issues with freeholds

for the most part the freehold system looks okay, however i strongly think that having a system that only 5-10% of people can access is a massive mistake, fair enough if they are not for everyone, but that number needs to be atleast 35-45% of players, especially as these have been sold in the in game shop for the past 5 years, there are aspects about aoc that i love, the risk and reward etc but things like this that will be completely controlled by the 1-5% of players are just a huge mistake and a massive design flaw in this age of gaming, this is coming from someone that works from home and will have a massive amount of time to play and will most likely obtain a freehold pretty easily, i still think this is a terrible mechanic, and as this game is taking an extremley long time to release ( wich if it releases as the game we all want is okay ) there is no excuse for mechanics like this to make it into the final product, some people will disagree with this but this type of mechanic in my opinion is more toxic than griefing, and as every server progresses we will see the same issues, the top 5% of players and their alts ( other accounts ) will own 90% of the freeholds, just my opinion but please take a look at your design and atleast up the number of available land spots

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Ludullu

Fantmx wrote: »

I think the main point is he said to a large degree which means something can't be. Most reasonable answer as to what won't be is animal husbandry. Then maybe farming.

I think that's gonna be my question for the next stream. Thouuuuuugh, you could ask that on the 9th hehehe

ClintHardwood

NiKr wrote: »

ClintHardwood wrote: »

Did you even read what I wrote? How is farming and husbandry processing?

At this point I need to make the "don't make me tap the sign" meme. Jfc people, there is a god damn wiki on this game.

Please tell me, what are those arrows pointing at?

It's odd to have them under processing, considering both professions are logically production and semantically gathering, but I do retract my earlier post. I guess I was misinformed.

Still, isnt t3 fairly low? Level 30 items, which I imagine will be phased out from direct use a few months into the server. Saying that most people will be relegated to t3 processing is not very good design imo.

Chicago

Another issue id like to bring up is, this pretty much makes it impossible for players that arestarting fresh to join an established server, also players returning from a 6 month break of the game to compete with established players, also what happens if the time comes when a servermerge is needed? There are so many issues that need to be addressed

Ludullu

ClintHardwood wrote: »

It's odd to have them under processing, considering both professions are logically production and semantically gathering, but I do retract my earlier post. I guess I was misinformed.

Food has 3 steps and husbandry, I assume, now includes the taming part, so it's kinda of a "you process a wild/small animal into a useful one".

Gather seeds (gathering) -> work them on your farm (processing) -> use the produce in a dish (also processing, which to me is the weirder choice)

I think out of that whole list Alchemy and Cooking stand out. Everything else is "you have a thing, you do smth to that thing to change it - you get a result", but both cooking and alchemy are "you have several things, you combine them in different volumes/quantities - you get a result".

Maybe Intrepid used a different logic there or maybe "it is all subject to change, cause alpha or smth".

Ludullu

ClintHardwood wrote: »

Still, isnt t3 fairly low? Level 30 items, which I imagine will be phased out from direct use a few months into the server. Saying that most people will be relegated to t3 processing is not very good design imo.

Supposedly high tier items will still require low tier stuff, so they shouldn't be phased out. And if high tier processing requires a ton of work, then all the people with freeholds will be busy with their t4-5 shit, while everyone else can mass produce t<=3. I could see it working like that.

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

What percent of people who play an MMO actually want to manage a freehold?

If Archeage is anything to go by, 75%.

mcstackerson

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

What percent of people who play an MMO actually want to manage a freehold?

If Archeage is anything to go by, 75%.

The keyword was want.

How many people who did farming in archeage because they enjoyed it vs those who just did it because of its availability and because it was part of playing efficiently?

Noaani

mcstackerson wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

What percent of people who play an MMO actually want to manage a freehold?

If Archeage is anything to go by, 75%.

The keyword was want.

How many people who did farming in archeage because they enjoyed it vs those who just did it because of its availability and because it was part of playing efficiently?

Most enjoyed it. Farming land (and the economic system as a whole) was the reason I stayed when my guild left.

If you didnt like managing land, coin purses were quite a good way to make a profit - and yet most of the better coin purses locations were often empty.

No one was forced to farm land, yet almost everyone did at least a little.

Veeshan

Neurath wrote: »

They changed the size of the plots to 3x the size without consultation. This shrank the potential number by 3. I feel the change will not be reverted despite the backlash right now. The supporters are too happy with the change in size.

The size of the plot doesnt matter tbh its the parcel of land they can be on having a 1 hectare size plot available for a 1km x 1km piece of land is the same as 3 hectare size plot on a 1x1km size parcel.

I also think majority of player are not gonna bother with the risk involved in freehold, going by the current resource costs which will indicate how much effort the devswant to develop these freeholds is extreamly high especialy for 1 person which alot of people seem to wanna build solo freeholds. and after investing so much time and resource into these ffreehold u might just loose everything if the node ur in loose a node war.

ClintHardwood

I will definitely have a freehold, and if it means rushing to 50 then so be it. It'll probably be a year until the first metropolis falls so hopefully I make good use of it.

Veeshan

mcstackerson wrote: »

What percent of people who play an MMO actually want to manage a freehold?

I get the fear but also think people need to consider that not everyone will want a freehold and even if you can't get one for yourself, you could access its features by working with others.

Not saying there isn't a chance of issues but I also think people should see what the availability actually feels like before fear-mongering about being unable to get one.

I agree. With the current values we have on freehold which is an indication of what devs want.

Gathering resource node = single degit amount of resources (at suppose max level harvesting)
Crafting a low level weapon takes 10 ingots 10 wood (This is very early since it was pulled from the crafting window he seem to accidently pull up during freehold stream)
Lumbermill T5 upgrade = 12000 Stone, 1000 Essence, 8000 ingots + 1 Core (most likely boss drop)
T2 inn bed upgrades = 2000 wood 1200 ingots 2500 feather

We dont know current conversion rates from raw resources to refine but generaly you get less in the conversion.

And all the work can be destroyed during a seige war, Freehold are high right high reward compared to all other housing and i feel most people wont actualy want to risk it.

alot of people seem to think there gonna be solo building freehold where they kinda designed for 8 people atleast with a decent amount of investment time to get them going

Noaani

Veeshan wrote: »

I agree. With the current values we have on freehold which is an indication of what devs want.

That level of investment is perfectly fine, and it is probable that most solo and small group players would never achieve a tier 5 sawmill.

The thing is, people would be fine with that if they were able to build a tier 3 or a tier 4 one. The thing is, the system is cutting them off from being able to build one at all.

It isn't about having the best or being the best - it is about having something.

I hope Intrepid do a better job of listening to these people that a few in the community here are doing.

Fantmx

NiKr wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

I think the main point is he said to a large degree which means something can't be. Most reasonable answer as to what won't be is animal husbandry. Then maybe farming.

I think that's gonna be my question for the next stream. Thouuuuuugh, you could ask that on the 9th hehehe

I plan to

AnimusRex

I don't believe Freehold Scarcity fits the narrative of the game (one of the 4 original pillars of the game design btw.)

The Verran story thus far is largely one of repopulating/recolonizing a Huge world and the scarce thing is.... LAND?

Historically (and yes I know Terran history) has governments throwing land at settlers (or it being very cheap) so they will stay in a certain area to help develop commerce and labour for local asset protection.

It doesn't make narrative sense that it is so difficult to obtain. But there are 48 types of silly mounts for mayors, so all good.

Certain metals being very rare or certain animals and plants. That would make more sense. But Verra is a huge unexplored world of untamed LAND - that's the point!

I don't think your own piece of land should be easy to earn. But making it a veritable pot of gold at the end of the rainbow goes so much against narrative logic that it's almost immersion breaking for me.

Veeshan

AnimusRex wrote: »

I don't believe Freehold Scarcity fits the narrative of the game (one of the 4 original pillars of the game design btw.)

The Verran story thus far is largely one of repopulating/recolonizing a Huge world and the scarce thing is.... LAND?

Historically (and yes I know Terran history) has governments throwing land at settlers (or it being very cheap) so they will stay in a certain area to help develop commerce and labour for local asset protection.

It doesn't make narrative sense that it is so difficult to obtain. But there are 48 types of silly mounts for mayors, so all good.

I don't think your own piece of land should be easy to earn. But making it a veritable pot of gold at the end of the rainbow goes so much against narrative logic that it's almost immersion breaking for me.

AoC design pillars

1- Engaging and immersive story
2- Reactive world
3- Player interaction
4- Player agency
5- Risk vs reward

I think the limited availability fits quite well here

2- Reactive world, check they can change hands/be destroyed via result of node wars and they are built up reactively based on the players
3- Player interaction with freehold owners when it comes to processing rights and so on or even family, also inns and all that aswell check these boxes
4, players have the ability to affect and change the game world not only owning them but also destroying them in result of node wars can change the landscape alot
5, They are high risk high reward, reward is the return you can get on the investment via higher tier process good being sold that your produce, however there a high resource cost/investment needed to get freehold to this point and they can be destroyed/lost and u can loose all the progress u made before u can get the benefits from them

People look at freehold and be like ohh well who every owns that gonna make billions but in actual fact they can cost billions too if thing play out in one way.
when it comes to housing the risk vs reward is the largest with freehold followed by in node housing and then appartments being lowest risk but least reward.

The gameplay loop the devs seem to be aiming for is player a has gathering player A harvest and list it on market, player b owns freehold so he buys players a harvested items and caravans them back to his freehold to refine (risk involved with loosing caravn) then caravans them back to node to sell them, player C buys materials from player b to craft the items and sell them. Thats the loop they want and any player can do a max of 2 of these things atleast on one account so you have to interact with other players like player B might ask player A to gather resources for him and he pay them for the task and skip the market step all together to save on taxes for listing them.

AnimusRex

Hi Veeshan

I did say ORIGINAL design pillars. Economy, Nodes, Meaningful conflict and Narrative. Became the 5 you listed yes.

You're kicking at the new goalposts (and you skipped the relevant one, No 1 Immersive Story) so I'll just repeat that it does not feel immersive for developable land ownership to be a scarcity in the game.

Songcaller

Fantmx wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

They changed the size of the plots to 3x the size without consultation. This shrank the potential number by 3. I feel the change will not be reverted despite the backlash right now. The supporters are too happy with the change in size.

I'm pretty sure in the past they said the freehold size would increase as the node increased. So this probably was always planned but they decided to skip the process and instead have permiting increase as nodes increase.

My guess.

I was aware the freeholds expanded with the node but I assumed 0.5 would the limit at max tier. I guess one should never assume.

Depraved

ClintHardwood wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

ClintHardwood wrote: »

Did you even read what I wrote? How is farming and husbandry processing?

At this point I need to make the "don't make me tap the sign" meme. Jfc people, there is a god damn wiki on this game.

Please tell me, what are those arrows pointing at?

It's odd to have them under processing, considering both professions are logically production and semantically gathering, but I do retract my earlier post. I guess I was misinformed.

Still, isnt t3 fairly low? Level 30 items, which I imagine will be phased out from direct use a few months into the server. Saying that most people will be relegated to t3 processing is not very good design imo.

they are making the way in such a way that low level stuff will be useful at high levels. its reasonable to believe that people doing t3 processing will contribute at lvl 50

Diamaht

Well if it's 5 to 10 percent of the player base then its zero percent of the player base.

1)These things are destroyable so you need to protect them to safely use them. That requires numbers.

2) Large numbers and the ability to fend off attacks means big wealth and influence.

3) Big wealth and influence means you can buy up land rights.

4) Massive land rights means you can control the game economy. Simply price out the smaller guys and gobble them up. (Or attack them with your numbers).

5) Large and wealthy groups will slowly begin to monopolize the freeholds and therefore the game.

This is basically Eve.
Freeholds are not a player feature, they are a player organization feature.

Depraved

they cant defend every node at the same time. (:

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