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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Idea: 3 Freehold plot sizes
CROW3
Member, Alpha Two
What if we divided the available 1.5 acre plots into three sizes: .5, 1, & 1.5 acre plots for freeholds?
It would significantly increase the number of players that could participate in Freeholds and would open the processing bottleneck for higher quality processed components (while reducing the over crowding of node processing equipment).
Most importantly it would create interest for more players to belong to, invest in, and defend a node.
Edit: I don’t have any interest in owning a Freehold, but it seems like it would be in the best interest of the game to broaden access, while retaining all of the competitive constraints covered in the update.
It would significantly increase the number of players that could participate in Freeholds and would open the processing bottleneck for higher quality processed components (while reducing the over crowding of node processing equipment).
Most importantly it would create interest for more players to belong to, invest in, and defend a node.
Edit: I don’t have any interest in owning a Freehold, but it seems like it would be in the best interest of the game to broaden access, while retaining all of the competitive constraints covered in the update.
7
Comments
The "reason to defend a node" issue was one another poster just brought to my attention. Not sure how serious that issue is since there are other benefits of having an active node in your area. And I'm sure a lot of people are going to hang out in a particular area because that's where everyone they know hangs out or because they visually like that spot. Or it's advantageous to them because of resources and their profession.
Still like the idea even though I'm guessing Intrepid wants this artificial scarcity to drive one of the absolute most important aspects of AoC, sieging, what keeps the realm alive and beating. Maybe they could find another way of accomplishing this.
Regardless I still want to see obtaining freeholds moved from a bidding system to systems similar or identical to the mayoral systems. Combat tournaments for military nodes(gladiatorial arena style), bidding still for economic nodes, faith based questing speedruns for religious nodes lol, and elections for scientific nodes. They can still be bought/sold after acquisition, but RMT is going to destroy that system, amongst others, but people are already up in arms about the freeholds.
Either way I guess all we have to do is wait until some stuff goes down, which will certainly, to the freehold system and RMT on release. If the game does well watch it get demolished. Just like raids got so severely hindered in Classic WoW because of the gdkp gold bidding raids. If there was only a limited number of raids and you had to pay the highest for access to them, there wouldn't have been any.
This is open world limited HOUSING, with exclusive grandmaster benches, it's going to get absolutely wrecked by RMT.
For example, I would like to see some of those freehold parcels be opened up for player villages of around 10 houses with a plot of land. Nothing fancy and probably no bigger than 0.25 acres. Just a small house and enough land for 1-2 crops or a couple of processing stations or a shop that can go to max level. All in all the area would be around 3 acres, including the road passing through the village.
Even if the placement is predetermined, it's still a home out and about in Verra, and a place the more casual players actually have a chance acquiring, so they don't just leave for another game.
The big freeholds can still be there for groups to strive for, for those who want to set up processing empires.
In a node siege they would be destroyed right away of course, win or lose, but that is what it is.
Sorta, kinda like this from minecraft, but better:
That was my take. From everything I've read in our forums for the past number of years, I don't think everyone wants a massive plot, but more a small place to call their own that links back to the node. I just think that actual collective ownership will create greater loyalty to a node than aspirational ownership.
They have realy easy way to add more freehold down the road if they need to like u can even add them to the underealm since it not hard to add a tunnel to a freehold spot for example but i think we should see how things play out.
I think current interaction is actualy quite good from gameplay perspective as a whole but that can change during A2 when i see it play out but as stands now i think its fine to see how it plays out in A2
Freeholds are very high risk with what appears to be a potential for a good reward.
AA public farm is similar to this and haviung it as a build option for mayors which can be taxed when rented could work but it should be very small scale production compared to freeholds
For sure some players will not want to join guilds but would only prefer to interact with the larger community who lives in the node.
I had some other ideas too, to somehow allow a large freehold only if a few smaller ones are present in the area. But I feel there is some issue with it.
this way you could just have a business on the way to a hunting ground instead of a massive acreage. still have the 1 per acc limit and a diff grid system for the small business ones but this way you could just have what you want where and even throw less taxes on it , less upgrade power etc. obviously this would be more inclined for those that have missed out on the big plots as i dont see many people throwing away a chance for a big one unless they miss out
Sound idea.
I was never aiming for a freehold but if there was an option for a non-top tier FH to mess around with I'd be more engaged. I don't have a desire to be a Processor, and certainly won't compete for a limited spot with streamers and guilds funneling money to one player.
We are talking about smaller houses yes the game already provides that. With actual housing that is not instanced, as well as instanced apartments.
This is all about moving the goal post for people little by little, else they would have acknowledged they could have gone for the other house types.
Small: 0,5 acres, house, 1 production building
Medium: 1 acre, house, 2 production buildings
Large: 1,5 acres, house, 3 production buildings
And different sizes can be placed near to each other, while same sizes cant, like they now plan to.
This way we get 2 times more home owners, colhose slots to be shared and 50% more production buildings, witch are more populated.
Well as far as freeholds go, I say not to move the goal posts. Just to satiate the people focused on the housing idea, make apartments cover the bare minimum, and freeholds are the top tier you need to work for. Nothing wrong with that concept. It's premium housing vs baseline housing.
Seems like we should split the difference.