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You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Some speculation and napkin math on how many freeholds can be in the game.
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
From the livestream Steven said this (slightly paraphrased):
The landmass of Verra is 480 km2, excluding the underrealm, which adds around 100 km2. Underrealm freeholds seems to be a thing too, so let's add that for a total of 580 km2.
1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers
Obviously a lot of land is unusable for freeholds, since it's covered by roads, nodes, mountains, POIs, dungeons, etc. For the sake of argument let's put it at 300 km2 usable for freeholds. Just over half the landmass.
What "almost county size" and "many, many, many acres" means is really hard to guess honestly, but let's say 50 acres for a parcel at a minimum. 50 acres is around 0.202 km2.
If we have a total of 300 km2 to play with that's 300/0.202 = 1482 parcels of land, and thus potentially that many freeholds as well.
That's not a horribly low amount, but for a game with up to 50,000 accounts per server, that's still only 1 in 33 that gets a freehold. I kind of doubt the 50k accounts per server though, so let's put it at 25k accounts max, which means there are enough freeholds for 1 in 16 accounts or so.
We can play with the numbers a little: If we get 400 km2 total parcel land and 50 acre parcels, we get 1980 freeholds.
If the parcels are 100 acres instead of 50 we obviously only get half the number of freeholds.
A big positive for this approach is that we won't be getting freehold cities dominating the landscape, so from a visual fidelity point of view, limiting the number and proximity of the freeholds is definitely the right move.
It also absolutely kills the dreams of many time-casual players if only 1 out of 16 players can get a freehold, and it might promote a huge demand for buying RMT gold, especially since the freehold plots can be sold by other players.
On the flipside, it's also going to drive people to destroy more nodes so freehold slots might free up.
- Each Zone of Influence has designated large parcels of land that are catered to POIs or are thematically relevant to the area.
- You can bid on those almost county size areas where you can then place your freehold within.
- Freeholds are now 1.5 acres, where they used to be 0.5 acres.
- The parcels are "many, many, many acres" in size.
The landmass of Verra is 480 km2, excluding the underrealm, which adds around 100 km2. Underrealm freeholds seems to be a thing too, so let's add that for a total of 580 km2.
1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers
Obviously a lot of land is unusable for freeholds, since it's covered by roads, nodes, mountains, POIs, dungeons, etc. For the sake of argument let's put it at 300 km2 usable for freeholds. Just over half the landmass.
What "almost county size" and "many, many, many acres" means is really hard to guess honestly, but let's say 50 acres for a parcel at a minimum. 50 acres is around 0.202 km2.
If we have a total of 300 km2 to play with that's 300/0.202 = 1482 parcels of land, and thus potentially that many freeholds as well.
That's not a horribly low amount, but for a game with up to 50,000 accounts per server, that's still only 1 in 33 that gets a freehold. I kind of doubt the 50k accounts per server though, so let's put it at 25k accounts max, which means there are enough freeholds for 1 in 16 accounts or so.
We can play with the numbers a little: If we get 400 km2 total parcel land and 50 acre parcels, we get 1980 freeholds.
If the parcels are 100 acres instead of 50 we obviously only get half the number of freeholds.
A big positive for this approach is that we won't be getting freehold cities dominating the landscape, so from a visual fidelity point of view, limiting the number and proximity of the freeholds is definitely the right move.
It also absolutely kills the dreams of many time-casual players if only 1 out of 16 players can get a freehold, and it might promote a huge demand for buying RMT gold, especially since the freehold plots can be sold by other players.
On the flipside, it's also going to drive people to destroy more nodes so freehold slots might free up.
6
Comments
If I get my freehold 'permit' from my region's Metro but my plot is all the way out past a Town...
And the Metro gets destroyed but the City between me and it is still standing...
What happens to my Freehold?
Yip Promotes RMT & take the Inventory change to Tarkov style that promotes Bot usage to level since it gimps XP & collection.
But on the freehold side of things, there are options I suspect they are going be level instances meaning they can actually put more than 1 at each location in future. Displaying the highest tier one per location. While that isn't there plan now IT IS AN OPTION!
From the Wiki:
So you might keep it as if nothing happened if it just falls under the vassal node's ZOI now. Unless they changed it. I assume you would have to do a quest or something for the new node within that week though, but maybe it's just automatic.
That's a really interesting outcome since that might mean 'different Random freeholds are in danger and others aren't' based on where the owner is a citizen of or got their plot registration from.
I don't think we actually had citizenship and Freehold Placement tied together, but that's another solution.
And with the general design being skewed towards parties and close-knit communities, I think that we can count 1 freehold per ~8 people on a server. So if there's ~1k freehold spots (my current theory) that'd mean ~8k people will have a freehold to use and benefit from.
The remaining however many people will have to either deal with apartments or lay siege to some nodes in hopes of grabbing themselves some land. Which seems to be "working as intended", in terms of everchanging node life on a server.
Splitting the costs (both of purchase and of taxes) between 8 people would also lessen the shock of loss, in case their node does fall and the freehold gets destroyed. Which could potentially increase the player retention in the long run.
Intrepid just gotta find a way to push people towards socializing in a positive way rather than a "you either party up or you can't play".
Yup, this is my thought as well.
After the stream today this is very much my opinion freeholds are group content, you select your family members carefully from amongst your guild mates/friends with likeminded goals as to what they desire from a freehold and then pool their resources to make it happen.
Large guilds and large alliances (maybe centered around streamers) will be helped to get a freehold.
Streamers get real money from their supporters anyway. Is it bad If they sell freeholds cheaply to their followers?
Even if the large guild leader is not a streamer, is it bad if the guild helps guild members?
The game can be made to be streamer friendly or streamer hostile.
Makes sense.
Additionally, nodes can build apartments and building these housing buildings will be attractive to nodes. Nodes need citizens to grow and level up and apartments enable citizens so they will be almost essential for large nodes to build lots of apartments and (perhaps) price then cheaply.
Freeholds are very attractive, but there will be lots of housing besides them. This might double the available housing (or more!), which impacts these calculations.
I fully expect any resale of freeholds to also be a bidding system. Direct sales to another player would be a horrible way to do it. It's bad enough that the bidding system combined with the scarcity promotes RMT, but direct sales would take it to 11. We'd see freeholds for sale directly on the net for hundreds or thousands of dollars. With a bidding system they at least can't do that, because anyone with enough gold can win the bid.
If players can give each other gold to help buy things which they would otherwise never be able to buy by their own effort, the prerequisites are there to create debate if the game is fair or not.
One thing feels unfair to me. Some players say they bought freehold cosmetics.
It can happen that they will never end up owning one.
I would really prefer to help such players get their freeholds and enjoy a better looking freehold than none of us to have one.
Oh wow, that's bad. He really needs to change that.
Also, in-node housing provides different utility, so maybe the crafters will be going for those instead of for the freeholds? They are changing the amount of in-node housing as well, which we'll learn more about next week.
And future Ember refunds for freehold skins, for the people mad about the freehold thing.
Piggies?
I might have missed that one. I'll take your word for it
Is that recent information and are you sure you interpreted it correctly?? Contradicts with what was said in 2020 and is still quoted on both the Freeholds and the Cities wikia entry.
The cities entry says *buildings in cities* can be resold to other players directly after already built and owned by a player. Real estate that doesn't have that function, which is the category that Freeholds belonged to in 2020, may only be resold to the node owner.
48:00-49:25
Makes more sense that way. Otherwise the auction system would be a farce once the server is populated.
Lex is sick now so probably didn't have enough energy/time to update everything on the wiki.
The sandal lord is very flip floppy
Thanks for raising this. a key point that perhaps could have been raised in the monthly talk and certainly something they should probably raise to help clarity
Would like to see some distinction between domestic freehold areas and open wilderness.