I just remembered that I really should not use certain language in certain ways on the internet, so for anyone reading.
I am among the 'snowflakes'. I am the carebear. I am the type who will campaign for the 'casual' to have Freeholds and for bidding to be removed.
It is not my intent to use that term to mock anyone like me, but to use it to mock the sort of people who use it unironically.
It's a 'coping mechanism' for when I'm irritated by bad designs.
And to also be clear, I was making a joke at Depraved's expense, because his math is shit.
I do still think that assuming that everyone would have a freehold was foolish, but I'd prefer if Intrepid just split their freeholds into the building types they mentioned on the stream. This will obviously still fuck over a ton of cosmetics buyers, but they've done that already so alas.
We have housing, processing, service. Make those 3 types of freeholds, with 3 different sizes (0.5acre(or even smaller) - 1.5acre), with 3 different acquisition methods, with 3 different amounts of slots for them.
Have a hard quest and a nice plain cost for the house. Have a profession-based check/requirement for the processing. And have a bid-based party/family content of business freeholds.
Anyone who wants can get a house, which takes up barely any space and has almost no distance limit between buildings. Hardcore processors have their first come first serve slots with "enough" space for several buildings related to their profession. And business dudes have predetermined high value locations in each node that guilds can fight over.
I feel like that'd be the most fair, while being absolutely unfair to literally anyone who just so happened to get a business cosmetic skin. Those should be provided a refund, or ideally even a doubling of their embers.