With the upcoming update changing the look of both Monarchs Bluff and Everfall, as well as the recent developer update talking about territory management I thought I’d take a deeper look into territories. I took how much each town was making and from where for three servers, two on US East, and one on US West. Most of the data were taken from a full period (one week time) near the end of August to the beginning of September.
Houses
Castle Of Steel
Maramma
Yggdrasil
No surprises here, Windsward & Everfall are central and probably the first places players consider purchasing a house. After that, Ebonscale is a big one due to it being the best-looking housing and finally having T4 housing. Then there’s Mourningdale, which is probably popular due to being in the top corner of the map, similar to Windsward, and players wanting their housing spread out throughout the map.
Ultimately, this suggests that the next territories to be revamped are Weaver’s Fen and Restless Shore. Even after a change, I don’t believe that they will be popular due to the level of the zone, but it will at least be a place where players, especially company members, would consider having a house there. It will be interesting to see the effect revamping Monarch’s Bluff will have on the number of houses.
Trade Post
A lot of information about the economy can be obtained through trading post tax. Few things to note though.
- Listing Fee: The cost of a listing scales based on two factors. 1. The amount of time for the listing. 2. Trading Tax. The starting point for the fee of a listing depends on its duration, 0.5 for 1-day, 1 for 3-days, 2 for 7-days, and 4 for 14-days. This is a coin sink, it does NOT go to the territory under trading tax. Tax discounts do apply.
- Transaction Tax: The transaction tax is the amount you pay off every item that is sold. Let’s say I have an item for sale that costs 2 coins. The player filling the listing pays slightly more (maybe 2.2 coins) while I receive slightly less 1.8 coins as profit. Therefore every transaction is essentially taxed twice, one going to the territory the listing was created and another to the territory the listing was filled in.
- Tax Reductions: There are two ways of reducing trading tax. 1. Company discount. 2. Territory standing discounts. The company discount is 30% while the territory standing discount starts off at 5% going up to 62.78%. That means, in total, you can have a maximum
The amount in circulation is a really rough estimate calculated based on the amount in taxes paid for a transaction. If the tax rate of a transaction is 2.5%, Tax for a Transaction = Listing Price * Tax Rate, you can then reverse this to get the listing price from the tax amount paid for the transaction. Now given you can have up to ~93% of the tax discounted it creates a wide range of the amount in circulation. However, most players won’t be receiving that large of a discount on their transactions. I decided to include anywhere from a 5% discount (the first trading post discount you receive), all the way up to max territory standing and the company discount. I would bet that the 30% discount I included is the closest to the actual amount.
Finally, although Ebonscale doesn’t make the most it does have the largest transactions and it makes sense. It’s a level 60 zone, the best-looking zone, and is where I usually hang out if I’m not in Windsward. Windsward is lower because it’s just diluted by all the small transactions leveling players and crafters are making.
Crafting
Castle Of Steel
Maramma
Yggdrasil
There’s not much to be said about crafting. The crafting amount in Windsward is more than double the next highest territory with the exception of Yggdrasil. Although, there are some territories that have a significantly higher average per craft, which makes sense considering that the more costly or large crafts are reserved for territories your company controls for the tax discount.
Refining
Castle Of Steel
Maramma
Yggdrasil
Refining, as with everything else, mostly occurs in Windsward with the number of resources refined being nearly double the next most used territory. However, there are a few territories that have a higher average coin spent per refinement than the total average. This basically means that the resources that are being refined in these territories are of a higher tier. For every server viewed Reekwater stands out on top for having the highest average coin spent per refinement. My best as to why is because Reekwater
Overall
*Weavers Fen has housing units that are used in other places such as First Light but I’d consider it unique enough.
I decided to give each territory a “Layout Rank” based on how the crafting & refining stations are distributed throughout the town. Not only that but how easy they are to access or travel from one to the other. Obviously, Reekwater is the worst. It’s terrible, I hate it, I get what they’re going for with it, I just wish it was better. Next is Restless Shore, it has crafting stations at the bottom which seem separated from the rest of the town. Lastly, Weavers Fen is primarily due to the forge being almost outside of the town. The Inn separates half of the crafting stations which aren’t even on the same platform similar to Restless.
Companies that control the main territories (now Windsward, Everfall, and Ebonscale respectively) earn millions of coins per week. At the highest end, a company can make enough from a single town to give 50 players in a company 85K coins each every week, a number which is only going to grow with the increase in the server population cap. Given that shell companies have existed since launch the potential profit for some companies has been even greater. The problem is that other towns exist but just aren’t being used. On top of that, there are methods in the game that enables all players to be paying much less in taxes than they are currently. From the servers I looked at, on average, taxes are divided as follows: 13% from housing, 83% from trading, 1% from crafting, and 3% from refining. Without the company discount included, 63% of all taxes can be avoided. However, it’s not exactly 63% of the totals down below as most players are already receiving at least one discount. The problem is that the method of obtaining these discounts is terrible. There are multiple ways of increasing your standing in a territory, but the main ways include:
- Town Project Boards (Supply varies)
- Crafting
- Corrupted Portals (Not for the starting territories in the next update)
No matter the method it takes a large time investment to level up just for one of the eleven territories.
Why does this matter
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Performance: Having a populated town is nice but Windsward being the only populated town is not. On top of that having a lag spike the minute you get off the beach due to loading the first town you come across is not a good experience.
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Giving Towns Meaning: The whole idea of taking over a territory is to make it yours in a sense. The current territory incentives for companies and factions don’t achieve this. Partly due to the existence of shell companies, but also a lack of incentives/rewards for both company and faction members. If you look at the current territory incentives they all seem outdated and not useful.
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Spreading the Wealth: This is less important if they made the trading post tax shared equally but currently everyone uses Windsward. Why? Crafting is easier there, more people hang out there, the layout is better, and more people have houses there. Everything about it makes Windsward far more convenient than any other territory. There should be a better distribution of players amongst all territories in order for each territory to make a similar amount in taxes and be seen just as competitive.
All this comes down to is that there are now 2,500 players per server. This has made Windsward even more filled with players. There needs to be other territories that not only have a good layout for crafters but also housing that is appealing. Removing shell companies doesn’t matter as much when a company can continue making a large portion of what they were making when they could hold more than two territories at a time.
Solutions
It seems to me that the most obvious way that AGS will attempt to band-aid this problem when they eventually get around to it would be to make the trading post tax global. Most of a town’s revenue comes from the trading post but it doesn’t own the trading post. It makes no sense that a particular town should get a greater share of wealth circulating through the trading post just because more players are interacting with that town’s trading post.
In the meantime, AGS has confirmed that they will add a minimum number of company members for the defense of a territory. This is good as it practically removes shell companies but it doesn’t improve the company system or significantly reduce the amount of company can make from territories.
- Distribute the Trading Post Tax: This is by far the easiest way to balance out how much a territory makes and it makes sense. No territory owns the trading post, it’s global, make it act that way.
- Change Company Tax Discount to Faction: Why give a 30% tax reduction when the tax is just feeding directly back into their company? IT’S ALREADY A 100% DISCOUNT!!! ACTUALLY WTF??? Just move this to faction discounts, problem solved.
- Rework Territory Standing: This gives players the ability to reduce the tax amount they pay and companies receive by more than half the current amount. However, the amount of time it takes is far too long just for one territory. The main method (doing town boards) varies given the number of ongoing territory upgrades.
- Rework Companies: Again, the addition of the minimum amount of company members for a war defense is a band-aid. The companies haven’t been changed since launch while possibly being the most contentious system in the game.
- Progressive Town Upkeep: Towns Upkeep is a flat rate based on the number of upgrades in a territory. This is a bad system for many reasons. Mainly because it fails when the server’s population falls below an unhealthy amount, leaving the server either to be merged and/or have the stations downgraded in all but one territory. The Upkeep should be a portion of the town’s revenue that increases with the number of upgrades or the level of the town.
PLEASE UPDATE THESE AGS!
- Fast Travel has been reduced to a negligible amount even before the discounts.
- There’s global storage now.
- House discount only applies once.
- Luck and gathering bonuses are territory dependent. For some, it may be useful, but for the majority, it goes unnoticed.
Just wanted to point out that nearly all towns already have their tax rate at the lowest with the exception of housing. The upcoming update increases the housing tax rate enabling companies to increase the current amount you have to pay to maintain your houses.
