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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.
issues with freeholds
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
for the most part the freehold system looks okay, however i strongly think that having a system that only 5-10% of people can access is a massive mistake, fair enough if they are not for everyone, but that number needs to be atleast 35-45% of players, especially as these have been sold in the in game shop for the past 5 years, there are aspects about aoc that i love, the risk and reward etc but things like this that will be completely controlled by the 1-5% of players are just a huge mistake and a massive design flaw in this age of gaming, this is coming from someone that works from home and will have a massive amount of time to play and will most likely obtain a freehold pretty easily, i still think this is a terrible mechanic, and as this game is taking an extremley long time to release ( wich if it releases as the game we all want is okay ) there is no excuse for mechanics like this to make it into the final product, some people will disagree with this but this type of mechanic in my opinion is more toxic than griefing, and as every server progresses we will see the same issues, the top 5% of players and their alts ( other accounts ) will own 90% of the freeholds, just my opinion but please take a look at your design and atleast up the number of available land spots
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Comments
I get the fear but also think people need to consider that not everyone will want a freehold and even if you can't get one for yourself, you could access its features by working with others.
Not saying there isn't a chance of issues but I also think people should see what the availability actually feels like before fear-mongering about being unable to get one.
Its the thing where u hear not everyone gets one and suddenly people are like they want it now.
Which in a way is good since the value of it is meaning something now. Normally i don't care about that stuff, but I'm trying to be a lord that owns land xD
i agree mate that not everyone will want one, but given enough time, when everything is done in the game, that will change, freeholds are a huge part of the game, and progression system so i can guarantee although not everyone will want one, a vast majority will, where as i agree not everyone should have one i also think that limiting it to 5% of players is a huge mistake, this will also cause problems with the big guilds controlling what nodes fall and rise, and i can guarantee nodes will be getting attacked just so the average players loses their freeholds to just be rebought by the same guild that is destroying them, its definitley something that needs to be tested in A2, there will also be alot of guilds '' testing'' A2 but using it as a way to optimize their route to level 50, so when the game launches these guilds will hit lvl 50 within a week and as you cant even purchase freeholds till level 50, 99% of the land will be bought before the average player can even look at making a purchase, dont get me wrong i agree there should be things that not everyone can obtain, but this is bad game design and needs to be looked at, even if its just tweeked a little bit
I'd say they look required at the game's highest level, but I'm not convinced it's a huge part for everyone. I hope you can make them a large part of your game but don't think it's something everyone should have to do.
The fear-mongering about guilds is something I disagree with.
How many freeholds do you think a guild needs?
Yes, a guild will want enough freeholds to get access to all the necessary processing equipment but how many will that require? With their increased size, do you even need more than one? After they hit that requirement, you have a guild of players that don't need a personal freehold since the guild will be able to provide all the services they unlock.
Yes, selling freeholds might be a way some guilds decide to make money but sieging a node isn't cheap and profit isn't guaranteed. The cost to do so is comparable to the cost to develop the node itself, so I'm skeptical about how often guilds are going to be sieging nodes to get freeholds.
you are right but as we play in an age where the majority of people min max every single thing possible i would guess that even if they dont technically need more, most people in these guilds are going to want one, and im honestly of the belief that sieging nodes will almost never happen, its much more beneficial for the two or three top guilds on the server to have an alliance between themselves that almost prevents node wars, i really hope that im wrong but i wouldnt doubt that this is the path we go down
Steven has stated just recently that everyone can get one. Is that meaning there is enough or is that simply implying opportunity?
The gameplay and design look fantastic, the best ive seen in any MMO. However I'm definitely one of the supporters who thinks they need to be accessible.
If doesn't have to be 100 percent, but 5 is not in any way acceptable.
And it was just sad at some point because MANY features are locked within Systems like this.
So the same thing with Freeholds in Ashes now. Freeholds will be awesome thats for sure - for those lucky few players. but its all locked for only such a small amout of Players. they should've made freeholds instanced so this HUGE System could be atleast used by ''some'' more players.
dont quote me on this but im pretty sure steven wants each server to host up to 50,000 players? i know at launch its 10-15000 players, it was stated that freeholds would be in the low thousands so maybe 2-4,000? then there will also be people with duel accounts multi boxing that own more than one freehold, obviously that is not the norm but it will happen, so i would say between 5-10% of players will actually aquire them, and of that 5-10% a solid 99% will probably be the sweatys that have 12 hours a day to play, and fair enough if they put in the work they should be rewarded but its not really a good design when its only catered to these types of people
further more, intrepid have sold these items with people under the impression they would be able to aquire a free hold, we always knew that not everyone could have one but the question has been repeatedly asked over the past 5 years to clarify what i was that we were buying, and then for intrepid to go and make these changes without consulting the community first is just bad business, personally i did not buy any freehold skins as i thought they were a bit stupid but im sure some people did and probably feel a bit hard done by
i 100% agree, i think everything in game should be accessible to a point, or atleast put the mechanics a freehold offers as a node mechanic and dont lock it behind a freehold
I'm pretty sure in the past they said the freehold size would increase as the node increased. So this probably was always planned but they decided to skip the process and instead have permiting increase as nodes increase.
My guess.
Did you even read what I wrote? How is farming and husbandry processing?
Im pretty sure AH was confirmed to be processing?
Please tell me, what are those arrows pointing at?
It's odd to have them under processing, considering both professions are logically production and semantically gathering, but I do retract my earlier post. I guess I was misinformed.
Still, isnt t3 fairly low? Level 30 items, which I imagine will be phased out from direct use a few months into the server. Saying that most people will be relegated to t3 processing is not very good design imo.
Gather seeds (gathering) -> work them on your farm (processing) -> use the produce in a dish (also processing, which to me is the weirder choice)
I think out of that whole list Alchemy and Cooking stand out. Everything else is "you have a thing, you do smth to that thing to change it - you get a result", but both cooking and alchemy are "you have several things, you combine them in different volumes/quantities - you get a result".
Maybe Intrepid used a different logic there or maybe "it is all subject to change, cause alpha or smth".
If Archeage is anything to go by, 75%.
The keyword was want.
How many people who did farming in archeage because they enjoyed it vs those who just did it because of its availability and because it was part of playing efficiently?
Most enjoyed it. Farming land (and the economic system as a whole) was the reason I stayed when my guild left.
If you didnt like managing land, coin purses were quite a good way to make a profit - and yet most of the better coin purses locations were often empty.
No one was forced to farm land, yet almost everyone did at least a little.
The size of the plot doesnt matter tbh its the parcel of land they can be on having a 1 hectare size plot available for a 1km x 1km piece of land is the same as 3 hectare size plot on a 1x1km size parcel.
I also think majority of player are not gonna bother with the risk involved in freehold, going by the current resource costs which will indicate how much effort the devswant to develop these freeholds is extreamly high especialy for 1 person which alot of people seem to wanna build solo freeholds. and after investing so much time and resource into these ffreehold u might just loose everything if the node ur in loose a node war.