Idea to make Freeholds stay relevant while being more fair with the casual players.

Kionashi

I personally don't like the idea of gating high tier processing behind such an exclusive system as the freeholds because it feels like only the sweatiest guilds with the sweatiest members will ever be able to get them leaving out the majority of the population unable to even dream on advancing on their artisan path.

But of course I know freeholds should be desirable I think even without gating the higher tier processing there are still plenty of reasons to get a freehold:

1.- You can set up public services. If you want to open a tavern you can only do it on a freehold. Since having access to certain buffs in specific areas will make sense.

2.- You get the prestige of having a place of your own on a part of the world. Random people will find your freehold by simply exploring the world and that's cool.

3.- You get to choose your location: If you want your house on a beach, or if you want your house in a snowy mountain with great vistas you can only do it on a freehold since instanced houses in the node will have all the default node environment.

4.- Extra protection when the node is destroyed: When a node is destroyed, everybody knows where the instance houses will be. But the freeholds can be anywhere, so it would be harder for people to actually find and raid your freehold unlike the node houses that will be stomped on 1 minute after the node falls.

I think all these advantages will make Freeholds attractive enough so people will desire them but if that's not enough I have a 5th extra advantage that could seal the deal.

5.- With freeholds your artisan progression depends on yourself, while in instance housing it depends on the node. By example, if you own a freehold, you can get all the processing stations you can afford, if you spend tons of gold to get a tier 5 processing station you are set. In the other hand, with instance nodes you will have to use the "public processing stations" from the node itself. So if the major decides to build Tier 5 public processing stations they would be available for every citizen of the node but if they only have Tier 4 you will be stuck in that tier and you must convince the major to upgrade them if you want to progress, making node poltics a little bit more interesting specially in scientific nodes since other major candidates could promise to prioritize upgrading the processing stations if they get elected.

But of course if you have the money and the freehold you could bypass all of that a simply buying your own private processing station. Also even if you spend a lot of money to get a tier 5 processing station and then the major decides to add tier 5 public stations in the node, it would still be more convenient to always have access to your private processing station instead of relying on the public ones since the public ones can be used by everybody and you will have to wait your turn if there are too many people wanting to use them at the same time, besides having the processing station on your freehold next to your chest is always more convenient that having to go to the node processing area, make your stuff and then run back to your house to store it away.

I think that way we could both make Freeholds more desirable without blocking the artisan progression of people who can't play as much as more dedicated players.

Songcaller

So you want science nodes to have t5 crafting and t5 processing? Makes more sense to let any node have t5 crafting.