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The freehold mechanic that will ruin the game
Chicago
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
It seems to me that intrepid are going back to the roots and making the leveling journey exciting and long, stating it could take up to a month? My fearis that freehold land plots unlocking at 50 will cause a huge majority of the player base to just skip most of the leveling experience in general and use the alpga 2 to refine leveling routs just to ensure they are able to purchase the land, what can be done to prevent this? Maybe make freeholds only unlock 2 months after launch?
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this is legit one of the worst posts I ever came across in the forums
Before this I wasn't aware of such an obvious benefit for doing so.
Well mate come up with some solutions instead of crying wich is what the forum post is about, finding fixes for things like this
As for lowering the FH quest / purchase level. If people aren't even going to stick around until 50... do you want them buying FreeHolds? These are going to be long-term endgame systems.
Don't get so hung up on FreeHolds. It's the systems, the content, the interactions that matter.
Grinding 10's of Thousands of gold and mats isn't going to be fun for small groups. There will be items, you might not even have access to that are required to build Processing Stations, or other buildings.
I expect to play a lot, I expect to join a good sized guild. I'll try to own a Freehold, but I'm not betting on it.
It's a Piece of the Game, not the Point of the Game
True, this game maybe never was for them, but they are still going to be disappointed/sad about it. And there is probably not an insignificant number of people who fit this description.
You're not wrong. In fact a week ago if you'd asked me what my highest goal in AoC was (aside from generic: experience as much of the world as possible) would have been: Owning and Building Up a Freehold.
This week, it's "I hope to own a Freehold"
I'm far more concerned with what actual game content will truly be available to casual players:
Dungeon Bosses, World Bosses, High-end Resources/Artisan Creations, etc.
Yes, some people will see themselves incentivized to ditch the fun of actually enjoying the game to tick some other achievement off the list earlier. But that won't happen without sacrifice.
- I talked about having fun on the journey, if someone decides to power level, they'll miss out on that
- region restriction: They can play as much Alpha 2 as they want, since not the whole map will be open, there won't be any strategies to powerlevel in regions that weren't open during the Alpha
- player skill: Since the primary goal is to own the freehold rather than getting familiar and highly proficient with one class, the power leveler might not exactly be the kind of player who is most suitable to defend their freehold or during a node siege
- obtaining a freehold first might save someone a lot of money in the beginning, but since Nodes fall, also freeholds will be destroyed and newly distributed and then the playfield will look much different.
So while I agree that some will see themselves incentivized to power through the level up process I think they won't be doing it without making sacrifices and with that it's not really too concerning to me.
Absolutely nothing can be done or should be done to prevent this. People like myself will rush, because there is a massive benefit to be gained in Open World sandbox games. I'm sorry, but you just have to accept the fact that if you are a casual player who isn't willing to invest the time, you won't get a freehold in this game. That's by design. That's a core design pillar for the game and will be present in most of the features.
eventually once everything is bought up nodes will fall and you will see FH's being bidded on like crazy just how in FF14 houses got snapped up instantly once available
um isnt 2 months the amount it takes to hit 50?. delaying fh give solo players less opportunity to grab a fh vs a guild...because early on it will be about who gets to 50 first..if you have a guild of 300, the solo player isnt competing vs 300 people because not all 300 will hit 50 as fast as possible. if you delay fh bids, then chances are more of those 300 players will hit 50.
for a solo player or just families, the best way to grab a fh is to try to rush to 50 when the game comes out
225 hours roughly (45 days of 4-6hrs) so 3 weeks no lifeing the game
you will have T5 node by the time people hit level cap more than likely, since T4 expected to be less than a week to get it seems and T5 will be a few weeks
eh cant no life it. remember you need the nodes to level up and the higher the level the more exp they need and a few people wont be able to level up nodes by themselves. at some point they will be stuck killing low level mobs and doing low level quests and wont get that much exp. sure they probably wont need 2 months but i doubt they can do it in less than 3 weeks
I would assume so. The more content you see, the more prepared you can be to be the best. Now besides power there's economic gain, and exclusivity gains to be first. Having bids on a freehold it's great option.
The concern is that players will use alpha and beta to work out the fastest means of leveling, transition this to live (this will happen regardless, it happens in every MMO), and then be the first to 50 on live to have first shot at freeholds.
My reason being that Freeholds were going to be hard to get anyway. Steven said a few months ago that it'd be a monumental achievement to obtain one. You almost certainly wouldn't have the resources to obtain a Freehold prior to level 50 anyway.
The level 50 requirement just makes it harder for people to make new accounts to claim freehold plots. If there was no level 50 requirement, people could just make a new account, transfer gold from their main, and instantly acquire a Freehold plot.
If you’re not striving to achieve max lvl, to be the best at pvp/pve. To be the top crafter as soon as possible. Then you will finish last. And you shouldn’t expect to be able to have/do the same things as the top players.
Not everyone will get a participation trophy.
What @Noaani has said.
Also, I thought leveling experience would be more important. I thought Ashes was going to move away from the current MMO design of just having you rush to the endgame as fast as possible, where the real content begins, and everything during leveling is mostly irrelevant.
Freeholds being locked to max level kinda feels like that, it's content gated behind max level (won't say for no reason, because there is a reason for it).
I do understand there need to be some limitations, but maybe the requirement would be a certain currency that you obtain during your gameplay (coincidentally, you would get enough of it to unlock Freeholds at around level 50, but the difference here is that it's not the level that's locking you out, it's the amount of currency you have). The difference here is, it doesn't really push you to level up as fast as possible to unlock a Freehold, you might just obtain enough currency before lvl 50, if you really wish to do it.
Idk just throwing out random ideas, this is the most irrelevant of the problems with Freeholds anyways.
Seems like a good idea to me, in my opinion just scrap the level 4 and 5 crafting being gated behind freeholds all together and make them a bragging right aspect of the game, gating a mechanic that id a massive part of end game progression to 5% of the players is just not good game design, atleast make there be another way for us to aquire it
Where did you get 20% from lol, i dont know the exact numbers but basically i did it this way
50,000 accounts per server
1 freehold per acc
Low thousands of available plots? 2-4000?
So if its 3k plots with 50,000 accounts its about 7%, dont quote me im not great at math lol
OP is afraid other players will play the game how they want, instead of how OP wants them to play.
Which is nobody should rush to 50, and learning how the game works in A2.