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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
No, I didn't say that. You assumed I said that. You said yourself "you need several guilds to take down a node".
If more than one guild is necessary, how does the small guild get a freehold?
If the tradeoff was "you help me take down this node, I give you 10 freeholds", how does that work? How can you garantee it?
Still you didn't explain why a bidding system is good, a necessity or even the best possible solution and without that explanation from your side the thread is pointless, it's just justifying.
I am not wrong because I actually agree with you. I never said an MMORPG can't be solo-friendly, that would be a ridiculous statement. The vast Majority of MMORPGs are solo-firendly, and there are extremely Good MMORPGs out there that follow that design.
It's just not something I enjoy, and it is not something Ashes of Creation is going to be. You can definitely play AoC as a solo, you can participate in a lot of the content, but its a group-based game and you won't ever come close to achieve everything other players can while playing with their friends/guilds.
Two separate issues. 1. The number of players who can achieve a freehold. 2. How the freeholds are acquired.
Regarding #1, the fact that processing is gated behind the freehold, and the fact that some people just want to create an identity via freehold, makes me think that WAY more than 10% of players should be able to get them. Maybe 25%. I really liked @Nerror 's village idea. So many people have envisioned themselves as a Master Alchemist, or a Master Breeder, or whatever, and now need to come to terms with the fact that their playstyle (solo, semi-casual, whatever) won't allow them to get anywhere near a FH.
Regarding #2, I wonder if Intrepid could create several paths to freehold ownership.
- Some auctioned by the node, as planned.
- Some achievable through exploration.
- PVE drop
- Some achievable through a crafting path
- PVP path. Possibly via guild wars, a subset of castles perhaps. Maybe let the guild that owns a castle have 50 FHs to distribute to members. This would almost guarantee lively guild wars if FHs are properly limited.
- Some awarded through religion and/or reputation
- Etc
I am sure there are many other ideas. Given people's passion about freeholds, it definitely seems like there need to be ways for all walks of players to have a path to FH ownership, even if it is still out of reach for the majority.
A few things that I would oppose are:
- Making it easy to obtain. It should be very hard and require a ton of time.
- Allowing FHs to be so common that they clutter the world
- Instanced FHs
- Allowing non-citizens to have a freehold in the node
All of that said, I am sure Steven & team deliberated on this at length and have pretty sound reasons for the current design. It would probably help the community to understand those reasons.
I think you'll find you have misplaced people's reason for being upset here.
No one playing an MMO solo expects to experience everything in the game. That has almost never been the case, and almost never will. Same with people playing in smaller guilds - there are things they just wont experience.
None of that is a problem - it is all expected.
The problem is that Ashes seems to be taking that notion to the actual absolute extreme. Intrepid could still have a game where the solo player is unable to experience everything someone in a guild experiences, or a player in a small guild is able to see more of the game than someone in a larger guild - but still allow for solo players to have a small piece of land to farm.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
What you are seeing with all of these many people currently upset is an entire subsection of Ashes fan that is in the process of realizing the game simply isnt for them. Dygz realized it with the naval "change", but many more are realizing it with this.
That is why I said in an earlier post (quite seriously) that if each server has 2k freeholds, one servers worth of freeholds may well be enough for every player in the game to have one - Intrepid keep chasing their community away.
@Liniker Thoughts on this with freeholds being thought of as an extreme by this individual?
I think its clear that we have completely different visions on this matter, even tho I am making an effort to see the other side, I find it almost ridiculous the way people are treating freeholds as if they were a "make or break" feature when the fact is the large majority of the playerbase in pretty much every MMO we played for the last 2 decades don't give a shit about housing systems.
I'm sorry I do not agree with you I find it completely out of touch with reality if anyone ever had the slightest expectation of a solo player acquiring a literal Piece of Land in an MMORPG like Ashe of Creation. A game inspired in so many others that are not solo-friendly.
To be honest I would find it easier to accept that someone had expectations of being able to get a full set of legendary gear as a solo than getting the highest level of housing owning land without group effort. In my mind, maybe due to the games I played, I find this completely unreasonable.
I will also leave here, once again, what Steven himself said with his most recent comment on a YouTube video after the freehold situation
I couldn't say it any better than the man himself, he never set out to do a game for everyone, and as you said, when it comes the time that people realize this is not Their game, this is Steven's game, everyone needs to choose if they will play or not.
and to be clear, I do not believe the players currently complaining about this are the majority - and I also do not believe even those complaining won't play the game because of this, this is not a hill they will die on
the same applies to Dygz, he will be there at launch, and he will play the game, we all know it
I just find it unreasonable to be asking for a system that aligns 100% with the core vision that was promised back in 2017, to change, but I don't expect it to change.
Ya i think its the case they hear its more exclusive so now more people want it, and feel they should have it where normally it wouldn't have been a big deal and people just would have accepted things normally or excited if they did manage to get one, before it was destroyed after a siege.
Me looking at it, I can see the pvp angle of the freeholds, it will push people to do wars to acquire land, but also push people to defend nodes to protect their land.
Here you go making assumptions again.
I didn't say that players were wanting the highest level of housing in the game - the problem there is that Intrepid decided that is the highest tier. That is an artificial limitation that Intrepid have put on the situation, and that limitation is in itself a part of the problem.
Think back to the prediction I made in that other thread. In that, the freehold that the bulk of players would get is a third of the size of the current freehold we have.
That is *CLEARLY* not expecting the top tier of housing.
You need to actually listen to what it is people are saying, rather than just assuming every one is asking for every thing to be handed to them.
Except that's easily exploitable.
What's to stop large guilds from just diving up into 5-6 smaller guilds, so they can take advantage of the key buffs? They can just forge alliances between themselves, and still work as one big guild.
But you've played Archeage, and you damn well know it was possible for solo players to own land. Even if you were in a guild, it had nothing to do with you being able to grab a piece of land. You didn't need a massive army behind you just to place down a farm plot out in the world.
"the large majority of the playerbase in pretty much every MMO we played for the last 2 decades don't give a shit about housing systems" - Is just not true at all for Archeage (a game you like to bring up as an example), because that game had a very good housing system, that mattered. It mattered if you owned one, because it was very useful to have. In other MMORPGs, the reason players don't give a shit about housing systems, is because they're just that. They're just housing systems, where you have a house, and maybe some furniture...boo hoo, big deal, it's mostly just for decorations and looks.
Ashes will also be more like Archeage than other games, because Freeholds will absolutely matter, and be really really useful to have (more so than they should imo), which is why an even larger number of players would want to own one.
Yes I played Archeage, and because of that I know Archeage did not have instanced apartments and houses within cities as an alternative - the only housing system available was land, so of course everyone had to get access to it.
Because of that, you'd see all those tiny tiny lands on top of eachother and you had no sense of actual achievement. Ashes is coming to make that system better, not to copy the shitty parts.
Freeholds are the ultimate goal the ultimate form of housing, owning a piece of land in the world should, and will feel like acquiring a legendary gear piece. That is awesome.
and in the meantime, while people that Made the decision to play an MMORPG solo and refused to join guilds - wait to get their own freehold, they will still have access to all the proffesions and other forms of housing.
I love this system.
They will just be another mindless NPC gathering stuff to sell, and then pay exorbitant prices to get something crafted. If you expect me to believe that gatherers, even master ones, will be paid well enough for their services, you're wrong. It doesn't happen in real life either. Farmers are paid shit, and then large corpos resell for extremely high margins.
So now, you've gone from "mighty adventurer" to "working in the fields" person who doesn't get paid enough, owns nothing and unless it belongs to 500 fortune guild, can't do jack.
People like to immerse themselves in a role, and that has been cut from them
So much of the designs in ashes can be exploited. For a game with no P2W or P4C the game has so many exploitable facets that I'm not sure what to call the actual exploitable facets.
What about the whole PK thing? you do understand that the LARGE Majority of players would like to have PVE servers right?
Should intrepid change things based on what a large portion of the players want?
Of course not, and they already said multiple times they are not doing it.
The game is not designed by feedback, they explained multiple times that this is not a game made by committee, they take feedback to understand why people like or don't like the systems, not to make changes.
Steven himself said after the livestream, some times they will make design decisions that will make some people upset, and that's OK
I don't want your MMO, or the community's MMO, I want the game Steven is making.
I'm not saying the topic is serious, I'm saying that a LOT of people are now realizing that all of the things they're seen on the livestreams won't be something they will ever achieve. It's akin to someone saying "look at this majestic Ferrari", and you believe you can get it, and then you find out it's practically impossible. That's what happening.
On the other hand, PvP is completely different because there are restraints put into the system to avoid PvP for someone who doesn't want to. You have corruption.
Is there a similar system for Freeholds? Nope. Do we have "social freeholds" for people who can't afford one and maybe buy them at reduced price? Or are some give to small guilds?
No, all of that is left to the players, which means only large guilds will own them. And that's ok, if that's the game Steven wants. All I am saying is that people are finding out they won't be able to experience all the cool things Ashes have, because they just can't. And telling people to "work hard" it's not really an answer either, because it's not realistically achievable.
Noaani said it best. If we're being honest, how much % of the game can a casual actually play? And why they would stick to the game if they can't advance or play at least 50% of the game?
Freesholds are not 50% of the game or any amount like that, that statement is manipulative and misleading at best. Same thing with a lot of what that guy says. Things you want to gain from a freehold will be bought on the market, you don't suddenly have capped progression.
They will have housing that are going to be more inline with casuals on top of it.
You are trying to try and say tons they have shown players can't do all the sudden which is just a straights up lie, atleast try to be somewhat transparent. You can only chalk that up to one stream with freeholds not meant for casual players since that is the highest lvl of competitive housing.
It was said that freeholds are FAMILY content, each family member can have access to all processing stations and level their profession, so if there is 3000 freeholds that's not just 3000 end game processors.
Each owner can invite up to 7 people and all the 8 family members will be able to get the highest tiers of processing so with 3000 freehold that's 24k endgame processors, 48% of the server
which honestly, by the way they described "masters" in the profession before, that would be so difficult to gat there and highest rank masters would be so rare that you will be recognized in your region - I never, ever expected the number to be so high.
What can you access as casual? Guild wars? No. Static housing? No. Freehold? Probably not. I mean owning one, not using it.
The things that make Ashes, you won't be able to access them. We still don't know about dungeons, how much farmed they will be. In this type of game large groups own everything.
I was just throwing a number around, but look at other games. Yes, they suck, but in Wow classic, you can do everything except raiding, that's the whole game except one tiny aspect.
I think you need to check out the wiki and read up you literarily don't know what you are talking about right now you are just saying random things hoping it sticks.
There are different levels to everything, people have different levels have access to things. Just like there is high tier stuff so is there low tier.
Really what you are saying to sum it up is you are ignoring the lower tiers things you can do, ie housing node wars, etc. And saying if casuals can't do high tier or solo high tier stuff they can't do anything in the game, while blissfully ignoring everything under it.
I'm guessing you are a fan of some content creator and pushing some sort of agenda guess this is actually a real thing.
Then please tell me what I can access as casual? And please don't use excuses with "agenda" or some crap like that.
I am saying that the "selling points" of Ashes are things that casuals cannot get into or am I not seeing something?
Interesting how that was the first thing you responded to, feel like I hit a note.
It is either that or you don't know about the game, read the wiki stop assuming things. I'm not going to sit here and hand hold you on all the things casual players can do.
The point of you trying to relate all competitive end game to casuals shows you have an ulterior motive imo since you ignore everything else and suddenly say they have no content.
I guess I am right after all. All the things casuals can't do aren't that much. Goodbye
do you mean casual or solo player? you can be a casual and join a guild and have access to guild stuff...or you can be a hardcore solo player and wont have access to guild stuff