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
Clearly guild halls and freeholds will play a role somehow in this.
Also this makes me wonder how guild halls and freeholds play into sieges as it is directly saying that by making them stronger through guild hall buffs it will make them withstand sieges better:
guildwars might be similiar to node wars but on a small scale with destroying the guild hall as an outcome which will free up space for another guild to take a spot.
Guild hall shouldnt get any of the bells and whisles that freehold get outside of like a respawn spot for guildies, it should act as a fort for the area more than anything i would even say you cant pillage the freehold until the Guildhall gets destroyed so it gives a point where all the freehold owners in the area can come together in one spot and try and defend there parcel instead of trying to defend it with there family alone
Yeah, probably. The "issue" of guilds controlling FHs remains, though I guess Steven doesn't see it as an issue.
Just to be clear, node wars don't just result in destruction of things.
But yeah, I'd expect that GH interactions will be one of the goals in GWs, be that destruction or pillaging or anything of the sort.
I do like the idea of the GH being a fort that you gotta go through after a siege, but if GHs only serve as a respawn point and all freeholds around it are just that guild's members' ones - the guild would've been fighting off any attackers together either way, so solos and small families wouldn't really factor into it.
I want to give some inputs but the status of my group is kind of odd right now relative to this game (you can guess what their general reaction to the Freeholds thing was) and I was streaming for the last hour or so, so I would only be starting to gather up their opinions (which I might not get at all for the afore-not-mentioned reason but since it's you, maybe, don't expect them to post though).
If you only need my opinion, let me know and I'll just have a quick go at it.
It leads to Mafia style behaviours, basically.
The economic incentive to strong-arm, intimidate, or otherwise harrass people who could challenge you, in this case, drastically changes.
You'd think this would lead to more 'discussion' and negotiation, and by some definitions that's what is happening, but 'negotiating with the Godfather' is very different than 'negotiating with a neighbour'.
Cause I can't quite see how it would be different from the "mafia's" pov. Wouldn't they intimidate any potential competitors either way?
The mob generally functions based on the idea that the other person can be put into a lose-lose-'win' situation where the only 'win' condition is to help the mob or at least allow them to do things.
In a situation where you have money and there are laws or anything preventing your money from just being outright taken (such as just the basic game mechanics that your gold in your inv is your gold), you can continue to always hope for a win situation.
In the case where you can lose money because someone else had more money without them losing anything, you are in a lose-lose situation where your only win condition is to give them what they demand. It changes the situation from 'conflict' to 'rational decision'.
This takes really long to explain in full, I think I could find you some papers or a book but they'd be pretty old, so let me know if you'd want them (I'm talking about thesis or graduate level papers with studies). I am never sure whether or not the simpler explanation just 'makes sense' or not.
tl;dr the mob doesn't win because it's more powerful, it wins because it's more organized. When two 'mobs' clash over things like territory, the only thing being compared is their organization. Same as guilds, same as Feudal Lords.
Your suggestion simply makes it so that the winning side takes no losses and the losing side takes all the loss. Unless I misunderstood it entirely?
Add a stock exchange or real estate to that and you're looking for trouble. I say this as someone who often uses the former and studies the latter.
I dont see it as an issue either. I think the design working out quite well with alot of the thing they post.
there enough friction being created to cause comflict and diplomacy to happen and prevent the game from stagnating.
and with the freehold and Guild hall system here you will tend to see guild want to take a guildhall and then the nodes within the boarders of there guildhall to be a base of operation for them, it then causes diplomacy to occur with node along with all guild in the area of that node since it in there best mind to play nice because there home is only as defendable as the node it associated with, that also means there also incentivised to help people of the node that are willing to defend the node if war breaks out because you dont want weak links to defend the guild investment aka the node. So you will get processed resource making it to the market from these nodes so other players are able to gear up in case war comes.
Also with guild option for node also reduces the amount of freehold a guild needs to be self sufficient as a guild since they only need 1 processing bench total on freeholds, it also add incentive for guild wars if they dont have everything or diplomacy with trade routes with neighboring nodes to get the materials they need
It's that Guilds do this economically instead of becoming an equivalent of the government.
This is why I don't have a problem with this really. If they add any system where your right to a Freehold has to do with your contributions or place in relation to that then it's easily solved because likeminded groups will form their governmental affiliations and loosely affiliated soloists will absolutely organize properly.
So if that's Steven's end goal and we just haven't heard all the details yet, I'd say there's literally nothing to worry about except that whole 'must be level 50' thing.
And even that isn't terribly bad because the idea would not be that the Freehold users would all need to be level 50, just the 'administrator'. Organizing like this is perfectly natural, if a bit frustrating for certain people, but then you're back to 'one Freehold per account' and it's back to more-or-less working.
If this isn't tied to raw economic power as a primary, it's almost certainly fine. This includes the Guild Halls. In fact it goes even further than that and the Guild Halls are probably a reasonable solution to the whole thing, again, assuming that maybe three things are fixed (perception wise, I mean, two of them don't even absolutely need to be fixed).
Now, this isn't relevant to the topic because the entire premise of the OP is that we need to worry about Guilds obtaining Freeholds via money instead of the equivalent of 'Reputation' or 'Influence' (using those terms the way one does for the Elite BGS), but I'm moreso saying that discussing Guild Halls before we know for sure if 'straight cash' is the primary Freehold acquisition lever is going to lead to the same thing as before.
People upset because we have half the information.
As usual, I chide/scold Intrepid for their messaging. But then again Steven could absolutely just want it this way in which case messaging is perfect and very clear.
I just double checked and it's at least 2 buildings per profession https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_buildings
"A minimum of two artisan buildings will be required to max out a particular profession.[12]"
So with 9 processing professions, a guild, that wants to completely min-max their professions, would need at least 3 freeholds that are completely filled with purely processing stuff. Probably even more.
And those would be just the "guild's" freeholds, not really personal ones. This is why I wanted GH to have all that stuff available, because guilds would just be able to do all their stuff there and take up waaay less space in the game's world, while also not losing out on artisanry. It would also allow some of the artisan players of the guild to not buy their own freehold, if they're just interested in the gameplay itself rather than "having a place of their own" status.
If Miraleth has 6 potential GH location within the node. I am curious about the system being used to determine if a plot that can be use for a GH will be used for a GH. Also, what are the restrictions on GH placement. Freeholds have to be 100meters apart, will GH have to be an arbitrary number of meters apart as well? Can adjacent GH plots not be occupied? What's the max number of GH at each stage of a Node.
If Three Rivers barony has a GH on it but Dankwood doesn't do any potential buffs the GH gives be subject to the estates in Dankwood or just in Three Rivers?
Guild Halls buffs bleeding into other baronies without a Guild Hall on it.
Guild Halls only giving their buffs to it's own barony.
I just don't really see how that wouldn't be controlled by the guilds as well, which is why I came up with the OP. Just a full redirect of the entire guilds' population into GHs from FHs.
The uproar with the freeholds came from "guilds will just outbid everyone", so GHs seemed like a potentially nice way to at least alleviate some of that. But considering Steven's additional info from discord that Fantom posted, I feel like GHs are more of a "part of the patronage system" than anything else. It might be a predicate for it or a result of it. Which would mean that 45 guilds will be able to get them (if the previously mentioned patron limits are still in place).
And if that system involves a ton of money in any of its steps - the issue of guilds buying up freeholds would be somewhat alleviated either way. At least at the start of the game, that is.
im guessing guild halls either have a set location they can be built or they can be built anywhere that isnt on a freehold parcel going by the map since there none on the outline of the freehold parcel.
As for amount of guild halls Towns (T4) have 1 Cities(T5) have 2 and Metro(T6) have 3 (https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Patron_guilds)
Its the entire reason its being brought up. This provides an avenue for large player organizations to min max their crafting potential while not buying out the entire countryside.
That spreads out the guilds to keep the open world active while still leaving room for a large amount of players who want to use the freehold system.
I don't have a good feeling about this.
Feels extreme.
What will be the impact onto the economy?
With this system, what my guild would do (if we were to play) is get as many guild halls using as many shell guilds as we can, and get all freeholds around them.
The notion of selling a freehold for profit has just been supercharged. Selling an entier barony in one to a guild is the move.
if you can max out whatever you want inside your guild hall, that defeats the purpose of the other systems. going out, fighting for resources, risks, rewards, etc. might as well make everything instanced then...
well, maybe it was guild halls and teleportation abilities. You never saw people in the open world. they hung out in their guild halls, then teleported to raid or instanced dungeon entrances.
Prior to that, guilds mustered for raids in the open, which created a much more interesting game.
That will already be the case with freeholds.
Hell, it'd be even easier to attack a guild that's chilling on their GH because you'd be able to wardec them and have barely any penalties against them, while being able to kill them all "for free". While with FHs you'd have to go corrupted to stop someone from farming their shit.
If anything, this feel like a way more pvp-friendly approach.
Then that definitely seems like an "instanced and TPs" problem rather than a GH one.
Whereas the guild hall is a structure similar to freehold structure can only be taken through successful sieges against a node per-se are not taken but destroyed
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Guild_wars
Guild forts might be the "steal your girl" type of deal and would be way more competitive. Though I'd love if forts were pretty much the same as my idea for halls (with halls still being like I said), but just better defended. Smaller "castle sieges" on a more regular and frequent basis between strong (but not top) guilds would be great.
And the upgrades for that fort would stay, just as they do with blueprints after your FH (and I'd assume GH?) dies. So there'd be constant battles for them, cause they'd be super valuable.
Now I've hyped myself up for a shitton of cool pvp which will never happen