Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
In other words, make freeholds unsustainable unless they're good for others outside of the player/group that owns it. And it would be a huge gold sink for anyone who just wants to squat land to "fuck others over".
This obviously doesn't resolve the issue of "not everyone has a plot of land to chill on", but it could at least bring more positivity into the game? Maybe?
This is what I meant before.
We could be discussing the specifics of how the community would like Freeholds to interact with the positive game loops. But here we are discussing potential for RMT.
As I've told you before, you often know how to build the base levels of these things, I usually assume everyone can do so. And yet...
Land speculation.
I suppose this is a boon for ingame realtors.
Actually I can solve this now, I forgot that INH already has this system worked out (partially, there's always loopholes).
If you own a Freehold and are required to provide Anything Whatsoever to your Node and you do not do so, you accrue Debt. This will probably never result in your Freehold being repossessed, but it does mean that you keep on losing money or profit in some other place. I.e. when you do some transaction, something is taken from you (maybe disabling a building, a health inspector comes and shuts down your Inn).
A player who doesn't know they will be gone and accrues debt can choose to pay it back.
A player who knows they will be gone chooses what to do beforehand.
A player in a large amount of debt can 'lose' it to someone else who can instantly pay it off.
That last one is where it gets complicated because you have to construct something kinda like the 'opposite of bidding' where the controller of the land knows it will be 'lost' but not to who. But in all cases, it's a sink for Anything Whatsoever (it's best if this isn't cash but Ashes doesn't offer much else exactly that we know of).
Since Freeholds are Account based, there's options for putting pressure on the Account owner's 'Alts' or similar.
But none of this was even remotely the point, because it's scarcity and competition that would keep us talking about things like 'well what if the Big Guilds just always buy up all the repossessed Freeholds?'
That would never be a sensible thing to do. 10k gold of debt, they pay it off, now there's no debt, the Freehold is not available to anyone else. They can't sell it because they'd need to wait to accrue more debt, and it probably has a bunch of buildings that need to be repaired to be used. They can't sell it for more than the debt they accrue.
They're 'sitting on it only to keep it from their competition' (at no point does this person make any money from doing this except via RMT by luck).
But the problem would remain, right? "Hold land in order to drive up the value of other land" (in this case through limiting Master Processing stations".
If the server offered 8000 plots, and one guild decided to quest up 70% of those just to keep other people from Processing high level Ores, then they've created many accounts whose outcome will be not to produce but also while not producing, to actively drain their resources. The more they have to get control off, the smaller the Opportunity for them.
Which they would then compare to a whole calculation that just thinking about explaining makes me feel tired.
Basically 'assuming you want to be a Master Artisan but not taking it seriously means you make a loss instead' sort of thing would prevent every person from 'trying to get one'. Now if only I could easily demonstrate why this is meaningfully different than the current model without six reference books...
Bad direction. Weaponizable.
Never give players a way to have intentional failure affect the Commons.
I’m wondering if between citizenship requirements, one freehold per account limits, and the up front cost of a freehold - There are enough constraints such that you would need a very well organized guild to take land speculation to a problematic level at scale.
I think individual realtors/speculators will paint themselves into a corner relatively quickly. They would either find themselves without a Freehold (with lots of capital), or with a Freehold they cling to and won’t sell.
Totally agree on the land grabbing; it’s a zero sum game, with advantages to guilds dominating a node.
Of course, the real lever in this equation is that all of those players pay the same sub. So, I think there’s some longer term revenue advantages for Intrepid to throwing the FFXIV crowd a really robust set of aesthetic options for those instanced apartments.
I believe that the land speculation can be avoided while retaining (rather, by increasing) the limits, and that the price that will be paid is 'denial of this content to a very large portion of the playerbase' which is the thing I have the problem with.
And as you know, this is not a personal problem. If it reaches the point where it is a 'personal problem' for my very tight knit family who are basically all 'definitely not casuals' then I have no condolence I can even offer to any other.
I just believe that 'repossessing someone's cool Trophy or functional furniture' is cleaner.
If your house is empty, why should the Node/State 'let you keep it' in a game like Ashes anyway? It's unrealistic. The Node Citizens would vote to have it taken from you.
I really really don't want to go all the way down to explaining how land's ability to produce is the only real value and the societal structures built up around it that we take for granted. It would become politics.
Lockstep on both points.
Yep. After a year, there will be an equilibrium reached based on Intrepid’s business goals & the capacity of their product (& customer base) to reach those goals. There will be a population of players that will tolerate the lack of accessibility balanced with the opportunity of accessibility. Even if it’s mostly illusory.
coughcommunismcough. so if you have 100 bucks nd you arent hungry, is it ok for me and my friend to beat u up and take your $100 so that we can eat? don't think so eh.
if I wanna buy land not build anything and just look at the grass, that's my right. its my money, my land, I do whatever I want with it. maybe I just wanna have a picnic with my girl or friends.
of course ahses has the war mechanics and all that, and its in the server best interest to have land producing something. that means your enemies will try to take it from you. its ridiculous that the same citizens who live in your area can vote and take it from you because they don't like what you do with your plot. i mean node allegiance suprseeds every other faction...
My problem with this is that an MMO isn't a chemical reaction, it's more like a nuclear reactor.
Without the required mass to keep the chain going, everything just dies down. And unlike most of their decisions, this one is borderline calculable. You can't have a goal of 'Freeholds not being for everyone' with an implementation that is so likely to lead to 'Actually Freeholds will be for everyone because everyone who doesn't have one will just leave' (obviously exaggeration, assume 'everyone who wants one').
I'm saying it's not a good goal. It's not even the right way to think about the goal. Choose a number of Freeholds that you want in the world and tune stuff until everyone who has one under the parameters you set actually wanted one, give or take.
There needs to be more 'gap' here. There should probably always be some number of Freehold plots that 'no one can be bothered with'. This is a demographics thing way more than anything else.
Which brings me back to:
Why did you make them BIGGER, Intrepid?
I guess you maybe received feedback from NDA spot testers that they would like them to be bigger? Cause I don't remember ever seeing anything else related to it.
On another note if this stays as is I hope we get planters/pots to grow things in our instanced housing.
I personally prefer Brass Flowerpots over Ceramic Flowerpots, but that's only because of the Gardening system actually caring which type of pot you use and it affecting yields, so if we're not getting yield effects by flowerpot I'll take just aesthetics I guess.
I don't think I'll feel fine doing Animal Husbandry in the Stables of the Node permanently though. I'll think about it, since that seems unrealistic for me given how much time I spend in the Chocobo Stables. It's not like I could have raised my Chocobo in my house.
You know that American city, county, state, and federal government has laws and regulations allowing for the condemnation, demolition, seizure, and repossession of abandoned property - either by government, corporate, or non-profit actors, right?
These types of answers from Steven support my theory.
No! Bad. No politics! (I know this is not politics).
This is also the reason why I don't discuss Fiat Magarin's premise. Because that's the first chapter's concept draft.
"All currency is tied directly to the productivity of worthwhile land or access and therefore all idle land automatically devalues currency and trade."
It's theoretically a long book.
🤣
bigger also means less freehold in the map xD maybe that's why
but hey I'm sure more freehold will be available when more land is added in expansions xd
If so, I agree with it to a point, but why do both things at the same time?
1. Freeholds were almost obviously beneficial for families before, I think most people probably expected some level of that.
2. Adding more UPKEEP to Freeholds that can then be shared amongst the family is still the better solution for this.
The rich/hardcore player gets their whole Freehold to themselves and can rent out their stations or whatever with no guarantees of anything, but can always use it for whatever they find most profitable, probably living in a high traffic area and paying the appropriate upkeep costs from their wealth.
The casual/middle class family shares their freehold, doesn't/can't rent things out as often, but all together they contribute and can match up to the single hardcore player and because they don't use the stations/etc all at once, or have to spread their activities and storage over the plot.
Hence the 'expectation that upkeep and location was going to be the main factor'.
If they make it bigger to encourage the use of it across a family of players/alts, it's still too big, probably, and also way more abusable without the upkeep part being the primary part.
Hey now, I've probably written it twice over now in design documents and forum arguments. This change alone is refining my ~checks notes~ third chapter for me!
I'm just really aware of the low demand for a book explicitly about how to design fantasy MMORPG economies.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I just found the idea of a book being ‘theoretically long’ amusing.
You're the sort of person that I need to write the book for.
Like, definitionally.
The people who decided it was 'not ok' to beat someone else up and take their $100 are the same people who decided what a '$100' was.
It is your land until someone takes it. It is your money until someone takes it. Do you know why you get to claim otherwise without being laughed at and then skewered on a pike?
Or as my friend says:
You know who doesn't agree with you...?
THE MONGOLS.
its still not ok. so vikings pillaging villages was ok?
why does it matter who decide what money was? do you think we were better before than now?
before money:
I can only produce apples. i want pears. you produce pears and you don't want apples, you want a horse. so now I have to try and trade with 549567675 until I can get something that can be traded for a horse. by the time I come back to you with the horse, your pears are spoiled
with money: I sell my apples to whoever is interested. they voluntarily buy them. nowi can go to you and buy pears, then you can use the money to buy a horse.
why not remove gold from mmorpg?
also, still evil for me to beat u up and take your money. otherwise, why do we have laws?
Wait you think we have laws because doing illegal things is evil? I take it you either aren't an American or don't study their history much whether you are or are not (this is still not politics, right? Someone call me out if it is).
Also you can remove gold from MMORPGs, that would be the entire point of the book. Not saying you should but that you can and that it is important to understand how and why you can that leads to understanding how to design MMORPG economies.
Some humans agreed at some point that it was okay for some people (without an army, no less) to buy potentially profitable land and do nothing beneficial with it.
If you want to design a fantasy MMO economy you have to start from the very bottom or mimic someone else's design or you will introduce holes that will quickly remind us why human behaviour is based on those agreements that we all take for granted.
Otherwise you will create a system that no bulk group of humans would be willing to live under, and they will not play your game with the goal of experiencing an economy.
laws describe what pattern of behavior is prohibited and tell you how you will be punished if you engage in that pattern of behavior. what is considered evil by a group, might not be considered evil by another group, however, we can agree that certain things are universally wrong. beating you up to take your things instead of me working hard to get them, is one of those things.
also, by your own logic. if there are 5 freeholds in your area that do metal processing, and you buy a freehold and you want to do metal processing, then you shouldn't be allowed. people should be able to vote and decide that hey we have too much metal processing and you should do wood processing or skin processing. in fact lets also vote and change 3 of those metal processing stations into other things.
Actually a bunch of people literally don't agree on that.
Some people believe that taxation is theft, but the government will 'beat you up' if you don't pay the taxes, and some people believe that the very concept of property is theft because it will always be taken to the extreme of 'X uses their claim to property, to deny access to some other resource'.
There are hundreds of laws worldwide about this, complex ones too.
You can try to extend my logic like that and I won't complain because in the end, trying to reduce this topic to simplicity is itself the 'wrong'. Now we're definitely at 'politics', whereas I prefer to just discuss economic things in the view of MMORPGs, so please proceed with any further interpretation you have of my position, and I'll probably concede it regardless of what it is.
Go big, it's fine.
you are still not getting it T_T
Yeah don't worry about it, I'm like a crazy anarchist anthropologist who looks too deep into the abyss of human nature and all that.
I'll never get it, I'm blind to the Truth from staring into said Abyss for too long.
I think there are cookies down there though.
They're not eyes. Those dark spots are raisins.