Solving Player Imbalance

[Nooop]

Problem: Overpopulated nations dominating underpopulated ones

Cause: Production linked to number of players. More Players make more production.

Solution: Link production to nations or pors. Each nation or port has a finite number of production plots that can be leased to the highest bidder.

How Solution works: Overpopulated nations will see more players bidding for limited production plots and the prices will inflate. Ships and repairs will be more expensive for them. Underpopulated nations conversly will have cheaper ships and repairs. Overpopulated nation will have a harder time dominating smaller ones because they have to pay more for everything. Choosing an unpopulated nation is attractive for its cheaper prices.

[admin]

2 hours ago, Nooop said:

Problem: Overpopulated nations dominating underpopulated ones

Cause: Production linked to number of players. More Players make more production.

Solution: Link production to nations or pors. Each nation or port has a finite number of production plots that can be leased to the highest bidder.

How Solution works: Overpopulated nations will see more players bidding for limited production plots and the prices will inflate. Ships and repairs will be more expensive for them. Underpopulated nations conversly will have cheaper ships and repairs. Overpopulated nation will have a harder time dominating smaller ones because they have to pay more for everything. Choosing an unpopulated nation is attractive for its cheaper prices.

Not going to work. It an ecology.  Things like you propose sound great on paper though, but not going to work in reality. Like limited crew resources are amazing but should have been done right from the start, now they will just piss off part of the community.

[van stiermarken]

but you can regulate via taxes for each port the own. I've no problem with huge clans (in a nation) but they should have it harder when they capture ports. at the moment the can gain unlimited ports without any penalty (like higher taxes for each port the own.)

you can regulate the PB for deep water ports. make a RoE for this and other single battles. limited the amount of 1st, 2nd, 3th rate in a PB.

bring the diplomatic system back, so that nations can work together.

that, i think, would be a good start in the right direction.

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by van stiermarken
typo

[Thonys]

6 hours ago, Nooop said:

Problem: Overpopulated nations dominating underpopulated ones

Cause: Production linked to number of players. More Players make more production.

Solution: Link production to nations or pors. Each nation or port has a finite number of production plots that can be leased to the highest bidder.

How Solution works: Overpopulated nations will see more players bidding for limited production plots and the prices will inflate. Ships and repairs will be more expensive for them. Underpopulated nations conversly will have cheaper ships and repairs. Overpopulated nation will have a harder time dominating smaller ones because they have to pay more for everything. Choosing an unpopulated nation is attractive for its cheaper prices.

is not working at all...alts, and people who give stuff away... 

it makes no difference for the players who are in a big nation or even smaller nations.

people are sharing stuff when...  battles are underway... so its not a issue to get access to certain items, even when they are rare.     

[Guest]

It's the right solution, to the wrong problem. I don't say this very often but I agree with the admin, finite production plots will only drive nations to acquire more ports as each clan will want to try and secure valuable plots for their players, this will make them all far more aggressive and put even more pressure on the smaller nations.

A lot of faction based games have tried placing economic disadvantages on factions which grow too large but this has always worked under very rare circumstances, people typically want to join the largest nation regardless if that puts them at a massive disadvantage or not. The only tried and test method which works almost every-time is simple limiting player numbers, locking factions from gaining new players until the population starts to balance out. Something the Devs have already stated they considered and would never do.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Guest

[Georg Fromm]

7 hours ago, admin said:

Not going to work. It an ecology.  Things like you propose sound great on paper though, but not going to work in reality. Like limited crew resources are amazing but should have been done right from the start, now they will just piss off part of the community.

@admin

Do I find this reasoning somewhat strange? Any change you make at the game will risk losing part of the community and leaving the game. If your main concern is losing parts of the community, you should simply freeze the game and enjoy the current 350 players and 150 Alts online. I always thought with every change in the game, the key question should be whether or not I gain more players than I lose.
I would also recommend that you tell people once again that any form of business ingame is just cosmetic and also good at promoting the game. That would significantly reduce the number of economic suggestions for improving the game.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Georg Fromm

[Chromey]

9 hours ago, admin said:

Not going to work. It an ecology.  Things like you propose sound great on paper though, but not going to work in reality. Like limited crew resources are amazing but should have been done right from the start, now they will just piss off part of the community.

just DO it.... (dont limit them, just make it more expensive for the top )

Edited November 25, 2019 by Chromey

[Licinio Chiavari]

11 hours ago, admin said:

Not going to work. It an ecology.  Things like you propose sound great on paper though, but not going to work in reality. Like limited crew resources are amazing but should have been done right from the start, now they will just piss off part of the community.

So let's keep the unbalances... in a PvP server.

[Mouth of Sauron]

Alliances are the only way to solve the issue without culling the amount of nations

[RKY]

People are the only way to change the balance on the server, whatever nation they are in at the moment. Stop bitching about zergs and what not, just play the damn game you are intending to play.

There will never be balance as you are looking for, for you are simply not willing to have balance and there shall never be balance. What you are looking for is a reason to justify your lack of will to play the game on the pvp side of the game.

This is not targeted to someone specific, it is the reality of players in this game, a reality about the vast majority of the pvp server.

Edited November 25, 2019 by RKY

[Aquillas]

12 hours ago, admin said:

Not going to work. It an ecology.  Things like you propose sound great on paper though, but not going to work in reality. Like limited crew resources are amazing but should have been done right from the start, now they will just piss off part of the community.

Many players of big nations have several accounts. Doing the way proposed by @Nooop, these players will move one to the small nation. This would imbalance this small nation more than it is right now.

[Preechur Blackheart]

i believe you can get this on Amazon Prime. Good movie, actually.

[Trastámara]

How about increasing the playerbase by making the game f2p?

You already got all the money that u were going to get selling keys

Cba to have 500 or 600 players in such game...

[Nooop]

7 hours ago, Aquillas said:

Many players of big nations have several accounts. Doing the way proposed by @Nooop, these players will move one to the small nation. This would imbalance this small nation more than it is right now.

Maybe a system could be devised to prevent griefing like this and disallow transfers of assets between nations. Someone should play the governor who makes regulations on imports/exports and ship sales to other nations.

Edited November 26, 2019 by Nooop
Added second sentence.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Nooop said:

Maybe a system could be devised to prevent griefing like this and disallow transfers of assets between nations. Someone should play the governor who makes regulations on imports/exports and ship sales to other nations.

It was once stated that Alts would be bannable, this later changed to "under certain circumstances" as it is very difficult to prove a player is an alt and then an alt of who, unless that person is idiotic enough to admit it you'll never be able to prove it. 

Transfer of assets between nations was once a bannable offence and one clan was subject to a pretty harsh punishment for doing so, this was until another clan from a certain nation did the same thing and co-incidentally that rule no longer seems to exist. Buying and selling things form Free Ports is a key part of the player driven economy and banning it would solve little other than preventing the larger nations from bankrolling the smaller ones so once again this only puts the small nations at a disadvantage.

[Nooop]

What got me thinking about this is I built a sugar farm and I have 5 slots to build in a port. If I had an alt I would have 10 slots. If everyone went to this port and made many alts it would have unlimited production, as production is proportional to number of players. In meatspace economics, resources are finite. The most productive plots would be snatched up by first comers, leaving only marginal plots for the rest. Eventually you run out of land and you have to look to far away colonies to develop and import their resources, and transport these resources back home, which is the meatspace reason for having merchant ships bearing commerce and warship navies to control this commerce.

 

 

[Raekur]

What about imposing a income tax based on the number of ports owned? This tax could be considered a maintenance cost for internal relocation of funds from outer colonies back to the capital and would be money not given to any player or clan. Even if a nation with a large number of ports wanted to compensate the loss by capturing more ports it would be a diminishing return until the large nation gave up ports to balance out their income. The only tricky part is determining what the number of ports are that establish a balance for the nation and how much of a penalty is imposed by having over this number.

[Raekur]

5 minutes ago, Nooop said:

What got me thinking about this is I built a sugar farm and I have 5 slots to build in a port. If I had an alt I would have 10 slots. If everyone went to this port and made many alts it would have unlimited production, as production is proportional to number of players. In meatspace economics, resources are finite. The most productive plots would be snatched up by first comers, leaving only marginal plots for the rest. Eventually you run out of land and you have to look to far away colonies to develop and import their resources, and transport these resources back home, which is the meatspace reason for having merchant ships bearing commerce and warship navies to control this commerce.

 

 

The main issue I see with that approach is that larger nations would aggressively go after ports just to gain more resources to counter the loss of available plots in their main ports. This would not curb the larger nations from taking over the map but actually give then just cause to do so. While yes it would force them to have more merchant ships in the open world to move the supplies I don't think it would be much of a hindrance to them as they would be able to form a large fleet to move the resources. Small nations would be choked to death for lack of resources and inability to keep up production to counter losses incurred defending their ports.

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, Raekur said:

What about imposing a income tax based on the number of ports owned? This tax could be considered a maintenance cost for internal relocation of funds from outer colonies back to the capital and would be money not given to any player or clan. Even if a nation with a large number of ports wanted to compensate the loss by capturing more ports it would be a diminishing return until the large nation gave up ports to balance out their income. The only tricky part is determining what the number of ports are that establish a balance for the nation and how much of a penalty is imposed by having over this number.

Is already a thing, ports require an upkeep which the owning clan has to pay.

 

52 minutes ago, Nooop said:

What got me thinking about this is I built a sugar farm and I have 5 slots to build in a port. If I had an alt I would have 10 slots. If everyone went to this port and made many alts it would have unlimited production, as production is proportional to number of players. In meatspace economics, resources are finite. The most productive plots would be snatched up by first comers, leaving only marginal plots for the rest. Eventually you run out of land and you have to look to far away colonies to develop and import their resources, and transport these resources back home, which is the meatspace reason for having merchant ships bearing commerce and warship navies to control this commerce.

 

 

I understand your reasoning but in reality, or the game reality, this would just cause larger nations to become more aggressive as the owners of each port would try to secure the best land for their own members and other clans would be forced to branch out and acquire their own territory so their members could pull resources. It's a good solution but not to this problem, this would be something to look at if say, RvR was dead and none of the major nations were attacking each other because they were all comfortable in their own zones.

[Raekur]

I dont think you quite understood my point. While yes there is upkeep for those ports you want a timer on, my suggestion would affect the amount of funds gained from taxes. So instead of a base 10% larger nations would be under a higher tax rate and thus would earn less from taxes. Imagine that even if the port owner set the tax to 0 there would still be a flat imposed tax of say 10% thus reducing the money earned by taking trade goods there. This could prompt traders to deliver their goods to other ports belonging to a different nation since the tax is nationwide. The only way for the affected nation to gain that tax level again is to reduce the number of ports they own.

[Chromey]

50% of ports are russian and 50% of player base is russian nation (or alt) so you will probably get a big fat no since they pay for probably over 50% of the devs revenue.

[van stiermarken]

1 minute ago, Chromey said:

50% of ports are russian and 50% of player base is russian nation (or alt) so you will probably get a big fat no since they pay for probably over 50% of the devs revenue.

they will be very soon alone on the server.

[erelkivtuadrater]

4 hours ago, Raekur said:

I dont think you quite understood my point. While yes there is upkeep for those ports you want a timer on, my suggestion would affect the amount of funds gained from taxes. So instead of a base 10% larger nations would be under a higher tax rate and thus would earn less from taxes. Imagine that even if the port owner set the tax to 0 there would still be a flat imposed tax of say 10% thus reducing the money earned by taking trade goods there. This could prompt traders to deliver their goods to other ports belonging to a different nation since the tax is nationwide. The only way for the affected nation to gain that tax level again is to reduce the number of ports they own.

Do you know how much they would need to nerf the economy mission if they did that (they still have to nerf those missions or increase sell price for goods though) ? You make literally 30% profit if you buy goods from port a and sell them at port b if the tax is 10% in each port. I've given up the hauling and just sit outside county capitals boarding traders taking their goods into the port and sell them for alot more money.

Edited November 26, 2019 by erelkivtuadrater

[Nooop]

5 hours ago, Winterthrust said:

this would just cause larger nations to become more aggressive as the owners of each port would try to secure the best land for their own members and other clans would be forced to branch out and acquire their own territory so their members could pull resources.

This is in the realm of a wishlist and not serious,

but you could add armies and supplies in. Let a port invasion start with creating a siege port right next door. The owner of the invasion puts contracts for troops and food and ammunition that he can use to craft siege points that lower the defenses of the port. If the port is far away this will need lots of supply missions that will be need to be protected and the defender has a shorter commute time. Recapture of a port close to the home area will be easier because of the short round trip vs the attackers. Maintaining an occupation garrison is also an option. The option for a large empire is to escort large convoys with 3rd-1st but this will shrink their main battle fleet so lightly escorted convoys spread across its many possessions may be a necessity. If we add crew experience, a large empire can build many ships but they will be staffed with green crews that can be preyed upon by a veteran pirate raiding fleet. 

Possibly add a mechanic for succession and revolts to create new nations that can split up a larger nation. Make that DLC, with a custom coat of arms. People might pay to create the nation of Boaty McBoatface.

[Conte D. Catellani]

IMHO first step could be reduce or cancel the possibility to use alts and see how thing go.

Then the Raiders are the good way could be improved  adding some surprise events like riots: a in a random dock npc ships attack players of the same nation or the forts start to shoot yelling bad words. Dont loose the port but is like starting hostiity