Happy with Freeholds acquisition method.

volsh

This puts to rest my idea of opening a top tier pie shop

BlackBrony

Ratzu wrote: »

I still cannot understand why solo players or casuals are so upset about high-level processing being gated behind freeholds. The highest-quality items that need to be processed are likely to be raid drops, so "casuals" aren't getting these items in the first place. Guilds will need T4 and T5 processing to make use of raid drop materials. To the extent they sell those items on the market--whether as processed goods or raw materials--then solos/casuals will be able to buy them if they have the money. Go take the item and buy one-off access to a freehold to process the item and then voila, make your top-tier armor or weapon out of it, etc. If you aren't wanting to pursue gameplay as a processer, then this doesn't affect you--e.g., if you are a gatherer or crafter, this doesn't affect you.

What I am not seeing any recognition of on the other side of this debate is that game design choices involve trade-offs. When you make something more accessible to solos and casuals, you are taking away a separate gameplay layer from the most involved members of the community who are really the core audience of consumers at any rate. When you look at all the other MMOs available right now, the games have a system of one-dimensional gameplay layers because the gameplay has been flattened to promote accessibility. This is precisely what we are hoping Intrepid avoids.

I, myself, am not angry. I'm surprised but the low amount of people who will get access. Having a freehold is like "having your slice of heaven". Think beyond gameplay. It's something you can show, you can use, you can chill in.
What about animal husbandry? Can you do that anywhere? What if you wanted to farm tomatoes and chill in your tavern?
We're talking about less than 10% of population having these freeholds. Are only these 10% the most involved?

Ratzu

BlackBrony wrote: »

We're talking about less than 10% of population having these freeholds. Are only these 10% the most involved?

But then we have the family system overlaid on top of that. Assuming that each individual with a freehold has a full family, then we have ~15,000 people will freehold access on a server. I imagine it will be less than that of course, but it will still be significant.

Liniker

.

Ratzu wrote: »

I still cannot understand why solo players or casuals are so upset about high-level processing being gated behind freeholds. The highest-quality items that need to be processed are likely to be raid drops, so "casuals" aren't getting these items in the first place. Guilds will need T4 and T5 processing to make use of raid drop materials. To the extent they sell those items on the market--whether as processed goods or raw materials--then solos/casuals will be able to buy them if they have the money. Go take the item and buy one-off access to a freehold to process the item and then voila, make your top-tier armor or weapon out of it, etc. If you aren't wanting to pursue gameplay as a processer, then this doesn't affect you--e.g., if you are a gatherer or crafter, this doesn't affect you.

What I am not seeing any recognition of on the other side of this debate is that game design choices involve trade-offs. When you make something more accessible to solos and casuals, you are taking away a separate gameplay layer from the most involved members of the community who are really the core audience of consumers at any rate. When you look at all the other MMOs available right now, the games have a system of one-dimensional gameplay layers because the gameplay has been flattened to promote accessibility. This is precisely what we are hoping Intrepid avoids.

Thank you. I agree with everything this person said, especially the trade-offs part. You should link this post to the feedback thread.

BlackBrony

Ratzu wrote: »

BlackBrony wrote: »

We're talking about less than 10% of population having these freeholds. Are only these 10% the most involved?

But then we have the family system overlaid on top of that. Assuming that each individual with a freehold has a full family, then we have ~15,000 people will freehold access on a server. I imagine it will be less than that of course, but it will still be significant.

If you can give access per group, that would be best. A guild member would want to give acess to their entire guild.
On the other hand if family allows summoning, then if you're in a guild all your family members must be in the same guild to exploit that.

Liniker

BlackBrony wrote: »

On the other hand if family allows summoning, then if you're in a guild all your family members must be in the same guild to exploit that.

I love that nowdays people call doing anything efficiently an exploit

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

But I'll definitely be the first one to say that everyone should be able to have an apartment, because that's exactly the "entrance lvl content" that any person should have access to.

This doesn't quite work.

Let me attempt to explain.

Freehold buildings are kind of broken down in to three groups. There are homestead buildings, there are artisan buildings and there are business buildings.

What we understand of both apartments and in node housing is that they provide the player with the function of homestead buildings.

What this means is that even if every player has access to an apartment, it is still only those with freeholds that have access to the gameplay that comes with business and artisan buildings.

In order to fulfil what it is I am saying, a player should be able to use an apartment as a business, or have artisan features. It may well be that an apartment could only be a sawmill (used on purpose to illustrate how rediculous it would be), and nothing else while a freehold could have a sawmill, tavern, stable, crop field, fishing pond and forge all at once. This still gives players with a freehold a clear advantage, and guilds would still rather freeholds as it means everything is closer together.

My hope is that this is what is done with the smaller freeholds that I have predicted will happen, rather than apartments. This is simply because it doesn't make sense for apartments to be able to fulfil this role.

DrDefault

Liniker wrote: »

After discussing this with my community and putting together some thoughts, I wanted to make a separate thread to voice my satisfaction with the current iteration of freehold acquisition and provide a more in-depth answer on why the new changes regarding freehold acquisition and limited numbers are extremely positive for the game, and not a reason for concerns.

I'd like to begin by addressing some of the concerns that are being brought up, by players that are unhappy with the changes due to their realization that Ashes is actually a group-centric MMORPG.



- RMT

A non-issue when it comes down to the recent changes. This is simply reflecting the lack of arguments against the changes, as Steven himself replied yesterday on Discord



the nature of open player-to-player trading already introduces that "issue" in the game and to a much much worse degree. The BiS Legendary and Legendary unique tier items will be able to be traded, you would be able to buy literal Power with RMT skipping the need for freehold entirely. RMT is a separate issue that will need to be addressed but freehold being bought with gold is one of the least worrying things about this.

"but with RMT you can get them first" - you can only buy a freehold at level 50 so not only you need the gold, but also you need to put in the hours and grind, only the most dedicated players will get those first freeholds, not RMTers.



- Bidding is bad

What were people expecting? Did someone actually think that you wouldn't need an extremely high gold investment to acquire an open-world piece of land in an MMORPG? There is absolutely no difference from fixed price to bidding, because if Intrepid did fixed price that amount would need to go up according to demand/supply and would also need to be EXTREMELY high... why?

Because freeholds are 1.5 acres and as this post shows

Nerror wrote: »

It is impossible that with 480 km2 land mass, we have over 2000 freeholds. There is no physical space for all the 50 000 players on each server to own their freehold, so what is the solution? delay the game for +10 years and boost the world size 10x? shrink the freeholds?

Bidding is not what makes them limited in quantity, and bidding is not the reason a casual player won't get a freehold before large guilds. There was never a possibility for a casual player to be able to compete and get to a certain level and farm the resources Before organized groups that have multiple, hundreds of players working together, unless you made RNG freeholds acquisition which would be the worst, most ridiculous system ever.

If there is any amount of grind/gold/level competition involved, there is no hope for less dedicated players to beat the most dedicated players, and Ashes is not a game where "everyone is a winner" This is their core philosophy players WILL be rewarded accordingly. So what is the issue here?



- Steven lied when he said everyone can get a freehold if they put in the work

How is that statement a lie? he never said you would get a freehold on day 1, he never said how hard or what was his definition of putting in the work. If you are a casual player and you save up gold, you WILL eventually be able to bid and win a freehold when one becomes available, and Intrepid added freehold trading to make sure this will happen. Everyone, eventually, will get the opportunity to own a freehold, if you put in the work, after all... this is a monumental achievement, as it should be.



- Intrepid sold freehold cosmetic skins

"Everything is subject to change" and here is a screenshot from Ashes of Creation's Terms of Service that you can find under "In Game Purchases" https://ashesofcreation.com/terms-and-conditions



Despite that, Intrepid will already be offering refunds in the form of Embers to anyone that bought freehold skins, as they did with crossbows. Problem solved.



- Everyone will be homeless

In most MMORPGs that is true, in some there isn't even any housing system at all, in Ashes players will have access to not only Instanced apartments with storage, and furniture but also in node open-world housing, which is more than what you get in multiple popular MMOs, so why are some players acting like the game is doomed because you can't get a land piece? What about flying mounts? castles? Legendary gear?

Ashes was always a game where we would have multiple tiers of content for different players, why should that be different for their housing system?

It does feel amazing to have a legendary sword that you walk around and everyone recognizes because it's so dam rare - it's also amazing to have the land you worked so hard to get and everyone desires, this adds purpose to the game, makes it so that housing isn't just another system that you roll through but you actually need to either join an organized group of people or put in the work to get one some day.

This is the feeling many of us want, and if you are not willing to join guilds, make friends, forge alliances, or put in the work, maybe Ashes of Creation won't be a game for you.

EDIT:
*I'd like to add some extra details


- Locking players behind professions

Many people simply did not understand the system for making this assumption. The limited number of freeholds does not mean only the freehold owners will be processors.

Everyone can do processing WITHOUT access to a freehold. You can do processing up to T3 (T4 is basically your BiS endgame, and T5 is legendary) but there is even more to it.

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 and rare that you would be recognized in your region, I never, ever expected the number to be so high.


Finally, I'd like to leave a screenshot of a thread I've made last year. I think this is my best post and it remains true now more than ever.



Thread:

Liniker wrote: »

Congratulations on being part of the minority that is happy with the freehold news; however, since you're part of the minority you should accept the fact (regardless of how much you defend against it,) that the current freehold system they introduced to the public will not be the final version.

Choosing to lock a large majority of the player base out of husbandry and high tier crafting will end up destroying the population of the game, imagine telling a new player that they will not be able to access higher tiers of processing without having to pay someone to use their stations, which will ultimately defeat the purpose of investing in processing of any kind since we all know guilds that control these freeholds will charge insane amount to use their artisan stations.

This is just the reality, Albion online has a similar system that intrepid studios wants to implement and that system only works because guilds have the option to create their own crafting stations on their own personal guild island.

Without such features that allow all players to be able to contribute to some extent to the economy and giving them access to those feature, you're just going against the large majority of the player base and people will just quit the game.

Because that's the reality of the situation here, people won't stick around if they're locked out of content that they're locked out of because guilds choose to lock them out of it.

Guild politics shouldn't be involved in simple lifeskilling progression, that's incredibly counterproductive if your goal is to create a consistent 10k population on a server at all times, people won't stick around, they will leave, and they will explain why they left.

DrDefault

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

If a server has 2k freeholds but has 5k people wanting one, please explain how they can all get one.

The first 2k players to get one are all sorted. The remaining 3k players, however, essentially need to wait for players to leave the game - or more likely for entire guilds to leave the game.

What if all 25k or so players on the server want a freehold?

If we assume that all those people can in fact outbid the original owners - those people do have the ability to have a freehold too. Just gotta siege a few nodes and outbid the old owners.

I don't think Steven ever said that all who want a freehold will be able to have them all at the same time.

How is a player supposed to outbid an entire zerge guild that chooses to gather all their resources together to purchase all the freeholds?

Also, you suggesting that players just gotta siege a few nodes and outbid the original nodes is illogical, large guilds will pay other guilds to fake sieges in their territory in order to make sure other can't actually threaten their precious little territory control, that's the reality when it comes to all these large guilds, they cheat the system so they can stay in control. So, how can you siege a node when you have such guilds with an infinite supply of resources protecting themselves?

Also, once again you suggest outbidding the old owners, yet if those old owners are guild members of large guilds they once again retain control over the freehold since they have far more resources available to them than a small group of people or a single individual.

Also Steven did say whoever wants a freehold will be able to have one. With the new bidding system they introduce though, that will no longer be the case though, will it? Of course not! How can you outbid an entire guild? You can't.

DrDefault

Ratzu wrote: »

I still cannot understand why solo players or casuals are so upset about high-level processing being gated behind freeholds. The highest-quality items that need to be processed are likely to be raid drops, so "casuals" aren't getting these items in the first place. Guilds will need T4 and T5 processing to make use of raid drop materials. To the extent they sell those items on the market--whether as processed goods or raw materials--then solos/casuals will be able to buy them if they have the money. Go take the item and buy one-off access to a freehold to process the item and then voila, make your top-tier armor or weapon out of it, etc. If you aren't wanting to pursue gameplay as a processer, then this doesn't affect you--e.g., if you are a gatherer or crafter, this doesn't affect you.

What I am not seeing any recognition of on the other side of this debate is that game design choices involve trade-offs. When you make something more accessible to solos and casuals, you are taking away a separate gameplay layer from the most involved members of the community who are really the core audience of consumers at any rate. When you look at all the other MMOs available right now, the games have a system of one-dimensional gameplay layers because the gameplay has been flattened to promote accessibility. This is precisely what we are hoping Intrepid avoids.

>proceeds to talk about game trade offs
>lists none
Hahahaha, why is it everyone defending this is just throwing out words words words without actually addressing the real issue here, which is a small percentage of the player base controlling how much it costs players to have access to progressing their artisan skills, how much it will cost to craft gear and equipment for those that aren't part of those guilds, and how players are being locked out of farming and husbandry?

I swear, everyone defending this cannot for the life of them actually address these fundamental problems that come up when you introduce a bidding system, it's almost like they want to have this control over the majority of players because they get off on it.

Falleni

Alot of people allready made point about families sharing access to freehold so infact one freehold is used by 8 ppl. Of course there are some families that might have multiple freeholds but I doupt its going to be that many.

There are other housing options like stated before and not everyone want to get freehold. Freeholds also come with bigger risk with node sieges. Also if best crafting is done in node instead of freehold there might be bonuses on in node houses for it like there are for processing in freeholds. Then there are gatherers who most likely are biggest group of players and with most money at start. Gatherers might want to be more nomadic and want to use inns and such to move more freely and change citizenship.

Also as freeholds get online on node level 3 with what we know of node levels once node gets to level 4 and 5 more level 3s become available opening markets for new freeholds. These might not be as desirable for big guilds if they want to be citizens of the big node.

And if the sieging system does what its designed to do and node levels fluxuate freeholds get destroyed and new ones become available when nodes level up and delevel.

BlackBrony

Liniker wrote: »

BlackBrony wrote: »

On the other hand if family allows summoning, then if you're in a guild all your family members must be in the same guild to exploit that.

I love that nowdays people call doing anything efficiently an exploit

I know you're Brazilian, so just to be clear: exploit means:
-make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource).

I'm not saying it's an exploit (noun).
It's one of the acceptable definitions. I do apologize for using words that have double meaning though, that's on my end.

Noaani

Falleni wrote: »

Alot of people allready made point about families sharing access to freehold so infact one freehold is used by 8 ppl. Of course there are some families that might have multiple freeholds but I doupt its going to be that many.

You are mistaken.

A freehold can be used by up to 9 people from one family.

That doesn't mean it can be used by 9 people, and that doesn't mean one freehold is enough for 9 people.

What you will find top guilds do is having perhaps 2 or 3 people in the guild per family, setting up a freehold for a specific purpose, and then having guild members that want to participate in a given profession join that family.

Essentially, top end guilds will have as many freeholds as it makes sense for them to have in order to be able to cover everything.

Liniker

Noaani wrote: »

You are mistaken.

A freehold can be used by up to 9 people from one family.

it's 8 people Noaani...

and unless you are a RP Guild, there is no point in owning more freeholds than necessary to cover all the processing professions - which is probably around 4 freeholds

daveywavey

Liniker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

You are mistaken.

A freehold can be used by up to 9 people from one family.

it's 8 people Noaani...

and unless you are a RP Guild, there is no point in owning more freeholds than necessary to cover all the processing professions - which is probably around 4 freeholds

Of course it's worth owning more than you need.

You get three buildings on your freehold, outside your House. That means you can only do three things.

You have two freeholds, you can now do six things.

Every member of your family has a freehold, your 8 plus your spouse, you have 9 freeholds and so can do twenty-seven things.


And even if you don't want to use them all, you're keeping them until they rise in value enough that you can sell them for an ENORMOUS profit and then go and buy more in new T3 nodes that open up. Much like private landlords do with their rental properties.


And if you're not looking to sell the freeholds, you're simply stopping others from getting them, which means less competition for your Master Processing business. That means more money for you.




There are plenty of reasons to own more freeholds than you need.

Liniker

daveywavey wrote: »

There are plenty of reasons to own more freeholds than you need.

Sure, but that's not how guilds work. There will be multiple, multiple ways for guilds to snowball - it depends on what your goal is

If I'm going for the naval castle I'm not spending gold and investing resources to play Monopoly with freeholds,

theres a lot of endgame content in the game that guilds gonna be rushing to get.

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

it's 8 people Noaani...

@Liniker

Family sizes are normally limited to eight characters.[1]
Marriage increases family size by one to allow player housing permissions to be shared.[4]

Questions?

daveywavey

Fantmx wrote: »

and I specifically asked if as a solo player I would be able to have a farm and the answer was yes. It would be hard work and it would be easier with friends but yes as a solo player I could do that.

Fantmx wrote: »

if a player goes through monumental tasks of getting a freehold, they will get a freehold.

Fantmx wrote: »

Maggie begins that question by asking if it would be a prestige symbol owned by a fraction of players and the answer was no, any player that did the work would get the freehold).

Fantmx wrote: »

And up until Friday I had been told multiple times if I tried hard enough and did the pre-requisites, that I would earn it.

For me, this post from Fantmx explains exactly the reasons behind people not liking the new changes.

After years of being repeatedly told that, yes you can live out your freehold dreams in Ashes, there's just been a huge U-Turn and now, no you won't be able to.

Feels like a trusted friend has walked up and kicked you in the nuts.



And yes, the game is still in development and is always subject to change, but this is a rather major change that will affect a lot of players, and the full reasoning behind the change doesn't appear to have been given to explain why.

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

There are plenty of reasons to own more freeholds than you need.

Sure, but that's not how guilds work. There will be multiple, multiple ways for guilds to snowball - it depends on what your goal is

No one is saying every top end guild will horde freeholds.

I think we all know there aren't enough of them to do that.

All it takes is 5 or 6 guilds per server to do this. That in itself could take up 50% of the available freeholds.

With the lack of actual top ned content Ashes seems to have so far (a few bosses on a predictable weekly spawn timer is the best to hope for right now), top end guilds are likely to do things like this just to pass the time.

Liniker

Noaani wrote: »

Questions?

https://youtu.be/K-OyTa9pgQk?t=5055

Songcaller

I hope the spawn timers aren't a week...that's archaic for a pvx game. Needs much better turn around for more contestation/conflict.

Of course instanced bosses can reset each week if there are any.

daveywavey

Liniker wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

There are plenty of reasons to own more freeholds than you need.

Sure, but that's not how guilds work. There will be multiple, multiple ways for guilds to snowball - it depends on what your goal is

If I'm going for the naval castle I'm not spending gold and investing resources to play Monopoly with freeholds,

theres a lot of endgame content in the game that guilds gonna be rushing to get.

Freeholding for the top-quality high-end gear will be part of winning and keeping the naval castle.

I'm not going to be arguing with you anyway. You know exactly what the problem here is. You're just in the very tiny minority of players that is going to be massively benefitting from this change, which is why you're pushing to defend it so vehemently. You're well aware of the impact on the rest of the playerbase, you just don't care cos you'll be sitting pretty.

Let's not pretend your arguments For are anything other than what they are.

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Questions?

https://youtu.be/K-OyTa9pgQk?t=5055

My assumption is you attempted to put a timestamp in at 84 minutes 25 seconds, but that is just Steven reiterating that permissions for freeholds can be handed out to anyone in your family - which has a cap of 9 players (8 standard, one additional through marrage).

If that isn't what you are trying to say, then perhaps type it out yourself.

If that is what you are trying to say, then, umm, what?

BlackBrony

Liniker wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

There are plenty of reasons to own more freeholds than you need.

Sure, but that's not how guilds work. There will be multiple, multiple ways for guilds to snowball - it depends on what your goal is.

This is either naive or misdirecting on purpose. A guild that can hold freeholds will do it. All the best things come from freeholds. Even if you just do PvP, you need gold, materials.

Liniker

Noaani wrote: »

My assumption is you attempted to put a timestamp in at 84 minutes 25 seconds, but that is just Steven reiterating that permissions for freeholds can be handed out to anyone in your family - which has a cap of 9 players (8 standard, one additional through marrage).

timestamp didn't work? it's correct on my end

the quote is

"Can married couples co-own a freehold?

- No the Freehold ownership is designated by one account only and then the family system is the system that facilitates multiple accounts having permission basis within that"

It sounds like a change since there was no mention of marriage being included in the family system, that marriage quote was all the way from when Jeff was working at intrepid, and a lot has changed since then - I'm not sure tho

Ratzu

> Signs up to play a social "sandpark" MMO that requires grouping and guilds to access certain content
> Complains about game feature when being a solo player means they cannot access certain content

The truth is that there is still a lot we do not know. I see many people saying that farming and animal husbandry are locked behind freehold access. We do not know this; and I do not recall Steven saying that during the recent livestream (please post link for me if I missed it).

Songcaller

Liniker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

My assumption is you attempted to put a timestamp in at 84 minutes 25 seconds, but that is just Steven reiterating that permissions for freeholds can be handed out to anyone in your family - which has a cap of 9 players (8 standard, one additional through marrage).

timestamp didn't work? it's correct on my end

the quote is

"Can married couples co-own a freehold?

- No the Freehold ownership is designated by one account only and then the family system is the system that facilitates multiple accounts having permission basis within that"

It sounds like a change since there was no mention of marriage being included in the family system, that marriage quote was all the way from when Jeff was working at intrepid, and a lot has changed since then - I'm not sure tho

Co ownership wasn't the question. You can still have 9 freeholds if you are married.

Liniker

Ratzu wrote: »

> Signs up to play a social "sandpark" MMO that requires grouping and guilds to access certain content
> Complains about game feature when being a solo player means they cannot access certain content

daveywavey

Ratzu wrote: »

> Signs up to play a social "sandpark" MMO that requires grouping and guilds to access certain content
> Complains about game feature when being a solo player means they cannot access certain content

The truth is that there is still a lot we do not know. I see many people saying that farming and animal husbandry are locked behind freehold access. We do not know this; and I do not recall Steven saying that during the recent livestream (please post link for me if I missed it).

They are both in the Processing artisan tree.

Freeholds will be the only place where high-end Processing can be done.

High-end Processing will be the only "meaningful" processing, once players hit high levels. Cos, why would you want crappy stuff when you can have good stuff.

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

My assumption is you attempted to put a timestamp in at 84 minutes 25 seconds, but that is just Steven reiterating that permissions for freeholds can be handed out to anyone in your family - which has a cap of 9 players (8 standard, one additional through marrage).

timestamp didn't work? it's correct on my end

the quote is

"Can married couples co-own a freehold?

- No the Freehold ownership is designated by one account only and then the family system is the system that facilitates multiple accounts having permission basis within that"

It sounds like a change since there was no mention of marriage being included in the family system

So, this is a case of you not actually reading once again. You really need to work on that. Like, really need to work on it.

I'll go over it again, in smaller factual pieces so you understand. No offense, but this seems to be the best way to get information over to you.

A person owns a freehold. That is it. That never changed.

That person can set permissions to anyone in their family. That never changes.

A family is set to a default number of 8 people in total.

If someone in a family gets married in game, that family size increases to 9.

Thus, the family cap is actually 9 players.

Now, with a basic understanding of the family and marrage systems, all of the above information is contained in the following quote;

Family sizes are normally limited to eight characters.[1]
Marriage increases family size by one to allow player housing permissions to be shared.[4]

So, once again, do you have any questions?