Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Well that depends since we haven't seen the system in action. But what's to say the new land spot comes on line and its one that requires favor as well as gold to bid on. You spent time gaining honor, but no favor and they out bid you for that one freehold because of that alone. We just haven't seen everything in action yet to know for sure. But I could see something like this example happening.
"Come join us as you wont like the taste of the Grapefruits we're throwing at our enemies."
"Never settle for what you think you know" - C. Krauthammer
One thing I would hope we could all agree on is that players will know. Perhaps not on launch day (but probably on launch day).
We will know what different nodes need as requirements. If there is an RNG component where sometimes it is one thing and sometimes it is another thing, we will know which nodes sometimes require which things.
In a game like Ashes, if my and my guilds economic activities are based on needing a freehold, we will have all of these eventualities covered.
We will have plans in place for if our node is destroyed. We will know what node we would want to build up next, where we would want to look at getting new freeholds and guild halls, what we would do if a different node became the leading node in the area.
So, if there was a chance that we may need either favor or honor, we will have someone that has each. If it is a guild level thing and your guild can only have one or the other, we will have two guilds.
Doing this isn't even a "we may have two guilds" kind of thing. Organized guilds will be organized.
This is what I have been saying for a while - not just in regards to freeholds, but content in general. If there is competition, you can not compete with organization by any means other than more organization.
Bravo, that's the point. Just because you need favor, doesn't mean it's a problem. You need favor? Ok, Jimmy and Andy will level slower and farm favor, and then at 50 we will transfer gold and they can get the freeholds.
I always feel that when Steven talks, he almost "gives up" to solo or casuals. He doesn't say the obvious, which is "orgs will dominate", but his message sound like "if you work hard, you have a chance"
Looking at it that way I potentially agree. To be fair though, in your example you say I and MY not WE and OUR. So your example pitted you and him against each other not you and your guild against him. So if I add, he gets a guild asap after joining Ashes and they are helping as well. Now its who outbids the other, and both have sufficient backing. So neither have an advantage.
"Come join us as you wont like the taste of the Grapefruits we're throwing at our enemies."
"Never settle for what you think you know" - C. Krauthammer
Within the context of the discussion, we are talking about how there is an inherent advantage to those of us in more organized and/or larger guilds.
Obviously one way to combat this is to get yourself in to a large/organized guild. However, that isn't dealing with the issue, it is just putting the player in question on the right side of said issue.
Personally, I would rather that the issue be dealt with.
The design intends for that to be dynamic, rather than static.
We'll have to see how well the dev team can implement that.
Race isnt going to be a factor. Every time Steven talks about racial impacts on the game, he downplays them. It is cosmetic and thematic, not mechanical. The closest thing to a mechanical impact race will have (outside of augments) is that you may be given a different quest to achieve the same end goal.
The rest would all be accounted for by an organized guild. I mean, race would as well, if it had any impact.
The design might change so that it's not a factor. But the current design includes dominant Race as a factor.
I appreciate that you have acknowledged that you made an assumption about freeholds--their prevalence and how difficult it would be to obtain them. You are certainly not the only person who made this assumption; it seems many people feel they were misled. I don't know what the exact numbers are for who believes what, but there are clearly a number of individuals with strongly held beliefs that the recent release of information is a mistake. There are no firm statements as far as I know that you or other folks can point to that justified the belief that most of a server would have a freehold, so it might be helpful if we stop referring to the recent release information as a "change."
Many other premises or statements in your post are plain wrong or are implicitly contradicted by info that Steven has revealed about systems. Not really worth engaging each item, I hope you read the wiki before you post in the future about what a system's design is or isn't, but I just wanted to point to this quote above.
Economy implies a supply and demand. Aka scarcity.
Those two things are not the same.
You're right they are not the same, but to think Ashes was going to be a thempark where everyone could do anything, but then have a caravan system where you can lose materials and not think scarcity was involved is narrow minded.
Like everyone else on this forum, people lack looking deeper than a few words they get hung up on.
Semantics.
I've personally always thought scarcity was part of the overall systems of "economy" in Ashes, because it makes sense.
Ok, I thought you were gonna go further with this, but either way I was snarky for no reason (slightly busy but that's no excuse).
A game can be explicitly designed with a supply and demand loop with 'scarcity' only operating on one aspect of it and have a perfectly functional and in my opinion better-than-most economy. Improperly applied scarcity levers are more likely to make your game a bad experience than to maintain a good one.
The freehold and process gating isn't about profitability but limiting resources so markets don't flood.
Outside of gear and items breaking due to durability, they limit the amount of items that can be processed. If you know the areas that processing takes place you can create friction around those freeholds. Since you have to carry back resources to a node town to craft.
Keeping a market from flooding is 100% about profitability to the one(s) that control it. Otherwise, the scarcity would exist on the gathering front.
This, for clarity, is the only place a game 'needs' any scarcity, but because of the way most players learned to experience games of this type recently, I feel like studios have been reluctant to do this for basic economic stuff. They'll do it for bosses and similar, but even that gets 'eased up' quite quickly.
I'm not saying Ashes won't do this, in fact I'm sure they will. I'm actually saying that this is all they have to do, and additional points of scarcity have the potential to do more harm than good.
Bots farming the gathering scarcity, or apply it to people actually playing the game that have access to the tools that process the scarcity, while also driving friction. Yes, bots can feed the processing, but atleast there now points of interest with which freehold is processing.
I'm also willing to accept to see this system put into practice in A2, and no problem with changing my view, but currently I think this a good way of doing it, and honestly I've never thought any different when the economy "pillar" was discussed, and expanded upon with freehold/processing.
Taking out rival processing freeholds through node war is a good motivator.
Discussion is nice, but right now this is what it will be, and we will test in A2 and is subject to change and balance.
This is also the perfect spot for the ever so repeated.
"This game isn't for everyone"
Why is no one playing our game?
It wouldn't be because of freeholds.
Hell, I'll give it another bump just for the obnoxious sentiment.
You guys are going to over-use and rubber-stamp that quote and render it meaningless. Especially when you add no substance.
If you can't handle the discussion then it might be better for you to go do other things until A2 starts.
"This forum may not be for everyone."
You must of missed the part where I said A2 systems will be tested. Adjustments may be made, and it's very possible they will never change to a version you find acceptable.
Imagine I am the only person on the server with a freehold that has top tier ore smelting facilities. If you want top tier ore, you have to come through me.
Now imagine that the components to make that top tier ore are not scarce at all.
Do you honestly think I wouldn't be processing the shit out of all the ore I could get, in order to make absolute bank?
The thing is, in Ashes, there isn't going to be just one freehold with smelting facilities, there will be many. While some people may reserve those facilities for their guild, node or other allies, some absolutely will not. There will be people on every server that simply exist to make a profit.
Due to this, literally all materials that exist on a server that can be turned in to top tier materials simply will be turned in to top tier materials.
Freeholds literally only function to determin who profits from that process, as they stand now they absolutely do not place a limit on it.
Now, you may say something like "well how do you know how long it will take to process ore?". This is true, but if they want to limit top tier materials based on time, then they are no longer limiting it based on freeholds. Any other limitation they apply (raw material scarcity being the most likely) means that it is no longer a limit imposed by freeholds.
The entire argument of freeholds existing in order to facilitate rarity of top tier processed materials simply doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny.
Let's do some simple math. A snapshot in time.
There are 10 freeholds that can produce gold ingots.
For sake of simplicity each processor has 100 ore.
Each freehold will only be able to produce 10 ingots every 10 hours for a total of 100 ingots.
Now if you reduce the freeholds by half you will only be able to produce 50 ingots in 10 hours, meanwhile a stockpile of gold ore is accumulating, but still only being able to be produced at 50 every 10 hours.
On the other side of the scale, you have 20 freeholds that can produce gold ingots, but the gold ore reserves stay the same. Spread out your 1000 ore amongst the freeholds, and you get 100 ingots in 5 hours, but have little to replenish your ore stock.
It's like saying irl factories shouldn't be needed because I can also just go home and make my ingots.
Considering my above statement, you could implement a home version of processing, where it takes 600mins for 1 ingot versus 10, I could find that a possibility.
Regardless, the freehold / processing work as a factory of sorts. Which then reminds me of SWG, and I like the proposed version of processing even more now.
What is stopping a server having 100?
Further, the limitation in your scenario is time, not freeholds.
In order to prove that, I am going to quote the start of your post, and just change out a few words - the math still holds true.
See? the math still holds.
As such, your math, and thus your result, are not reliant on freeholds.
You have mathmatically proven that time to process could be used as a gate on top tier resources, however.
Guilds will also collude together to squeeze and control markets.
Start buying up freeholds early and often. Dont sell them. Even pay a premium if you have to, to the existing owners. It'll be worth it because you will control the market on vital items. With current availability there will be literally nothing players can do anout it.
And if you think the players will band together to fight the evil money man or that all or most of the major power blocks won't be in on it, the you needs a better understanding of actual people.
Play Eve and you'll understand what I mean.
The only thing that stops this is actual competition.
All else aside, are we now calling this good game design? Are we defending this kind of system in a game?
If freeholds were ONLY about processing, I could see a very biased acceptance of this (though it would take a special kind of mental gymnastics to think that someone smelting ore should be able to block someone else from sawing lumber) - but freeholds are not just about processing.
If me and my friends want to run our own tavern in game, why should we need to compete with a top end guilds desire to corner the top tier metal market?