Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
A PvX drop that has a very small chance of dropping from any mob farming, gathering, processing, or crafting action in that node once you hit level 50. How exactly will that be "dominated" by guilds? It doesn't matter that a coordinated guild might have 500+ people trying to do it. It's just a numbers game that increases their chances. I would much rather have that than the "strategic, dedicated effort" of just going to your guild and saying "okay another bid is up, everyone send me 2k gold and I'll outbid everyon else". Very strategic Steven. I'm sure no one could possibly beat that strategy.
well, people still need to farm that gold. we don't know how easy or hard it is yet and we don't know how much gold you need a day to survive or get by...buy consumables etc. also, because of pareto distribution, not all players in the guild will make much money. there will be a few players in any given guild making most of the money, and its entirely possible that a solo player, or a family, can make more money than guilds that arent super big. also, fh slots will be readily available competing with other locations. its no like one location is open at a time and everybody is forced to bid on that one only. also, you have to consider that not everybody in the guild will give money, or wont be online to do so.
also, if you make it a pve drop, dont you think larger guilds will still have an advantage? they can go to the farming spot where the item drops and close the map, now no one has access to the items...
and even if the item dropped from any monster, big guilds will get more of it faster and can power level their guildies. so even if you are a solo player and get the item at a low level, nothing guarantees that you will get a fh by the time you hit 50.
any method of obtaining the fh will benefit larger guilds anyways. also consider than a guild cant bid on every freehold at the same time
Also, we'll need to do a quest to even get the ability to make a bid. What if that quest has the exact thing you're talking about? And what if the bid timer runs out before anyone else can finish the quest too?
What if the system evolved such that certain caps were placed on the auctions and should cap be reached, then it becomes a lotto system.
My understanding is there will be further chances for re-purchasing when the nodes fall and are re-built.
But this may also disperse players, where they orientate their base play area towards where they can establish their freeholds rather than support the node they would like to be at..
steven said they will be in the low thousands, need alpha 2 for testing.
anyways, why do new players should have a priority? yeah its important to get them up to speed with older players, but what about all the people who didn't quit, farmed for months, etc. dont invalidate their effort in favor of a new player.
if the waiting time for a fh is 6 months, because that's the time it takes you to get enough money to compete, why someone who just joined a month ago deserves it? i mean the new player can always join an established guild who can help him get the fh
What you are telling people here is that they need to play a game they don't want to play for 6 months in order to be able to play a game they do want to play.
Objectively speaking, that is kind of shit. At least for people that would consider farming on their freehold to be a major draw of the game.
the 6 months was an example but I get your point. so what is the alternative? to completely discard the merit and effort of those who been playing? the new guy doesn't deserve it. he has to earn it. no one deserves anything, people earn it.
also, there are other reasons to play ashes. if the payer wants to play to farm on their freehold,and they will not get one, well..that's how they want to play, so they probs wont play. but hey if bob isn't playing, tom is (:
some people play lol, some play dota. same difference
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.[/quote]
shrinking them wont change anything the devs dont want to cram them close together like archeage did with it housing zones because that looks shit, you would need to shring the parcel that the freehold can be placed on to fit more in but then u just enmd up craming them together.
im guessing each node will have about 10 parcels of land that can have freeholds and there can be 83 nodes so about 830 freeholds available but hard to say for certain how many parcels each node will have without seeing world size ingame, each free hold can have a family of 8, so thats up to 6500 or so players.
if for what ever reason you didnt get a freehold and want one there also now incentive to node war to destroy and make space for you to potentialy get one next time
The only reason to get in to this situation is if Intrepid specifically want that barrier to entry.
As to your bob and tom example - fix freeholds and they will both play. Surely that is the best option.
Honestly though, with the way Ashes is hyper-focusing on only one player type, 2,000 freeholds per server may actually mean every player in the game can have one.
And I mean that quite seriously.
Players without individual properties by default of not having everything they individually can achieve / want would be encouraged to explore and interact with other players who do have freeholds. Especially if each freehold cannot achieve everything and there are interdependencies. They may visit these spaces, participate in community or collaborate on trade together.
By limiting the availability of freeholds, players are encouraged to rely on each - essentially creating socialization and interaction. Surely this fosters a stronger sense of community and cooperation among players, as they depend on each other's resources and hospitality.
In such a scenario, the focus shifts from individual ownership and solo play to shared experiences and interactions and the collective. Players without freeholds can still actively engage with others, creating opportunities for cross play and collaboration.
This can lead to a more inclusive and interconnected gaming experience, where players rely on the community as a whole for socializing and gameplay.
You will end up being friend with people who buy freeholds either because they RMT or they own multiple accounts and can work around the game limitations normal players have. It can happen that you even join a guild, they are nice friendly people and later you realize they are doing this too. Eventually being like them might become normality. And you will wonder if maybe the developers wanted this to happen since the beginning.
Can also be special mobs in a story arc, or in an personal instanced area. Everything is better than a bidding system
There should be a difference in progress between new and old players, but again you shouldn't lock out new players from farming corn on their piece of land.
The shared experience and social interaction should happen in the node city! There should be a reason you spend time in the node city and also Guilds should contribute for the overall citizen experience
then you shouldn't lock new players from killing raid bosses or gathering the rare plants that spawn in a specific location during one season at a specific time of the day, or to acquire flying mounts, or legendary gear, or no open world PVP so they can mine and chop trees all day etc, etc.
they can farm corn in their land, if they get the land
again, not a game where everybody wins. there are winners and losers. game isn't targetted at people who want to solo play FarmVille. can those players benefit? sure, but its not targetted at them. the game is designed to be played in groups and cooperate with your team to compete with your enemies. so what players should and shouldn't do its dictated by the core pillars of aoc, not by what u or other players think should happen or not.
remember that other games had different design philosophies than ashes. sure if u want to make it so that everybody wins then yeah give everybody a fh, but why stop there? why not flying mounts too, access to rb, all gatherables etc etc. but then ashes will stop being a game designed in such a way where there are winners and there are lsers, and just because you lost on something, doesn't mean you cant win on something else.
im sure everybody being able to have a fh will make everybody happy. the problem is, and it doesn't matter if other games did this and was good or not, this solution steers away from ashes philosophy.
any solution that is proposed should adhere to the direction ashes is taking and to its design pillars. so again, how do you propose we solve the "fh problem". don't give me a solution that worked in another game, give me a solution that adheres to aoc design pillars and philosophy.
large guilds will still have an advantage
The problem is - new players to a game need content.
Ask yourself honestly - what is it you expect a player that joins the game 12 months after launch to actually do?
Don't say "join a guild" or anything, because most guilds want players to catch up at least somewhat before considering them.
Don't say "harvesting open world resources", because that isn't a way for a new player to catch up. In order to catch up, you need to progress faster, not slower.
Basically, unless you want ot say that only players that start the game in the first month matter, something in your approach here probably needs to change.
Yes but every player can be lucky to find such item, if it's about bidding, than the majority has zero chances
Don't you think there is a difference between a high end raidboss and pressing E to farm corn? Can't be about winners and losers in every aspect. You can't expect that eeevery player has the time and motivation to get fully into guilds etc.
We shouldn't justify any bad game design with "there are winners and losers"
false. i have joined top guilds in every game I've played where I didn't play from the start. such guilds always welcome new players after they have been in the game for months. they only have recruiting restrictions early on because you want the best people early to rush and get things. after a year, everybody has everything and they don't mind inviting new players, specially when older members become less active.
for a new player to catch up, there can be different things that don't involve having a fh. maybe prices of items went down because everybody has them? farm something that has a decent demand, maybe consumable ingredients, sell it and buy your sword maybe 10 times cheaper than when the first word in the server popped up.
and yes join a guild, get other people to craft for you and you just provide the ingredients. you will level faster as well since you don't have to wait for nodes to develop
etc etc
what if the large guild blocks access to the area where you can get the item, how are you going to get it now?
your suggestions make it even worse for the solo players because a large guild will have more people farming the items, killing mobs faster, preventing others from farming it, etc. entirely possible for a community of 1000 players to get every freehold on day 1 (or as soon as they hit 50). a bidding system doesn't allow this.
large guilds will go to a bid war vs large guilds, medium sized guilds will fight medium sized guilds, small guilds will fight small guilds and the solo player will fight the solo player. you don't try to outbid a 250 players guild with your 30 players guild...unless you guys are massively rich, which most likely wont happen in the first 2 months.
after a guild wins a fh, they have no resources now to win the next bid war, they have to go and farm. the guilds who lost will win it, but how many large guilds are there anyways? not more than small guilds or single players
consider that guilds cant bid on everything at once. if you can't compete for fh A, go try on fh B. Maybe you won't get the one you want (and why should you when you aren't working together with people), but you will get one if you can outbid other solo players.
As I said instanced, or you have multiple spots and it's a limited drop per person with a timer. You defend a broken system
I fully believe you if you were talking about a game like ESO, however.
Which is a good thing. Else the game would have to create artificial rules to prevent players who cooperate to have an advantage.
OK, but where will I plant my potatoes? It seems to me growing food is something that's going to be closed off to many players.
Hence, I am in desperate need of life skillers, crafters, farmers etc. My primary concern is that those people will simply leave the game very early on if their endgame requires them to be hardcore, super competitive players in other areas.
I mean.... What good does it do for the game to tell the farmers that they cannot farm unless they belong to the elite guilds? Or the the crafters that they cannot do endgame crafting without a freehold.
I think having the best efficiency (through equipment and npc help) and biggest production reserved for free holds is more than fair - but I don't see why a non freeholder-owner shouldn't be able to craft the best stuff - even if it might take them more than ten times the time that a invested freehold-owner needs ....
I really hope that the node houses and the apartments will offer enough for the life skillers. Without them, I am probably not going to get far. ._.