Some speculation and napkin math on how many freeholds can be in the game.

From the livestream Steven said this (slightly paraphrased):

Each Zone of Influence has designated large parcels of land that are catered to POIs or are thematically relevant to the area.
You can bid on those almost county size areas where you can then place your freehold within.
Freeholds are now 1.5 acres, where they used to be 0.5 acres.
The parcels are "many, many, many acres" in size.

The landmass of Verra is 480 km2, excluding the underrealm, which adds around 100 km2. Underrealm freeholds seems to be a thing too, so let's add that for a total of 580 km2.

1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers

Obviously a lot of land is unusable for freeholds, since it's covered by roads, nodes, mountains, POIs, dungeons, etc. For the sake of argument let's put it at 300 km2 usable for freeholds. Just over half the landmass.

What "almost county size" and "many, many, many acres" means is really hard to guess honestly, but let's say 50 acres for a parcel at a minimum. 50 acres is around 0.202 km2.
If we have a total of 300 km2 to play with that's 300/0.202 = 1482 parcels of land, and thus potentially that many freeholds as well.

That's not a horribly low amount, but for a game with up to 50,000 accounts per server, that's still only 1 in 33 that gets a freehold. I kind of doubt the 50k accounts per server though, so let's put it at 25k accounts max, which means there are enough freeholds for 1 in 16 accounts or so.

We can play with the numbers a little: If we get 400 km2 total parcel land and 50 acre parcels, we get 1980 freeholds.

If the parcels are 100 acres instead of 50 we obviously only get half the number of freeholds.

A big positive for this approach is that we won't be getting freehold cities dominating the landscape, so from a visual fidelity point of view, limiting the number and proximity of the freeholds is definitely the right move.

It also absolutely kills the dreams of many time-casual players if only 1 out of 16 players can get a freehold, and it might promote a huge demand for buying RMT gold, especially since the freehold plots can be sold by other players.

On the flipside, it's also going to drive people to destroy more nodes so freehold slots might free up.

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Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I screenshotted some of the pertinent comments by Steven on Discord.

You should include the message that people will be able to process stuff in nodes as well. Not master lvl+ stuff, but still. Cause I've seen some people assume that literally the entire processing profession is locked behind a freehold.

Piggies?

Nerror

NiKr wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I screenshotted some of the pertinent comments by Steven on Discord.

You should include the message that people will be able to process stuff in nodes as well. Not master lvl+ stuff, but still. Cause I've seen some people assume that literally the entire processing profession is locked behind a freehold.

I might have missed that one. I'll take your word for it

It makes sense too. Up to journeyman crafting on freeholds and up to journeyman processing in cities.

Caww

Promoting the Freeholds as a major feature and attraction of game play and then telling players most of you will never get one will diminish enthusiasm and interest in AoC as people wonder what else has limited potential for unrestricted access further down the road.

Ludullu

Laetitian

NiKr wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

I fully expect any resale of freeholds to also be a bidding system. Direct sales to another player would be a horrible way to do it. It's bad enough that the bidding system combined with the scarcity promotes RMT, but direct sales would take it to 11. We'd see freeholds for sale directly on the net for hundreds or thousands of dollars. With a bidding system they at least can't do that, because anyone with enough gold can win the bid.

Steven said on discord that it's both a bid and a direct sell, sellers choice. So definitely RMTable and Intrepid will have to somehow track that and prevent it.

Is that recent information and are you sure you interpreted it correctly?? Contradicts with what was said in 2020 and is still quoted on both the Freeholds and the Cities wikia entry.
The cities entry says *buildings in cities* can be resold to other players directly after already built and owned by a player. Real estate that doesn't have that function, which is the category that Freeholds belonged to in 2020, may only be resold to the node owner.

https://youtu.be/KesMtSOZl8k?t=2881
48:00-49:25

Makes more sense that way. Otherwise the auction system would be a farce once the server is populated.

Ludullu

Laetitian wrote: »

Makes more sense that way. Otherwise the auction system would be a farce once the server is populated.

Lex is sick now so probably didn't have enough energy/time to update everything on the wiki.

Laetitian

Hm. I guess perhaps natural resource limitations and regular sieges will ensure that this system won't be abused too heavily by people who plan to win all highly contested auctions and resell for real-world money, or at absurd prices? That would be the only reason I could imagine for why he would have changed his stance on this.

Ludullu

Laetitian wrote: »

Hm. I guess perhaps natural resource limitations and regular sieges will ensure that this system won't be abused too heavily by people who plan to win all highly contested auctions and resell for real-world money, or at absurd prices? That would be the only reason I could imagine for why he would have changed his stance on this.

He likes to change it quite often. Last time we heard about freeholds - we couldn't even sell those fuckers

Oh and btw, the time before that time - WE COULD

I had a mighty roflcopter about that when I learned about it after the stream.

The sandal lord is very flip floppy

akabear

tautau wrote: »

Good discussion. Remember, though, that there will be housing in the nodes which will be quite attractive to many players - the size of the house can grow as the node levels up and you can also put crops around your house - so many players will choose node houses rather than freeholds.

Additionally, nodes can build apartments and building these housing buildings will be attractive to nodes. Nodes need citizens to grow and level up and apartments enable citizens so they will be almost essential for large nodes to build lots of apartments and (perhaps) price then cheaply.

Freeholds are very attractive, but there will be lots of housing besides them. This might double the available housing (or more!), which impacts these calculations.

Thanks for raising this. a key point that perhaps could have been raised in the monthly talk and certainly something they should probably raise to help clarity

akabear

Definately do not want to see multiple freeholds within pve or boss areas..
Would like to see some distinction between domestic freehold areas and open wilderness.

SongRune

It's not quite "how many freeholds will exist", but I'll just leave this here, as it's related. From the feedback thread...

SongRune wrote: »

Jahlon wrote: »

So for the constructive criticism, I would remind Intrepid that "you are not your designs, your designs are not you"

With that said, I think this pivot on Freeholds is a terrible one. It isn't learning the lessons on Open World Housing from Archeage, Elyon, and isn't taking into account the problems from Final Fantasy XIV.

If you want to limit the number of Master and Grandmaster Processors, than limit how and when and where they can get those top tier crafting stations.

However, saying there are "3 other types of housing" when we know in Node houses start at 8 in a Stage 3 Node and Grow to some unknown number at Stage 6, really isn't a solution since the number of Nodes dropped from 103 to 85 and there is no housing in stage 0/1/2 Nodes

Stage 3 Nodes have 50 apartments, and Stage 4 and higher ONLY have more if the Mayor builds the building.

So basically a percentage of the population will own a home or a freehold, and everyone else will be stuck in Instanced Housing.

If you haven't paid attention to any of the other games that have open world and instanced housing, Instanced Housing is a consolation prize and a "thank you for being a second class citizen" award.

Wait seriously? Are these numbers correct?

85 nodes. 50 apartments (hell, let's say mayor builds double: 100 apartments). That's 8,500 people with housing. 50,000 registered accounts per server. Hell let's double it again. 17,000. And again. Every mayor in every possible node builds 7 extra apartment buildings instead of something else. 34,000. At 50,000 registered accounts per server, that's 16,000 homeless people without even instanced housing.

The 8*85=680 (or doubled 1,360 (or doubled-doubled 2,720)) non-instanced node houses aren't even gonna make a dent.

(16,000-2720)/85=156.

Are there gonna be 156 freeholds at every single node? I really hope you did the math, Intrepid, cause it seems like you're gonna have a homeless problem even on a very well-developed server.

In terms of the "You don't need a freehold. There will be lower tier housing for everyone" argument...

Maybe not?

This is obviously equally rough back of the napkin math based on numbers I didn't personally verify. But then again... I did it the generous way. I doubled, and doubled, and doubled, even when there might be more profit to be made with different mayoral investments. I assumed every possible node was built up fully (in terms of requirements for housing anyway), even though that's literally not possible with the Vassal system.

Freeholds aside, at the "back of the envelope math" level, Ashes has a homeless problem.

Maybe they're relying on "everyone has a ton of alts which share housing with each other"? I know a lot of people play this way. (If the story's any good, I probably won't have any alts.) But at that point all it takes is mayors investing a bit less generously in housing instead of other things, and "not assuming an impossible level of server development".

Or you know. People buying an instanced apartment in different city for every alt...

Actually. If accounts share housing, since it's one per character... Maybe I will have a few lv1 alts.

Ludullu

SongRune wrote: »

Freeholds aside, at the "back of the envelope math" level, Ashes has a homeless problem.

The whole system seems to have changed (well, at least the houses did), so I think we just gotta wait till next month's stream (or most likely in two months).

Spif

As far as napkin math goes, I'd say that a lot less than 300 sq km will be available parcels.

But that said, there are going to be plenty of freeholds. Why?

Gold cost will be high
Material costs for buildings will be high
Time investment to get anything out of those costs will be high
Number of players on a server is not the limit. It's number of L50 active players. IMO that won't hit 50k even on highly populated servers. Midrange servers I think will have 1-5k, and that will take months.
Not all of the L50s will want to bother, and many that do will pool for a family system.

What there won't be is plenty of freeholds in decent locations. Some freeholds will be far away from a developed node that has crafting stations. That means long mule/caravan trips to sell refined mats.

The video showed upgrade costs (not final of course), but a single upgrade to one building needs 2000 wood, 1500 metal. I'm guessing that's an hour+ of gathering for a single upgrade.

One real fly in the ointment is going to be server merges. If you're on the smaller server and you get merged into another, what happens to your freehold investment?

Raven016

Nerror wrote: »

One real fly in the ointment is going to be server merges. If you're on the smaller server and you get merged into another, what happens to your freehold investment?

What was the solution before this announcement about server merges?

Raven016

NiKr wrote: »

Laetitian wrote: »

Hm. I guess perhaps natural resource limitations and regular sieges will ensure that this system won't be abused too heavily by people who plan to win all highly contested auctions and resell for real-world money, or at absurd prices? That would be the only reason I could imagine for why he would have changed his stance on this.

He likes to change it quite often. Last time we heard about freeholds - we couldn't even sell those fuckers Oh and btw, the time before that time - WE COULD I had a mighty roflcopter about that when I learned about it after the stream.

The sandal lord is very flip floppy

What is the chance that the cosmetic store will end up selling in game currencies?
Because if some players will be able to get the gold via RMT to buy freeholds, then Steven will lose the opportunity to have some profit. And I would rather buy from store as I never used RMT.

Songcaller

Raven016 wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Laetitian wrote: »

Hm. I guess perhaps natural resource limitations and regular sieges will ensure that this system won't be abused too heavily by people who plan to win all highly contested auctions and resell for real-world money, or at absurd prices? That would be the only reason I could imagine for why he would have changed his stance on this.

He likes to change it quite often. Last time we heard about freeholds - we couldn't even sell those fuckers Oh and btw, the time before that time - WE COULD I had a mighty roflcopter about that when I learned about it after the stream.

The sandal lord is very flip floppy

What is the chance that the cosmetic store will end up selling in game currencies?
Because if some players will be able to get the gold via RMT to buy freeholds, then Steven will lose the opportunity to have some profit. And I would rather buy from store as I never used RMT.

The game doesn't let gold drop from mobs. I doubt you'll get to buy gold with real money from the devs.

Raven016

Neurath wrote: »

Raven016 wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Laetitian wrote: »

Hm. I guess perhaps natural resource limitations and regular sieges will ensure that this system won't be abused too heavily by people who plan to win all highly contested auctions and resell for real-world money, or at absurd prices? That would be the only reason I could imagine for why he would have changed his stance on this.

He likes to change it quite often. Last time we heard about freeholds - we couldn't even sell those fuckers Oh and btw, the time before that time - WE COULD I had a mighty roflcopter about that when I learned about it after the stream.

The sandal lord is very flip floppy

What is the chance that the cosmetic store will end up selling in game currencies?
Because if some players will be able to get the gold via RMT to buy freeholds, then Steven will lose the opportunity to have some profit. And I would rather buy from store as I never used RMT.

The game doesn't let gold drop from mobs. I doubt you'll get to buy gold with real money from the devs.

It might be so now. But I see people being surprised by changes except @NiKr
Also in the stream it was said that things might change because is a game in development.
If this was not the first change, then any change can be assumed to happen.

Songcaller

I'm all for mobs dropping gold but then gold would have to be dropped on death rather than certificates. I'd rather drop tokens and have the gold protected. Anything can change though except 90% of the current playerbase would leave if P2W and P4C suddenly appeared.

Raven016

Neurath wrote: »

I'm all for mobs dropping gold but then gold would have to be dropped on death rather than certificates. I'd rather drop tokens and have the gold protected. Anything can change though except 90% of the current playerbase would leave if P2W and P4C suddenly appeared.

True, some players will be upset and leave. Others would come.
Is hard when a game you invested in, changes or ends up different.
At least when that game is the first one. But after you support 3-4 games and you see them change or fail, it gets easier. Or you become more cautious.

Songcaller

Most of the players won't rmt because most of the players believe in skill and risk vs reward. Its why most of us are here for. Mmos failed for a lot of reasons and I don't know if ashes will fail. I hope to play ashes for years but I rarely get my wishes

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