This is why a central premise of the game, that PvP combat can be fair and should impact the entire server, is flawed. This is a fundamental flaw in the design of city control. Might does not make right. We need civilians to have some say, because “Get Good” isn’t working. We can’t get good.
We didn’t dupe, and many of the people who are in leadership did dupe but juuuuust enough to not get caught.
We can’t spend hundreds of hours focused on grinding the best PvP gear.
We can’t buddy up to the people in the above two classes of people.
So we’re behind, and getting further and further behind as we go.
I think the next major update to the map control mechanic needs to have some sort of democratization effort, so that we have both military (PvP) and civilian (PvE) leadership and needs addressed.
Maybe we could have a system where there’s a PvP battle for control of the fort (much the same as now) and the result of winning is that your company becomes the “Militia” for that town. The Militia could get a wage (percentage of town income paid to the company) and enjoy the same discounts as current territory control. They could control the Keep Upgrade Projects for the town as well. They would get access to a special title proclaiming them, for example, Militia of Windsward.
Civil management of the town could be achieved through a more capitalist/democratic process. Companies could put in bids to buy the town with the highest bid winning, which would probably initially result in the same companies owning towns as they have the most gold. However, if the citizens were unhappy with their management, they could run PvE “Revolution” missions which move a tally a bit like the PvP faction mission do Influence. There could be “Peace” missions that counter the Revolution to allow for more than one opinion. Members of the governing company would be excluded from running either of these mission types. Once the Revolution gains enough support, the town would go back up for auction, with previously governing companies excluded for a period of time.
Civil managing companies would have control of taxes and town projects apart from keep defence. Faction members of the governing company would enjoy territory discounts.
is easy to you to say that, maybe it’s no all extreme on your server, because if a want get strong, a need do craft the best gear, so a have to level up craft, but how? do you have 300 k gold to up station to 200, even if you farm all the resources? i don’t, that is what cost to craft things to get there, only to be able to craft something for me, one item really good, imagine all things a need to me solo player get ready to fight back people with already all full. should i do 50 outpost for day? for 3 mouths, is this what this game become? will other 49 people do the same for get back?
The game naturally encourages players to join the largest, strongest companies on a server in order to experience the factional war mechanics… So, yeah, basically working as intended.
I’m in the same boat for the most part. I play with very select friends (we should join a clan, but we kinda just do our thing).
Our map is owned entirely by Green (Theleme server). We are Yellow. Purple was dominant but ban hammer sort of nixed that
@laoi has good points. There should be mechanisms whereby smaller groups can make a significant impact on territory control. I think factions are fine, however, the way it is currently set up small companies stand zero chance in having any meaningful contribution to territory control (even though a few of my buddies are absolute beasts in PvP).
Having cities flip in an open PvP setting would be most welcome from where I sit. Of course others may disagree. I’d love to take part in a small warband rather than large company but as it stands, we can’t do that.
I’m not great at PvP (not horrible either) but I do enjoy it with my friends and anything they can do to let us peons have an impactful contribution to a fundamental component of the game would be most welcome.
As it stands, I enjoy myself just mucking about these days. However, this is one area that would up my enjoyment significantly. I would like to take part in this stuff too…but I’m too old for joining random companies to participate (disclaimer: I really don’t want the game to change for me…not what I’m saying. I just know several folk in my group that would also be very happy to participate).
These are the discussions I had hoped to see here. A side note, of course. But this is healthy stuff.
The game has too many incentives for players to play in the dominant faction and not enough incentives for retention of the losing side. And the system is all about who wins the war, it has nothing to do with actually maintaining the town.
I think another issue is inactive companies holding onto towns.
There was a mass exodus on our server where 3 of the companies all of which were holding towns transfered and the settlements were still under their control, slowing downgrading.
Currently, there is no way for a faction to transfer the town occupation except for the opposite faction to take it in a war which seems like a big oversight to me.
Honestly I like the idea and the system.
Only issue is balance.
Pvp is dominate.
PVErs don’t have any say.
Which leads to a, " what’s the point mentality."
On my server we had a 5/4/1 spread, but we are low pop (after 400+ players decided to transfer to other servers), so both the “bigger factions” needed the lower one to fill out their roster.
Suddenly the lower one decided to only help the higher one. There’s some infighting on the lower faction because of it, but most of them have agreed to it. The biggest company from there told people they will kick them/ ice then out from their faction if they don’t fight for the bigger faction (we’ve been told this by members of that company/faction that don’t agree with what’s happening)
Now the spread is 8/1/1 and the server is dying inevitably faster as a result. Those of us who remain are figuring out how to regain our territory back, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s incredibly difficult to get people to sign up for wars when they feel like there’s no hope.
As the mid faction… it sucks having two factions against you.
This intended territorial control mechanic causes the cylindrical want to change servers. As people leave servers, it continues a cascading problem that would not be resolved by continued server transfer tokens.
The PVP community advocates “this is a PVP” game and people need to step up or learn the game to be on their competitive level; however, the same demographic of players do not have an interest in playing the PVE content side: AGS desperate to quiet player discontent made some decisions that disfavored PVE game play.
These facts are directly related to the OP raised issue over 30-50 players owning an entire server or 1-3 company(ies) dominating tax/fee policies over thousands of players. AGS created a linear game mechanic and process deciding territory control. How its designed has several functional flaws that are not related to gear or weapon performance.
There should be multiple avenues for obtaining territory control. PVP is one avenue, and I suggest AGS introduce two other methodologies for a company to compete for control. When you devalue the impact PVP holds over territory control than dominate companies could not solely manipulate the war roster participants or declared wars.
AGS needs to break the linear characteristic of their territory control design into a dynamic mechanism. One mentioned method could be to implement a timed delay v. player participation, as their company expands its control; players switching to another companies would not alter the time delay.
This idea only staggers players participation, as active players adapt to the delay and desync organized schedules, and by association subtly shift player skill levels, as one PVP victory conditions to desync pre-made groupings. One idea where an accumulated and on-going delay has multiple applications to change the frequency of same players v. same player combat scenarios.
AGS should review and adjust or redesign their territory control system to be more dynamic where one niche game play doesn’t dominate the map. There is nothing wrong making the whole process more cerebral.
BUT not as a knee jerk reaction to implement a short term correction, as their already decisions are not impacting the core concept of the game. TOO linear that promotes niche game play excluding the bulk of their content development outside grind chests or a location for end game gear since they impaired crafting.
I completely agree, there is no repercussions for them to maintain the towns. Our server has roughly 40-60 people on it nightly. Trading has come to a standstill and the company presidents basically arrange wars on their whim just to keep interesting. They own the whole map. Only two towns have tier 5 stations to craft the higher stuff so you are through them. So it is all on their terms what happens to the map. Server mergers may help but it will be the same thing of discord alliances and the mafia companies controlling the spice. NewWorld has to find a way to penalize the companies if they have no incentive to maintain their town and even a civil war. We have a whole new army on the shores but nothing is happening with that . I wish that they would have like an invasion and actually do take over the town . Even if as tough as the current invasion is. If the company doesnt keep the townsfolk happy. it causes dissent. New World wanted a “Age of emprise” like incentive system? maybe but at least in the Sim City games, i can see when townsfolk are unhappy. Right now they sit on thier throne and collect money. No incentive to prosper thier town to my knowledge…
