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.
Right, so we are just talking about a small subset of processing gameplay, not all of it. How is this game design decision flawed? If you are a solo player you are able to buy a freehold. It's not going to be easy, and nobody said it would be, but why not just find people to group with and avoid the issue altogether instead of asking to have no restrictions when playing a social game anti-socially?
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.
@daveywavey@Noaani
this is the latest quote, players can achieve processing up to T3 (rare tier items) to a large degree in nodes
So we know T5 is something out of reach for the large majority of players, if you have 1 piece of legendary gear that's a Huge achievement, so don't need to worry about that
It really comes down to T4 which will be the actual engame BiS - since families get access to freeholds, that's 8, or lets say 9 players per freehold with access to T4 processing
with 2000 freeholds on a server that's 18k players with T4 and T5 crafting - easily 45% of the server with access to endgame processing
You are locked to one artisan tree after T4, so in a perfect scenario we would have 33% of players doing crafting, 33% doing processing, 33% doing gathering
where is the issue with the processing game design?
akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Wonder how acurate the arguments for, against and otherwise will end up being when the full elements can be assessed in isolation and in context of the overall systems.
Wonder too, if the motivation behind this move was to create community activity over solo play, sometimes that is called an MMORPG.
Solo players want freeholds - they want an equal chance of getting them and don't want 200 people working together having an easier time acquiring them - and since they have absolutely no reasoning behind this, for the last 5 days they are throwing every single bs argument they can to try and get Steven to change the system.
We have seen them complain about cosmetics sold, about RMT, making factual incorrect arguments like "no one will have access to processing" saying the game will fail because of this (?) and a lot more.
Already have and it seems you all don't really have a lot of points to make, at least not clearly. So here I am, asking for you to clearly list the specific gameplay layers or features you believe this prevents you from accessing.
Solo players want freeholds - they want an equal chance of getting them and don't want 200 people working together having an easier time acquiring them - and since they have absolutely no reasoning behind this, for the last 5 days they are throwing every single bs argument they can to try and get Steven to change the system.
We have seen them complain about cosmetics sold, about RMT, making factual incorrect arguments like "no one will have access to processing" saying the game will fail because of this (?) and a lot more.
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.
Should've read my comment in context. Noaani didn't say that all those 25k people are purely solo players or that none of them are in strong guilds.
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.
Please give a quote where Steven says "everyone on the server can have a freehold all at the same time". Maybe I've missed it. Cause if that quote exists then it would be the biggest proof of "Steven going back on his word".
Please give a quote where Steven says "everyone on the server can have a freehold all at the same time". Maybe I've missed it. Cause if that quote exists then it would be the biggest proof of "Steven going back on his word".
I think this is a little disingenuous.
Players had no reason at all to assume freeholds will be as limited as they now seem to be.
While no one expected to get a freehold and keep it forever, even Steven said at one point that a major point of contention to players losing their freehold is in players having to place furnature and such again.
While he may not have said there would be a real chance they may never get another freehold again, he certainly gave people a reason to assume that wouldn't be the case.
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.
That is not true. Or at least not necessarily.
Here's a crafting table for a top lvl material. At one point the resulting material stands at the 4th step of crafting tiers
You'd collect Animal Bones, craft them into Coarse Bone Powder, craft that into Varnish of Purity, craft THAT into Artisan's Frame and then use the Frame to craft the Warsmith's Mold.
The lowest lvl of a mob that drops animal bones is 4. Which means that even a lvl4 character can go farm some mobs and then sell the loot for a good price, because top lvl people need those materials in their crafts.
The same can apply to the entire crafting process in Ashes. All tiers of gathering get combined with all tiers of processing and flow into all tiers of crafting. No one is forgotten and no one is ignored. Afaik SWG had something similar/better.
Simple, that isn't the only thing we are talking about.
It is one aspect of what we are talking about.
Okay, what else?
What about animal husbandry? The idea of having your piece of land and farming? Or having an inn and being the awesome RP player who welcomes people to their tavern?
Steven said "low thousands" on a server with 50k players.
I failed to see how "family", which was something created for real life friends or you know real family is a solution. If you belong to a hardcore guild, for which freeholds are the intended recipients, I bet you 100% that one of the rules of said guild would be to "have all family slots available" for the guild. The family bond already offers a summon, unless that has been recently changed. It will not be used for andies to summon their friends, it willl be used by guilds to assert dominance.
On the other hand, by design, the most hardcore players will be closer to metropolis and own property there, either instanced or not. Why? Because they level faster, so they claim citizenship faster, and the more citizens a node has, the higher the price for instanced housing. Nodes have soft cap on citizens.
So casual will go further away from the node, further away from "crafting stations at the node". Maybe a small guild can snatch freeholds, until the large ones come and destroys everything.
Nodes have no social structure. Nodes are not owned by guilds, but in reality who else will care about a node? 100 randoms without any real connections? Yeah, sure.
Players had no reason at all to assume freeholds will be as limited as they now seem to be.
While no one expected to get a freehold and keep it forever, even Steven said at one point that a major point of contention to players losing their freehold is in players having to place furnature and such again.
While he may not have said there would be a real chance they may never get another freehold again, he certainly gave people a reason to assume that wouldn't be the case.
And to me that's just copium speaking. As we've discussed before, everyone approaches what they hear from Steven from their own experience. My experience is that everything is limited to groups (and usually guilds) and that there's no wide availability for everyone. Others' experience is that they have a much higher chance to experience higher lvl content w/o putting in a shitton of work.
So when I hear Steven say "anyone can get a freehold", I think "got it, I gotta work a shitton and probably with a group". But others hear "ahh, nice, literally anyone can get it in their own way".
You say that approach is disingenuous, but when you look at Steven's words in context of a ton of other mechanics in the game and other design choices - my thinking seems more logical.
Now you could say that Steven has played a lot of AA so it's only logical to assume that he'd have the same system in Ashes, but, from what I've seen of his speech habits, he usually gives direct parallels to the systems/features he's inspired by if he took those in almost the same way.
A quick ctrl+F of the flagging page brings up Lineage, but freehold/buildings page doesn't bring up AA. Though while I was checking the L2 references I saw an interview of Steven paralleling AoC's buildings to AA. The only thing he mentioned is just the ability to build several buildings, which we saw directly in this latest showcase.
What I'm trying to say, if Steven wanted to copy the availability of in-world housing from AA - he woulda said so already and would've referenced it with smth like "AA (or "this one game") had a great housing system, with a lot of players being able to build their own plots and houses. So we took that system and just added a few features on top of that".
If I missed that kind of vague quote, do point it out pls.
And to me that's just copium speaking. As we've discussed before, everyone approaches what they hear from Steven from their own experience.
While this may be true to a point, I'm curious as to what you have to say to this.
It is essentially Steven saying that solo players would be able to own and run a farm. He touched on the fact that there is likely a need for assistance in regards to some resources, that having friends, family or guild behind you would make it quicker, quite a few of the "MMO" things that you would expect.
If you listen to that, it would seem like a totally different game to what we have now.
You are welcome to say "but L2" all you want. It really doesn't matter. What Steven says in regards to Ashes trumps what ever L2 did in relation to what players should expect in Ashes.
And what Steven said is that solo players would be able to own and run a farm on a freehold - as such that is what players should have been expecting in Ashes.
I think the reality has been accepted, hence the backlash. I think a lot of people have realised they've backed the wrong horse and want more than 'embers' for the trouble. I personally am not fussed either way but a freehold would be nice to manage. I can still partake in node sieges and node wars if I'm allocated to a node by my guild.
While this may be true to a point, I'm curious as to what you have to say to this.
And what Steven said is that solo players would be able to own and run a farm on a freehold - as such that is what players should have been expecting in Ashes.
I'd say that he danced around that like a ballerina A "farm for the most part" is an interesting way to put it.
If anything, I feel like at that point the farming feature was either separate from the freehold or at least was available outside of the freehold as well, cause Steven words it as if your access to a farm is in the same list as access to a freehold, but not necessarily the same thing.
I'll give them the last benefit of the doubt with the next node update. There's still a chance that nodes will have a way to do animal husbandry and farming for each player of the node, be that through the apartment or just a general instance on the premises. Steven alluded to that in his discord message, but if I were to follow my own words - that "allusion" interpretation might be copium on my side.
If there is no such feature and if freehold have in fact completely cut off any and all solo players from farming and husbandry - I'll agree that Steven lied in that clip.
p.s. on the previously discussed topic of providing business at an entry lvl. This is complete and utter speculation on my part, but what if in-node taverns (built by mayors) provide a "job" where players can replace npcs for a while and provide whatever services (work as a shop, a parlor game operator, etc). I think that could be a way to introduce people to that gameplay feature w/o them having a freehold. At which point we'd have all of the freehold features available to people that don't have them at an entry point to the mechanics.
I'd say that he danced around that like a ballerina
All else aside, is that how you want the creative director of an MMO you are playing to talk to his players?
At that point, a farm was one thing you could do with a freehold - just as it is now. You could have a freehold and make it a farm, or make it a tavern, or make it a stable.
As to your tavern idea, the desire players have in Ashes is to run a tavern, not to wait tables in one.
You keep throwing numbers around without reason for them.
First, there will not be 2k freeholds on a server at a time. There will be half of that.
sorry, you have no idea what you are talking about, as usually
so low thousands - and the number (low thousands) fluctuates (up and down) so there "will be" only 1k ?
The phrase "low thousands" typically refers to a numerical range between 1,000 and 3,000. It suggests a quantity or value that falls within this range but is closer to the lower end.
You keep throwing numbers around without reason for them.
First, there will not be 2k freeholds on a server at a time. There will be half of that.
sorry, you have no idea what you are talking about, as usually
so low thousands - and the number (low thousands) fluctuates (up and down) so there "will be" only 1k ?
I'm going to do that thing where I spoon feed you the relevant information again.
At the moment we are targeting low thousands for freehold plots.
Plots are associated with nodes.
Freeholds become available when a node hits level three.
Not all nodes will be at level three at any given point in time.
Thus, not all freehold plots will be active at any given point in time.
Questions?
I've been talking about this as a general fact for days now. You aren't keeping up at all, my dude. How can you expect to be worthwhile voice in a discussion like this if you aren't keeping up?
Players had no reason at all to assume freeholds will be as limited as they now seem to be.
it's just honestly a waste of time arguing with someone that is pulling their own personal assumptions and opinions on what is good or bad design, and what was right or wrong to "assume" - and using it as facts to try and win arguments
at the end of the day, it's Steven's game, you can either play it or not, I like the freehold changes, there were no reasonable arguments made in all the 7 pages of this thread against the changes - and this is just another dps meter, open seas pvp thing were people wasted days crying about something that won't be changed.
The idea of a family system in an MMO is so that players have a unit of membership that is just for friends, rather than something that needs to be optimised for gameplay reasons.
No man... see, that's the issue with your argument and most people that are complaining - that is not the idea of a family system in an MMO - that is Your personal biased idea.
I mean, that is why they were first added to MMO's. If you have a different idea of them,that is a you problem.
It is also the original idea Steven had for families. When talking about the family summons he was talking about the exact kind of situation of having a real life friend that couldn't be on early enough, and the family system was there to help with this kind of thing.
His idea of what a family in an MMO may have changed since then, but that doesnt mean you can come in here and say my idea of what a family system is about is wrong.
Explain to me why the freehold system needs to be family based, rather than guild based, or individual permission based.
The thing is, you cant. There is no reason for this to be family based other than Intrepid needing to do something with the family system other than the family summons that will never make it to live.
to give more players access to fh. i mean you could set permissions for 7 other people in your friends list and its the same thing...its just an extra menu option.
u could remove the family system and then have 7 other friends help you bid for a fh and then you give them permissions. it would still be the same....
your argument is because there is a label called "family" the system is forcing you to do that and its the only way you can accomplish it and its build around it.
also families in other games could be formed for gameplay reasons, as i told you. just because your experience has been that someone in your family logs once a week, doesnt mean its everybody experience. people have organized themselves into families for gameplay reasons. tis been happening for 20 years now
Players had no reason at all to assume freeholds will be as limited as they now seem to be.
it's just honestly a waste of time arguing with someone that is pulling their own personal assumptions and opinions on what is good or bad design, and what was right or wrong to "assume" - and using it as facts to try and win arguments
at the end of the day, it's Steven's game, you can either play it or not, I like the freehold changes, there were no reasonable arguments made in all the 7 pages of this thread - and this is just another dps meter, open seas pvp thing were people wasted days crying about something that won't be changed.
This is literally you coming to the realization that Steven previous said that freeholds will be available to solo players, meaning everyone that has been upset about this that you have been saying has no reason to be upset actually did indeed have a very good reason to be upset.
Then, instead of saying "oh, I was wrong, you guys did have a reason to be upset, isn't Steven a bit of a dick", you just said "his game. suck it up".
This is who you are.
I'd be somewhat ashamed with myself if that was who I was.
Comments
Right, so we are just talking about a small subset of processing gameplay, not all of it. How is this game design decision flawed? If you are a solo player you are able to buy a freehold. It's not going to be easy, and nobody said it would be, but why not just find people to group with and avoid the issue altogether instead of asking to have no restrictions when playing a social game anti-socially?
It is one aspect of what we are talking about.
Okay, what else?
@daveywavey @Noaani
this is the latest quote, players can achieve processing up to T3 (rare tier items) to a large degree in nodes
So we know T5 is something out of reach for the large majority of players, if you have 1 piece of legendary gear that's a Huge achievement, so don't need to worry about that
It really comes down to T4 which will be the actual engame BiS - since families get access to freeholds, that's 8, or lets say 9 players per freehold with access to T4 processing
with 2000 freeholds on a server that's 18k players with T4 and T5 crafting - easily 45% of the server with access to endgame processing
You are locked to one artisan tree after T4, so in a perfect scenario we would have 33% of players doing crafting, 33% doing processing, 33% doing gathering
where is the issue with the processing game design?
Rather than me repeating what everyone else has said, how about you do some reading.
I suggest starting here.
Wonder too, if the motivation behind this move was to create community activity over solo play, sometimes that is called an MMORPG.
@Ratzu no need, I will give you the TLDR:
Solo players want freeholds - they want an equal chance of getting them and don't want 200 people working together having an easier time acquiring them - and since they have absolutely no reasoning behind this, for the last 5 days they are throwing every single bs argument they can to try and get Steven to change the system.
We have seen them complain about cosmetics sold, about RMT, making factual incorrect arguments like "no one will have access to processing" saying the game will fail because of this (?) and a lot more.
Already have and it seems you all don't really have a lot of points to make, at least not clearly. So here I am, asking for you to clearly list the specific gameplay layers or features you believe this prevents you from accessing.
See, you're wrong.
First, there will not be 2k freeholds on a server at a time. There will be half of that.
Second, there will not be 9 players using each freehold, there will be an average of half of that.
This takes your 18k players with access to a freehold down to 4.25k.
But even then, that isn't painting an accurate picture.
Please give a quote where Steven says "everyone on the server can have a freehold all at the same time". Maybe I've missed it. Cause if that quote exists then it would be the biggest proof of "Steven going back on his word".
Players had no reason at all to assume freeholds will be as limited as they now seem to be.
While no one expected to get a freehold and keep it forever, even Steven said at one point that a major point of contention to players losing their freehold is in players having to place furnature and such again.
While he may not have said there would be a real chance they may never get another freehold again, he certainly gave people a reason to assume that wouldn't be the case.
Here's a crafting table for a top lvl material. At one point the resulting material stands at the 4th step of crafting tiers
You'd collect Animal Bones, craft them into Coarse Bone Powder, craft that into Varnish of Purity, craft THAT into Artisan's Frame and then use the Frame to craft the Warsmith's Mold.
The lowest lvl of a mob that drops animal bones is 4. Which means that even a lvl4 character can go farm some mobs and then sell the loot for a good price, because top lvl people need those materials in their crafts.
The same can apply to the entire crafting process in Ashes. All tiers of gathering get combined with all tiers of processing and flow into all tiers of crafting. No one is forgotten and no one is ignored. Afaik SWG had something similar/better.
Better because you weren't gate blocked from personal progression through solo endeavours.
What about animal husbandry? The idea of having your piece of land and farming? Or having an inn and being the awesome RP player who welcomes people to their tavern?
Steven said "low thousands" on a server with 50k players.
I failed to see how "family", which was something created for real life friends or you know real family is a solution. If you belong to a hardcore guild, for which freeholds are the intended recipients, I bet you 100% that one of the rules of said guild would be to "have all family slots available" for the guild. The family bond already offers a summon, unless that has been recently changed. It will not be used for andies to summon their friends, it willl be used by guilds to assert dominance.
On the other hand, by design, the most hardcore players will be closer to metropolis and own property there, either instanced or not. Why? Because they level faster, so they claim citizenship faster, and the more citizens a node has, the higher the price for instanced housing. Nodes have soft cap on citizens.
So casual will go further away from the node, further away from "crafting stations at the node". Maybe a small guild can snatch freeholds, until the large ones come and destroys everything.
Nodes have no social structure. Nodes are not owned by guilds, but in reality who else will care about a node? 100 randoms without any real connections? Yeah, sure.
So when I hear Steven say "anyone can get a freehold", I think "got it, I gotta work a shitton and probably with a group". But others hear "ahh, nice, literally anyone can get it in their own way".
You say that approach is disingenuous, but when you look at Steven's words in context of a ton of other mechanics in the game and other design choices - my thinking seems more logical.
Now you could say that Steven has played a lot of AA so it's only logical to assume that he'd have the same system in Ashes, but, from what I've seen of his speech habits, he usually gives direct parallels to the systems/features he's inspired by if he took those in almost the same way.
A quick ctrl+F of the flagging page brings up Lineage, but freehold/buildings page doesn't bring up AA. Though while I was checking the L2 references I saw an interview of Steven paralleling AoC's buildings to AA. The only thing he mentioned is just the ability to build several buildings, which we saw directly in this latest showcase.
What I'm trying to say, if Steven wanted to copy the availability of in-world housing from AA - he woulda said so already and would've referenced it with smth like "AA (or "this one game") had a great housing system, with a lot of players being able to build their own plots and houses. So we took that system and just added a few features on top of that".
If I missed that kind of vague quote, do point it out pls.
It is essentially Steven saying that solo players would be able to own and run a farm. He touched on the fact that there is likely a need for assistance in regards to some resources, that having friends, family or guild behind you would make it quicker, quite a few of the "MMO" things that you would expect.
If you listen to that, it would seem like a totally different game to what we have now.
You are welcome to say "but L2" all you want. It really doesn't matter. What Steven says in regards to Ashes trumps what ever L2 did in relation to what players should expect in Ashes.
And what Steven said is that solo players would be able to own and run a farm on a freehold - as such that is what players should have been expecting in Ashes.
If anything, I feel like at that point the farming feature was either separate from the freehold or at least was available outside of the freehold as well, cause Steven words it as if your access to a farm is in the same list as access to a freehold, but not necessarily the same thing.
I'll give them the last benefit of the doubt with the next node update. There's still a chance that nodes will have a way to do animal husbandry and farming for each player of the node, be that through the apartment or just a general instance on the premises. Steven alluded to that in his discord message, but if I were to follow my own words - that "allusion" interpretation might be copium on my side.
If there is no such feature and if freehold have in fact completely cut off any and all solo players from farming and husbandry - I'll agree that Steven lied in that clip.
p.s. on the previously discussed topic of providing business at an entry lvl. This is complete and utter speculation on my part, but what if in-node taverns (built by mayors) provide a "job" where players can replace npcs for a while and provide whatever services (work as a shop, a parlor game operator, etc). I think that could be a way to introduce people to that gameplay feature w/o them having a freehold. At which point we'd have all of the freehold features available to people that don't have them at an entry point to the mechanics.
All else aside, is that how you want the creative director of an MMO you are playing to talk to his players?
At that point, a farm was one thing you could do with a freehold - just as it is now. You could have a freehold and make it a farm, or make it a tavern, or make it a stable.
As to your tavern idea, the desire players have in Ashes is to run a tavern, not to wait tables in one.
You make too many assumptions, trying to push assumptions as facts is very silly. Makes your arguments look extremely weak.
sorry, you have no idea what you are talking about, as usually
so low thousands - and the number (low thousands) fluctuates (up and down) so there "will be" only 1k ?
I don't think you understand many of the points. This is not "I want a freehold" ***cries in solo player***.
This is at the core of the game
The phrase "low thousands" typically refers to a numerical range between 1,000 and 3,000. It suggests a quantity or value that falls within this range but is closer to the lower end.
At the moment we are targeting low thousands for freehold plots.
Plots are associated with nodes.
Freeholds become available when a node hits level three.
Not all nodes will be at level three at any given point in time.
Thus, not all freehold plots will be active at any given point in time.
Questions?
I've been talking about this as a general fact for days now. You aren't keeping up at all, my dude. How can you expect to be worthwhile voice in a discussion like this if you aren't keeping up?
it's just honestly a waste of time arguing with someone that is pulling their own personal assumptions and opinions on what is good or bad design, and what was right or wrong to "assume" - and using it as facts to try and win arguments
at the end of the day, it's Steven's game, you can either play it or not, I like the freehold changes, there were no reasonable arguments made in all the 7 pages of this thread against the changes - and this is just another dps meter, open seas pvp thing were people wasted days crying about something that won't be changed.
to give more players access to fh. i mean you could set permissions for 7 other people in your friends list and its the same thing...its just an extra menu option.
u could remove the family system and then have 7 other friends help you bid for a fh and then you give them permissions. it would still be the same....
your argument is because there is a label called "family" the system is forcing you to do that and its the only way you can accomplish it and its build around it.
also families in other games could be formed for gameplay reasons, as i told you. just because your experience has been that someone in your family logs once a week, doesnt mean its everybody experience. people have organized themselves into families for gameplay reasons. tis been happening for 20 years now
This is literally you coming to the realization that Steven previous said that freeholds will be available to solo players, meaning everyone that has been upset about this that you have been saying has no reason to be upset actually did indeed have a very good reason to be upset.
Then, instead of saying "oh, I was wrong, you guys did have a reason to be upset, isn't Steven a bit of a dick", you just said "his game. suck it up".
This is who you are.
I'd be somewhat ashamed with myself if that was who I was.