First of all, this post is made by the user: u/DerpyDaDulfin over at Reddit. This is just to good not to be on the forum! You can find the entire post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/newworldgame/comments/xed5fr/territory_reward_changes_are_incoming_why_gold/
I know this is a wall of text but I think it’s spot on!
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As stated during the latest dev blog, AGS’ Dan Henuber discussed plans to address the “economic issues” surrounding New World’s territory system. While Dan did not go into specifics, the Social Experience team hopes to “spread the wealth around” in order to avoid the “runaway win-condition” of owning EF/WW.
Gold should not be a reward for owning territory - MMO economies are incredibly delicate, fragile things that can quickly inflate in response to large influxes of gold. Whether player perception is correct or not, the very perception of a gold imbalance in the economy caused by dupes and EF/WW taxes has driven away whole swaths of the playerbase. In order to remove this perception of uncontrollable inflation, New World must move away from Gold as a reward for territory ownership.
Over the following post, I will demonstrate how companies can simply circumvent most methods of wealth redistribution, but also offer a suggestion in place of a raw gold reward in the form of these chapters:
- Company Halls
- Mythic Crafting / Refining Stations
- Revamped War Declarations
- The Chromatic Enclave: a neutral, in-town resource conversion NPC faction
Taxed Gold is being Sold as RMTs - Companies will Always Find a Way
As long as easy gold can be made and sold for Real money by owning territory, some Companies can and will do whatever is needed to acquire said gold. Note: While most companies that own territory are - NOT - RMT abusers, the economy is still threatened by the RMT abusers - as they have the greatest motivation to take advantage of the gold offered by the system in place currently.
- Diffusing the rewards among company members may work for smaller, more democratic companies, but sweaty companies will simply demand those rewards as “dues” for being a part of the Company, and thus they would operate in the same way they would have before a redistribution of wealth. I know of a few company leaders who secretly RMT away their company coffers while their members are none the wiser.
- Diffusing rewards across all territories will only give companies even more impetus to own the entire map. When millions of gold can be sold for hundreds of dollars, what’s the cost of another $40 account, (I guarantee you the RMT absusers and shell companies bought up a ton of $20 NW copies for all their alts to combat company minimums for war.)
- Gold rewards were being siphoned off of lower population servers (now all servers are full) via territory ownership and sent over as RMT transactions for larger servers, adding to the inflationary effect on large servers. Should the game’s popularity die down again, this practice will return.
Gold as a territory reward is essentially FUBAR - it fuels an RMT market that thrives on the inflation that is inherently created by the massive influx of wealth gained from territorial control. To kneecap the RMT market, and to restore some stability to New World economies - gold as a territory reward must go.
To replace it, I aim to suggest a series of changes that will not only motivate players to seek out specific territories based on their needs, but also bring more life and hopefully in-game interactions surrounding territory ownership.
Company Halls
Company Halls have often been suggested, and I believe they are an excellent way to bring more personality and meaning into each territory, rather than a handful of centralized ones. This could done by offering rewards for players physically standing in a Company Hall itself, and through Mythic Crafting and Refining Stations, which I will go over in greater detail further down. As an added benefit to all players, Invasions should now only damage Company Hall specific upgrades - once regular crafting stations are upgraded to Tier 5, they remain that way.
However, I’d first like to discuss two ways in which companies halls could physically inhabit the world:
- Easy Way: Allow the Company owning a territory to choose a housing plot within the city. This housing plot now becomes physically in-game, overriding all houses that were once displayed there (players who own a plot there can still access their houses from the front). Like scheduling a war period, Companies can set a period of 1-2 hours were the Hall is “closed” for renovations - allowing Furnishers to enter and decorate the space while it returns to an instanced space temporarily.
- Cooler Way: PTR Monarch Bluffs has a a freakin sweet Castle. PTR Everfall has some super sweet high-rises. Company Halls being physical buildings apart from all the housing is a true statement of elevation, a reminder of who owns the territory - especially if ruling companies can furnish said spaces. Should AGS continue to redesign the various cities around New World, I’d encourage design choices that always created these singular awesome buildings for the purposes of Company Halls.
Company Hall Upgrades
Now that we have a physical space for the Company Hall, we need to make it matter (even if having a Castle would probably be enough motivation for many players haha). To do this, we can make standing in company halls mean something, giving players Company Hall specific upgrades that must be maintained and protected, in this case, upgrades called Lavish Estate and Mythic Stations. The former of which is quite straight-forward:
- Lavish Estate: While standing within the borders of a company hall, all buffs applied to your character have their duration increased by 50-150%. These benefits are affected by Lavish Estate’s Upgrade Level, your Faction, and your Company (Company members gain the most benefit from this effect).
All Company Halls have access to this upgrade, and it can be damaged based on how badly a company failed their Invasion. Mythic Stations are a different beast, however.
The Mythic Crafting and Refining Stations available to a territory should be Territory specific. For example, with Monarch Bluffs being a Castle, Company Halls could have access to a Mythic Forge and a Mythic Smelter. Everfall, with its high rise buildings and modern feel, could have access to a Mythic Outfitting Station and a Mythic Woodshop. Which stations go where isn’t really important, what is important is the number of stations. By not having access to all Mythic Crafting / Refining Stations within a territory, this drives demand to expand, to conquer more territory for your specific company and your faction, as there will be rewards for both. Similar to the Lavish Estate Upgrade, these Crafting Stations would need to be maintained and protected from Invasions.
Mythic Crafting and Refining Stations
The benefits of Mythic Crafting and Refining Stations are straightforward, but impact game-play in different ways.
- Mythic Refining Stations would have greater yield, but would also be the most difficult to maintain and keep upgraded. Mythic Refining Stations would be the first to take damage during an Invasion and require several upgrade levels, with each upgrade only providing a 0.5-2% (testing required) increase to yield. Inherently, Mythic Refining Stations would provide a base benefit to yield (0.5-2% again) based on whether your faction held the territory, and if you were a member of the company owning the territory.
Mythic Crafting Stations
Mythic crafting stations would act as a sort of half timeless shard - for a heavy price. It would allow the locking in of one extra perk, but the base cost of the item would be increased by 3x-12x; this value would be modified by whether a Timeless Shard or a Golden Scarab was used at the Mythic Crafting Station, the level of the crafting station, as well as faction allegiance and company allegiance. For example, crafting an Orichalcum Fire Staff which costs 8/5/4/6 T5 Timber/Metal/Leather/Arcana:
- Without any timeless shards, crafting an item with an extra guaranteed perk (not guaranteed attribute) would have a baseline cost of 3-5x
- With a Timeless Shard, two perks and an attribute could now be guaranteed, at the cost of 6-9x the baseline resource.
- With a Golden Scarab (BIS), crafting an item with all guaranteed perks and attributes would cost 10-12x the baseline resource.
OPTIONAL IDEA: Weapons and Armor created at Mythic stations with Golden Scarabs (Full perk control) would gain the MYTHIC tag. Players can only receive one Mythic item once every 2-7 days (needs testing / balancing).
Based on the level of the crafting station, this baseline cost would decrease for faction members and company members by a different metric. When fully upgraded, Factions benefits could be a 2x/5x/9x scale while Company members could benefit from a 1.5x/4x/7x scale. This benefit could be increased even more for Companies as crafting items with specific perks will come into play with the Chromatic Enclave - an NPC faction that will provide a balancing force in the economy that will be expanded upon later.
For consumables created at Mythic Cooking Stations and Mythic Arcane Repositories, Mythically crafted Potions and Foodstuffs could gain the benefit of greater duration or shorter cooldowns at the cost of a significant increase to the baseline cost of each consumable, or even greater yield for baseline crafts.
War Coffers
In addition, a portion of the resources spent at these Mythic Crafting Stations is broken down and kept within a special, non-withdrawable (but viewable from the Company tab), company-specific War Coffer storage chest. Taxes from housing within a territory also fill War Coffer chests. The items and gold stored within this War Coffer storage chest can then be used to pay for Company Hall Upgrades, to pay for part of War Declaration requirements, and can even occasionally be partially returned to the company in the form of reward chests from defending territory.
Effect on Territory Control
These stations would become key objectives for factions and companies seeking to craft BIS of certain types, or push for faction wide refinement days when a specific territory is captured and held, as each territory would ideally only contain one to two types of Mythic crafting and refining stations, the level of which would be determined by the efforts of both the previous and current owners of the Territory. This adds drama to the map, and makes the ups and downs of New World’s economy more identifiable in the world space.
Thus, we’ve now moved the economic and crafting benefits from territory control away from the chaos raw gold provides; this system also suppresses demand, acting as a counterbalance to the demand inflicted by Mythic crafting and War Declaration costs. Companies that own territory will still be able to craft BIS faster / more efficiently than companies that do not, allowing companies that own territory to snowball, but not as quickly as with the millions of gold they had earned from EF/WW previously.
War Declaration Remake
Without the reward of gold for owning a territory, asking companies for 10,000 gold per declaration would be too heavy a cost, especially for smaller, less wealthy companies. As New World has shown an openness to letting players play and contribute to their own progression in whatever in the way they want to play, the same principles should be carried over in War Declarations.
For example, a War Declaration could become a physical document purchased from a faction vendor. Upon purchasing Declaration of War document, it would move into the Company hold, and Company members could contribute to its progression from the Company tab. The War Declaration Papers would require the fulfillment of four pips. Each Pip could be fulfilled by a variety of resources (exact values subject to balancing):
- Raw Resources: Baseline T1-T3 resources could be used to fill a pip. Allows Company Gatherers to contribute to War Declarations. The specific resource could be static for consistency, or it could be seasonal / rotating to create a more dynamic economic environment. The amount of resource required would be high, as these types of resources are easy to acquire, ballpark 10-50k of timber / iron bars etc. Raw resources spent in this way would make their way to the coffers of the Chromatic Enclave.
- Faction Tokens: PvPers typically want to PvP, and not bother with gathering / PvE. Company members who PvP all the time could help fill pips by contributing Faction tokens. Due to the ease of faction token acquisition, each pip would likely require a minimum of ~ 100k+ faction tokens.
- Gold: No point in taking it away. 2.5-3k gold per pip to complete.
- Umbral Shards: Acquired from a variety of activities and also an upgrade resource, Umbral shards would move Pips further along than faction tokens or raw resources. In theory, each Pip could take 15-50k umbral shards to fulfill.
- New Perfect Azoth Lattice: Acquired from the Chromatic Enclave by fulfilling Perk Bounties, Perfect Azoth Lattices would be the most effective way to fill a pip, and has synergy with the lower crafting costs and increased refinement yields gained by companies that own territory.
- War Coffer: Companies with sizeable war coffers may contribute between 60-90% (should be tested) of the cost of raw resource pips, rather than needing to pony up the resources themselves.
With all of these options available, Company members can contribute to wars in a wide variety of playstyles. Aside from these resource requirement changes, I’m sure more exciting options for getting to the Declaration Point (running influence) could be brought to the table, but that’s for a whole different post.
The Chromatic Enclave
Even if none of these suggestions were taken, and simply looking at the state of New World economies currently - there is a glaring issue: RNG based crafting creates a swath of “sub-BIS” items with perks that simply don’t align with BIS, flooding the market with knockoff Best-in-Slot that does a “serviceable job” but also typically undersells for far below the cost of the goods required to make it.
I remember coming back in July and buying 5 pieces of 600 GS legendary light armor with Resilient (some with shirking fort) for less than 7k gold on Yggdrasil. The sheer amount of Phoenixweave alone for all those pieces easily surpassed 7k. With Golden Scarabs on the way, this problem will only be exacerbated. The market will continue to flood with items that people will continue to pass up because it just isn’t worth buying until it dips below 1000 gold, costing crafters tens of thousands of gold in effort just to sell their the actual good crafts they make.
Enter, The Chromatic Enclave - a neutral NPC station similar to a trading post, with multiple windows for accomplishing different things.
- Perk Bounties: Similar to a Town Bounty Board, the Chromatic Enclave seeks items with specific perks, and will reward the player with a number of Perfect Azoth Lattices based on how many perks had been fulfilled and the reward offered. Which Perks each Bounty seeks could be on a seasonal or random rotation, but a seasonal rotation would provide clearer economic trends for players to follow.
- Lattice Conversion: Perfect Azoth Lattices cannot be traded, but they can be converted into different endgame materials such as Chromatic Gypsum (a special gypsum that can be turned into any color gypsum, but uses a daily Gypsum slot like earning said color Gypsum normally would), Umbral Shards, or other endgame rewards such as Timeless Shards, Golden Scarabs or Treasure Chests that may contain rare Furnishing / Cooking Recipes.
- Discount Vendor: Economies need a floor. This vendor would buy T1-T3 resources (subject to balancing) at an incredibly cheap baseline price. I’m talking 0.1-0.2 for hyssop, greenwood or iron ore. Items sold to the Chromatic Enclave would not be lost, but rather resold by the Chromatic Enclave for a steep ceiling (1g-5g per hyssop, greenwood, or iron ore - subject to balancing).
Perfect Azoth Lattices would act as a transitory currency like Azoth Salt, untradable save for when donating Lattices to a War Effort. Their use as a secondary path to upgrade materials helps further fill gaps in progression and smooths the flow of the progression curve.
The Chromatic Enclave’s coffers would be filled by, raw resource contributions to Declarations of War and those who choose to sell their resources for the floor price. If these resources cannot be resold at their steep ceiling (expected), the Chromatic Enclave occasionally offers challenges - be they PvE, PvP or Crafting - wherein the victors can receive a treasure chest full of raw resources and gold.
Conclusion
The ultimate goal of these changes is to create a more dynamic and engaging territory environment while still providing reasonable and desirable rewards for a system that no longer offers the insane “win-condition” that was millions of gold filling coffers weekly. If you’ve made it this far, I appreciate it, and I hope to hear some feedback in the comments!
TL;DR
Gold Rewards for Territories will always make New World’s economies unstable and inflationary. Bring more life into Territory Ownership by providing Company Housing, do away with some aspects of RNG crafting with Mythic Crafting Stations, and provide balance to the economy with some sort of station or faction that offers some sort of bounty for all the extra crap we craft in order to make BIS.
