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
That's the thing. It's totally okay that top tier crafting is super rare etc., but growing potatoes should be available to everyone
I think having a Open World Housing system HAS to be very limited because of the playable area it takes from the Game. if very third Person could get a Freehold you would stumble over a Freehold on every corner so thats just understandable.
BUT bidding ? someone here every bid on a MMo House ? thats just standing on a ''Vendor or at the Area where you have to click'' for HOURS. so every Person that has enough Money will just stand there till its sold. i've made an experience with this once and we stood there and bid on a Building from Monday evening through the WHOLE night (FF14 housing system). it was just an awful experience.
But it's a game and it's not like it's impossible to find a solution that doesn't lock out people from basic harvesting etc.
Where do people see the benefits of bidding? I don't see any, except "my guild will be so special"
I have been trying to think how best to address this.
You see a casual player and you see someone who can't contribute to a game world because of the lack of hours they have to play.
I see a hardcore player and see someone who plays for hours on end because they don't know how to efficiently use their time.
You assume I will not be able to contribute meaningfully to the world but the reality is I have a very busy life with my career, family and fun and learned at a very young age that efficiency and priority are the king and queen of getting things done. It drives me insane when I work with people who are not as efficient as me.
So by the time I get to play for my 2 to 4 hours on weekdays and 6 to 8 on weekends, I have already watched youtube and twitch for tips, tricks and tutorials. I have already created my spreadsheets of what and how much I need of x to complete my tasks of y and z. I already know where I need to go to and what to do to accomplish my goals. I find the most efficient route of gameplay to satisfy what I want to do and to contribute to the game world. I have already started this process on paper and in my head with the knowledge that we already have.
You see a casual and you see a leech without considering that that person is aware of their time restraints and have found ways to work around them. Will you reach your goals faster than I will reach mine? Sure, if you are spending 10 hours a day in Verra, you most definitely will. But don't assume that a casual player has nothing near what you have to offer to the game world.
You are right, it is not impossible. But for some reason Steven wants something else.
The advantages of this solution is that he can keep the map where NPC related events happen to be free of player structures.
Maybe there are other reasons too.
Please don't mix stuff. It's not about limiting the freeholds, it's about the system to get the freeholds.
To me is obvious that if the number is limited, it has to go to those who can put more energy into obtaining them rather than a lottery or a queue.
In another mmo, these structures would be instances and would be available just as you left them 5 years later if you take a break from the game. And everybody would be able to have one, more or less equipped, depending on how much they play or pay.
Have you ever played Archeage? You absolutely didn't have to be a part of a large guild in order to get your own piece of land. Often, you could decide on a spot with your smaller guild, and have plots next to each other.
In Ashes that won't really be the case, as large guilds will always have the ability to outbid you, meaning you're never guaranteed to own a Freehold, even after investing a lot of hours and effort into being able to get one.
In Archeage, if there's an empty plot, and you have the blueprint, you just go there and place it. Done. Large guilds don't matter in this case.
"Obvious based on other games", yet when I read your replies, it's almost as if you haven't played some of those games. It has nothing to to with Freeholds btw. Freeholds shouldn't act as some "legendary loot" that only "the biggest guilds will be competing for". Because Freeholds offer basic things like farming and animal husbandry, that should be allowed to anyone to partake in.
It is stopping me, because the system favors large groups with tons of money, who will easily outbid you. If you can't win a bid, you won't get the freehold, simple as that.
Again, using Archeage as an example, nobody's stopping you from going out and placing your farm on a free spot. Where as in Ashes, there's an additional layer in between, where even if there is an empty spot, you can't just go there and place your Freehold, but you have to go through an NPC/random menu to bid for it against other players.
//
There are a few possible ideas on how to solve this.
-Make farming, animal husbandry, etc. not be a part of Freeholds, so that all players could use those systems if they wish to. But then you'd have to make Freeholds even more scarce, so it would be one per guild (of about 20-30 players). And the other housing that allows for farming, etc. should work like in Archeage, and cover the majority of land that's available for open-world housing. Essentially, this would mean you have yet another open-world housing system, where Freeholds are really valuable to have (setting up businesses, top tier processing/crafting stations, etc.), and the other system is just for those who want to farm stuff and own a piece of land out there in the world.
-Make Freeholds of various sizes - small, medium, large. In theory this would allow for more people to own one. You'd expect large groups to control the larger Freeholds, but it would still allow for more regular players to own at least something, and have their own plot of land for farming, animal husbandry, etc.
-Make Freeholds less of an incentive for players to get. Tied to my 1st point, if you just remove some exclusivity from them, not everyone would then wish to get one.
Instanced freeholds could be readily available (for a cost if necessary), and unlock all the different gameplay benefits, but maybe have some handicap such is it taking 5% longer to grow crops, slightly more expensive to hire help, not being visitable by other players etc.
Now, Steven's vision is quite wobbly at his age, so there's a pretty high chance that it'll change preeeetty soon here. Just as it has on the topic of selling freeholds before (twice already btw). I personally don't care about this particular change in the system, so I'm not yet a frog being slowly cooked, but the overall wobbliness of the vision definitely puts some things in perspective.
I want to chime in here. I hear a similar argument in medicine all of the time. "Everyone has access to healthcare." Sure, theoretically everyone has access to to healthcare. But there sure are a lot of people who can't afford it or physically get to it. To them having "access" means nothing.
we have different experiences then
yeah I wasn't complaining about it. if you can get the players, organize them, etc, and you get an advantage, more power to you. what I'm just saying is that any method for acquiring a fh will benefit a large guild more than a solo player, since people were complaining that bidding benefits large guilds
well pvpers had to craft all their stuff in l2, and that was a fairly hardcore pvp oriented game. pvpers will craft too if there are no crafters.
I could also support adding some alternate paths to acquire a freehold that would make it possible for more solo and/or casual types to accomplish. Maybe have 50-75% of the parcels auctioned by the node, then 25-50% have an alternate method. Maybe an exploration discovery, ultra rare drop, divine gift (achievable), or whatever.
But regardless of the method, people who play less should/would have less chance to acquire one. That's life.
Also, the fact that freeholds are tradeable means that there are many paths to obtain a freehold. Anything you can achieve that can be sold can be used to purchase a freehold. For example, you can sell your ultra-rare dragon egg drop to buy a free-hold.
Overall I really like the fact that not just anyone can achieve a freehold. Just like flying mounts and legendary gear. That makes the game awesome. Freeholds will be something to aspire to, gawk at, be proud of, differentiate oneself, etc.
Please Intrepid & @StevenSharif do not make freeholds something that literally every single player on the server can have. That would be a horrible move. There would be nothing special about having one. So many unattended freeholds littering the world with an owner who hasn't logged on in 2 months. Just ugly clutter.
Steve and Intrepid have made a decision that freeholds should require a lot of time, dedication and hard work to acquire, and that it's not something that 100% of the players will have. Many people here just need to deal with that. Maybe it will change in the future, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Also, for all of the RPG people out there, and the people who want immersion, think about this. In real life not everyone will achieve a 1.5 acre property with multiple buildings. That's the way it works. That's what makes it fun.
FFS.
Game looks awesome.
I think you mean AI bot farm conglomerates.
The big guilds may still get the pokemon farms but they will have to buy them from china.
Guilds, groups, and people that are professionals in working the market will be a step above others.
And they'd need only that because they'd be able to bid the lowest amount on each freehold, because there'd be no competition. So unless the auction goes on for damn months - the current system is "first come first serve".
1. It's entirely possible that an individual, alone, can make more money than any 2 or 3 or even 10 people. As that number gets larger, it becomes less and less likely, approaching near impossible for any individual to generate more gold than a group of 50-300 people (minus insanely lucky drops, or gold-generation farms like a Grandmaster-level processing station
2. There is a massive incentive to donate money to the guild in order to secure Freeholds already. Just by the sheer fact that other guilds will be doing the same thing, it will become a requirement for guilds to also attempt this, and a requirement for players who want access to a FH to participate. And the "won't be online" is irrelevant because it can be a donation when you join, a weekly donation, etc. It makes little sense to do it on an "as needed basis".
3. Yes, a PVE drop will result in larger guilds having an advantage over an individual player. But that advantage doesn't make others chances next to 0. An individual still has the same probability regardless. Also, I'm not speaking about a single farming spot. Nor a single action. All PVE actions within that node where the plot is available. Whether it's cutting down a T1 Tree, farming a level 15 mob, or crafting a level 25 weapon. As long as you reach level 50, and do the quest, every day actions done in that node have a chance to produce the drop. Impossible to be gatekept, and inefficient to be "farmed". Doesn't disturb the normal gameplay loop of other players either.
4. It won't be a "get 1000 of this drop" item, so it won't be powerfarmed. Sure, players can dedicate hours and hours to cutting down T1 trees, but that's fine. All that will do is show actual "dedication, effort, and time" to getting a FH. Which is the goal. Getting 300 people to each send you 100 gold doesn't show any of that.
5. A guild can DEFINITELY bid on every FH at the same time. What's stopping them? They may not win every bid, but as long as you have enough gold, you can get as many FH as possible.
Fair analogy. I’m with @NiKr though, I’ve always read Steven’s statements on potential as just that not any kind of guarantee.
I'll give you one of the best alternatives I can think of, one that pleases a few different types of players. Have initial acquisition of freeholds be identical to the mayoral system. Combat tournament for the military nodes, faith based questing speedrun for the religious nodes, elections for the scientific nodes and even bidding for the economic nodes to please the only people who will obtain them, RMT'ers.
The original system, bidding was suppose to encourage teamwork by making guilds work together to own housing, which is awesome, but RMT will exist and it will trump guilds.
Some of those methods of the mayoral system still encourage banding and working together though like the elections, bidding(in theory lol), the speedrunning, but not the combat tournament.
After that the owners can buy or trade or gamble or abandon or demolish their freeholds, whatever they want.
Fixed that for you.
No one is complaining about all the cold case murders not solved, how is second degree assault an issue hahahahahha.
What kind of satellite on the side of the trailer, denture losing, dog food chomping, totinos in the oven yee-yee-haw logic is that dude?
They're both a problem ffs. Freeholds are a larger issue because they're limited in quantity, hold grandmaster crafting benches, and people want them more than anything else(seems like the benches aren't even a big driving factor in this). People just want a friggin house, a little land, do some farming, have some animals, and do it in AoC, like really.. really bad. And feel at a big disadvantage to RMT with them. Can you blame them?
And freeholds with the exclusive benches are much more lucrative, people be lucky if the gold farmers don't just monopolize them all by themselves.
It's a somewhat easy fix, cause the solution is better than bidding alone, and more fun. Imitate the mayoral system, combat tournaments for military nodes, elections for scientific, bidding for economic, speedrun quests for religious nodes.
Besides, that pleases more types of players anyways.