Incentive for nations to own more towns.

[Budgie Smuggler]

  Cost of owning towns seems to be discouraging nations from going full throttle conquest. I hear it over and over from different clan leaders and other nation players "we have enough towns".  Today for example we couldn't get a group together in our nation to flip a town because no-one wanted to own the cost involved. If this was remedied i do believe the activity in the game overall would increase dramatically.

  Suggestion:  A small percentage reduction in town ownership cost for each town owned (excluding non capturable) by a Nation.  For example nation A owns 20 ports @ lets say .75% cost reduction per town :-  20x .75%= 15%  therefor every port in that nation gets a 15% cost reduction (regardless of which clan owns).  This would encourage nations to increase their ports owned to get a bigger discount.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Budgie Smuggler

[Teutonic]

I had a similar idea in a thread I made but it was based more on owning a region. By owning the region, the ports in that region had a significant reduction in port maintenance (along with other bonuses).

My thought was that it would create an incentive to own ports that would otherwise not be taken so that you could gain bonuses for yourself and the nation. The incentive also comes with opponents being able to disrupt these bonuses and there being a reason to defend every port.

[Budgie Smuggler]

6 minutes ago, Teutonic said:

I had a similar idea in a thread I made but it was based more on owning a region. By owning the region, the ports in that region had a significant reduction in port maintenance (along with other bonuses).

My thought was that it would create an incentive to own ports that would otherwise not be taken so that you could gain bonuses for yourself and the nation. The incentive also comes with opponents being able to disrupt these bonuses and there being a reason to defend every port.

i like the idea of owning regions to get increase RNG for ship building.

 

2 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

And admin said taxes for towns was a good idea. I hope the drop of activity have convinced him to listen (more) to people that actually play the game.

 @admin

I don't mind the tax system it just needs a this tweek.

[Sven Silberbart]

37 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

And admin said taxes for towns was a good idea. I hope the drop of activity have convinced him to listen (more) to people that actually play the game.

 @admin

That System was a very bad idea. Dont know how much vodka they had in when making that decision.

[Capn Rocko]

50 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

And admin said taxes for towns was a good idea. I hope the drop of activity have convinced him to listen (more) to people that actually play the game.

 @admin

The taxes were are good idea and they work great (nothing is perfect in this game). They give incentive to fight for heavily trafficked ports and discourage owning useless ports. Thus the taxes add a layer of strategy to the game.

Instead of complaining about taxes, you should be complaining about the 75% of ports that are completely useless in the game. Once more ports have more meaning, then more ports can/will be profitable. 

 

Side note: I love how every topic is the reason players are leaving the game 

[Capn Rocko]

4 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Well, the thing is many warned him it wasnt going to be good for small and medium clans (which are the majority atm in NA). Those clans cant afford to be every day grinding to pay the dam timers.

If you have to grind anything at a port you own. Maybe its not worth owning (or paying a timer) 😉

Though I agree more content needs to be added for the clans that own ports.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Capn Rocko

[Elric]

A big part of the issue is 90% of the ports on the map have no resources of interest.  Each port should have some resource making it worth owning.

As others have said, the cost of ownership is crippling.  100k for a worthless port that generates no income and has no resources.  Why would anyone bother attacking it.  Most players now have enough VM's coming in each week to not want the extra burden of a port sucking money from the clan.

Give each port a resource drop making it worth owning.  

[z4ys]

• making timers cheap = no content by timelocking ports
• making timers expensive= its a choice -> more content available

regardless what devs do. People always complain

[Budgie Smuggler]

1 minute ago, z4ys said:

• making timers cheap = no content by timelocking ports
• making timers expensive= its a choice -> more content available

regardless what devs do. People always complain

My suggestion wouldn't  make much difference to how many ports have timers,  just allow nations to expand to their full potential. Having more and more ports is still going to cost, this just eases the burden and makes it more viable while also removing the hesitation we are experiencing from nations to expand.   0.75% is a starting number to get some sort of balance.

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

The answer to that problem in my opinion is to give tools to the owners to turn their ports into attractive places for visitors, no matter if their clan members or others. How could this be done? By upgrading ports by a selection of buildings there, which produce advantages the visitors want to buy. And with every turnover by visitors, the port becomes more profitable.

Examples?

- clan offers dockyard places in addition to the ones the player owns. so he can have more ships and park them in this port for a fee depending on size of the ship.

- clan builds a special wharf which, contrary to player-owned wharfs, can add additional upgrade slots to an existing ship - for a good price of course. Boy, how they will flock to that port!!

- clan can produce rare resources, at a low rate compared with original spawning areas (for example crooked cedar outside of crooked islands), in buildings only available to them (not players). They set up auctions for achieving the best prices, which are announced up front and require people actually visit the port for bidding. Needless to say, those auctions have nice fees the clan will earn. Player A buys 100 copper ingots for 520 gold a piece, clan adds 20 % provision, makes 52.000 + 10.400 gold for the port-owning clan.

- clans do some research efforts in experimental facilities in their ports, where built. Certainly eats ups money first, and the outcome is (random generated and thus) unpredictable, but once the research would be successful, a new upgrade named after that port would be generated in the game, with slightly different statistic values compared to the normal upgrade it is based upon. For example, a Bovenwind Refit which gives 1 % more speed than the standard Bowenwind Refit, by the name "La Tortuga Bovenwind Variant" if invented in that port. And it could only be produced in this port and nowhere else. And of course it is sold there and flushes the treasury of that clan...

- clans build large amusement quarters in town which allows cheaper crew recruiting compared to other places. Again: the clan earns with every sailor being hired in their amusement quarters.

Question is, if each port with a special building can only have one of them or several.

A port equipped with special clan buildings will become very precious and of course other nations want to conquer it. But... there is some risk the special building(s) will get destroyed during the fighting. It could even get connected with the actual port battle. The bloodier and the more ship losses in PB, the higher the risk special buildings(s) will burn to the ground. Then the winner has to build new ones from scratch.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Cetric de Cornusiac

[Christendom]

This system would work well if we had the people to fill up most of the map and make more than a handful of ports useful.  But we don’t.  

This game needs players first and foremost.   It also needs to create reasons for players to go to player owned ports.  Increased rare ship crafting percentages.  Maybe special trim regions.  Something.  

In typical lazy dev fashion they flipped the switch on increased port costs without  giving players a reason to need those ports in the first place or ways to make the ports pay for themselves.  Admin is kind of like my wife, she always forgets to pick up bread when she grabs peanut butter at the store.  It’s like well, wtf do I now.  Increasing port timer costs without creating a reason to own the ports is exactly the same thing.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Christendom

[Tiedemann]

I look at this issue from another point of view : If it cost money to own something you don't use or need, why would you keep it?

In my mind the solution is to make all ports profitable to own. Only when you chose to use defence timer or/and open for all nations, should it become costly to own a port.   

 

[Capn Rocko]

This is why I suggested to bring back the regional bonuses. Even if it doesn't fix a tax deficit, at least you are getting something with your money. 

But I think @Christendom is right. We just need more players. If we had 4 times the amount of players, many problems would fix themselves. This is the catch 22 that has plagued the game for quite some time now. Until then, just pick and chose your ports wisely. Bigger clans could also drop timers to save costs. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Capn Rocko

[Slim McSauce]

The game needs to be playable with the population it has before it will grow out of sheer hype.
Take note of Planetside 2, where no matter what time of day or rank, whether you're in a clan or you aren't, you can always find a major fight happening by just looking at the map or following the flow of battle from fight to fight until two major armies merge.

[VirtuallyIdiotic]

2 hours ago, Capn Rocko said:

This is why I suggested to bring back the regional bonuses. Even if it doesn't fix a tax deficit, at least you are getting something with your money. 

But I think @Christendom is right. We just need more players. If we had 4 times the amount of players, many problems would fix themselves. This is the catch 22 that has plagued the game for quite some time now. Until then, just pick and chose your ports wisely. Bigger clans could also drop timers to save costs. 

The devs have created a game that is working in a system with a larger population rather than creating a system for the current population and building upon the system as the population grows. Or dies.

 

I do hope the new econ features come with a tweak of costs for ports. It is definitely needed for the continuation of progress for the game. The regional bonuses of the past would do very little to help the game but I do agree there should be some benefit for controling a full region.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Davos Seaworth

[Ellias]

What are you talking about? In prime time we have 400+ players, some of them alts.

How many ports do we have in total? 333 or 373?

Almost 1 port per player.

[seanjo]

Tax killed port ownership. Pandering to the PvPers has killed the game.

[Fletch]

Why do players need to own all the ports? If there was no cost in ownership some one would steam roller the entire map. Remember how it was before? Nations owning half the entire world and ports constantly swapping hands with no defence because the empires were so large and many  ports became meaningless.

[Capn Rocko]

1 hour ago, Borch said:

If RvR activity is going to stay as it is - clan based, then I would say that port ownership should cost even more or simply not be allowed beyond some number. I understand that currently with the playerbase we have it looks like bigger no. of port ownership is needed but after release we should expect a large influx of players. When that will happen one clan absolutely shouldnt be able to keep too many ports as they will deny content for other clans in nation. Out of my head 5 ports for biggest most active RvR clans with possible teleports and tows plus outposts should ne enough.

No thanks. 

The game is a sandbox. If a clan gets too powerful, the entire server can rise up against it to take back ports. No need to limit content when there is a limited supply. 

[Capn Rocko]

9 hours ago, seanjo said:

Tax killed port ownership. Pandering to the PvPers has killed the game.

Last I checked, every port is owned. Nice argument brah

[Slim McSauce]

Just now, Capn Rocko said:

No thanks. 

The game is a sandbox. If a clan gets too powerful, the entire server can rise up against it to take back ports. No need to limit content when there is a limited supply. 

I get what you're saying and I agree, but this game isn't a sandbox. Yes there is a sandbox, but we aren't a sandbox. That would be games like gmod or minecraft, and to an extent halo and timesplitters. NA is simply an open world MMO, things follow a pretty set standard. We are in no way playing god. Sorry had to actchually, carry on  

[Budgie Smuggler]

8 hours ago, Fletch67 said:

Why do players need to own all the ports? If there was no cost in ownership some one would steam roller the entire map. Remember how it was before? Nations owning half the entire world and ports constantly swapping hands with no defence because the empires were so large and many  ports became meaningless.

 I'am not suggesting there would be no cost, the cost just reduces slightly per port for every port owned.  The more ports you own is still going to cost more if we use 0.75% reduction/port. One nation would have to own 133 ports at that rate to get 100% cost reduction.  Biggest nation atm are not pushing past 60, and they are avoiding it because of cost, that's my whole point.    Ports constantly swapping hands is what we want, activity. If the nation was big enough to take it it should be big enough to defend it and when nations get to big they become bigger targets.

 

2 hours ago, Borch said:

 I understand that currently with the playerbase we have it looks like bigger no. of port ownership is needed but after release we should expect a large influx of players. When that will happen one clan absolutely shouldnt be able to keep too many ports as they will deny content for other clans in nation. Out of my head 5 ports for biggest most active RvR clans with possible teleports and tows plus outposts should ne enough.

Clans or nations owning more ports is not denying anyone content.  Again, it just makes them a bigger target.

 

51 minutes ago, Capn Rocko said:

Last I checked, every port is owned. Nice argument brah

Btw Haulover has been neutral for days if not a week plus.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Budgie Smuggler

[staun]

6 hours ago, Intrepido said:

Look brah.

Since then last patch the RvR activity has been on clear decline. Two things were changed, victory marks and taxes. Victory marks gave most people access to the ships most often used in RvR so the issue must rely on the cost increase of owning ports.

If you own many ports, you will have to pve more to pay for them. More pve, more boring grind, less players fighting other players.

Gold is easy to obtain but not enough fast if the average playerbase has only 2 hours to play. And a good trading trip last usually not less than 45 mins. 45 mins sailing in a quite vulnerable and not fun ship to sail. Almost half of your playtime looking at the sea, not a nice way to invest your time. The other option for easy gold is attacking fleets, which after some time is becames boring due to how predictable they are.

Actually I for a long time thought it was the timers aswell, But not sure anymore. Dnp is on top on spending money on timers. We have no problem to do it, We where running down on money, then we talked about what we wanted, and agreed we wanted timers on the ports,  since that we just have had money in a steady stream to the clan. Actually so much, that we don't need any income the next 2 weeks to keep the ports(red. was to weeks ago we talked about oure finances.).  I do think it is good for the game, that no nation basicly can have the hole map, that you have to think where you want ports.

So why don't we not do any RvR any more. Well first summer is comming, thought that was the problem. But each day we have between 20-30 online in DNP, so it isent the numbers.

Numbers falling yes, but actually think the numbers of players that did  PvP/RvR are more ore less the same. Players we lose is the casual players. And I do think we need them. they are the base to get players in to RvR. So why don't nobody do RvR? So why don't we not do RvR? Basicly because DNP is a PvP clan and not and RvR clan.  This game need leaders that want to do RvR. Luckely they are out there. But if we want to get RvR up and running, those that can organize a nation need to step up. 

 

[staun]

45 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

Precisely, casual players and casual clans were the ones most damaged by this change.

How many ports that had timers doesnt have them anymore? How many ports turned into neutral due to taxes?

To my knowledge there is at the moment only 1 neutral port( is neutral ports a problem?).Should all ports have a timer? It is a problem when you can't defend your ports because you don't have timers and therefor can't defend them. Think thats basicly why Dk stopped to fight the dutch. But does it matter if you lose ports? You actually just need them on important ports, not on all.  but ppl make timers a reason. Take oure war with the dutch. We just needed to have it on 1. So we had an advance point for fights.

Casual players and casual clans damage by taxes. How many casual clans do own a port? do casual players suffer from RvR and taxes. I don't think they do, they just need better PvE content, just plain stupid the patch where they only could cancle 3 missions a day. No nation have in the year I played went in to the core teritorium of any nation(except against the Russians at Bermuda). All nations have been allowed enough ports for the play of casual players. Look at DK-Ng. only 5 clans hold ports. DNP, ICP, BF, Danve and KDP. and basicly DNP holds 80% of the ports. No causal clan have a port, If they want one, they can have one, and trust me there is plenty of casual clans in DK-NG.

I was short in KDP, just back for a while to help in DNP. So now KDP is run by only 1 man, and he has no problem at all paying for the port, Ofc he can't defend it, but thats why we are in a nation.I would be nice if there would be a better reason for a clan to own a port, so they would have an interest in owning one. But I am still sure the main problem is that those that can organize a nation, right now have put them self on the sideline. GB with there players should be a fierce enemy to face, a tiger,and not a nice little kitten.

Edit: I know there have been attack close to nations core area, like the Swedes at Road town, but how long have any nation keept there precens in a core area,

Edited May 25, 2018 by staun

[staun]

Just now, Intrepido said:

Dk lost half of their ports at lake maracaibo when they were nightflipped.

And there is plenty of clans on other nations with causal playerbase (casual doesnt mean they do PVE with their time) that own a port. DK overall is a bad example of causal playerbase because that kind of crowd goes to nations like GB, pirates..

Partly truh, ports was lost to lack of timers. In all 3 ports was with timers. The one DNP had, lost in a contested pb(there was 3 pb that night, if memory serve me right.) Bf had timer on 2 ports. One lost in a pb after 5 ore 6 pb's. There was a timer on Maracaibo . Bf just decided  not to defend it.But we didn't have to, it was a choise.

Give me one good reason in terms of game play and content, that any nation need more than 6-8 ports.

So what do they casual clans do, that makes it impossible for the clan to hold on to a port and not make the 100 k they need every day. Yes dk have players leaving,But I sail there  and I can tell you we have atleast as many casual players than we do have RvR players. The danish nation is actually a place of peace.