I think the matter doesn't relate to hardcore or casual to be honest. I think its consumer vs sales. Realistically, all of my homely skins wouldn't be used anyway. I think the freeholds will now be commerce and craft centres. I do not like the change from metros to freeholds for the top crafting positions. If anything, freeholds and metros should be equal in terms of crafting abilities enabled.
One person spends money on cars, another on houses, another on holidays. Its not about what you earn but what you spend your money on. Freeholds are just another area in which I wont have to invest unless instructed to by my guild. I was a gatherer originally and also a hardcore gamer. I'm still a gatherer and a hard core gamer. Nothing is stopping the crafting guilds from clubbing together for a freehold. I personally wanted to curb the gold sinks and I believe I still can
I feel getting a freehold should be a rare drop item as well tbh. Not in legendary rare status but excitement when you get one. With it being bind on pickup and only lasting for a certain amount of days.
It will allow more people to have chances to get it, than it just being people that made a lot of money and bidding on them quickly. Caps to control things and limit demand can help.
That being said though she showed a lot, there is a lot we still don't know. but I feel we have enough information and showing the progression on it to be good for alpha 2 and the surprises that come with it imo.
I wouldn't like Freeholds to be on a timer. I also don't like bind on pickup stuff. I'm happy to be in a position to game the game and see what will happen. I also want to test the game before making a final decision. At least I can game the game for 9 months play time from my package. I don't have to sub if the game isn't what I expected. However, if I fall in love with my Enchanter I will end up no lifing anyway and I believe opportunities will come to experience most things.
I think the matter doesn't relate to hardcore or casual to be honest. I think its consumer vs sales. Realistically, all of my homely skins wouldn't be used anyway. I think the freeholds will now be commerce and craft centres. I do not like the change from metros to freeholds for the top crafting positions. If anything, freeholds and metros should be equal in terms of crafting abilities enabled.
One person spends money on cars, another on houses, another on holidays. Its not about what you earn but what you spend your money on. Freeholds are just another area in which I wont have to invest unless instructed to by my guild. I was a gatherer originally and also a hardcore gamer. I'm still a gatherer and a hard core gamer. Nothing is stopping the crafting guilds from clubbing together for a freehold. I personally wanted to curb the gold sinks and I believe I still can
I feel getting a freehold should be a rare drop item as well tbh. Not in legendary rare status but excitement when you get one. With it being bind on pickup and only lasting for a certain amount of days.
It will allow more people to have chances to get it, than it just being people that made a lot of money and bidding on them quickly. Caps to control things and limit demand can help.
That being said though she showed a lot, there is a lot we still don't know. but I feel we have enough information and showing the progression on it to be good for alpha 2 and the surprises that come with it imo.
I wouldn't like Freeholds to be on a timer. I also don't like bind on pickup stuff. I'm happy to be in a position to game the game and see what will happen. I also want to test the game before making a final decision. At least I can game the game for 9 months play time from my package. I don't have to sub if the game isn't what I expected. However, if I fall in love with my Enchanter I will end up no lifing anyway and I believe opportunities will come to experience most things.
To clarify i mean you get a rare item drop that allows you to do the quest. That is the item that will expire eventually (so people can't horde them). I'd also say they would be connected tot he area where you get them, so guilds can't buy of land in another area, and such. Though again I'm sure they have ideas in place to limit things.
I think the matter doesn't relate to hardcore or casual to be honest. I think its consumer vs sales. Realistically, all of my homely skins wouldn't be used anyway. I think the freeholds will now be commerce and craft centres. I do not like the change from metros to freeholds for the top crafting positions. If anything, freeholds and metros should be equal in terms of crafting abilities enabled.
One person spends money on cars, another on houses, another on holidays. Its not about what you earn but what you spend your money on. Freeholds are just another area in which I wont have to invest unless instructed to by my guild. I was a gatherer originally and also a hardcore gamer. I'm still a gatherer and a hard core gamer. Nothing is stopping the crafting guilds from clubbing together for a freehold. I personally wanted to curb the gold sinks and I believe I still can
I feel getting a freehold should be a rare drop item as well tbh. Not in legendary rare status but excitement when you get one. With it being bind on pickup and only lasting for a certain amount of days.
It will allow more people to have chances to get it, than it just being people that made a lot of money and bidding on them quickly. Caps to control things and limit demand can help.
That being said though she showed a lot, there is a lot we still don't know. but I feel we have enough information and showing the progression on it to be good for alpha 2 and the surprises that come with it imo.
I wouldn't like Freeholds to be on a timer. I also don't like bind on pickup stuff. I'm happy to be in a position to game the game and see what will happen. I also want to test the game before making a final decision. At least I can game the game for 9 months play time from my package. I don't have to sub if the game isn't what I expected. However, if I fall in love with my Enchanter I will end up no lifing anyway and I believe opportunities will come to experience most things.
To clarify i mean you get a rare item drop that allows you to do the quest. That is the item that will expire eventually (so people can't horde them). I'd also say they would be connected tot he area where you get them, so guilds can't buy of land in another area, and such. Though again I'm sure they have ideas in place to limit things.
Yeah. A quest based freehold would be cool. Much better than bidding for a freehold. I feel some design decisions are lazy and some people accept the laziness. Its all well and good to cut corners but cut corners create a circle of inadequacy.
I think the matter doesn't relate to hardcore or casual to be honest. I think its consumer vs sales. Realistically, all of my homely skins wouldn't be used anyway. I think the freeholds will now be commerce and craft centres. I do not like the change from metros to freeholds for the top crafting positions. If anything, freeholds and metros should be equal in terms of crafting abilities enabled.
One person spends money on cars, another on houses, another on holidays. Its not about what you earn but what you spend your money on. Freeholds are just another area in which I wont have to invest unless instructed to by my guild. I was a gatherer originally and also a hardcore gamer. I'm still a gatherer and a hard core gamer. Nothing is stopping the crafting guilds from clubbing together for a freehold. I personally wanted to curb the gold sinks and I believe I still can
I feel getting a freehold should be a rare drop item as well tbh. Not in legendary rare status but excitement when you get one. With it being bind on pickup and only lasting for a certain amount of days.
It will allow more people to have chances to get it, than it just being people that made a lot of money and bidding on them quickly. Caps to control things and limit demand can help.
That being said though she showed a lot, there is a lot we still don't know. but I feel we have enough information and showing the progression on it to be good for alpha 2 and the surprises that come with it imo.
I wouldn't like Freeholds to be on a timer. I also don't like bind on pickup stuff. I'm happy to be in a position to game the game and see what will happen. I also want to test the game before making a final decision. At least I can game the game for 9 months play time from my package. I don't have to sub if the game isn't what I expected. However, if I fall in love with my Enchanter I will end up no lifing anyway and I believe opportunities will come to experience most things.
To clarify i mean you get a rare item drop that allows you to do the quest. That is the item that will expire eventually (so people can't horde them). I'd also say they would be connected tot he area where you get them, so guilds can't buy of land in another area, and such. Though again I'm sure they have ideas in place to limit things.
Yeah. A quest based freehold would be cool. Much better than bidding for a freehold. I feel some design decisions are lazy and some people accept the laziness. Its all well and good to cut corners but cut corners create a circle of inadequacy.
I still say bidding on top of it, but not infinite bidding. I'd honestly take a note from BDO where the max bidding price can increase or decrease overtime. But also having a hard cap so prices are not set so only someone who played the market can own them or only powerful guilds. It will help make the playing field more fair and not encourage as much rmt. (though people that rmt and cheat for any reason and purposefully need to get the hard ban).
I think the matter doesn't relate to hardcore or casual to be honest. I think its consumer vs sales. Realistically, all of my homely skins wouldn't be used anyway. I think the freeholds will now be commerce and craft centres. I do not like the change from metros to freeholds for the top crafting positions. If anything, freeholds and metros should be equal in terms of crafting abilities enabled.
One person spends money on cars, another on houses, another on holidays. Its not about what you earn but what you spend your money on. Freeholds are just another area in which I wont have to invest unless instructed to by my guild. I was a gatherer originally and also a hardcore gamer. I'm still a gatherer and a hard core gamer. Nothing is stopping the crafting guilds from clubbing together for a freehold. I personally wanted to curb the gold sinks and I believe I still can
I feel getting a freehold should be a rare drop item as well tbh. Not in legendary rare status but excitement when you get one. With it being bind on pickup and only lasting for a certain amount of days.
It will allow more people to have chances to get it, than it just being people that made a lot of money and bidding on them quickly. Caps to control things and limit demand can help.
That being said though she showed a lot, there is a lot we still don't know. but I feel we have enough information and showing the progression on it to be good for alpha 2 and the surprises that come with it imo.
I wouldn't like Freeholds to be on a timer. I also don't like bind on pickup stuff. I'm happy to be in a position to game the game and see what will happen. I also want to test the game before making a final decision. At least I can game the game for 9 months play time from my package. I don't have to sub if the game isn't what I expected. However, if I fall in love with my Enchanter I will end up no lifing anyway and I believe opportunities will come to experience most things.
To clarify i mean you get a rare item drop that allows you to do the quest. That is the item that will expire eventually (so people can't horde them). I'd also say they would be connected tot he area where you get them, so guilds can't buy of land in another area, and such. Though again I'm sure they have ideas in place to limit things.
Yeah. A quest based freehold would be cool. Much better than bidding for a freehold. I feel some design decisions are lazy and some people accept the laziness. Its all well and good to cut corners but cut corners create a circle of inadequacy.
I still say bidding on top of it, but not infinite bidding. I'd honestly take a note from BDO where the max bidding price can increase or decrease overtime. But also having a hard cap so prices are not set so only someone who played the market can own them or only powerful guilds. It will help make the playing field more fair and not encourage as much rmt. (though people that rmt and cheat for any reason and purposefully need to get the hard ban).
Yeah. I mean my old purchase plan was Freehold then Legendary Gear. Now its Legendary Gear then perhaps a freehold. It depends how much gold I can amass. I don't plan to become a citizen of a node either. Perhaps my guild will have a castle though. We prefer the castles to the nodes/freeholds. Not sure if a castle has freeholds attached though i doubt it.
Will be interesting how the guild one works, I wouldn't be surprised if you can do some processing there as well and they change things once they figured out their design goals.
But we will see, this year is sure to be a banger with new information haha.
1. (statement disguised as a question) Will appartements have their unique feature, rather than being a watered-down version of freeholds? Something to make them desirable? Otherwise, I can't imagine it's a great feeling when the game tells you "You are a loser, but here's a consolation prize so you know what you're missing out on."
2. Wil there be an option to retrain out of professions? If I max, say, lumber milling to master or higher, and then the freehold gets destroyed along with the node, I will lose the necessary infrastructure to make it work. It might become a dead skill for the foreseeable future.
[*] How do you feel about the size-and-shape inventory management system?
I might like it. I will know for sure when I will play the game
[*] How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
I was expecting the crops to cover a larger area outside the freeholds. Would be more realistic. But maybe is ok if the player will decide to specialize and cover the entire area just with crops.
[*] How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
When milking the cow the chair just spawned under the character. I don't like that.
I would prefer to be placed in advance, maybe permanently and the cow to come nearby.
I also do not like how the chicken eggs were just laying on the ground visible from outside the pen. The player should to go and check to see if there are eggs inside each nest rather than just get close.
The wool gathering during sheering also was too minecraft style: the wool vanished suddenly instead of going through different stages and getting a little bit of wool at each step.
I wouldn't mind the wool quality to depend on what food the creature was eating and the tools used to collect.
The pig should be taken to a special butchery area to be killed.
The animals should not stay in one place. Should move randomly and their pens should require gates.
If they are attacked, all nearby animals should get scared and flee.
[*] What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
I would like defense buildings too, to help survive during sieges.
Or add a game mechanic + lore which would explain how and why the freehold protection works. To have to do something in the node too, maybe in the temple or mage tower to ensure a magic shield.
The fire in house should not stay on forever. I hope it will have some purpose too.
[*] Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
I like the concept as it is presented. Seems that players will have to cooperate and involve themselves into defending the node rather than compete with each-other.
Players will have a good reason to live in small nodes too, if they want a freehold.
I am excited!
[*] Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
Those jumping bunnies might shake the rider a bit too much.
A child of five years woke up in bed, sweating. The small, second-story room creaked and groaned with the wind. Headlamps from cars on the street below made visible an atypical bedroom: antlers stacked on the floor, leaving just enough room to enter and exit; elk head trophies protruding from each wall, their stiff tongues jutting out between rows of yellow teeth and dead eyes gazing nowhere and everywhere at once. The adults were away for the night, presumably, as ever, to escape the burdensome chore of parenting. The boy was frightened, his mind replaying a reel of scenes from earlier that day.
After a four-hour car trip, they pulled up along the street and stopped in front of an old, green, two-story building: a mother, if she could be called that, a father, if he could be called that, and their first four children - two old enough to comprehend and remember, two too young. The baby and the toddler had been screaming most for most of the drive. The older two had been trying not to make noise, lest they be 'given something to cry about', again. A rickety, rusted old pickup truck was parked in the driveway, some sort of towing mechanism jutting out of the bed with a rusty hook hanging ominously from its end, on a chain attached to a hand crank. Black flies were swarming over whatever lay inside, but the tailgate was closed. Loud whirring and banging noises came from inside the building, and the smell of blood was in the air, though the children had not yet made the connection.
The family walked to the door, the father inserted the key, and pushed the door open. In the dim lighting of the entryway, a shiny, dark liquid trailed over the concrete from the door to a drain in the center of the room. A loud bang and a hydraulic hiss spurred into action a cacophony of movement. A refrigerator door to the side opened up and from a rail built into the ceiling, a chain began to rotate slowly. From the refrigerator, corpses hanging from hooks through their hind legs paraded into the front room, followed by a tall, burly man in a white apron, covered in blood - grandpa.
He didn't have time to stop and say hello. He walked over with a belt of butcher's knives and slit the throat of the first animal - a deer - to begin the skinning. Blood poured onto the floor and added to the remnants of the last carcass. Adeptly, he carved through the skin around the hind hooves, closest to the ceiling, then down to the groin and straight through the animal's belly until everything spilled out - blood, chunks, chords - everything. He followed up by pealing off the fur-covered skin at the top and ripping downward until the corpse was bare except for the skin hanging around the animal's neck, which he then finished cutting around and tore off the rest of the hide, flinging it to the side of the room - the start of a pile of many more.
The butcher pushed a button on the remote in his knife belt and the chain brought around the next animal - a pig. He repeated the process - first he slit the neck to start draining the blood, then around the hind hooves and through the belly to empty out the organs, then he violently pulled on the skin from ceiling to floor. He pulled too far this time and the skin around the neck snapped off. The corpse swung violently, knocking him down into the growing pool of blood and entrails, but it didn't bother him. He simply stood back up, cut the remaining skin off, tossed it to the side, and pushed the button to bring out the next animal - another deer, an elk, a cow, a pig, a deer, and on and on.
The boy watched in horror, and a horror it was. When the skinning was done, the old man heaved the carcasses onto a band saw table and began sawing through the remaining flesh and bone, segmenting the various parts into smaller pieces. Some would be packaged as is and sold. Some would be seasoned and smoked. Some would be ground up by a machine then pushed through tiny holes, coming out in thing strings, which would be patted together and sold as hamburger. Bits and pieces of flesh littered the floors. Blood flowed to drains from every corner. The squealing of saws and clanking of chains seemed without end. The heads of the animals? Sent off to be stuffed, like the bull elk head, the size of his whole body, hanging directly above his face in the dark, creaky room he was left alone in that night.
The creaking began to grow louder and changed into a loud crack. The wind whistled harder, more creaking, and another crack. And then, as a car drove by outside, lighting up the heavy trophy above, it began to tilt off of the wall, those eyes, those dead eyes that saw everything and nothing at all, making contact with the screaming boy as it came crashing down.
And this time the boy actually woke up, sweating, or maybe it was more than that. It's hard to remember trauma that my mind has made such tremendous efforts to remove from memory. But I did remember looking up to see that the trophy hadn't fallen. The stiff tongue still poked out between its yellow teeth, the enormous rack still covered most of the width of the room, and those eyes, those dead eyes that saw everything and nothing, were still staring right at me from above.
And why share this? Because that one scene shown in today's livestream - killing the pig - brought it all back up to the surface. I was shaking, sweating, becoming dizzy and nauseous. I have a very visceral reaction to past trauma, of which I had the misfortune to be subject to a lot throughout my life. For as long as I can remember, video games were my escape. I could leave reality behind. I didn't have to think about the horrors I'd seen or the brutality inflicted upon me. I could cast spells, fight monsters, engage competitively with other players from the safety of my home (I love PvP), and otherwise exist in a world where my mind was not forced to focus on the pros and cons of living.
With all of that said, I would like to just state that sometimes being too realistic is immersion-breaking. I am not trying to be a real-life butcher or murderer in video games. I actively avoid horror movies and gory games because I can't handle it. In some ways, my mind is very much still childlike because of my birth providers' stunted emotional maturity and the upbringing that turned into, and I relish the opportunity to play pretend in a world that does not emulate every tedious and undesirable aspect of my life. I have never had that problem in MMO's. I've never had that problem in any of the RPG's I've played. I've played many of the ones that are listed as inspirations for AoC, and many others as well. So, with all due respect for the creativity of the artists, designers, engineers, Intrepid team, and other players, I would appreciate it if we didn't try to make the killing of innocent animals realistic. If I have to hunt a deer or other monster with spells and they poof into ash, conveniently leaving behind a ribeye steak, I can handle that. I really don't want to kill or happen upon others killing farm animals in realistic fashion. At the very least, please add in specific child-friendly options so that I can turn off this brand of butchery without compromising the quality of the rest of the game.
And now for the questions you actually asked...
How do you feel about the size-and-shape inventory management system?
Not impressed. Inventory management is not a rewarding system in any game. Please don't make it tedious. Unlimited items in a one-square slot with auto-sorting is ideal. I don't want to play Tetris or spend time moving things around to make them fit or discarding stacks of items because I hit some arbitrary limit. It's bad game design and there is an opportunity to be better here.
How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
Aside from the freehold itself, yes. Gathering is not rewarding - why does it take so long? Are there plans to make gathering faster or instant? I'm really hoping to not have to do virtual chores instead of focusing on quests, combat, and other fun features of the game.
How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
See above. Maybe have animals that you care for and every so often you get materials sent to your mailbox. No need to make it traumatic.
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
Can we take a step back for a bit and think about the fact that housing, crafting, and gathering are not for everyone? Some people - like me - want to grind, quest, explore, PvP, etc, and not play Mediaeval Sims. It is starting to sound like, not only will it be long and tedious to get a freehold, it will be necessary to even be on par with other players in general, and it will be unfairly withheld from players that aren't able to play the most hours, join the largest guilds, etc. Systems like this already exist in other games and they are pretty universally disliked. Please, no.
As far as decorating though - anything and everything - go wild. For people that enjoy that part of the game, give them every opportunity to live their fantasy and build and create to their hearts' content. Just don't force people to be part of it if they don't want to (ie making the best crafting, gathering, etc, only part of a freehold that is not achievable by all players), and don't make it impossible to be a part of for those that do.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
The concept of being able to build it out in the wild is fun. Other than that, no, not really. This was a pretty disappointing livestream and direction for the game to take overall. Plot limits, bidding, super exclusive crafting and gathering - just all bad. I am very much for nearly everything this game has put out so far. I love the open-world PvP, the risk vs reward ideas, etc, but this is not that. This is... I don't know that this is. Bad?
Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
I think I've gone on enough. Thanks for your time and consideration. For the trolls out there, please be kind.
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angelicshiyaMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't like bidding, it is cheap and its leaves a lot of possible loopholes/cheating. As far as the tatris bag thing I am not sure how I feel about it. I guess my initial thought is don't fix what ain't broken, weight may just be the way to go.
If this is going to be the current system with freeholds just get rid of them and replace with with huge Guild Quarters/Halls for clan leaders to establish for their guildmates, which would create more friction for guild wars to happen. I don't like not being able to achieve Master or Grandmaster without being able to strike lucky and get a freehold. If so make other routes in order to achieve M/GM for crafting.
Overall, I think the game is changing its vision/design somewhat from when I bought Leader of Men in kickstarter all those years ago, am I happy about it? I don't know, will have to test out in A2, but thanks for transparency
Looks all good so far, but overall, the Freehold limitation is a huge "no play" for me right now. I expected that every player who plays at least somehow actively can have their own freehold. Making this possibility available only to a small part of the player base who can invest much more time in the game would make me sad. And in my opinion also discourage a certain player potential.
I have no problem with the fact that someone who plays more also has more, better armor, faster mounts, a bigger house etc.!
But to exclude players with less time from a system would deagradate Aoc for me to "meh, maybe I'll take a look".
I hope of course that I misunderstand something and in the end every player who wants can have at least a small house with the shown possibilities.
I am afraid I am not very happy with what has been announced - but I see a few possible solutions.
The problems...
First of all - like earlier comment mentioned, it does come across as if IS has not done the math. Freeholds are super limited. Even instanced housing, that is worse in every way than a freehold, are not enough in numbers to cover the remaining players.
Second of all, like many many many comment stated, making freeholds into an economy bidding war is terrible. From every aspect.
1) you are very much inviting RMT.
2) you are inviting guild monopoly.
3) and this is the most important part - you are making it near impossible for new/late players to get a proper shot at the game. It will be like hoping in on a already started up V Rising server - all the lands are taken, the rich has the best defenses and generate money almost passively in a way that is impossible to catch up to. You are gatekeeping the new/late players in a way that is going to be extremely harmful in the long run.
Third of all - the entire system makes me skeptical about the whole idea. See, as I understand it the entire idea is that node wars will even these things out every once in a while - but if Freeholds are such an important privilege - you will *definitely* have the elite making alliances to make sure to protect each other's lands. I fear that node wars will not be in the interest of the most active/rich/commited players - and thus, there will be no to very few successful sieges against the "royality" of the server. All the while small upstarting nodes will probably get deleted almost instantly unless they are a part of said elite.
I know IS wanted the game to be realistic in many ways, but this is taking the absolutely worst parts of reality and putting it into a game.
Two possible steps in the right direction:
* Advertise Freehold as multiplayer homes. If Freeholds (and instanced nodes for that matter) act more like small guild halls, then a lot of issues might be resolved. And honestly? The more the better at this point, when looking at player numbers. I'd even consider allowing as many as 10-15 or even 20 players using the same freehold considering the enitre node-wars-destroys-everything aspect. By allowing people to develop their "base" together, you're making the whole gate in gatekeeping a lot wider. People like myself that do not like crafting that much, but love decorating and level housing features will be an asset to people like my fiance and his brothers who enjoy crafting. I want to be a hunter/tamer, my fiances brothers want to try animal husbandary - if we can work together to make that work on ONE plot of freehold land then everything becomes more doable than if we'd have to have 3ish freeholds. This will also lessen the competition for the solo players which in turn makes freeholds no longer impossible for the solo player.
* Do not restrict all forms top tier crafting to freeholds alone. Do not kill the entire life skilling community!!! Freeholds seem to be mandatory for anybody who wants to do animal husbandary and/or farming. This is bad enough, given how limited the access to freeholds will be with the current design. Do not limit people running stuff like alchemy, carpentry etc to freeholds as well. By allowing people to do full scale professions in instanced housing, then you'll reduce the power curve of the freehold which opens up accessability. Do not worry about freeholds being "unwanted" in any way - it is still a MAJOR gatekeeper.
* Have a top value for bidders, and if multiple people reach the top bid, then have a random generator give the freehold to one of them. - To avoid the prices becoming unbearing for the non-minority and to give people a chance at getting a freehold (although it might be really small due big communities just placing hundreds of bids, it is better than none.)
If nothing changes - and if I even can convince my friends to keep an interest in this game after this showcase - I'll probably look to play without housing as much as possible. I guess I'll make an attempt as a homeless wanderer. :'] And if that doesn't work, then I guess I'll just have to wait for another MMORPG to see if there is a better fit!
"If a player wants to achieve a freehold they can achieve the freehold"
Is this still the case or not?
You are selling (and I am Buying) skins for content that I believed would be available to me.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited July 2023
Just a thought
Freeholds of limited size for individuals within towns - perhaps New World style with best visual showing or like Black Desert.. But in principal possible for multiple owners. OR just a lot of them.
Freeholds of greater capability for guilds outside towns
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
L2 has a limited number of clan halls in each town that were auctioned at the commencement of each major update and ownership wiped at the end of each major update to be re-auctioned later.. The bids first time this happened were high. the successive bids required over the years required obsene wealth.. The only way for a smaller less wealth clan to bid was to target less popular towns.. so although not the same as a freehold.. sounds a little similar in principal.. so interested to see how this might play out..
I imagine less populous / popular areas may have dynamic turn over of freeholds and opportunities but over time the main nodes that remain static will only have ownership by the elite wealthy!
How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
The pig dying is more rough than it needs to be. Instead I would like to see a more "magical" killing. For example the breeder pulls the essence from the animal instantly killing it. As if they were shutting off the animals brain. No need for the sound, additionally the animation can just be a quite legs buckling as it sinks to the ground before despawning. (If you wanted a light magical sound could play but that is just a design decision)
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
I would really like to have a large hearth with a LARGE roaring fire in it.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
The immersion that freeholds will bring to everyone not just freehold owners.
I liked the presentation at the start outlining design goals and decisions.
It ensures points aren't accidentally missed, and reduces the chance for miscommunications.
Love it, and please do more, ESPECIALLY on a node focused showcase!
How do you feel about the size-and-shape inventory management system?
I think it's fine, especially when you factor in that different bag types will have different dimensions to more easily fit certain resource types.
It appears though that there's a vocal group who want brainless inventory management, so maybe it might be prudent to get that spot tested sooner rather than later. Or at the very least be able to pivot quickly in A2.
How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
I would like to see the actual UI for planting.
Otherwise I thought how the current plots were assembled was fine. I do wonder if object placement (planting, putting down buildings) will be "snap to grid" or "free placement" or both.
I would like to see value with infrastructure to support the farm plots.
ie. Fences to stop wild animals from taking crops, irrigation channels or sprinklers for better yield and faster growth.
It would be interesting to have tilled soil randomly sprout seeds that are native to that area if nothing specific is planted in a while. This is mimicking bird poop from passing birds germinating in random plots of soil.
Will there be crop spoilage if not harvested in time? I'm personally against that, but not very much so.
How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
I like this.
I would like to see specialised (along side generic) enclosures for specific types of beasts.
I would like to see peaceful interaction options for all animals (even some that are skill/stat checks such as trying to pet a CrabFish)
Specific animations for each type of beast/animal non-leathal harvesting.
I thought slaughtering was fine as is, but I do recognise people can have issues and would consider a "Gore and Slaughter" setting on game startup which prompts first time players into opting in/out of it.
I would have it though that you need to take the carcass to a butchering table to get the skin and meat. Don't have those elements just appear as loot. Perhaps have lower yield meat and skin with a skinning knife vs proper butcher setup.
Similar to crops, I would like to see upgrades to livestock raising such as hiring a herder to occasionally walk your herds and feed them, fend off wild animals, give immediate treatment for any maladies etc...
Static animals are immersion breaking. Allow them to roam a little bit but not wonder too far from home.
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
Gosh... give us everything!
Allow us to lay down paths and roads.
Allow us to have flower fields, trellises and other "not specific to harvesting" nature things.
Allow us to place down markers to mark the edges of our freehold claim so we can mold our dwellings to the terrain features how we wish, so long as the total area is contiguous and is equal to or less than the freehold entitlement.
I would like to build walls with gates that I can set Access Controls on.
I would like to place down lights and torches of whatever colors I want. (ie. a green flame torch or a ghost blue wisp wall lantern)
I would like general decorations like fountains, statues, and other things that my tired brain cant think of right now.
Interactable and programmable elements would be amazing, but happy to see that kind of stuff later.
I would like to be able to place down a freehold (with permission) right next to friends or guild mates to assemble tiny towns and communities out in the wilderness. As long as permissions are open, allow us to construct walls and paths across our FH boundaries.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
Super interested in how the buliding tech tree's shake out.
I would like to ask for clarification though if only 1 upgrade can be taken at each tech tree tier?
If so, I would ask that that be reconsidered.
I don't mind if the costs go up dramatically, but let me weigh up between investing heavily in 1 building vs making multiple for different tech.
Something like:
Cost of upgrade = Base cost * ((Number of upgrades already taken in this tier) + 1)
Also wouldn't mind in this system if the final tier is locked at only 1. Have it so that you can only take multiple upgrades in a tier only if that tier is NOT the highest one unlocked.
Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
I am concerned about the bidding nature for ALL freeholds. I've been playing a bit of Albion Online a little bit lately and the crafting stations in town follow this bidding system. It's quite unfair where the rich only get richer cementing their place whilst completely locking out others.
I would consider different sized Freeholds where there are a set of fixed priced smaller holds, and a handful of the largest ones which go to auction.
ie:
1) Freehold small deed (500 stock), 0.5 Ha, 2000g + whatever questlines and favor needed.
2) Freehold medium deed (100 stock), 1 Ha, 5000g + FH Small deed + new quest + whatever
3) Freehold large deed (20 stock), 1.5 Ha, 20000g + FH Medium deed + new quest + whatever
4) Freehold estate deed (5 stock), 2 Ha, Auction + must place down a FH Large deed as collateral.
These are just spit-balled numbers but I think it's enough to get the idea across.
Other general feedback
I found the blue minable minerals just sitting there a little bit jarring.
Something that irradiant I would expect underground or in a crypt. Minerals found on the surface are generally weathered and broken down. I would like to see something where traces of that mineral are found in the surface rocks either just from seeing it with the naked eye, breaking open surface rocks or surveying. The large pure deposits then can be found nearby in either a cave or a large rock or in a cliff face or something.
Mining large rocks in a single gathering cycle seems too fast. It would be good to see gradual breakdown of the rock/mineral of that size over like a minute, with several resource return stages in that time.
Can multiple people mine a single node at once?
That's all I can brain dump for now, might think of something more after a nights rest.
Lets say you have a group of 8 friends YOU trust (which is already a stretch) and you all decide to pool your money together to bid for a Freehold, you all bid for this Freehold for 8,000 gold. Ok great, you now have a bid of 8000, but then here comes streamer3000 with his load of followers with 80k gold to bid or a guild that chooses to have all their minions funnel their gold to their guildleaders/officers and if you don't like it, you get a big kick out...
Ok, make your own stream, spend years building a faithul following and a solid brand, have the charisma to actually make people want to simp for you and voilà! easy!
Let's be real, there aren't that many "streamer3000"s that you'll come across, and if you do, you'll worship the ground they walk upon to get your character on 1 frame on one of their streams.
Whilst I agree with you on not liking the bidding system, I think you need to check yourself if you're suggesting that streamers with hoards of rabid followers are dime a dozen and there'll be no room for small groups cause twitch will own all of Vera.
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ashoneMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I liked the freehold preview very much and everything looks going into a good direction.
There are still couple things that worries me.
I would hope that when players are using cosmetic skins on freehold buildings players could use the same skin into different types of building so they could match each other.
The second thing that worries me are those blue rocks that we saw at the begining of the preview. I didn't like those rocks' cube like shapes and they stood out too much in the environment. I think that they didn't match very well in the environment and I would suggest to change their appearence into more natural rock shape (more round shaped). Also they would look better inside some caves.
Overall I liked this livestream very much and especially the character art looked fantastic! Those Niküan dwarves looked amazing and that Felgaz Stalker was stunning! I can't wait to see Dünir dwarves' new models!
Wouldnt mind seeing some underrealm spots for freeholds aswell (maybe unique farming resource too due to different enviroments) you will probaly have to make these be set locations however due to nature of the cavern system but shouldnt be an issue to squeeze a few location underground for free holds for the cave dweller players :P
On topic of under realm i would love to see 1 or 2 nodes in a large cavern underground that could become metro if upgraded would add for a unique seiging mechanics with underground fighting with tighter quarters with the cave systems and things. Castle could also work too.
These nodes could become tradehubs too from people cutting through the underrealm to advoid choke points and things aswell.
I think the matter doesn't relate to hardcore or casual to be honest. I think its consumer vs sales. Realistically, all of my homely skins wouldn't be used anyway. I think the freeholds will now be commerce and craft centres. I do not like the change from metros to freeholds for the top crafting positions. If anything, freeholds and metros should be equal in terms of crafting abilities enabled.
One person spends money on cars, another on houses, another on holidays. Its not about what you earn but what you spend your money on. Freeholds are just another area in which I wont have to invest unless instructed to by my guild. I was a gatherer originally and also a hardcore gamer. I'm still a gatherer and a hard core gamer. Nothing is stopping the crafting guilds from clubbing together for a freehold. I personally wanted to curb the gold sinks and I believe I still can
I feel getting a freehold should be a rare drop item as well tbh. Not in legendary rare status but excitement when you get one. With it being bind on pickup and only lasting for a certain amount of days.
It will allow more people to have chances to get it, than it just being people that made a lot of money and bidding on them quickly. Caps to control things and limit demand can help.
That being said though she showed a lot, there is a lot we still don't know. but I feel we have enough information and showing the progression on it to be good for alpha 2 and the surprises that come with it imo.
I would rather it take work via long quest line kinda thing over a RNG drop, I rather they go to players who work towards it than get lucky with a rare drop.
Rare drops could be higher teir building and cool items though for housing that has some impact that i am fine with.
How do you feel about the size-and-shape inventory management system?
I love this. I was always worried about the dynamic between mules caravans and how much the player can carry and this pretty much solves that issue.
How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
Crops are not particularly interesting. I just hope they are balanced against other building options. Current implementation looks good
How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
Same as the crops
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
Maybe a smaller house or room options for family member where only the selected person can edit that space. This would give a person that does not own the freehold themselves a space they can call their own. This might help with the issues people have about scarcity of freeholds.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
Just being able to see freeholds in the open world.
Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview
I just hope it does not make the world feel cramped. Just the general balance of profit vs cosmetic decorations. Maybe increased taxes per income generating building to offset how beneficial it is.
Be careful about making an informal system like paying someone for temporary access to your freehold into a formal system. An informal system is a social experience and a formal one is a game mechanic that is expected. I do not want people to be able to AFK and automate sustaining their freehold by letting people pay to use it. It would discourage the natural cycle of freeholds changing hands and instead would reward squatters who are not actually interested in owning and sustaining a freehold. Treat a freehold like the investment it is and not as an easy way to make AFK income. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/55898/the-freehold-lending-and-borrowing-is-annoying-and-why-it-should-probably-stay-that-way
I remember when I sold my plot in FF14 when I stopped playing and when I got back to the couldn't get a new one for over 20 months not bc I didn't have the economic power but bc there literally was no plot was available and the few people that were trying to seel their plots only tried to do so via rmt. This sounds like the same dogshit system but somehow even worse. Never make player housing a bidding system.
If there really is a need to change the freehold system from your older descriptions then please take a look at games like Pax Dei and how they do player settlements
Lets say you have a group of 8 friends YOU trust (which is already a stretch) and you all decide to pool your money together to bid for a Freehold, you all bid for this Freehold for 8,000 gold. Ok great, you now have a bid of 8000, but then here comes streamer3000 with his load of followers with 80k gold to bid or a guild that chooses to have all their minions funnel their gold to their guildleaders/officers and if you don't like it, you get a big kick out...
Ok, make your own stream, spend years building a faithul following and a solid brand, have the charisma to actually make people want to simp for you and voilà! easy!
Let's be real, there aren't that many "streamer3000"s that you'll come across, and if you do, you'll worship the ground they walk upon to get your character on 1 frame on one of their streams.
Whilst I agree with you on not liking the bidding system, I think you need to check yourself if you're suggesting that streamers with hoards of rabid followers are dime a dozen and there'll be no room for small groups cause twitch will own all of Vera.
It's not just streamers, I did mention guilds which are to a degree worse than streamers. However, you're right, my main issue is the bidding aspect. I used an extreme scenario because that's what people tend to look at more. I just hope Intrepid considers this.
it's looking good so far. alot more space in the freehold than i thought there would be. a couple things i wondered about are
1. Can anyone take the crops and animal products or can it be set to only friends or clan mates ect?
2. can we have different shapes? i circular freehold would be nice to have
3. will there be possibilities for a seaside freehold where we can attach a dock for people to access i, or maybe trade through it.
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
- Customized signs where player can draw, write or add image aka ArchAge Crests.
- Flags a lot of flags and banners, love them.
SUGGESTION
Also would like to suggest a little but wery neat in my opinion improvement of interface animation when you loot an item. Right now looted item just appering on the bottom right which is ok but i think it would FEEL better if theres would be a more entertaining animation for that.
Example
All of that happens with some soothing pleasing sound, maybe some peniata/crystal like sound.
I've seen similar stuff in many games and i think animations like this add more satisfying feeling when you loot something and giving you a little bit of dopamine.
I just wanted to drop in and add my two cents on the animal slaughtering / butchering, as I think it's a careful line to walk. I personally think the demonstration in the video was mostly fine, although I'll agree with some that the pig squealing was a bit much. I feel slaughtering should be end-of-life for the animal, but I don't think it should involve gore or too much emphasis on the death of the animal. It should be respectful, as humane as possible, and minimize the violence.
As a further note, I know I'm not alone when I say that animal death is not something I personally wish to be exposed to in this way. I think the above paragraph should be taken as a baseline, and if possible add an additional setting available to those of us with bad experiences involving animal death or that are more sensitive to remove the visual and auditory aspect of the slaughter so it looks like the animal simply despawned.
It may be better the side with caution on this.
Also, an "are you sure" message would be nice for slaughtering animals so we don't accidentally end up with beef when we meant to get milk, or for misclicks etc.
It was a nice and encouraging dev stream on Freehold's yesterday. Thank you.
Some thoughts i had:
1) It would be nice when you haul gatherable mats like stone and lumber to your freehold plot of land that they become visually deposited in a holding area that visually grows larger the more you hold up to a maximum. Think stacks of hay or Valheim lumber stacks. There seemed to even be an outside square holding area on the freehold we saw that could be used for it. I like the idea of visually seeing your working materials youve gathered rather than placing a UI icon of 400x stone from player inventory in a storage box in player housing. You would approach the outside material storage area and collect x amount of mats needed for withdraw rather than your chest.
2) Maybe gatherer's could wear a backpack that expands in visual size the more you carry, or if using a mule w/buggy the materials get piled visually onto a cart that stacks in size as accumulated?
3) Vistas are on point and its great to see that distance rendering doesn't become heavily blurred like in New World.
4) Tree cutting is looking pretty good, though not believable with a few chops of a small axe for the large trunks shown. May not be a big issue, idk, just looked a bit odd felling a big tree with a few swings of a small hand axe. I also don't want it to be an IRL sim so it may be fine as is.
5) How can players with or without freehold permits observe where available plots of land are to claim? Will they have a visual boundary or will we have map indications of some kind? How can we scout for optimal locations?
6) Freeholds look so promising I really hope you bring back Ship-building in the future. I'd dig owning a plot near or adjacent to a harbor to build ships from. It could be really magnificent watching a ship being built visually in phases and could be a landmark/tentpole for the game (thinking compiling materials, drawing the frame, building the skeleton on a stand, etc.
7) Roughly what will the minimum distance be between freeholds?
8) I was hoping to see some skins demo'd on freehold buildings to get a better idea of customization. Its still a bit confusing what building skins can be applied to what building types and if there are restrictions. Some of the skins have unique shapes that don't follow the squared freehold sectional layout shown. How will they fit? Shrink to fit or will you be able to fit less plots and buildings if using circular/irregularly shaped buildings from skins?
9) Do inactive freeholds get recycled ever from a system besides player destruction in a node siege? How do players from a node get access to buy them who start later in the game's life? It seems like the best time to get in on them will be at server launch and the permit prices will be exorbitant as servers mature. How do players who are citizens of a node uproot a long-term inactive freehold owner? Do they need to move to a different node and gather forces to siege their old node? Do they need to hire a merc army to declare a siege on their node in the hopes of destroying the deadbeat freehold owner? The mechanisms to evict an inactive freehold owner may need to be defined. Potentially the node's Governor should have authority to evict in cases where a property owner is inactive for x amount of days as a solution.
10) Is there a maximum freehold permit cap per server? As nodes are sieged and destroyed it sounds like more permits will keep getting added as lower stage nodes advance in that vacuum. Will there be an ever growing amount of permits and a finite amount of freehold plots to place them? If so, what is the value of a permit with no available land to place it on?
11) I'm concerned that RMT will dominate the bidding for land and that would be a major turn off. Until Intrepid has an iron-clad grip on how to prevent RMT I don't think it wise to plan to move forward with a system that will 100% be controlled and abused by RMT'ers to purchase these properties at values individual players following TOS will not be able to self-fund in a open bidding process early on in the game's lifespan.
New World as an example is a RMT haven and the pvp warring community heavily gate-keeps content on all servers with the aid of RMT by buying gear advantage in large part. They're often the better skilled players, that's not the point, but the point is if there is a way to get an advantage by swiping competitive players will exploit it. Its difficult to have faith in gaming companies to control RMT as no game I've played has successfully done so. If a player is found guilty of buying gold via RMT will their property be revoked and turned in to open-bidding? This seems like a can of worms no one would like to manage. Is it worth going down that path and having to handle all of the player concerns once the game goes live? Is there a better system for obtaining permits that can be received that has less inherent risk of abuse while also achieving rarity the system needs due to map size limitations?
12) I think players should be safe from pvp on their freeholds outside of node sieges. I also think once your caravan reaches your property boundary it should be safe from would be bandits (not just your house).
13) How do you launch a caravan from your Freehold as they won't have caravansary buildings (from what I know) like a node is slated to have?
14) It would be interesting to find out how many Freeholds will be available to bid on per stage of node development.
15) I'm not a fan of the Tetris inventory system design. I'd rather it go by weight. I find the tetris inventory management type systems overly tedious and cumbersome. I don't think they add value to the game and are akin to the thought process behind why Ammunition/arrows aren't included in the game. They're unnecessary for a mmo. I think any time you're thinking of introducing a convoluted inventory management system the likely result is that it will have a poor outcome. New World's inventory management is horrendous (though not tetris). I don't want to do a puzzle when I'm looking through my inventory. I just want to stuff something in a bag, or retrieve something quickly that I need in a moment. Tetris inventory management would be a survival game aspect and a turn off. Make it clean, don't make it confusing.
Good stream, looking forward to seeing what's next.
Sooooo since everyone is now distracted by the bidding system. Let's talk about the other problems presented in the showcase.
Farming: So we weren't really told much of anything about the farming here so a lot of it is speculation and extrapolation.
Aesthetics: Everything just looks much too tidy and uniform and this is not the models fault. BDO tends to have this same issue, but they solve it through the actual placement of your crops being possible to make more irregular and through having the surrounding foliage and grass on wherever you are planting be part of the furrow. So when you get to the polishing phase, my recommendation is to go a similar route. Don't make furrows these 'realistic' things, make them more like a garden where things can be placed a little more organically and haphazardly, but keep the neat and tidy arrangements you showed today as a preset that any player can achieve within the more freeform system. You mentioned being able to mix and match crops in a furrow but it will look awful to do so without a freeform placement system.
Mechanics of Theft: So I am really glad the team seems to have taken my criticism from years ago about how we needed the ability to steal from farmers or threaten them in some way, but there are some flaws with the current intended implementation. First of all nothing about security or defenses were noted and I think that is a real shame. You spoke a lot about the ability to customize your freehold, but let's face it, if you intend to introduce THAT much risk to a person using their freehold, no one is going to want to do it without options for more security. Guard NPC's and Pet monsters that when killed give the attacking players a small amount of corruption would be a great start. We should also think about giving players blueprints for walls, turrets, magical clouds of debuff effects and explosions, general traps, even ballistae. What is the saying? The home is a persons castle? Why not just roll with that now that freeholds are big enough to be a landed nobles estate. You definitely have enough room to do so and you will be implementing similar mechanics for node seiges and defenses anyway.
Over all I'm glad some risk was added to the system, but think we need ways to mitigate it somewhat.
Mechanics of Growing: It sounds like you will have water and fertilizer management which is great, but I didn't hear anything about pest management. I think you should reconsider that if you are not going to have it, as pest management is one of the few areas of farming that you can really lean into the interactivity of the craft. BDO for example will have occasional quick time events where a mole will suddenly spawn while you are farming and you can chase them down to get some small resources back. The sudden-ness of it makes you really have to pay attention if you want to maximize your gains. It didn't sound like water management was going to be very important beyond 'hey water this' either, although you didn't say much about it. I feel like the water management system is the main area where you can make freehold placement and where the furrows are placed on your freehold really integrated and immersive. I'd be quite surprised if you could grow tomatos in a dryer area just because you can spam a water bucket.
I highly encourage your developers look into BDO's system for insight on how to do that. In BDO right now I have to worry about how often it rains and where my farm is on the water table and what happens to rain after a storm relative to the precipitation in the area. If you can't get that level of detail in Ashes, I believe over all the game will just be outright inferior for farming as opposed to BDO. You can get PvP on a farm in BDO. There is a ton of cost/fuel management in BDO. There is a lot of planning and interactivity in BDO's farming relatively. Oh and of course in BDO anyone can be a master farmer if they want to put in the blood sweat and tears into it, where as this is not the case in Ashes. Not everyone who wants the farm will be able to farm and not everyone of those actual farmers is going to be able to achieve mastery... No matter how much they may want to. There is nothing special about Ashes interactivity at the moment as it's mostly just 'press e to harvest and nothing further' which by the way I really hope is a place holder because wow is that not immersive. If you are going to make farming such an achievement I would hope you still made it fun to do and didn't just cut corners because you don't expect people who actually want really immersive crafting to get into it in the first place. Be better than BDO please. You have the pieces to do so.
Mechanics of Livestock:This is where press e to harvest better be a place holder the most. If milking cows isn't a rythm minigame like BDO what are you even doing here. I'm fine with slaughtering livestock as that is where food comes from. There are other animals you can raise like chickens, sheep, and dairy cows available if you want to raise livestock but don't want to kill them. I'm sure you can throw in fantasy elements here as well to spice things up a bit. Maybe there are turtles that grow nodules of fruit or meat on them that you can harvest from the bushes on their backs. We already know some turtles in Verra can get quite big and have symbiotic plants on their shells already.
Mechanics of Storage: Ugh, tetris AND stacks? Stacks and limited slots in inventory were already going to far and well enough for 'making you think about what you are choosing' and 'creating moments of pause where you have to make decisions on your inventory'. Heck I'd take stacks and weight like in BDO over this nonsense. More over this adds a layer of tedium to freehold crafting in general I wasn't expecting. If you don't have a way for crafting while at a structure to avoid some of these issues via an 'infinite temporary slot while working' things are going to be really obnoxious when you reach a certain point of overflow or complexity in your crafting or processing. You mentioned having bags that could circumvent some of this nonsense, but that isn't good enough if you have to literally go out in the world to hunt or buy said bags. They should be 'buyable' at a freehold without any interaction with anyone else if you are so insistent on this system because that level of inconvenience while crafting is a pain. Believe me, it happens in Minecraft, BDO, and FFXI and THEY aren't NEARLY as restricted as what you are presenting.
Mechanics of Crafting: So in the slide show, which I really appreciated by the way, we saw a bunch of slides with crafting menus and I cannot tell you how disappointed I am with the implications here. Menu based crafting is the lowest form of crafting imaginable. It breaks my immersion on SEVERAL levels. Crafting is supposed to be a very involved physical process. There are very few acts where I'd be 'looking at a ledger or manual' in artisan professions. I hope, therefore, that there is more to it than what we saw in the sneak peak. I'm ok with menus when it fits immersion. Planning what to craft and setting up all your materials is fine. Planning and picking your skills in a menu is fine. But that's about the limit. Keep crafting largely in world and figure out a way to make menus small and not full screen. If there is too much detail to make it small, you probably need to rethink the menu and presentation!
Overall Impression: The game has really gone backwards in it's aesthetic. The freeholds were so brown and muddy. Everything lacked color and pop. You went full war craft with your combat and armor aesthetics and general lighting models so I'm surprised things were so 'gritty and realistic' here (and not in a good way.)
The freeholds themselves were far too 'tidy' looking due to the dirt road system. You should really try to figure out if there is a way to integrate the foliage you are placing the freehold on with the structures you put on top of them or all freeholds will look very same-y.
I wasn't really impressed with anything here. It looked like a slightly concentrated form of BDO's crafting systems and furniture interactivity for the most part and I already have that experience. If anything it seemed a bit more shallow than BDO in some ways.
I'm fairly concerned with how open the over all layout of freeholds is. They look kind of bloated with far too much space. I think 1 acre could have fit all the structures your example freehold had here. And with that bloated space makes it far more attackable and easy to sneak up and gank people. It's yet another reason we really need security structures in the game as a generality.
You didn't give much of a look at processing so its hard to say if I'm disappointed here. I'll just wait for more information. But you are going to have to explain and do more with processing than 'press e to excite the crafting user base'.
I really like the idea of inns but think they are a solution in search of a problem. The problem is how limited housing is in the first place. Giving people temp houses does almost nothing to benefit and immerse the player. You aren't going to care about 'decorating a hotel room'. It's just there to 'make sure players don't fall behind' and I respect that.
Some of the views in game were gorgeous, it shows me there is potential for the game to look nice if you give your artists a little more freedom to be colorful and stylized.
I liked the slide show. I need you all to do that sort of thing more often as it really helps keep things clear and gets into the important systems design details. And to whichever person kept 'interrupting' with more details and explanations. THANK YOU YOU WERE GREAT KEEP INTERRUPTING TO CLARIFY DESIGNS!
Comments
I wouldn't like Freeholds to be on a timer. I also don't like bind on pickup stuff. I'm happy to be in a position to game the game and see what will happen. I also want to test the game before making a final decision. At least I can game the game for 9 months play time from my package. I don't have to sub if the game isn't what I expected. However, if I fall in love with my Enchanter I will end up no lifing anyway and I believe opportunities will come to experience most things.
To clarify i mean you get a rare item drop that allows you to do the quest. That is the item that will expire eventually (so people can't horde them). I'd also say they would be connected tot he area where you get them, so guilds can't buy of land in another area, and such. Though again I'm sure they have ideas in place to limit things.
Yeah. A quest based freehold would be cool. Much better than bidding for a freehold. I feel some design decisions are lazy and some people accept the laziness. Its all well and good to cut corners but cut corners create a circle of inadequacy.
I still say bidding on top of it, but not infinite bidding. I'd honestly take a note from BDO where the max bidding price can increase or decrease overtime. But also having a hard cap so prices are not set so only someone who played the market can own them or only powerful guilds. It will help make the playing field more fair and not encourage as much rmt. (though people that rmt and cheat for any reason and purposefully need to get the hard ban).
Yeah. I mean my old purchase plan was Freehold then Legendary Gear. Now its Legendary Gear then perhaps a freehold. It depends how much gold I can amass. I don't plan to become a citizen of a node either. Perhaps my guild will have a castle though. We prefer the castles to the nodes/freeholds. Not sure if a castle has freeholds attached though i doubt it.
Will be interesting how the guild one works, I wouldn't be surprised if you can do some processing there as well and they change things once they figured out their design goals.
But we will see, this year is sure to be a banger with new information haha.
2. Wil there be an option to retrain out of professions? If I max, say, lumber milling to master or higher, and then the freehold gets destroyed along with the node, I will lose the necessary infrastructure to make it work. It might become a dead skill for the foreseeable future.
I might like it. I will know for sure when I will play the game
[*] How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
I was expecting the crops to cover a larger area outside the freeholds. Would be more realistic. But maybe is ok if the player will decide to specialize and cover the entire area just with crops.
[*] How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
When milking the cow the chair just spawned under the character. I don't like that.
I would prefer to be placed in advance, maybe permanently and the cow to come nearby.
I also do not like how the chicken eggs were just laying on the ground visible from outside the pen. The player should to go and check to see if there are eggs inside each nest rather than just get close.
The wool gathering during sheering also was too minecraft style: the wool vanished suddenly instead of going through different stages and getting a little bit of wool at each step.
I wouldn't mind the wool quality to depend on what food the creature was eating and the tools used to collect.
The pig should be taken to a special butchery area to be killed.
The animals should not stay in one place. Should move randomly and their pens should require gates.
If they are attacked, all nearby animals should get scared and flee.
[*] What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
I would like defense buildings too, to help survive during sieges.
Or add a game mechanic + lore which would explain how and why the freehold protection works. To have to do something in the node too, maybe in the temple or mage tower to ensure a magic shield.
The fire in house should not stay on forever. I hope it will have some purpose too.
[*] Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
I like the concept as it is presented. Seems that players will have to cooperate and involve themselves into defending the node rather than compete with each-other.
Players will have a good reason to live in small nodes too, if they want a freehold.
I am excited!
[*] Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
Those jumping bunnies might shake the rider a bit too much.
After a four-hour car trip, they pulled up along the street and stopped in front of an old, green, two-story building: a mother, if she could be called that, a father, if he could be called that, and their first four children - two old enough to comprehend and remember, two too young. The baby and the toddler had been screaming most for most of the drive. The older two had been trying not to make noise, lest they be 'given something to cry about', again. A rickety, rusted old pickup truck was parked in the driveway, some sort of towing mechanism jutting out of the bed with a rusty hook hanging ominously from its end, on a chain attached to a hand crank. Black flies were swarming over whatever lay inside, but the tailgate was closed. Loud whirring and banging noises came from inside the building, and the smell of blood was in the air, though the children had not yet made the connection.
The family walked to the door, the father inserted the key, and pushed the door open. In the dim lighting of the entryway, a shiny, dark liquid trailed over the concrete from the door to a drain in the center of the room. A loud bang and a hydraulic hiss spurred into action a cacophony of movement. A refrigerator door to the side opened up and from a rail built into the ceiling, a chain began to rotate slowly. From the refrigerator, corpses hanging from hooks through their hind legs paraded into the front room, followed by a tall, burly man in a white apron, covered in blood - grandpa.
He didn't have time to stop and say hello. He walked over with a belt of butcher's knives and slit the throat of the first animal - a deer - to begin the skinning. Blood poured onto the floor and added to the remnants of the last carcass. Adeptly, he carved through the skin around the hind hooves, closest to the ceiling, then down to the groin and straight through the animal's belly until everything spilled out - blood, chunks, chords - everything. He followed up by pealing off the fur-covered skin at the top and ripping downward until the corpse was bare except for the skin hanging around the animal's neck, which he then finished cutting around and tore off the rest of the hide, flinging it to the side of the room - the start of a pile of many more.
The butcher pushed a button on the remote in his knife belt and the chain brought around the next animal - a pig. He repeated the process - first he slit the neck to start draining the blood, then around the hind hooves and through the belly to empty out the organs, then he violently pulled on the skin from ceiling to floor. He pulled too far this time and the skin around the neck snapped off. The corpse swung violently, knocking him down into the growing pool of blood and entrails, but it didn't bother him. He simply stood back up, cut the remaining skin off, tossed it to the side, and pushed the button to bring out the next animal - another deer, an elk, a cow, a pig, a deer, and on and on.
The boy watched in horror, and a horror it was. When the skinning was done, the old man heaved the carcasses onto a band saw table and began sawing through the remaining flesh and bone, segmenting the various parts into smaller pieces. Some would be packaged as is and sold. Some would be seasoned and smoked. Some would be ground up by a machine then pushed through tiny holes, coming out in thing strings, which would be patted together and sold as hamburger. Bits and pieces of flesh littered the floors. Blood flowed to drains from every corner. The squealing of saws and clanking of chains seemed without end. The heads of the animals? Sent off to be stuffed, like the bull elk head, the size of his whole body, hanging directly above his face in the dark, creaky room he was left alone in that night.
The creaking began to grow louder and changed into a loud crack. The wind whistled harder, more creaking, and another crack. And then, as a car drove by outside, lighting up the heavy trophy above, it began to tilt off of the wall, those eyes, those dead eyes that saw everything and nothing at all, making contact with the screaming boy as it came crashing down.
And this time the boy actually woke up, sweating, or maybe it was more than that. It's hard to remember trauma that my mind has made such tremendous efforts to remove from memory. But I did remember looking up to see that the trophy hadn't fallen. The stiff tongue still poked out between its yellow teeth, the enormous rack still covered most of the width of the room, and those eyes, those dead eyes that saw everything and nothing, were still staring right at me from above.
And why share this? Because that one scene shown in today's livestream - killing the pig - brought it all back up to the surface. I was shaking, sweating, becoming dizzy and nauseous. I have a very visceral reaction to past trauma, of which I had the misfortune to be subject to a lot throughout my life. For as long as I can remember, video games were my escape. I could leave reality behind. I didn't have to think about the horrors I'd seen or the brutality inflicted upon me. I could cast spells, fight monsters, engage competitively with other players from the safety of my home (I love PvP), and otherwise exist in a world where my mind was not forced to focus on the pros and cons of living.
With all of that said, I would like to just state that sometimes being too realistic is immersion-breaking. I am not trying to be a real-life butcher or murderer in video games. I actively avoid horror movies and gory games because I can't handle it. In some ways, my mind is very much still childlike because of my birth providers' stunted emotional maturity and the upbringing that turned into, and I relish the opportunity to play pretend in a world that does not emulate every tedious and undesirable aspect of my life. I have never had that problem in MMO's. I've never had that problem in any of the RPG's I've played. I've played many of the ones that are listed as inspirations for AoC, and many others as well. So, with all due respect for the creativity of the artists, designers, engineers, Intrepid team, and other players, I would appreciate it if we didn't try to make the killing of innocent animals realistic. If I have to hunt a deer or other monster with spells and they poof into ash, conveniently leaving behind a ribeye steak, I can handle that. I really don't want to kill or happen upon others killing farm animals in realistic fashion. At the very least, please add in specific child-friendly options so that I can turn off this brand of butchery without compromising the quality of the rest of the game.
And now for the questions you actually asked...
How do you feel about the size-and-shape inventory management system?
Not impressed. Inventory management is not a rewarding system in any game. Please don't make it tedious. Unlimited items in a one-square slot with auto-sorting is ideal. I don't want to play Tetris or spend time moving things around to make them fit or discarding stacks of items because I hit some arbitrary limit. It's bad game design and there is an opportunity to be better here.
How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
Aside from the freehold itself, yes. Gathering is not rewarding - why does it take so long? Are there plans to make gathering faster or instant? I'm really hoping to not have to do virtual chores instead of focusing on quests, combat, and other fun features of the game.
How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
See above. Maybe have animals that you care for and every so often you get materials sent to your mailbox. No need to make it traumatic.
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
Can we take a step back for a bit and think about the fact that housing, crafting, and gathering are not for everyone? Some people - like me - want to grind, quest, explore, PvP, etc, and not play Mediaeval Sims. It is starting to sound like, not only will it be long and tedious to get a freehold, it will be necessary to even be on par with other players in general, and it will be unfairly withheld from players that aren't able to play the most hours, join the largest guilds, etc. Systems like this already exist in other games and they are pretty universally disliked. Please, no.
As far as decorating though - anything and everything - go wild. For people that enjoy that part of the game, give them every opportunity to live their fantasy and build and create to their hearts' content. Just don't force people to be part of it if they don't want to (ie making the best crafting, gathering, etc, only part of a freehold that is not achievable by all players), and don't make it impossible to be a part of for those that do.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
The concept of being able to build it out in the wild is fun. Other than that, no, not really. This was a pretty disappointing livestream and direction for the game to take overall. Plot limits, bidding, super exclusive crafting and gathering - just all bad. I am very much for nearly everything this game has put out so far. I love the open-world PvP, the risk vs reward ideas, etc, but this is not that. This is... I don't know that this is. Bad?
Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
I think I've gone on enough. Thanks for your time and consideration. For the trolls out there, please be kind.
If this is going to be the current system with freeholds just get rid of them and replace with with huge Guild Quarters/Halls for clan leaders to establish for their guildmates, which would create more friction for guild wars to happen. I don't like not being able to achieve Master or Grandmaster without being able to strike lucky and get a freehold. If so make other routes in order to achieve M/GM for crafting.
Overall, I think the game is changing its vision/design somewhat from when I bought Leader of Men in kickstarter all those years ago, am I happy about it? I don't know, will have to test out in A2, but thanks for transparency
I have no problem with the fact that someone who plays more also has more, better armor, faster mounts, a bigger house etc.!
But to exclude players with less time from a system would deagradate Aoc for me to "meh, maybe I'll take a look".
I hope of course that I misunderstand something and in the end every player who wants can have at least a small house with the shown possibilities.
Thanks for all the work so far.
The problems...
First of all - like earlier comment mentioned, it does come across as if IS has not done the math. Freeholds are super limited. Even instanced housing, that is worse in every way than a freehold, are not enough in numbers to cover the remaining players.
Second of all, like many many many comment stated, making freeholds into an economy bidding war is terrible. From every aspect.
1) you are very much inviting RMT.
2) you are inviting guild monopoly.
3) and this is the most important part - you are making it near impossible for new/late players to get a proper shot at the game. It will be like hoping in on a already started up V Rising server - all the lands are taken, the rich has the best defenses and generate money almost passively in a way that is impossible to catch up to. You are gatekeeping the new/late players in a way that is going to be extremely harmful in the long run.
Third of all - the entire system makes me skeptical about the whole idea. See, as I understand it the entire idea is that node wars will even these things out every once in a while - but if Freeholds are such an important privilege - you will *definitely* have the elite making alliances to make sure to protect each other's lands. I fear that node wars will not be in the interest of the most active/rich/commited players - and thus, there will be no to very few successful sieges against the "royality" of the server. All the while small upstarting nodes will probably get deleted almost instantly unless they are a part of said elite.
I know IS wanted the game to be realistic in many ways, but this is taking the absolutely worst parts of reality and putting it into a game.
Two possible steps in the right direction:
* Advertise Freehold as multiplayer homes. If Freeholds (and instanced nodes for that matter) act more like small guild halls, then a lot of issues might be resolved. And honestly? The more the better at this point, when looking at player numbers. I'd even consider allowing as many as 10-15 or even 20 players using the same freehold considering the enitre node-wars-destroys-everything aspect. By allowing people to develop their "base" together, you're making the whole gate in gatekeeping a lot wider. People like myself that do not like crafting that much, but love decorating and level housing features will be an asset to people like my fiance and his brothers who enjoy crafting. I want to be a hunter/tamer, my fiances brothers want to try animal husbandary - if we can work together to make that work on ONE plot of freehold land then everything becomes more doable than if we'd have to have 3ish freeholds. This will also lessen the competition for the solo players which in turn makes freeholds no longer impossible for the solo player.
* Do not restrict all forms top tier crafting to freeholds alone. Do not kill the entire life skilling community!!! Freeholds seem to be mandatory for anybody who wants to do animal husbandary and/or farming. This is bad enough, given how limited the access to freeholds will be with the current design. Do not limit people running stuff like alchemy, carpentry etc to freeholds as well. By allowing people to do full scale professions in instanced housing, then you'll reduce the power curve of the freehold which opens up accessability. Do not worry about freeholds being "unwanted" in any way - it is still a MAJOR gatekeeper.
* Have a top value for bidders, and if multiple people reach the top bid, then have a random generator give the freehold to one of them. - To avoid the prices becoming unbearing for the non-minority and to give people a chance at getting a freehold (although it might be really small due big communities just placing hundreds of bids, it is better than none.)
If nothing changes - and if I even can convince my friends to keep an interest in this game after this showcase - I'll probably look to play without housing as much as possible. I guess I'll make an attempt as a homeless wanderer. :'] And if that doesn't work, then I guess I'll just have to wait for another MMORPG to see if there is a better fit!
Is this still the case or not?
You are selling (and I am Buying) skins for content that I believed would be available to me.
I imagine less populous / popular areas may have dynamic turn over of freeholds and opportunities but over time the main nodes that remain static will only have ownership by the elite wealthy!
The pig dying is more rough than it needs to be. Instead I would like to see a more "magical" killing. For example the breeder pulls the essence from the animal instantly killing it. As if they were shutting off the animals brain. No need for the sound, additionally the animation can just be a quite legs buckling as it sinks to the ground before despawning. (If you wanted a light magical sound could play but that is just a design decision)
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
I would really like to have a large hearth with a LARGE roaring fire in it.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
The immersion that freeholds will bring to everyone not just freehold owners.
It ensures points aren't accidentally missed, and reduces the chance for miscommunications.
Love it, and please do more, ESPECIALLY on a node focused showcase!
I think it's fine, especially when you factor in that different bag types will have different dimensions to more easily fit certain resource types.
Otherwise I thought how the current plots were assembled was fine. I do wonder if object placement (planting, putting down buildings) will be "snap to grid" or "free placement" or both.
I would like to see value with infrastructure to support the farm plots.
ie. Fences to stop wild animals from taking crops, irrigation channels or sprinklers for better yield and faster growth.
It would be interesting to have tilled soil randomly sprout seeds that are native to that area if nothing specific is planted in a while. This is mimicking bird poop from passing birds germinating in random plots of soil.
Will there be crop spoilage if not harvested in time? I'm personally against that, but not very much so.
I like this.
I would like to see specialised (along side generic) enclosures for specific types of beasts.
I would like to see peaceful interaction options for all animals (even some that are skill/stat checks such as trying to pet a CrabFish)
Specific animations for each type of beast/animal non-leathal harvesting.
I thought slaughtering was fine as is, but I do recognise people can have issues and would consider a "Gore and Slaughter" setting on game startup which prompts first time players into opting in/out of it.
I would have it though that you need to take the carcass to a butchering table to get the skin and meat. Don't have those elements just appear as loot. Perhaps have lower yield meat and skin with a skinning knife vs proper butcher setup.
Similar to crops, I would like to see upgrades to livestock raising such as hiring a herder to occasionally walk your herds and feed them, fend off wild animals, give immediate treatment for any maladies etc...
Static animals are immersion breaking. Allow them to roam a little bit but not wonder too far from home.
Gosh... give us everything!
Allow us to lay down paths and roads.
Allow us to have flower fields, trellises and other "not specific to harvesting" nature things.
Allow us to place down markers to mark the edges of our freehold claim so we can mold our dwellings to the terrain features how we wish, so long as the total area is contiguous and is equal to or less than the freehold entitlement.
I would like to build walls with gates that I can set Access Controls on.
I would like to place down lights and torches of whatever colors I want. (ie. a green flame torch or a ghost blue wisp wall lantern)
I would like general decorations like fountains, statues, and other things that my tired brain cant think of right now.
Interactable and programmable elements would be amazing, but happy to see that kind of stuff later.
I would like to be able to place down a freehold (with permission) right next to friends or guild mates to assemble tiny towns and communities out in the wilderness. As long as permissions are open, allow us to construct walls and paths across our FH boundaries.
Super interested in how the buliding tech tree's shake out.
I would like to ask for clarification though if only 1 upgrade can be taken at each tech tree tier?
If so, I would ask that that be reconsidered.
I don't mind if the costs go up dramatically, but let me weigh up between investing heavily in 1 building vs making multiple for different tech.
Something like:
Cost of upgrade = Base cost * ((Number of upgrades already taken in this tier) + 1)
Also wouldn't mind in this system if the final tier is locked at only 1. Have it so that you can only take multiple upgrades in a tier only if that tier is NOT the highest one unlocked.
I am concerned about the bidding nature for ALL freeholds. I've been playing a bit of Albion Online a little bit lately and the crafting stations in town follow this bidding system. It's quite unfair where the rich only get richer cementing their place whilst completely locking out others.
I would consider different sized Freeholds where there are a set of fixed priced smaller holds, and a handful of the largest ones which go to auction.
ie:
1) Freehold small deed (500 stock), 0.5 Ha, 2000g + whatever questlines and favor needed.
2) Freehold medium deed (100 stock), 1 Ha, 5000g + FH Small deed + new quest + whatever
3) Freehold large deed (20 stock), 1.5 Ha, 20000g + FH Medium deed + new quest + whatever
4) Freehold estate deed (5 stock), 2 Ha, Auction + must place down a FH Large deed as collateral.
These are just spit-balled numbers but I think it's enough to get the idea across.
I found the blue minable minerals just sitting there a little bit jarring.
Something that irradiant I would expect underground or in a crypt. Minerals found on the surface are generally weathered and broken down. I would like to see something where traces of that mineral are found in the surface rocks either just from seeing it with the naked eye, breaking open surface rocks or surveying. The large pure deposits then can be found nearby in either a cave or a large rock or in a cliff face or something.
Mining large rocks in a single gathering cycle seems too fast. It would be good to see gradual breakdown of the rock/mineral of that size over like a minute, with several resource return stages in that time.
Can multiple people mine a single node at once?
That's all I can brain dump for now, might think of something more after a nights rest.
Ok, make your own stream, spend years building a faithul following and a solid brand, have the charisma to actually make people want to simp for you and voilà! easy!
Let's be real, there aren't that many "streamer3000"s that you'll come across, and if you do, you'll worship the ground they walk upon to get your character on 1 frame on one of their streams.
Whilst I agree with you on not liking the bidding system, I think you need to check yourself if you're suggesting that streamers with hoards of rabid followers are dime a dozen and there'll be no room for small groups cause twitch will own all of Vera.
There are still couple things that worries me.
I would hope that when players are using cosmetic skins on freehold buildings players could use the same skin into different types of building so they could match each other.
The second thing that worries me are those blue rocks that we saw at the begining of the preview. I didn't like those rocks' cube like shapes and they stood out too much in the environment. I think that they didn't match very well in the environment and I would suggest to change their appearence into more natural rock shape (more round shaped). Also they would look better inside some caves.
Overall I liked this livestream very much and especially the character art looked fantastic! Those Niküan dwarves looked amazing and that Felgaz Stalker was stunning! I can't wait to see Dünir dwarves' new models!
On topic of under realm i would love to see 1 or 2 nodes in a large cavern underground that could become metro if upgraded would add for a unique seiging mechanics with underground fighting with tighter quarters with the cave systems and things. Castle could also work too.
These nodes could become tradehubs too from people cutting through the underrealm to advoid choke points and things aswell.
I would rather it take work via long quest line kinda thing over a RNG drop, I rather they go to players who work towards it than get lucky with a rare drop.
Rare drops could be higher teir building and cool items though for housing that has some impact that i am fine with.
I love this. I was always worried about the dynamic between mules caravans and how much the player can carry and this pretty much solves that issue.
How do you feel about the systems shown thus far for planting crops on your Freehold? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
Crops are not particularly interesting. I just hope they are balanced against other building options. Current implementation looks good
How do you feel about raising livestock and collecting resources from them? Does anything in particular concern or excite you regarding this?
Same as the crops
What kind of customization do you want with your Freehold, or buildings on your Freehold?
Maybe a smaller house or room options for family member where only the selected person can edit that space. This would give a person that does not own the freehold themselves a space they can call their own. This might help with the issues people have about scarcity of freeholds.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview?
Just being able to see freeholds in the open world.
Is there anything in particular you’re concerned about regarding what was shown with the Freehold Preview
I just hope it does not make the world feel cramped. Just the general balance of profit vs cosmetic decorations. Maybe increased taxes per income generating building to offset how beneficial it is.
Be careful about making an informal system like paying someone for temporary access to your freehold into a formal system. An informal system is a social experience and a formal one is a game mechanic that is expected. I do not want people to be able to AFK and automate sustaining their freehold by letting people pay to use it. It would discourage the natural cycle of freeholds changing hands and instead would reward squatters who are not actually interested in owning and sustaining a freehold. Treat a freehold like the investment it is and not as an easy way to make AFK income. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/55898/the-freehold-lending-and-borrowing-is-annoying-and-why-it-should-probably-stay-that-way
If there really is a need to change the freehold system from your older descriptions then please take a look at games like Pax Dei and how they do player settlements
It's not just streamers, I did mention guilds which are to a degree worse than streamers. However, you're right, my main issue is the bidding aspect. I used an extreme scenario because that's what people tend to look at more. I just hope Intrepid considers this.
1. Can anyone take the crops and animal products or can it be set to only friends or clan mates ect?
2. can we have different shapes? i circular freehold would be nice to have
3. will there be possibilities for a seaside freehold where we can attach a dock for people to access i, or maybe trade through it.
- Customized signs where player can draw, write or add image aka ArchAge Crests.
- Flags a lot of flags and banners, love them.
SUGGESTION
Also would like to suggest a little but wery neat in my opinion improvement of interface animation when you loot an item. Right now looted item just appering on the bottom right which is ok but i think it would FEEL better if theres would be a more entertaining animation for that.
Example
All of that happens with some soothing pleasing sound, maybe some peniata/crystal like sound.
I've seen similar stuff in many games and i think animations like this add more satisfying feeling when you loot something and giving you a little bit of dopamine.
As a further note, I know I'm not alone when I say that animal death is not something I personally wish to be exposed to in this way. I think the above paragraph should be taken as a baseline, and if possible add an additional setting available to those of us with bad experiences involving animal death or that are more sensitive to remove the visual and auditory aspect of the slaughter so it looks like the animal simply despawned.
It may be better the side with caution on this.
Also, an "are you sure" message would be nice for slaughtering animals so we don't accidentally end up with beef when we meant to get milk, or for misclicks etc.
It was a nice and encouraging dev stream on Freehold's yesterday. Thank you.
Some thoughts i had:
1) It would be nice when you haul gatherable mats like stone and lumber to your freehold plot of land that they become visually deposited in a holding area that visually grows larger the more you hold up to a maximum. Think stacks of hay or Valheim lumber stacks. There seemed to even be an outside square holding area on the freehold we saw that could be used for it. I like the idea of visually seeing your working materials youve gathered rather than placing a UI icon of 400x stone from player inventory in a storage box in player housing. You would approach the outside material storage area and collect x amount of mats needed for withdraw rather than your chest.
2) Maybe gatherer's could wear a backpack that expands in visual size the more you carry, or if using a mule w/buggy the materials get piled visually onto a cart that stacks in size as accumulated?
3) Vistas are on point and its great to see that distance rendering doesn't become heavily blurred like in New World.
4) Tree cutting is looking pretty good, though not believable with a few chops of a small axe for the large trunks shown. May not be a big issue, idk, just looked a bit odd felling a big tree with a few swings of a small hand axe. I also don't want it to be an IRL sim so it may be fine as is.
5) How can players with or without freehold permits observe where available plots of land are to claim? Will they have a visual boundary or will we have map indications of some kind? How can we scout for optimal locations?
6) Freeholds look so promising I really hope you bring back Ship-building in the future. I'd dig owning a plot near or adjacent to a harbor to build ships from. It could be really magnificent watching a ship being built visually in phases and could be a landmark/tentpole for the game (thinking compiling materials, drawing the frame, building the skeleton on a stand, etc.
7) Roughly what will the minimum distance be between freeholds?
8) I was hoping to see some skins demo'd on freehold buildings to get a better idea of customization. Its still a bit confusing what building skins can be applied to what building types and if there are restrictions. Some of the skins have unique shapes that don't follow the squared freehold sectional layout shown. How will they fit? Shrink to fit or will you be able to fit less plots and buildings if using circular/irregularly shaped buildings from skins?
9) Do inactive freeholds get recycled ever from a system besides player destruction in a node siege? How do players from a node get access to buy them who start later in the game's life? It seems like the best time to get in on them will be at server launch and the permit prices will be exorbitant as servers mature. How do players who are citizens of a node uproot a long-term inactive freehold owner? Do they need to move to a different node and gather forces to siege their old node? Do they need to hire a merc army to declare a siege on their node in the hopes of destroying the deadbeat freehold owner? The mechanisms to evict an inactive freehold owner may need to be defined. Potentially the node's Governor should have authority to evict in cases where a property owner is inactive for x amount of days as a solution.
10) Is there a maximum freehold permit cap per server? As nodes are sieged and destroyed it sounds like more permits will keep getting added as lower stage nodes advance in that vacuum. Will there be an ever growing amount of permits and a finite amount of freehold plots to place them? If so, what is the value of a permit with no available land to place it on?
11) I'm concerned that RMT will dominate the bidding for land and that would be a major turn off. Until Intrepid has an iron-clad grip on how to prevent RMT I don't think it wise to plan to move forward with a system that will 100% be controlled and abused by RMT'ers to purchase these properties at values individual players following TOS will not be able to self-fund in a open bidding process early on in the game's lifespan.
New World as an example is a RMT haven and the pvp warring community heavily gate-keeps content on all servers with the aid of RMT by buying gear advantage in large part. They're often the better skilled players, that's not the point, but the point is if there is a way to get an advantage by swiping competitive players will exploit it. Its difficult to have faith in gaming companies to control RMT as no game I've played has successfully done so. If a player is found guilty of buying gold via RMT will their property be revoked and turned in to open-bidding? This seems like a can of worms no one would like to manage. Is it worth going down that path and having to handle all of the player concerns once the game goes live? Is there a better system for obtaining permits that can be received that has less inherent risk of abuse while also achieving rarity the system needs due to map size limitations?
12) I think players should be safe from pvp on their freeholds outside of node sieges. I also think once your caravan reaches your property boundary it should be safe from would be bandits (not just your house).
13) How do you launch a caravan from your Freehold as they won't have caravansary buildings (from what I know) like a node is slated to have?
14) It would be interesting to find out how many Freeholds will be available to bid on per stage of node development.
15) I'm not a fan of the Tetris inventory system design. I'd rather it go by weight. I find the tetris inventory management type systems overly tedious and cumbersome. I don't think they add value to the game and are akin to the thought process behind why Ammunition/arrows aren't included in the game. They're unnecessary for a mmo. I think any time you're thinking of introducing a convoluted inventory management system the likely result is that it will have a poor outcome. New World's inventory management is horrendous (though not tetris). I don't want to do a puzzle when I'm looking through my inventory. I just want to stuff something in a bag, or retrieve something quickly that I need in a moment. Tetris inventory management would be a survival game aspect and a turn off. Make it clean, don't make it confusing.
Good stream, looking forward to seeing what's next.
Farming: So we weren't really told much of anything about the farming here so a lot of it is speculation and extrapolation.
Aesthetics: Everything just looks much too tidy and uniform and this is not the models fault. BDO tends to have this same issue, but they solve it through the actual placement of your crops being possible to make more irregular and through having the surrounding foliage and grass on wherever you are planting be part of the furrow. So when you get to the polishing phase, my recommendation is to go a similar route. Don't make furrows these 'realistic' things, make them more like a garden where things can be placed a little more organically and haphazardly, but keep the neat and tidy arrangements you showed today as a preset that any player can achieve within the more freeform system. You mentioned being able to mix and match crops in a furrow but it will look awful to do so without a freeform placement system.
Mechanics of Theft: So I am really glad the team seems to have taken my criticism from years ago about how we needed the ability to steal from farmers or threaten them in some way, but there are some flaws with the current intended implementation. First of all nothing about security or defenses were noted and I think that is a real shame. You spoke a lot about the ability to customize your freehold, but let's face it, if you intend to introduce THAT much risk to a person using their freehold, no one is going to want to do it without options for more security. Guard NPC's and Pet monsters that when killed give the attacking players a small amount of corruption would be a great start. We should also think about giving players blueprints for walls, turrets, magical clouds of debuff effects and explosions, general traps, even ballistae. What is the saying? The home is a persons castle? Why not just roll with that now that freeholds are big enough to be a landed nobles estate. You definitely have enough room to do so and you will be implementing similar mechanics for node seiges and defenses anyway.
Over all I'm glad some risk was added to the system, but think we need ways to mitigate it somewhat.
Mechanics of Growing: It sounds like you will have water and fertilizer management which is great, but I didn't hear anything about pest management. I think you should reconsider that if you are not going to have it, as pest management is one of the few areas of farming that you can really lean into the interactivity of the craft. BDO for example will have occasional quick time events where a mole will suddenly spawn while you are farming and you can chase them down to get some small resources back. The sudden-ness of it makes you really have to pay attention if you want to maximize your gains. It didn't sound like water management was going to be very important beyond 'hey water this' either, although you didn't say much about it. I feel like the water management system is the main area where you can make freehold placement and where the furrows are placed on your freehold really integrated and immersive. I'd be quite surprised if you could grow tomatos in a dryer area just because you can spam a water bucket.
I highly encourage your developers look into BDO's system for insight on how to do that. In BDO right now I have to worry about how often it rains and where my farm is on the water table and what happens to rain after a storm relative to the precipitation in the area. If you can't get that level of detail in Ashes, I believe over all the game will just be outright inferior for farming as opposed to BDO. You can get PvP on a farm in BDO. There is a ton of cost/fuel management in BDO. There is a lot of planning and interactivity in BDO's farming relatively. Oh and of course in BDO anyone can be a master farmer if they want to put in the blood sweat and tears into it, where as this is not the case in Ashes. Not everyone who wants the farm will be able to farm and not everyone of those actual farmers is going to be able to achieve mastery... No matter how much they may want to. There is nothing special about Ashes interactivity at the moment as it's mostly just 'press e to harvest and nothing further' which by the way I really hope is a place holder because wow is that not immersive. If you are going to make farming such an achievement I would hope you still made it fun to do and didn't just cut corners because you don't expect people who actually want really immersive crafting to get into it in the first place. Be better than BDO please. You have the pieces to do so.
Mechanics of Livestock:This is where press e to harvest better be a place holder the most. If milking cows isn't a rythm minigame like BDO what are you even doing here. I'm fine with slaughtering livestock as that is where food comes from. There are other animals you can raise like chickens, sheep, and dairy cows available if you want to raise livestock but don't want to kill them. I'm sure you can throw in fantasy elements here as well to spice things up a bit. Maybe there are turtles that grow nodules of fruit or meat on them that you can harvest from the bushes on their backs. We already know some turtles in Verra can get quite big and have symbiotic plants on their shells already.
Mechanics of Storage: Ugh, tetris AND stacks? Stacks and limited slots in inventory were already going to far and well enough for 'making you think about what you are choosing' and 'creating moments of pause where you have to make decisions on your inventory'. Heck I'd take stacks and weight like in BDO over this nonsense. More over this adds a layer of tedium to freehold crafting in general I wasn't expecting. If you don't have a way for crafting while at a structure to avoid some of these issues via an 'infinite temporary slot while working' things are going to be really obnoxious when you reach a certain point of overflow or complexity in your crafting or processing. You mentioned having bags that could circumvent some of this nonsense, but that isn't good enough if you have to literally go out in the world to hunt or buy said bags. They should be 'buyable' at a freehold without any interaction with anyone else if you are so insistent on this system because that level of inconvenience while crafting is a pain. Believe me, it happens in Minecraft, BDO, and FFXI and THEY aren't NEARLY as restricted as what you are presenting.
Mechanics of Crafting: So in the slide show, which I really appreciated by the way, we saw a bunch of slides with crafting menus and I cannot tell you how disappointed I am with the implications here. Menu based crafting is the lowest form of crafting imaginable. It breaks my immersion on SEVERAL levels. Crafting is supposed to be a very involved physical process. There are very few acts where I'd be 'looking at a ledger or manual' in artisan professions. I hope, therefore, that there is more to it than what we saw in the sneak peak. I'm ok with menus when it fits immersion. Planning what to craft and setting up all your materials is fine. Planning and picking your skills in a menu is fine. But that's about the limit. Keep crafting largely in world and figure out a way to make menus small and not full screen. If there is too much detail to make it small, you probably need to rethink the menu and presentation!
Overall Impression: The game has really gone backwards in it's aesthetic. The freeholds were so brown and muddy. Everything lacked color and pop. You went full war craft with your combat and armor aesthetics and general lighting models so I'm surprised things were so 'gritty and realistic' here (and not in a good way.)
The freeholds themselves were far too 'tidy' looking due to the dirt road system. You should really try to figure out if there is a way to integrate the foliage you are placing the freehold on with the structures you put on top of them or all freeholds will look very same-y.
I wasn't really impressed with anything here. It looked like a slightly concentrated form of BDO's crafting systems and furniture interactivity for the most part and I already have that experience. If anything it seemed a bit more shallow than BDO in some ways.
I'm fairly concerned with how open the over all layout of freeholds is. They look kind of bloated with far too much space. I think 1 acre could have fit all the structures your example freehold had here. And with that bloated space makes it far more attackable and easy to sneak up and gank people. It's yet another reason we really need security structures in the game as a generality.
You didn't give much of a look at processing so its hard to say if I'm disappointed here. I'll just wait for more information. But you are going to have to explain and do more with processing than 'press e to excite the crafting user base'.
I really like the idea of inns but think they are a solution in search of a problem. The problem is how limited housing is in the first place. Giving people temp houses does almost nothing to benefit and immerse the player. You aren't going to care about 'decorating a hotel room'. It's just there to 'make sure players don't fall behind' and I respect that.
Some of the views in game were gorgeous, it shows me there is potential for the game to look nice if you give your artists a little more freedom to be colorful and stylized.
I liked the slide show. I need you all to do that sort of thing more often as it really helps keep things clear and gets into the important systems design details. And to whichever person kept 'interrupting' with more details and explanations. THANK YOU YOU WERE GREAT KEEP INTERRUPTING TO CLARIFY DESIGNS!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw