The new scaling is what compels them to upgrade – you upgrade, you get more income.
In a server where you can transfer out, that is critical because what PvPers used to do was max all taxes (which they also can’t do anymore) and collect gold, then transfer out or RMT it or both.
In Fresh Start Servers you can’t transfer out. But there is also no existing income to make up any shortfall because the server just started and unlike legacy servers they didn’t have a year of messed up mechanics and dupes for individuals to get money.
So I think part of FSS is for AGS to have a clean slate to test their revised mechanics. They certainly attracted a lot of alpha testers with the various promotions like twitch-related events and 50% off promotion.
I find this extremely ironic. The scaling was supposed to incentivize companies to upgrade their towns because that would benefit everyone on the server.
But what we have now could just as well serve to disincentivize some.
I also wonder what this will do for small sized companies on smaller servers.
Not to mention what it means for the economy, like this post states they have just created the most massive early game gold sink imaginable, how do you balance that?
The whole way companies are funded is just stupid, completely frells everything else up.
They should have not used gold as the primary currency for company/city infrastructure. Just naive and stupid its why the market prices are so high for anything useful.
Integrating PvP and PvE game loops was another silly naive decision, two distinct game play styles, it’s like trying to mix oil and water, with one being particularly intolerant of the other.
Everything was based around grief at launch, this is the major cause of most of their issues.
You know that book “Everything you need to know about building an MMO, the pitfalls and Sucesses” yea amazon don’t stock that and threw the only copy they had out with “were gunna do an mmo” party food leftovers.
They are going to address issues, so let’s wait and see. They are making good progress in alot of area’s.
The war/territory control system is literally the best part of the game to me and can work just fine when done properly.
Not entirely sure what you mean by integrating PvP and PvE, the only thing a PvE player might notice is a small trading tax.
Personally I think that should the bare minimum and PvE players exagerrate the issues a lot.
I bet that if not told, most people wouldn’t even notice.
The way territory control is set up was the only reason this game had appeal to me when I was looking into it, and I imagine there are many others like me.
Having Dominion over people can be appealing to people I understand that.
It’s funny you mention taxes I remember paying 2000+ gold for a top tier house a week. Half the territories had massively excessive tax to force you to use 1 or 2 of them, normally Windward and Everfall. It’s not as bad now, no where near, but prime example of how things just don’t mix.
I do enjoy PvP but that side of things should not affect what I can accomplish in PvE, what I need to pay to keep a house etc.
The bottom line is given the chance people will frell other people over just because they can.
Like you say yourself, this isn’t the case anymore. So why mention it?
Personally I have never felt like paying taxes in town was a hindrance to anything and I’ve just finished grinding out my expertise to 600 on all slots on fresh, so been playing quite a bit of PvE recently to be war ready.
It’s a non issue.
It will. Those people should own territory, and hopefully it’ll be taken from them.
Lower prices. Because territory owning companies will first and foremost not have millions of gold to be spending(at least not at first, and never as much as on legacy) and big companies will probably not own more than two territories.
LOL. Especially once trading houses were linked, Settlements jacked up Trading Tax because that was where the main wealth was. Not just botters selling piles of goods but crafters selling end game gear at as much as they could get away with.
I think AGS maybe realized that their numbers were based on established (and broken-by-exploits-and-botting) economies.
So what better way to test and tweak the results than with Fresh Start Servers?
FSS seems like catering to forum idealists wanting a dubious fresh start but it is really Amazon doing a second round of alpha testing.
