This idea comes in support of the following assumptions:
- players enjoy PVP and want more and varied ways to participate
- there are a limited number of territories, which means resources are funneled to a limited number of companies
- diplomacy is, at best, found through small alliances
This idea attempts to solve
- opportunities for new or smaller companies
- wealth accumulation by a few landholders
- new PVP mode and battlefields with minimal development cost
Concept: Restructure city ownership
In the current game state, each company is in charge of managing a variety of city aspects: defense (fort), trade, housing, crafting, and refining. In my proposal, city management would be divided wherein each aspect of city management was owned by different companies called Guilds.
The responsibility of the Governing company is in the defense of the city - managing fort defenses and slotting defenders for both war and invasions. Guilds would each manage town board queues, maintenance expenses, and tax rates for their respective area of responsibility. 70% of taxes collected in each segment would be paid to the Guild and 30% paid to the Governing company. Alternatively, the split might be negotiated between the Governor and Guild Leaders giving opportunity for discussion and collaboration.
Guilds need not be the same faction as the Governing company, and a Company may never have more than one stake in the same city. Optional: Companies may have stakes in multiple cities.
Contests (changing Leadership): A war on a Guild is a smaller scale PVP (maybe 10v10 or 20v20) set in an instanced version of the city being attacked. Guilds can only use members of their own Company to fill this roster. The goals of the combat should be different depending on which Guild is being attacked: steal resources, protect a caravan, capture a flag, etc.
A war against a city remains the same. If the attacker is a Guild leader from the same city they forfeit their stake in that city- if they win they take control of the Governorship and if they lose, well, that’s a bridge burned. An abandoned Guild may be bid on by qualifying companies.
Guild Contests are initiated through quests similar to faction quests but specific and more flavored to the Guild being influenced.
Additional benefits: Guild members using the resource in the city in which they have a stake may also get some nominal benefits (discount on fees, reduced taxes paid, etc.). Members of the Governing company might benefit similar to the Guild members but only half as much (but on all the Guilds). Faction-wide benefits might remain as they are today.
Challenges:
- Costs would need to be examined to ensure each Guild had to pay their fair share for upgrades and maintenance (consider the cost of repair to crafting stations which is not present for the housing and trade sectors).