This would solve a lot of issues. Here are just some of the benefits:
Without Company ownership of a Settlement, there would no longer be any compelling reason to kick anyone from the roster simply to fill it with Company members.
As soon as the rosters are filled, the War starts.
Players who contributed to that Settlement’s PvP missions get more priority into the rosters and can bump out players with less or no PvP mission contribution.
Wars no longer need to be limited in frequency or only to occur at a specific time chosen by some player
Without Company ownership of Settlements, any shady dealings or win-trading involving Settlement control become impossible. Selling Tax money through RMT becomes impossible. It is a waste of AGS time to have to investigate these types of reports as there could be many hidden angles; and by the time any action is taken, which may require a very subjective judgment call, the damage may already be done long ago and irreversible.
With the map always divided to roughly be equal to all Factions, there is no longer any need for “underdog faction bonus” of any kind.
If a faction is in fact under-represented on a Server, they won’t have enough to fill the War roster and that War simply won’t launch.
Server merges are easier because there is no longer any need to arbitrate who retains ownership of a Settlement after a merge, because no one will own any Settlements.
Players will be encouraged to play in more parts of the map, according to where the Factions are located that week.
Currently, Wars exclude most of the PvP population. Compared to Outpost Rush where most of the PvP population can actually participate.
Aside from PvP issues, separating players from Settlement influence also resolves other problems:
Griefing through embezzlement and server transfer become impossible. E.g., Cases such as Aukumea and Aeaea .
There are also for example economic issues that can be solved. In various servers, the active population will determine how many Settlements are actually viable to sustain. Companies have already posted about trying to relinquish Settlement control because they can’t afford upkeep. All that can be bypassed and Settlement taxes dynamically adjusted to servers based on active populations, depending on what is needed as a coin sink.
All server populations become viable if cross-server queues are added to Outpost Rush and possibly somehow to Wars and Invasions as well.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
Remove Company influence and ownership over Settlements. Existing owners can be given 100k gold into the Company treasury, same as the cost of buying a settlement.
On a weekly basis, randomize faction control over Settlements so that the factions are roughly equal.
Wars have zero effect on a Settlement (not even changing the faction). They will just be instanced events.
Every day, only THREE settlement zones have PvP, one for each faction. This focuses the PvP population, increasing the chance of more PvP action.
I’m assuming this is a troll post but I’ll take the bait I suppose. So your idea to improve PvP and war is to remove one of the main aspects of the game and make wars meaningless? I’m sorry but if you don’t like the territory control meta game, in a game completely designed around factions fighting for territories you’re playing the wrong game.
Except the existing territory control mechanics have so many drawbacks. As I outlined and you obviously didn’t bother to read.
Drawbacks that others have complained about many times in other threads.
Don’t worry I read your whole post. It’s true the territory control meta game has some issues to be ironed out. However your solution was to get rid of rid of it entirely.
When making a suggestion on any game you should be keeping the core values of the game in mind. Realize that what the game is striving for may simply not be to your taste and that’s okay.
AGS has made it pretty clear their intent in this game is to have PvP and player influence in the world one of the main selling points. No matter what there will always be drama, backstabbing and shady deals but that’s just what you get with actual people involved in the game world.
Once Outpost Rush finally gets going, Wars will be deprecated anyway. They exclude so much of the PvP population whereas Outpost Rush is basically signing up to get a payout.
The current system will get starved to death on top of bringing so many bad situations.
Without the type of overhaul I suggested, owpvp and Wars simply can’t compete.
On top of that you have the headache of scrounging up coin to pay for a fully upgraded Settlement. Which I should add to my list as yet another inconvenience.
The devs have other ideas, bad as they are, and it will take more players leaving before they implement this change or modify how towns are conrolled.
The devs were told about the griefing that would happen with towns with taxes and companies
stealing gold and they ignored it. The only thing I can see is that the devs are fixated on wanting New World to be like EVE online, something that will never happen as the game will die before it becomes popular for the pvp.
Your post shows the same common sense that many tried to impress upon the devs deaf ears to no avail. The devs will wait until the population has dropped so far, but the changes will come to late.
It is the same scenario with the person you tell not to put their hand on the stove because it is on, the devs will still try to make the pvp work at the expense of pve as they are doing now, and like the person that still goes over and puts their hand on a hot burner after being told not to, they never learn the lesson or take common sense advice.
Would definitely be a huge improvement to the game. Unfortunately modern MMO players cannot be trusted with any power over other players. The biggest issue is bad actors cannot be dealt with in the ways which moderate them in other mediums. In real life if someone is doing the equivalent of griefing you can kick them out of your pick-up game or toss them out of your softball league unless the majority of people is actually ok with and wants that behavior to be allowed. Online behavior is moderated in very black-and-white, flawed ways based on idiotic criteria like word usage, which can be automated, rather than the holistic approach necessary for proper moderation. The sad result of this is that bad actors have all of the power as the only response to them is to remove your own self or selves from the equation, and that is true even if it is the majority that would like them gone. You are forced by play with them and essentially act as human content against your will unless you want to quit the game entirely.
There are two possible solutions: one is an immense dedication to active moderation where behavior is treated as it is in real life and using expletives is neither here nor there but doing things like abusing exploits will see you or your organization permanently banned, while the other is limiting player influence over the game experience of other players to an absolute minimum. It would be amazing to see a company commit to the first option even one time, as I think, long-term, the net moderation costs would not be as wildly exorbitant as it would seem they’d be at first glance. The reason you don’t need every single interaction in real life moderated is because people understand that transgressions will be and so they moderate themselves. If you aggressively expel people who are griefing by common-sense metrics, and people realize that something being technically possible no longer means it is de facto permissible, people will start actually thinking in real terms about what is and isn’t ok to do and moderate themselves as they do outside of the game.