We have to gate raiding and pvp content by node levels and arena ranks.

I like consistency in my game systems, and with the current freehold system, where only around 10% of the playerbase will be able to own one (if we are being generous), I think we need to expand this concept that Intrepid has introduced to the rest of the game as well. It's not a new concept really. They do like their exclusivity, like only flying mounts for metro mayors and kings and a lucky few drops, and exclusive cosmetics and such, but until now it hasn't been implemented in a way that blocks a large majority of players from major and vital content.

So I propose the following systems, to keep things fair and consistent for all players.

1. Boss Raids
Players who want to partake in raids have to be citizens of a node. The level of the node determines the level of the boss they have access to. If you are a citizen of a lvl 3 node you get access up to lvl 30 bosses, including world bosses. They will simply be invulnerable to you if you don't meet the criteria, and you'll get auto-kicked from raids that start attacking a boss.

As the node level increases, you gradually get access to higher level bosses and dungeons. In order to access the lvl 50 content you need to be a citizen of a metropolis. If you ever lose citizenship, you simply can't participate in raiding until you find a new home, and then only up to the level the node allows.

There is a cap on how many citizens can live in a metropolis of course, and citizenship gets progressively more expensive the more people already live in the node, but that's just the way it is. Land isn't infinite after all.

2. PvP content
Anyone can participate in random open world PvP, but your arena-level determines which other types of PvP content you can join. So in order to prove you are worthy to attack a caravan or join a node or castle siege, you need to prove your mettle in the arena first.

In order to be able to attack a caravan, you need to be in the top 70% of players in the arena ranks. That shouldn't be too hard to achieve if you really set it as your goal. To join a node siege, I think top 20% in the arena is fair, and if you want a shot at a castle, you need to be in the top 10% arena players on the server. Then there's guild and node wars, and we can say top 50% and 30% for those respectively.

So basically around 10% of the player-base has access to all the PvP content, and the rest have it to some lesser degree, if at all.

3. Crafting
Just like processing requires a freehold, crafting should require in-node housing (not apartments) in order to reach Master and Grandmaster content.

To make things consistent, Intrepid should increase the sizes of the in-node houses and reduce the numbers, to really make us feel the exclusivity. Like with Freeholds, you can invite your entire family to live with you, and they can set up their own beds and redecorate your house and such. And obviously gain access to your amazing crafting stations.

4. Other
I am not quite sure what to do about gathering yet, but we clearly need some gatekeeping there as well. Maybe you guys can help me?

The same goes for naval content. We can't have a bunch of landlubbers out on the open seas. That's just too dangerous for them. They could drown and what-not. So see if you can come up with a system that stops around 90% of players from ever sailing on the big ships.

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Liniker

Nerror wrote: »

It's his money to lose, so obviously he can do what he wants here. I have made plenty of constructive feedback in the official thread and a few others.

Name 1 MMORPG that failed because of having a "bad" housing system.

I can name multiple that don't even have housing or relevant life skilling at all and succeeded, lol

and I say "bad" because its bad for you, I really enjoyed the changes so, you do not represent all of the playerbase.

Nerror

There is a lot more to it than just a "bad housing system", and you know it.

Dhaiwon

Liniker wrote: »

This a lot of theorycrafting, and very little hard data, so do take it for what it is

Games have failed because they lack casual players and pve-oriented care-bears though. While hardcore gamers may make up for the bones, the skeletal framework if you will, casual players make up the meat, the volume. It is my belief you need both for a game to stay healthy in the long run. A game with just hardcore players tends to become like rats in a barrel slowly eating each-other until until there is just one starving rat left. Similarly, a game with just casuals tends to get incredibly unexciting and will need artificial excitement regularly added to not dwindle out like an oxygen deprived flame.

For reference, I'd say EVE Online is an example of game that maintains a healthy balance between them both, which is why it's player base is somewhat stable. Despite how hardcore that game can be at times, enough bones are thrown to the casuals that they stay as "food" for the hardcore gamers.
On the opposite end we have New World, who has never really had a proper balance, and as such fairly quickly was reduced to a barrel of rats. With short "breaks" from this state when they had expansions. But most of the time New World has been up, it has been a time of server merges, as the rats keep eating each other, reducing the number of active players on a server in a fairly predictable manner.
Also on the side of not having a proper balance are the "everyone is a winner" themepark MMO's that retain their players only by virtue of adding new content very often. While it works, it means the game needs constant coddling from the devs.

And, as I did see someone else point out somewhere in one of the threads here, the people most likely to truly enjoy the gameplay loops in freeholds, and not just do them because their guild demands it of them, are not the people most likely to be able to acquire them. While this might not on its own doom the game in any way or form, it is most certainly going to affect the number and types of players interested in it, affecting this balance. Potentially a lot more than other things being exclusive or hard to get.

Most games with competitive or demanding aspects rely a lot on some kind of suspension of disbelief. Most players know, deep down, that they will never have that BiS-weapon or that end-game gear. But they must be able to trick themselves into believing they can get it, otherwise doing all the content up to that point loses all meaning. The way the freeholds have been limited AND placed as a gateway for endgame artisan skills simply makes it too obvious, so many players will not be able to maintain that suspension of disbelief.

You probably don't need this suspension of disbelief, since having the position you do in a large(presumably) guild means you actually "know" you will have those things. You might even find the idea of relying on this kind of suspension of disbelief to able to enjoy a game to be a bit silly.
But it is very likely that AoC, just like any other game, will require the padding of casuals to run smoothly and live a long time. And they will have this need, so if it isn't catered to at all, AoC may end up struggling because of it.

Garrtok

Liniker wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

It's his money to lose, so obviously he can do what he wants here. I have made plenty of constructive feedback in the official thread and a few others.

Name 1 MMORPG that failed because of having a "bad" housing system.

I can name multiple that don't even have housing or relevant life skilling at all and succeeded, lol

and I say "bad" because its bad for you, I really enjoyed the changes so, you do not represent all of the playerbase.

From the feedback on all social media alot of people are not happy. And just because you want to feel special with your guild you're also not representing all of the player base

Songcaller

I don't see the lots of unhappy people on YouTube. Just on the forums and reddit. Twitter is down for us right now.

mcstackerson

Dhaiwon wrote: »

You probably don't need this suspension of disbelief, since having the position you do in a large(presumably) guild means you actually "know" you will have those things. You might even find the idea of relying on this kind of suspension of disbelief to able to enjoy a game to be a bit silly.
But it is very likely that AoC, just like any other game, will require the padding of casuals to run smoothly and live a long time. And they will have this need, so if it isn't catered to at all, AoC may end up struggling because of it.

Just because freeholds are hard to achieve doesn't mean the game won't appeal to casuals. FF14 also has limited housing and it seems to do just fine appealing to casuals.

This is hard to talk about since we don't have the game and I get the lack of a guarantee is scary to some but if you want this, you should be able to work for and get it. If necessary, joining a guild or at least finding a group of people who work with is also something you can do.

Dhaiwon

mcstackerson wrote: »

I mean, it is theory-crafting, so it is limited.

I do think that the problem we are having is that we are having 2 discussions at the same time. The limited amount of freeholds, and the gatekeeping of end-game processing behind them. I would guess that more casuals can deal with the first one, but the second one might really affect player attraction due to how it messes with the suspension of disbelief. They might deep down know that they will never have the materials to level that anyway, but more or less being told upfront that they probably wont get that far makes even trying boring.

Songcaller

A freehold is like a mini guild city and I'd rather build a freehold than a node. Families are there to help too. You could cover 6 types of processing on 1 freehold.

mcstackerson

Dhaiwon wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

I mean, it is theory-crafting, so it is limited.

I do think that the problem we are having is that we are having 2 discussions at the same time. The limited amount of freeholds, and the gatekeeping of end-game processing behind them. I would guess that more casuals can deal with the first one, but the second one might really affect player attraction due to how it messes with the suspension of disbelief. They might deep down know that they will never have the materials to level that anyway, but more or less being told upfront that they probably wont get that far makes even trying boring.

I assume most MMO players don't expect to get the highest-level gear without working with others.

This is an assumption, but the highest level of processing is probably for processing the highest level of materials, which most likely comes from the highest level of content, open-world raids.

The best gear in this game is craftable which I don't think people are used to but having this be somewhat exclusive doesn't seem like it would be new for MMO players.

Dhaiwon

mcstackerson wrote: »

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd bet money on the fact that the majority of players see the connection between levelling their artisan skills and acquiring gear. For large swathes of people it's probably more akin to which mini-game they want to enjoy while they are playing the game.

And if they know they can't "finish it", chances are they will not even start it. Whether this means a complete loss of players, or high end-processors being stuck processing every tier of material because most people avoid processing skills altogether, even if they originally wanted to do them, I cannot really guess.

EDIT: To be fair though, if the value of low-tier materials grows large enough, you will probably get a bunch of "empty" T3-processing alts just to profit from it, so "stuck" is probably taking it to far. But still.

mcstackerson

Dhaiwon wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

To be honest, I'm not sure I'd bet money on the fact that the majority of players see the connection between levelling their skills and acquiring gear. For large swathes of people it's probably more akin to which mini-game they want to enjoy while they are playing the game.

And if they know they can't "finish it", chances are they will not even start it. Whether this means a complete loss of players, or high end-processors being stuck processing every tier of material because most people avoid processing skills altogether, even if they originally wanted to do them, I cannot really guess.

If by finishing it, you mean hitting max level in that profession, I don't know if we know if processing the highest level of materials is required to hit max level. Most of the games I've played make it relatively easy to hit max level in a profession and then start gating you with materials. Ashes will just add an extra gate with your access to the processing stations.

Dhaiwon

mcstackerson wrote: »

That is a very good point, and that will probably make a huge difference on suspension of disbelief. If you can reach the end of the skill, even if you might not currently be able to fully utilise it due to lack of other resources, that will probably change the narrative significantly.

Noaani

Liniker wrote: »

Nerror wrote: »

It's his money to lose, so obviously he can do what he wants here. I have made plenty of constructive feedback in the official thread and a few others.

Name 1 MMORPG that failed because of having a "bad" housing system.

@Liniker

Perhaps this is the part you are not understanding.

Freeholds are not housing. Freeholds are the primary means by which players will interact with the games economy.

The games economy was originally stated to be as important as PvP (moreso, there was mention of the games economy on the kickstarter page, but literally no mention at all of PvP).

So essentially, what this is to many people is a gateway to the primary aspect of Ashes that they were told to get excited about.

Imagine if that happened to PvP.

That is the point of this thread. Sure, it's a bit of a joke, but it isnt actually wrong.

If Steven doesnt see that, then Intrepid - let alone Ashes - is doomed.

Gizban

ChipsAhoy007 wrote: »

Just so you know freeholds aren't gated or made exclusive just for the sake of being exclusive. They're made exclusive because they know how MUCH people want them(and the entire community has confirmed that very shortly after the livestream this month) and because they give people a reason to siege.

Before there was no reason to siege hardly at all, and the vast majority of MMO players either hate pvp or prefer not to.

Sieging in AoC is fundamental, the games built around it from the ground up, from the very first concepts of what Steven wanted before a single person was hired, I grantee you. It's required to keep the world alive, living and breathing, to keep things fresh, to keep the tension. All of this greatly lessens the need for what all other MMOs do to retain players, timegating.

I want to counter that idea based on what I feel I know of people and the objective facts, such as they are:

If a player KNEW that s/he would get a freehold after a successful siege, it would definitely be a draw. The problem is that isn't the case.

Issues:

After a successful siege (assuming everyone within that node loses their Freehold) you have to fight a bidding war with no guarantee you'll win.
The siege also de-levels the node, so there are now less Freeholds in its ZoI.
You need to complete a quest in the newly redrawn zone to be eligible to bid.
You have to wait for the Freeholds to reenter the 'real estate market', since they are incrementally released.

So a successful siege only gives you a what, 1 in a 100, 1 in 500 chance?

Its too much of an uncertainty to put that much effort in.
Focused and diligent people usually don't waste time on small chances, they want results that equal their effort, and this system doesn't do that.

Are you going to spearhead this expensive and effort intensive operation with the goal of having a chance at getting a Freehold? All this effort only to compete with your comrades in the siege?

I don't see that playing out.

I only say this as a student of people. Folks with drive don't waste effort on a small chance.

Disclaimer: Freeholds are neat but I wasn't aiming for one.

Gizban

Nerror wrote: »

I like consistency in my game systems, and with the current freehold system, where only around 10% of the playerbase will be able to own one (if we are being generous), I think we need to expand this concept that Intrepid has introduced to the rest of the game as well. It's not a new concept really. They do like their exclusivity, like only flying mounts for metro mayors and kings and a lucky few drops, and exclusive cosmetics and such, but until now it hasn't been implemented in a way that blocks a large majority of players from major and vital content.

So I propose the following systems, to keep things fair and consistent for all players.

1. Boss Raids
Players who want to partake in raids have to be citizens of a node. The level of the node determines the level of the boss they have access to. If you are a citizen of a lvl 3 node you get access up to lvl 30 bosses, including world bosses. They will simply be invulnerable to you if you don't meet the criteria, and you'll get auto-kicked from raids that start attacking a boss.

As the node level increases, you gradually get access to higher level bosses and dungeons. In order to access the lvl 50 content you need to be a citizen of a metropolis. If you ever lose citizenship, you simply can't participate in raiding until you find a new home, and then only up to the level the node allows.

There is a cap on how many citizens can live in a metropolis of course, and citizenship gets progressively more expensive the more people already live in the node, but that's just the way it is. Land isn't infinite after all.

2. PvP content
Anyone can participate in random open world PvP, but your arena-level determines which other types of PvP content you can join. So in order to prove you are worthy to attack a caravan or join a node or castle siege, you need to prove your mettle in the arena first.

In order to be able to attack a caravan, you need to be in the top 70% of players in the arena ranks. That shouldn't be too hard to achieve if you really set it as your goal. To join a node siege, I think top 20% in the arena is fair, and if you want a shot at a castle, you need to be in the top 10% arena players on the server. Then there's guild and node wars, and we can say top 50% and 30% for those respectively.

So basically around 10% of the player-base has access to all the PvP content, and the rest have it to some lesser degree, if at all.

3. Crafting
Just like processing requires a freehold, crafting should require in-node housing (not apartments) in order to reach Master and Grandmaster content.

To make things consistent, Intrepid should increase the sizes of the in-node houses and reduce the numbers, to really make us feel the exclusivity. Like with Freeholds, you can invite your entire family to live with you, and they can set up their own beds and redecorate your house and such. And obviously gain access to your amazing crafting stations.

4. Other
I am not quite sure what to do about gathering yet, but we clearly need some gatekeeping there as well. Maybe you guys can help me?

The same goes for naval content. We can't have a bunch of landlubbers out on the open seas. That's just too dangerous for them. They could drown and what-not. So see if you can come up with a system that stops around 90% of players from ever sailing on the big ships.

You have a point. The freehold system limits Processing, that's not disputed.

I work at a dept lead at a hardware store and I had a bear of time during the supply chain crisis. Putting a big kink in the supply chain for Crafting just doesn't seem like a good idea.

One thing that makes me wonder is, why limit Processing? Its the midlayer of the Crafting journey.

And why wrap Animal Husbandry and Farming into it? Anyone who devotes their Freehold to any one specific area increases the load on the others.

It feels like a City limiting the amount of business licenses they allow, and the car dealership and the hot dog vendor needs the same license.

Depraved

Neurath wrote: »

A freehold is like a mini guild city and I'd rather build a freehold than a node. Families are there to help too. You could cover 6 types of processing on 1 freehold.

6? so u can put 6 processing buildings now? o.o

Songcaller

Depraved wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

A freehold is like a mini guild city and I'd rather build a freehold than a node. Families are there to help too. You could cover 6 types of processing on 1 freehold.

6? so u can put 6 processing buildings now? o.o

Well, I think you would put a house or warehouse too but 5 or 6 covers the whole items a character can use.

Depraved

Neurath wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

A freehold is like a mini guild city and I'd rather build a freehold than a node. Families are there to help too. You could cover 6 types of processing on 1 freehold.

6? so u can put 6 processing buildings now? o.o

Well, I think you would put a house or warehouse too but 5 or 6 covers the whole items a character can use.

well since the size of the fh increased, it might be possible now.. i think you could only have 2 before

LegendaryIII

Veeshan wrote: »

I feel that free holds are one of those thing everyone thinks they want to have but when it gets down to it they realy dont want one :P

From what ive seen free hold take a huge and i mean huge amount of investment to get going looking at the resource costs to upgrade on the screenshots is expensive as lumbermill for example 10k gold, 12000 stone, 1000 arcane dust, 8000 ingots on the T5 upgrades and each harvest gives single digits. Comparison crafted weapons currently take 10 ingots and 10 wood and each node gather drops single digits on resources (With a supposable maxed out gathering)
of course all these numbers are subjected to change but currently i see it as for the majority of players a hassle most wont want to deal with if they can help it

Stop making sense.

And that's one building. Plus maintenance fees.
And of course it can be Destroyed.

I'm gonna just live out of an Inn...

Noaani

LegendaryIII wrote: »

Veeshan wrote: »

I feel that free holds are one of those thing everyone thinks they want to have but when it gets down to it they realy dont want one :P

From what ive seen free hold take a huge and i mean huge amount of investment to get going looking at the resource costs to upgrade on the screenshots is expensive as lumbermill for example 10k gold, 12000 stone, 1000 arcane dust, 8000 ingots on the T5 upgrades and each harvest gives single digits. Comparison crafted weapons currently take 10 ingots and 10 wood and each node gather drops single digits on resources (With a supposable maxed out gathering)
of course all these numbers are subjected to change but currently i see it as for the majority of players a hassle most wont want to deal with if they can help it

Stop making sense.

But that doesn't make sense.

People want the gameplay that comes with a freehold.

That gameplay is inherently solo in nature.

Intrepid put it behind a group based entry requirement.

The issue isn't that people think they want it but really don't - the issue is the entry requirements to that gameplay.

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