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Some concerns about land ownership

Hi there,
First of all, I have to say i'm very excited about this game and I believe in the abilities for this dev team to deliver an amazing product.

WARNING: I'm about to talk a lot about ArcheAge and the land problems in that game

I'm just wondering how claiming land will work exactly in AoC. The reason why I have some small concerns is because, there were some major issues with the way open world land ownership works in ArcheAge as I'm sure some of the devs are well aware. The moment the game launched, it was this land rush where every alpha / beta player knew to go claim the most valuable pieces of land. And not just 1 piece of land.. SEVERAL. some players would own as much as 10 pieces of land per account and create several accounts to dominate an entire area as far as real-estate goes.

Then comes the new players who see this potential great new game with land ownership and farms.. only to realise that all the open world land is all gone already and that the players hoarding it all, are selling pieces of lands for thousands of gold, which will take months for them to acquire. I think that this is what pushed away soo many potential players in ArcheAge. First they were told the game is F2P, only to find out that to have access to land and truly enjoy the game they need to be patrons (monthly sub). So then they get patron only to find out that all the real-estate is gone and they'll have to buy land from another player at a ridiculous price.

I think that something the ArcheAge devs should have done, is limit the amount of land each account can own to 1 or 2 plots to allow every paying player a fair chance at getting a piece of land.

The other main issue with land ownership in the open world is.. how do we do server mergers down the road. I know right? why are we talking about server mergers when the game isn't even close to released yet? This became a huge problem in ArcheAge when they tried to merge servers. even tho less players were on each servers, all the land was still occupied because each player owned a lot more land. So how do you tell players that they are about to lose all their land because servers are being merged?

I think once again, had the devs only allowed for players to have 1 or 2 pieces of land as a limit, this would not have been an issue. As players leave the game, their lands would eventually expire and would eventually become empty plots. If there's a land limit per account, existing players would not be able to simply take over these new empty plots as they already have their land. Devs would then be able to see how many plots of land are available on each servers due to the player volume going down, and would be able to merge the appropriate servers. Of course there's always going to be issues in mergers, such as players who had their lands in a specific area and now can't have it there anymore after the merge.. but compensations can be given to players who have to relocate.

Anyways, all this to say.. I really hope that Land ownership in AoC is better done than it was in ArcheAge. I would rather players buy land through NPCs to completely avoid this silly real estate problem ArcheAge had where players would hoard land to try to sell it at high prices.

Comments

  • Pretty sure server merging is not a option at all :( Simply due to the fact that every server will be completely different due to the node system, so it would make no sense trying to merge them:/

    I can't really say for sure, but it seems that its gonna be quite hard to get land plot in the first place. I don't know exactly how the plot system worked in Acheage (even though I bought and played it for a bit :/ ), but in AoC it seems like you really only need one main plot that you then develop over time, with different workshops, farm etc.
    Later on they say that if you missed out on the first plot rush in a city, then you can get an apartment, mostly for the political aspects of living in a certain city :)

    If you havent already seen the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGepb_OZLhQ">Q&A video</a>, then I encourage you too do it :) They talk abit about it there.
  • If there are people who go out to abuse that sort of system, perhaps there should be a "rent" system like they had in DAoC's housing.

    You go out and purchase a point, or stake a point or w/e system they are going to implement and then must pay a weekly fee for that node. In DAoC the bigger the house, the larger the fee. If nothing is built in that node, or rent isn't paid the node would go available to the public again.

    Would make it harder for people who want to grief housing spots to maintain it all at least.
  • Steven has already stated that you will only be able to own 1 of each type of house/land. The open world type, houses around nodes and apartments within nodes. I like your idea in terms of house decay. It only makes sense that if you're not using the house on a regular basis, it will disapear and get into a worsened state than before
  • If you use instances there is no player housing crisis.
    Granted you dont want 1000s of people all arriving at the exact same location to enter 'their' house doorway either.
    So you want a large variety of door locations.
    The problem then is devlopment time if 1000s of doors have to be 'unique'.
    So you let the players makes the doors 'unique'.

    A problem is just a solution no one could be bothered with.
  • DAoC / Wildstar housing was instanced, the difference between the two though was DAoC was setup as complete neighborhoods. It wasn't in the real world, but you could interact and check out otherpeople's houses if you were willing to explore.

    Wildstar you got that little plot.

    I enjoyed the previous as it brought more to the game for a game of its time. But if players are only able to purchase 1 node than that will solve a lot of issues, just house decay or a rent system that will open up the slot should really be implemented for people who quit the game and such. As long as the map will be big enough and have enough nodes for the people who want the houses, everything should work out fine. Should
  • One think in Archeage that was annoying was you can place your property in a way so you wasted space. I know it's supposed to be an open world, but maybe having a gird system for housing areas so space isn't wasted might be nice.
  • [quote quote=2425]One think in Archeage that was annoying was you can place your property in a way so you wasted space. I know it’s supposed to be an open world, but maybe having a gird system for housing areas so space isn’t wasted might be nice.

    [/quote]

    Like that guy that parks across two parking spaces for his precious.
    :/
  • I'm really glad the op put this issue up, as it was something I too was curious about and feared because of all of the reasons listed with AA. I look forward to hearing more about the housing system when more information is released!
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