashes is supposed to be about), I don't see Steven making another choice when this inevitably winds up on his desk.

I think this is something that will end up getting tuned in Beta 1, or even Alpha 2. While Alpha 2 might have too few players, the number of developed nodes will be smaller as a result, so we'll still see whether a node has enough freeholds to support its local player base. I think this is something that will come onto Intrepid's radar in a timeframe that will allow them to make a sensible decision on it in relation to their goals.

Child Item