Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
But I'm pretty sure Castle Tax Money goes anywhere they want.
Castles have direct power over the Nodes that belong to it, but also have soft power across the entire region it belongs to. All Nodes belonging to that region pay fealty to the Castle in the form of taxes paid directly to the Castle. The Monarch sets the rate, and can use those proceeds to upgrade defenses, maintain the Castle’s direct Nodes, or provide buffs and benefits to the citizens of that region, as the magnanimous ruler that you are.[1]
Guild castles impose a tax on all revenue for the nodes within its region.[2][3]
The monarch sets the tax rate, and can use those proceeds to upgrade defenses, maintain the castle's direct nodes, or provide buffs and benefits to the citizens of that region.[1]
Castle taxes are carried via NPC generated caravans from the nodes that fall under the castle's purview to one of the castle nodes at the end of each week leading up to a castle siege.[4]
In addition to taxes, Castles also influence crop yields, resources and events within its region.[5]
Part of the tax and resources gathered are applied to the castle for improvements.[2][6][7]
The remainder of tax income can be used by the guild for whatever they want.[2][8]
When castles change hands (following a siege), some taxes stay with the castle and some stay with the guild.[9]"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Castle_taxes
yes, thats been confirmed.
Node Taxes = Spent on Node
Castle Taxes = Spent on Whatever, with options to support people in its ZOI, build defenses, Support and Build Up Nodes or simply cash it out.
Ill agree with you if they keep guild castle members from being citizens of surrounding nodes. Otherwise, they will 100% just populate their surrounding nodes so that they have no accountability. Especially since right now, the monarch has the option to be mayor. Give them castle housing and let that substitute them not having a true node.
They need some form of handicap while in such a large position of power.
Again, if the guilds power over the game is not that impactful, then I will literally have no problem with just ignoring them and playing within the node system. Cuz I really do love the node system they've developed. I'm just worried that they are taking the power consolidation a little too far.
A Castle Controls 20% of the map, which means 2000 Concurrent players and 4000-10000 players on the server in total if we assume even distribution. There is plenty of accountability left unless its a mega zerg with 1500+ members.
The tax thing may be a limiter, but I'm sure there's many ways to leverage your control of an entire region for trade.
Nodes dont get destroyed. They just get reset back to Level 0 and can be rebuild by Player Questing in the Area. Why would a Guild that already controls the castle destroy the Nodes they get tax revenue from in the first place? That would be knee caping yourself. They want to be just nice enough that the population stays and doesnt revolte while maxing out personal profit.
That's what I meant, and it would only be against resentful nodes or nodes they won't be able to control. They can bar anyone from moving into their region by just killing of the nodes as they reach lvl 3, preventing people from establishing housing. You don't need taxes if you're the dictator of a continent... Any taxes they need for progression sake could just be funneled through one node city under their control, kinda like a pseudo money laundering scheme lol.
I like the idea of letting the citizens of a node know what the tax money was spent on, perhaps looking at the expenditures could be available in the city hall of a node. We could take that a step further and allow the mayor options on how much information is released for both revenues and expenditures. The settings could range from:
- No information released
- Information released only in broad categories of revenues &/or expenditures
- Detailed information released on specific revenues &/or expenditures
Different mayors will probably have different motivations to be mayor. Some will do it out of self-interest (pride, money, reputation, etc.) with the other end of the spectrum being altruistic (serving the best interests of the node and the citizens) and everything in between.
In a democracy, there are traditionally three goals of taxation:
1. Raise revenue. This is the obvious one most people think about, the government needs money to operate.
2. Achieve social goals. In the 'real world' this is national defense, police and fire, education and so forth. In the game it will be node and caravan defense, economic expansion, and other things we will discover in time.
3. Fairness. If citizens perceive taxes are fair, they pay them more willingly then if they think they are unfair, which causes them to evade taxes. Tax evasion in AoC looks like it will be more difficult than irl.
The mayor's motivation will probably motivate them to emphasize different ones of these goals. The more towards a dictatorship the mayor tends, the more goal #1 will be the priority. The more altruistic the mayor, the more goal #3 will be prioritized. Different people are attracted to each type of mayor and, thus, will be attracted to each type of node.
I hope that the mayor can not only choose the overall tax rate, but also choose what is taxed. For example, a mayor wanting to grow his node population might set a low 1% tax on housing. A mayor with many thriving taverns might raise taxes on food sales and gambling games. A mayor wishing to attract crafters and animal breeders might do away with sales taxes to make his/her node attractive to those professions.
Note that there are three basic types of taxes:
1. Income taxes, taxes on what citizens earn.
2. Wealth taxes, taxes on what citizens own.
3. Use taxes, taxes on what services people use.
Taxes can also be characterized as either:
1. Progressive - wealthier people are taxed more heavily as a % of income (ie. taxes on housing. If you don't own a house, you pay no tax.)
2. Regressive - poorer people pay a higher % of their income (ie. sales taxes on food in the 'real world'. A poor person may spend 20% of their income on food, a wealthy one 1% - so a smaller % of the wealthy person's income is taxed, even though the $ may be more).
I see how Progressive taxes play out in the game, but I cannot come up with an example of a Regressive tax, can anyone help me here? Perhaps there will be an optional 1g tax on entering and exiting the node. A wealthy player will hardly notice it, a poor player might think twice about running in and out often.
I think regressive taxes will be played out more through market manipulations. Such as price gouging essential goods, this can be done to a certain extent through taxes since wealthier people can bare it for longer.
Diverting funds from player progression buildings could also entrap them into lower-level occupations. Once your market is inflated with low level resources, you can take the undervalued resources to other regions to sell at a price markup. Players will most likely leave your node by then though lol.
@M33P
They cannot as people could just settle in the node said guild has most of their housing in.
Neither would it matter, because they dont need to be citizen of a a Node below to take part and fight against them in a castle siege.
I personally think there should be an upper limit just because if you become a citizen of a node and later on a new mayor could put it up to 100% that would just be an awful experience since you would lose stuff in the siege against the node but its not like you can do anything for money there either
But the mayor decides how much housing is made.
The second part was to show that the majority of the sabotage within your castle region can be mitigated if they wanted to take it far enough. Sure, they could lose a castle siege, but if money is one of the things that determine the winner. Someone can easily come up with the funds if they have a monopoly over a region's resources. It isn't infallible, it's just heavily sided towards the castle guilds.
From the videos I saw of the A1, the slider went all the way to 100%, but that could be dated.
Problem is you can buy EVERYTHING in that game, so when the game went live a guild pooled their money, bought the best town in the center of the map, upgraded it and made tons of money. With the money they crafted the best gear in the game and it was impossible to win against them so they took over the entire map.
The money you get you were suppose to use for upkeep of the town but they didn't upgrade any towns except the center map one. This forced everyone to go there if they wanted to craft anything as the crafting stations were lvl 0 in all other towns. You can make 2-3k gold per day in the game from farming and doing dungeons but they were making up to 5 million gold per week. They litterally didn't have to play the game at all, they could just wait for the money to come in, buy up everything on the auction house and craft the best gear that was given to their guildmembers making them impossible to beat in pvp.
I can cost up to 2 million gold to fully equip 1 person in New World, so the guild who took over the center town could use the money to make sure no one else could compete at anything. Defending the town from invasions is a way to make money but they would kick everyone who wasn't from their guild.
There are even stories about guilds who owned the center town selling gold to goldsellers making up to €5000 per week because it was impossible to get anywhere on the server unless you bought gold.
I REALLY DO NOT WANT guilds or players to get any gold for owning towns. There are other ways to do it as I've suggested on the New World forums. The best way to reward players for owning towns that doesn't grant a huge reward for doing nothing is bonuses to crafting and gathering.
Instead of giving tons of money so people who own towns can buy everything which allows them to craft the best gear it's much more fair (in my opinion) to grant bonuses to resources gathering and crafting for the guild members. So if a guild member goes out to mine some ore they might get 50% more or have a higher chance to find rare gems or ores and when you smelt the ore you might get 50-200% more ingots.
With a system like this the players have to actually work for their benefits.