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
It’s early and I don’t want to make a ton of points, just want to assist with your theoretical freehold maths.
It’s 6 buildings that can be in placed in addition to the homestead. So 8 technically including the shed.
Shed builds as soon as you place the freehold, house is required to be your first building(gotta have a house), and then up to 6 other things.
yea this is where we disagree, there always has been ""forced PvP""" in AoC's open world
I just don't think you fully understand it, because if you tell me you would not be in a guild to avoid auto-flag guild wars (enemies can follow you anywhere in the world and kill you with zero penalty)
you would not transport rescources around to avoid auto-flag caravans/ships (enemies can follow you and kill you with zero penalty)
you would not be citizen of a node to avoid auto-flag wars with citizens of other nodes (enemies can follow you anywhere in the world and kill you with zero penalty)
you would not defend your freehold in sieges
you would not defend your freehold after sieges
at that point I'll just say you wouldn't be playing the game for sure
of course, in all the examples I listed above you could technically refuse to do it - as you could refuse to go to the open seas......
and with all these examples you can't chose When, they all can happen or they can all Need to happen when you are not in the mood for pvp, so yea... open seas was 100% not bait and switch it was an extension of what was always in the game.
I honestly mostly only remember peoples stances of PvP. All that being said, while debate, discussions, and arguments are what forums are made of, you shouldn't dishesrten yourself purely because someone else lacks the empathy or similar effort into the discussion. Everything I say is less for whoever I am debating, and more for the developers to take feedback from. Unless it's means of course.
And that all being said, I think the main solution to the economic problem is just making another path for master processing somewhere else. But this is assuming it actually becomes a problem. It obviously needs to be tested still.
I still don't think having freeholds being exclusive is a problem, as long as static node housing and apartments manages to satisfy the housing itch. And as long as master processing isn't too bottlenecked.
i contest this. not as uncontestable as you thought.
The issue with saying that it needs to be tested is that we would have to decide 'tested for what'.
Reducing Freeholds reduces Free Economic Actors in the system or Freeholds are not meaningful. They were always going to be part of the FEA count because there is no exclusivity if they are not influencing that, except 'exclusivity of certain game loops' I guess.
But furthermore the problem comes with tying FEAs to the in-Node housing at all, because by doing so, you are largely removing them from the FEA count. The same goes for 'Crafting only in Nodes' but until we learn that you have to be a Node Citizen to use the max Tier crafting stations in the node, that's still not a true FEA limitation.
This is basically saying 'I don't think exclusivity of Freeholds is a problem except for the two largest problems', is that right?
"As long as Master Processing isn't too bottlenecked it's fine."
I think it’s saying that we don’t know those problems are problems yet. They could be potential problems that need adjusting.
I feel like most people lean towards the 2000 number of freeholds, but that number could be 3000-4000 and still technically be considered “low thousands”. Upping freeholds by 1-2 thousand would cause a huge change in the math.
Even at 2000 a 20k registered account server has the potential to have 80% player access to max level processing through family.
The problem people I have discussed this with have, is not that there are only enough Freeholds for 1 in 8 people to get them. This is probably fine, if not ideal.
It's who those 1 in 8 are.
I've stayed out of the discussions on this because we lack information and half the arguments don't make sense, but there is definitely a flaw and we know that flaw is the point as of now.
You do not limit Free Economic Actors unnecessarily in an MMORPG unless you don't want its Economy to be something that most players experience as anything other than a slave or serf (and possibly just not work but that's unknown here). Any design in which a Freehold is a Reward that does not literally bleed money is one in which you have purposely limited the FEA count.
Any alternate design wouldn't involve gated Processing. So we know that Processing has some gate, the game has trading for unset values, and the gate has an exclusivity. Steven even talked explicitly about having situations where someone wants to buy access to your family in order to upgrade their Economic Actor status.
The math is not what is 'wrong' here, the design is what is 'wrong'.
None of this is relevant in the context we are discussing. You cannot simply argue that 'any limit Intrepid feels like applying to players is valid' because we're talking about 'will the Economy be good?'
Then again, would you like them to remove Player to Player Trading? This would be more limiting and it would create and even codify Supply and Demand.
Would that be a good change that improves and aligns with the Core Design?
It begins.
You keep insisting you are not angry, have no animosity at all, just a passionate curious soul, hoping everything works out for everyone... then, you say things like "car salesman" "bait and switch", repeated insinuations that the game is falling apart since Jeff Bard left and Steven is a buffoon.
You angry, bro. Embrace it.
Also, there is tons of meaningful conflict. You fight for your node... not just because you care about it or its people, but so that certain services are available to you. If you lose, you need to find a new crafting station in the world. You fight for your caravan because it represents the materials to improve your node and upgrade services... it is a means to an end that you want to achieve.
In the open world, there will be meaningful conflict, for example, when another node or group is intentionally overharvesting in your node to make things more scarce for you (or maybe just so they dont wreck there land management).
Meaningful conflict is caused by scarcity. You need to want something badly enough to fight for it.
It doesnt have to be loot from a 1v1 pvp encounter (you over focus on that imo, I think because you dont like it so much), it is at a larger scale.
I think that you are having a hard time with some of this because you don't strike me as a "joiner"... you most likely prefer to hang alone, never getting too attached (not grouping for more than one hour, for example). This game is shaping up so that the loner may to not get to do everything. That is why the game doesn't appeal to you, at least in my opinion. The open world pvp is the most visible thing that gets in the way of you just going into Verra as an 'observer', but so are the politics and large scale strategy.
I did not join/buy in to Ashes during kickstarter, i was one of alot of lazypeon video awakeners. but, i have gone back and watched everything (literally everything I believe) publicly available about this game and I do not feel the direction has changed. Not even a tiny bit. Specifics have changed... no crossbow <gasp>, freehold size, map size, etc. These are changes they felt were required to preserve the essence of the game, not change it. At least that is my opinion.
You focus is so much on open world pvp, you are not seeing the meaningfulness of being able to shape the world around you.
My bartle score is 67% Explorer, 60% Killer, 40% Socialiser, 33% Achiever. (EKSA)
We all care about the economy.
Before we get too far into this... do you mind, briefly, stating how you are qualified to understand 'logisitcs/Econ' issues so much better than Intrepid Stuidos and the economist they hired to help them create a balanced, controllable economy?
It's probably better than letting the thread derail further:
My experience is only in playing strong economy games for many years. I submitted a paper once in college about it for a course, but the course was about Math and not Economics since I'm accredited as a Programmer/Software Engineer not an Economist.
I currently mainly make money through stock market investment only and continue to attempt to study game economies and historical economies in detail, but, again, I have zero accreditation in the matter, my degree is in Software.
I am not aware of who Intrepid's current Economy Designer is, afaik they didn't have a Lead one yet, so I can't make any comparisons there.
The games I have been liaisoned/involved in the development of, that actually released, do not generally have this aspect. The only other thing I can think of is that my software job was in designing and maintaining Business Intelligence search engines for large companies that would be explicitly used to track their own trends and economic data.
Since this was a bait question ("qualified to understand so much better than") I will simply ask others to not derail too much. i.e. please don't read my response as 'here's why I am right and Intrepid is wrong'. I similarly ask that you don't use it the opposite way: 'You don't have an Economics degree so you shouldn't act like you know anything'.
As usual, this post was not brief. I can't tell if it will prevent the derail or not, so go, dice roll!
We don’t know how bound currencies will effect this entirely. We don’t know the level of trade off acquiring bound currencies will have with other progression paths. If I hop in the game and my main goal is getting to that high end pve content, or leveling yourself or your guild up is going after that bound currency worth it if it slows that progress I want down more? For all we know the solo player who really wants to do animal husbandry can focus heavily on doing tasks that award favor and could potentially be so far ahead in that second currency race that no one could put bid them.
We also don’t know how the tiers of artisan classes work with each other, and how each tier will affect our gearing. With gear sitting at roughly 40% of our power there is a potential to not see a huge amount of disparity between each tier.
Even though I know some others disagree I think it’s pretty good game design to have lower tiers relevant to max level. I have always hoped that the higher tier gear may give you an edge with maybe more stat modifiers present on it and/or some higher ranges you can achieve, the usual, but also not something that makes you unbeatable if you have that gear. If someone in tier 3 gear never has a chance to beat someone in tier 5 without that tier 5 person going afk then I personally think they missed the mark.
If you just lose an edge by not having tier 5 gear, that makes lower tiers viable options, which means tier 3 processing is more viable, because again, that tier 3 crafting is still viable.
This also isn’t even taking into consideration gear degradation. Just that upkeep could cause tier 3 to be more viable to maintain then tier 5.
Thanks!
Thank you.
I have read your post several times and I am not sure I even understand what you think is bad design.
You are saying that freeholds will be such a wealth generator and making it so only a few will have one is going to create have and have nots in the economy?
If that is right, please explain what you mean by "if freeholds dont bleed money"? that is the part I got lost
A Freehold is desirable for some reason. In this case, we could assume that it generates some value to the player, that doesn't have to be ingame currency, it could just be fun, but we do know and expect that it has a cost of some type to maintain.
If a Freehold costs more to maintain than it produces, I have no issues with this system.
If it produces more value in general than it takes to maintain it through any vector, then it is a Reward for action. If it is a Reward for action that then provides a specific economic option and is then limited with no equivalent vector, then it is a limit on Free Economic Actors.
I am aware that I haven't yet explained why limiting Free Economic Actors in an MMORPG precisely is a problem. This is because it would take a very very long time to explain and I'd prefer to establish if others can agree or understand on whether or not the design is even limiting them before I spend time on that.
Prior to the Open Seas, there were no permanent zones that were auto-flag, (Corruption-free) FFA PvP. And non-consensual PvP was punishable by Corruption across the entire map.
My Bartle score is Explorer 87; Socializer 73; Achiever 47; Killer 0
Obviously, I have zero interest in guild wars.
I don't need to be in a guild to explore the entire map.
Also, I don't need to be in a guild to help my friends who are in a guild.
So, yes, I have no problen with not being in a guild if I don't like the PvP flagging associated with belonging to a guild.
The guilds I join are super-casual, so, I might quit the guild when I’m not in the mood to be flagged for guild wars and rejoin after the war is over.
Also, seems like, for some reason, you cannot understand the concept of "permant zone that is auto-flag (Corruption-free) FFA PvP".
Caravans are temporary.
Which means I can explore all areas of the map with Corruption active when Caravans are not around.
The most important part is that there are no permanent zones that are Corruption-free.
Nodes are not permanent zones with auto-flag (Corruption-free) FFA PvP.
Which means I can explore those areas of the map when a war is not present.
The most important part is that there are no permanent zones that are Corruption-free.
Sieges are not permanent zones with auto-flag (Corruption-free) FFA PvP.
And again, I can explore those areas when Sieges are not active.
The most important part is that there are no permanent zones that are Corruption-free.
What you are telling me here is that you are incapable of understanding my playstyle so you are trying to predict what I would do or think from the biased perspective of your playstyle.
I might refuse to go to the Open Seas if the playstyle reflected by my Bartle score where different.
If my Bartle Score was: Socializer 87; Achiever 73; Explorer 47; Killer 0 ---
Maybe I would be OK with just exploring the Mainland.
If my Bartle Score was: Killer 87; Explorer 73; Achiever 47; Socializer 0 ---
If my Bartle Score was: Explorer 87; Killer 73; Achiever 47; Socializer 0 ---
I might travel to the Open Seas and revel in the auto-flag (Corruption-free) FFA PvP.
In all the examples, I actually would be choosing when I'm in the game auto-flagged and could choose not to participate in any of those when I'm not in the mood for PvP. Because those are all temporary and none of them are as important to me as being able to explore the entire map without advertsing that I'm in the mood for PvP when I actually am not in the mood for PvP.
Obviously, in your examples, if I was not in the mood for PvP, I would either not participate in the Siege (of course we know when Sieges are scheduled weeks in advance) or I would choose not to do a Caravan run.
Or, if a guild war left me flagged when I didn't want to be flagged I would quit the guild during the war and still help them in other was while not being a formal member.
And... I would be free to explore the entire map without being auto-flagged for (Corruption-free) FFA PvP.
Might be that if you aren't an ESAK, you won't be able to understand my mindset and why the OpEn Seas is a dealbreaker for me.
But, I fully understood the game design. Steven made a significant change that was a dealbreaker.
Might not be a signifcant change to playstyles that are not ESAK.
I get what you are saying - the thing is, based on your arguments, you would also be OK with playing games like L2 because they technically don't have Corruption-free FFA PvP zones, but you say you don't play those games, and even in WoW you would go to PVE only realm,
so I honestly can't believe if Intrepid announced that open seas would only happen during certain times of the day - making them not permanent zones pvp - that you would suddenly be ok with playing the game, if the games you usually enjoy are mostly PVE with optional instanced PVP - I can't see someone that doesn't like EVE, L2, AA, enjoying playing AoC based on the corruption system's protection when there is a lot more to it.
I might be wrong, but based on what you say I don't see you as the target audience for a pvp-centric game regardless of the open sea pvp thing,
I don't know what that means
I would place a leasehold size as being that of the original freehold. That makes them a third the size of a current freehold.
As to clutter - I agree it could be an issue.
My assumption though is that an estate with a freehold and as many leasehold as possible would still only be about 10% used. Even if it is more than that, since the number of leasehold you can have on an estate is tied to the node level, as you are moving around Verra it will simply appear as if the closer you are to larger population, the more intense the land use is.
This will, in my opinion, add character and realism to the game world.
So…for that I would need to test Corruption to know if it is a sufficient enough deterrent.
I was playing EQ/EQ2/WoW/AO.
And I usually have 8-hour play sessions.
I don’t play a ton of games. When I find one I like - I play all day.
I played some DAoC. I played some AC.
I played some DDO.
L2 was not really on my radar. I paid no attention to it until Steven started talking about it.
I was kind of interested in a Sci-Fi MMORPG, so I looked into EvE Online, but determined it’s too PvP-centric for me. Lots of EQNext fans were excited over ArcheAge, but the moment I saw Naval combat, I lost interest.
If Corruption were active on the Open Seas for a few hours per day - it would not be a dealbreaker for me.
I play Hardcore Time. I would explore the Open Seas when Corruption is active.
I haven’t played L2. The only thing I know about L2 is that the L2 players who want me to play Ashes tell me that I would probably feel OK playing that game and that Corruption is even harsher, so they believe I should feel comfortable playing Ashes.
That’s what the L2 gamers, including Steven, told me before the reveal of the Open Seas. And I said - OK, I kinda doubt it, but I will test it.
Again, you will see that the very first questions I asked Steven on The Ashen Forge in 2018 was to compare Ashes PvP to EvE Online and ArcheAge.
I tried to get him to confirm that if EvE and ArcheAge are too PvP-centric Ashes would be too PvP-centric for me too.
He said that it’s not. It’s like L2.
And Corruption should work well enough for me to feel comfortable.
Because non-consensual PvP can be punished by Corruption across the entire map.
I don’t disagree with you but, Steven says Ashes is not PvP-centric; it’s PvX.
And then the Ashes fans parrot the same language, "Ashes is not PvP-centric; it's PvX."
The kind of PvP I like falls under Meaningful Conflict: Castle Sieges; Node Sieges; Caravans
And those could be Open World.
Meaningful Conflict was originally what was in the Kickstarter.
I'm not particularly motivated by Risk v Reward. And the more Steven obsesses over Risk v Reward, the less interested I am to pursue progression paths.
Explorer/Socializer/Achiever/Killer
to address the clutter, you could treat it as turning the freehold into a compound. So basically neighbors in close proximity, just quarter up the estate, reserving 1 quarter to the owner. You may have to limit the size of building to medium and small if you want each quarter to be able to have more than a house though
Edit: this would also make defending against sieges more viable
For example, a metropolis, with a metropolis' vassal cites and guild halls there will easily be hundreds of instanced apartments, several dozen freeholds and likely a couple of dozen guild halls.
There can be up to five metropolis level cities, times that with the required number of vassal cities each metropolis has, along with likely small city and town level nodes that have their own smaller vassal city system, this all adds up very quickly in number of apartments and houses there are for players.
Having an open world Home is a decent-sized carrot.
In my opinion, if initiating leaseholds as an option is something that lessens the size of a freehold, it will almost never be undertaken. That is a part of the reason why I'd prefer leaseholds as a new in game entity completely.
In regards to defending after a failed node siege, placing leaseholds near a freehold would indeed assist in defending the entirety. This isn't something I had put much thought in to, but to me, I see this as being an aspect of giving players the choice as to where on the estate the leaseholds are located. I'd like to see the freehold owner be able to deside whether they dictate where the leaseholds go, or leave it up to the player that is taking on the lease. I'd actually like to see an entire range of options that can be selected to form what would essentially amount to different clauses in a contract, with things like first right to buy should the owner of the freehold wish to sell it (or abandon it).
"I mean... I think most people " There it is again!!
Well I think most people want and love open world pvp and 99.9% of the people love hardcore pvp. (see how that works)
Depending on how well players get along with each other, each server could range pvp battlefield to a wonderland for crafters. Given the world map size, one area could be at constant war and another area be at peace.
That being said. Freeholds are looking to be high-maintenance/high-risk with medium rewards. They are design so Freehold owners will need friends to get the most out of and protect their Freeholds.