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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
The exact thing that Steven said won't exist for some reason. Maintenance costs.
It doesn't even have to be exactly maintenance.
If you want to lean hard into the PvX aspect, 'security', 'fuel', 'transportation issues'.
To vastly oversimplify, we either get:
'Some number of people upset that their Freehold Upkeep costs (time or money, preferably time) are too high, who then ask for help'
OR
'Some much smaller number of people with no complaints once they have their Freehold and a much larger number of people who would want to have one even with Upkeep costs, complaining because they can never get one to begin with'.
Please don't argue with "it's not for everyone" - yes i get that but you shouldnt justify every bad game design with "it's not for everyone". If you're gatekeeping everything from normal players the game will be dead fast. You need at least some appeal to casuals
50,000 the potential server cap
It doesn't really matter whether by scarcity or initial cost, or upkeep.
You show people what they "can have" and then create systems that prevent them from actually having them... It doesn't generally go well.
Complain about casuals all you want, but they're going to be paying the same monthly subscription, but getting a whole lot less for it. Both in cost per hour, and content.
My recommendation for "housing" is make the instanced apartments widely available and more desirable to the masses than the Freeholds.
To what extend are these cost though, either its not that big a deal and you have a overload of freeholds anyway and it breaks the game.
Or
The cost are high enough where you don't' make a profit making it feel almost pointless to have one. And by chance people find ways where that isn't a issue down the road it will again lead to a broken game unless they further increase the cost.
You can say this is the most easy way to go about it for them without breaking immersion. Though at the same time you build the highest tier processing so its going to be something to contest over as well.
If this was just a PvE game I'd agree with you but since it is pvx there is more to it.
Come on... Guild members are also normal people.
Casuals can join guilds too. Unless for some reason they hate guilds.
This is the thing with some people that are the most vocal. They want to be social players and not join groups, forced to be in one node or join guilds. But also want all the best things and think naturally they get it. It is starting to click they are at a disadvantage as a more casual or solo type player. and they don't want that.(Though there are still more things we need o learn about node and obtaining them so things are a bit incomplete)
There are almost no people like that on these forums who are also vocal.
Please name one vocal person on these forums that is not basically a guild leader or guild officer.
That sounds pretty rude to start name dropping.
you messed up the quotes >_>
you know, a game where you log in, do some dailies, then run an instance with your friends is everything that aoc isn't :P so yes, those games are kept alive by casuals...because that daily system puts a barrier on how much progression a player can acquire during a day, meaning a hardcore player playing all day wont be too far ahead from a guy playing 2 hours a day (if they both finish all their dailies). but that also means every time you don't finish a daily, u will never catch up. its a day that you lost and can never recover.
in the case of aoc, I want you to explain to me how a casual playing 2 hours a day will buy most of the thing from the market. maybe your comment stems from not knowing how the system works. lets see the following example.
casualdad logs in at 8 after coming home from work and spending time with his family. he plays for 2 hours and logs off at 10 because he's to wake up at 6 am to go to work.
in those 2 hours, he mines 100 iron in 1 hour then takes that to his furnace in his freehold to get 10 iron ingots.
it takes one hour of waiting time to turn 10 iron into 1 iron ingot and every 2 hours your furnace will over heat, meaning production will stop and you have to pour water on the furnace to keep it going.
but guess what? casualdad went to bed at 10 after having produced 1 iron ingot, then at 11, another iron ingot was produced and his furnace overheated, stopping production. casualdad will log in at 8 again, water his furnace and continue production. in a full day, he only produced 2 iron ingots.
meanwhile, hardcoresingleguy plays 15 hours a day. 1 hour to farm iron ore and then he produces 14 iron ingots at 1 per hour. he isn't necessarily interested ni pvp, but he is still a hardcore player and he produces the same output as 7 casualdads.
hardcoresingleguy has more money to participate in the market, he is selling more ingots and buying stuff. also some hardcore players share accounts, so its possible that he can have someone else log into his account and tend the furnace (maybe this wont be allowed in aoc).
now imagine you need 100 iron ingots to craft your shiny sword. do you want to wait for 2 months for casualdad to produce 100 iron ingots or just about a week until hardcoresinglguy produces the 100 iron ingots you need?
now imagine you need thousands of materials from different professions and you need thousands of players to gear up. casuals having freeholds prevent players from getting the gear they need to clear content, then they get bored they cant progress and quit.
so who contributes more to the game again?
Of course it does.
Anyways there are no such vocal people and you can't prove it, you just made them up in order to make your point.
This entire post is actually just a warning against building bad crafting systems.
Is your reasoning that 'casuals don't contribute in games where it is made difficult for them to contribute'?
Call it intuition based on previous discussions of people saying they are solo players and don't join guilds in these forums
As long as your definition of 'vocal' is 'posts on forums occasionally' I suppose you can claim whatever you want actually, so proceed.
no. I'm saying there are different type of games and in AOC is more beneficial for the whole server that hardcore players own the majority of the freeholds
its not a bad crafting system considering other aspects of the game. remember this game is designed for group play and competition,w here not everybody is a winner. this also slows down the amount of items introduced to the market and people complaining "what when everybody has their gear blah blah blah gear destruction blah blah blah"
maybe this system is bad for other games, but in theory, it fits ashes philosophy and goes into its design direction. don't look at things in isolation.
edit: give a million dollars to elon musk and a million dollars to a homeless drug addict. who will make a better use for that money? who will use it in a way that benefits other people?
I'm not saying that its harder for casuals to contribute and that's why they cant. I'm saying, give a casual and a hardcore a freehold, the hardcore will contribute more to the server because how the system works and that's just to refute people saying that casuals contribute more, which isn't true in this case.
Yes it can be casually on high influxes of conversations, it doesn't mean they are talking about things 24/7. Should show up every so often and be vocal at that point.
Ie for me it isn't about commenting all the time for me it can be just in certain cases where they are vocal mainly around more important topics. As they feel little reason to comment on some discussions or ones that go in circles.
haha
You are comparing one single casual player, to one single hardcore player.
Pick any MMO and look at the population, for every player that plays 15 hours a day, there are many many many more players that only play 3-4 a day.
Its the economy of scale. Hardcore players profit off this, because the casual are moving massive amounts of items through the market small piece at a time each. I get rich in every game I play because of casual players just throwing gold at things I sell because they simply dont have the time like I do to produce the good stuff.
Without casuals, my items wont move all that fast. If its just me and a bunch of other hardcore players, well they have the same time investment I do, most of them, will elect to get their own stuff because they have the time, or work with their own hardcore friends.
Casuals feed hardcore players, its the simple truth. They need to be able to feel like they have some skin in the game.
I am not saying, every player needs to be able to get a big freehold, that is insane considering the limited resources.
I am saying, with the other tiers of housing, every player needs to have a reasonable shot of getting their own housing if they work for it.
Taxes, upkeep costs on the lower tiers of housing need to be big enough to convince them to not sit on something they will never use, and low enough to not be crippling, so that plots become available for others to try out the system.
Node pvp where housing is on the line needs to be frequent enough to convince players to band together for defense, but not so frequent where you log in the next day and wonder where all your stuff poofed in the middle of the night.
Spoken clearly, if the highest tier of housing is going to take a concerted effort by a group of players to obtain, both the permit and winning the bid, then the next level of housing down needs to be balanced around a single player being able to work hard for and obtain, and the lowest tier (instanced apartments from what I understood) needs to be obtainable by anyone for reasonable effort.
If a casual loses hope at having any skin in the game, they will go somewhere else, and we do not want that as hardcore gamers.
again, different games, different mechanics. casuals don't feed hardcore in games designed for lots of competition. you know what I do when no one is selling the item I wat? I go and farm it. if the game is more casual friendly, then I still have to farm gold and buy it. i still have to farm as a hardcore player.
I'm not saying get rid of the casuals, I'm just saying any server in aoc will benefit more if hardcore players have the majority of the freeholds. that single scenario represents larger groups. they are called personas.
what about items that only drop from bosses and you need to pvp for those bosses?
just because something exists in a way in other games, doesn't mean its the same or its good for every game
So this comes down to a casual player not able to use a skin be it they play the game or not? I honestly don't think that will be the case since most casual players most likely won't buy the skin lol. Most the casual players being the influx that play the game when it launches.
Though like I said before a quick fix is to make it so those skins do work with your apartments and such, and influence them.
yeah, a Py-Rai singing tree on top of an apartment block would look tall as anything.
They didn't mean "casuals" not getting to apply cosmetics
Houses are literally just a vertical building and can be placed directly next to each other. In other words - the slums for the poors.
Processing stuff is ~1acre and can be placed next to each other as well. In other words - the factories and feeding planes.
And business is the red light district for the richest bastards around. Only in the juiciest places on the map and go for shitton of gold.
Houses can be achieved through hard quests. Processing plots through profession and party quests. Business through bids.
Yes I want them to shrink them back 3x the size.
Acting like this is some all or nothing huge deal is the problem here.
"It can't be perfect so we might as well not care about it becoming worse."
But sure, I guess people can just 'Deal with it.' too.