Jump to content

Sign in to follow this  
Linea

Feedback: Tax rates

Recommended Posts

31 minutes ago, Martyn said:

Then don't post in the PTR section of the forum.

You don't even know what the live version will look like yet.

God you're a muppet. If they have introduced max of 50% tax in PTR then that is their intended max for live. Therefore, people are posting in the PTR forum to give feedback on that. Stop making out as if people are posting here when they shouldn't, this is the whole point of the forum.

I've given my feedback of the taxes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And I've received your feedback on my posts too..

Now shove off..

And I think you should be able to make a max 99% tax.  With no minimum.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well the devs will have to decide what issues they want to address and what suggestions they will try. Its a testserver so they might aswell try 10% taxes and 99% taxes to see how it turns out if they think it could make the game successful and increase player numbers.

It was stated that increased rates are only for the testserver and will not go to the liveserver, everthing else is meant to be the live patch after adjustments based on feedback. I guess the suggestion to increase rates on the live servers further has already be made multiple times but it might cause issues on other aspects of the game, especially making it too easy.

I myself and everyone i asked so far will not consider living on island with 20% taxes or above. Its either lawless to build up or boot the owner from the island but that is not a good way to increase the number of people on islands. Another issue is that taxes can be increased at any time especially when you have build your base and cant just leave for another island so even those rare islands that still excist with low taxes arent a viable places to settle and the owner or a new owner will increase the taxes sooner or later.
High taxes prevent players from settling on island together which is exactly the issue this update was meant to fix as stated by the devs. The game had serious issues with not enough people finding a place to build a base and this was with multiple flags per island that allowed for several players or companies to settle there. Now its only 1 flag per island and it can easily be defended by one person. Even groups that settled together before dont want to anymore as one will get so much resources from the others that they choose to break up and everyone takes their own island. The problems this update wants to fix will tenfold with the system as it is. Especially on live servers with lower rates and more players in the future which must be the goal of the devs.

I have two suggestions the devs could try out on the testserver:

1. Lower maximum taxes to 10-20%, allow materials to be used for upkeep at lower rates than gold

2. Setting higher taxes will increase the upkeep,
so you can do it but not for free to encourage allowing others a place to live while big companies can afford to push others of their island. (10% = 1x 50% = 5x, adjusting the upkeep accordingly) (Would also work well with PVE)

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That makes no sense at all.   The Player and their company own the island, it is their island.  They should be able to tax it as they see fit.  20% tax rate is pretty useless, unless there's alot of people on the island.  And setting upkeep to the tax rate will only push owners to try to block people completely with gates etc since they won't be getting any worthwhile tax from letting people living near them.

Upkeep should go up with the number of people on the island.

This would push tax rates higher to compensate for the higher upkeep.

Upkeep should be gold only.  It's the currency of the game for paying crew so it makes sense it should be used to pay land rent on the islands.

The only interesting point remaining.. is who the hell are we paying the flag tax to anyway?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

well yes you are correct but only if there would be more islands than players. it would be the dream of everyone.

sadly there are not and the devs are likely to want more people to settle alongside each other on islands to increase player numbers. its an mmo and servers cost a lot of money without more players the servers will have to be shut down and your personally owned island is gone forever.

hence thats the reason why i parallelly play on a private server for leisure ;)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

yeh the island issue is a really serious issue atm.

They claim to have 700+ islands.  But only half of them can support a settlement and half of the lawless islands allow freebuilding, outside of settlements, with no protection periods at all. ie a sort of empires type warfare with limited decay rates, so long as you stay online or login within the time periods, they don't despawn.

Then a quarter of them are freeports.  Which apparently aren't working entirely as the should be, with reports of people building inside the freeports, blocking off npc vendors etc.  Not seen this myself, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.  So roughly speaking.

350 islands available for settlements.

175 for freeports and 175 lawless empire like rules.

With a possible 1-2 people per settlement claim.. upto what seems to be around 30-40 on some islands, I haven't looked at them all. It isn't really alot of islands for anyone to build on, especially not the proclaimed 30-40,000 people the server network claims to support.  

That said, there's reports from people who only have a dozen people on their island, with multiple shipyards, ships and buildings, reporting insane login lag and desyncs.  Which doesn't bode well either.

And parallelly is actually spelt correctly... it is however abit of a mouthful if you're drunk.

Edited by Martyn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

mate you are being quite unreasonable, i am pretty sure many people would rather  play another game than paying 90% in taxes, by the end of the day you will end up doing pvp vs boars cause there wont be players left lol. not like i care tho, i dont even play the game anymore so w/e happens in it doesnt affect me i just come here to read for the lols but your suggestion is the biggest lol i have had so far, and dont be offended by it i dont mean it as a pun but men 90% xD

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Seriously.. you folks deserve 90% taxes..

No in all seriousness, if I was a settlement owner, I'd probably go with 5%-10% tax.  Mainly because I recognise that noone cares about settlements, noone wants to make a team effort in all aspects of the game.  They all want "i win now" buttons, they want to get given all the weapons and armour and tools and tames, they then want to be carried into the warzone, so long as there's less victims than there is of them, they then want first dibs on all the loot, they want the legendary stuff only, because they deserve it, because they've not done anything at all to actually get it.  And better still it would be just grand if anyone they fought was offline and asleep..

So whilst 10% of us do 90% of the work.. the other 90% can live free and be happy, they're only paying 10% of the taxes.  And indeed only playing 10% of the game.  It just happens to be 100% of the fun part.

Edited by Martyn
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The way i see it, the problem is that upkeep is so ridiculously low that there's no point on having people on your island.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We claimed a small island, and set the tax rate to 25%, 1/2 that of the surrounding islands. with the tax rate visible on the Atlas map small groups and solo's flocked to our island. and we had 100k stacks of mats in the bank in a few hours.

Was going to lower it, but lack of gold for the upkeep ment we lost the claim.

The visable tax rate on the atlas map is great for attracting people to settle.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Jack Shandy said:

We claimed a small island, and set the tax rate to 25%, 1/2 that of the surrounding islands. with the tax rate visible on the Atlas map small groups and solo's flocked to our island. and we had 100k stacks of mats in the bank in a few hours.

Was going to lower it, but lack of gold for the upkeep ment we lost the claim.

The visable tax rate on the atlas map is great for attracting people to settle.

So the resources that are taxed are not contributed towards the claim upkeep. So this is what confuses me. I thought, the more people settling on the land, and therefore being taxed, the cheaper the upkeep would be, i.e. because they are getting more from the tax. But this means that companies building on your land don't at all contribute to the upkeep?

@Dollie why do you not make mechanics like this 100% clear as to how it works? The constant guessing game is horrible.

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
32 minutes ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

So the resources that are taxed are not contributed towards the claim upkeep. So this is what confuses me. I thought, the more people settling on the land, and therefore being taxed, the cheaper the upkeep would be, i.e. because they are getting more from the tax. But this means that companies building on your land don't at all contribute to the upkeep?

Exactly, we had lowest tax of our and all 8 surounding regions, and because of this had lots of small companies either setteling or just building ships to go elsewhere.

We were playing the good landlord, and were rewarded well in materials, but not in the currency required to upkeep the island.

The Upkeep could easily have been 5K metal, 25K wood, 25k thatch, 25k fibre and would have paid it easily, we even would have put the tax down to 10% to 15%.

But the upkeep requires us (at the start of the game - before setting up trades) to do non-landlord activities to pay the upkeep.

Plus if the upkeep is material you can imagine it being used to upkeep buildings, docks and the like. Being gold, you wonder who's getting it?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

So the resources that are taxed are not contributed towards the claim upkeep. So this is what confuses me. I thought, the more people settling on the land, and therefore being taxed, the cheaper the upkeep would be, i.e. because they are getting more from the tax. But this means that companies building on your land don't at all contribute to the upkeep?

@Dollie why do you not make mechanics like this 100% clear as to how it works? The constant guessing game is horrible.

No hon they aren't. But people forget about treasure maps. I couldn't confirm whether those were indeed going to the claim flag cause well I lost my island hehehehe. I never did get to see if more people meant lower upkeep cause no one wanted my non metal rich island at 5% tax rate. It looks like claim flags only have a radius of so far if im getting that correctly. You'd need to build tax banks to collect on bigger islands. 

I was trying to see if you could add gold to peoples flags but unfortunately most people have their claim flags behind buildings. I finally gave up and decided to do some baking.

There is also no upkeep on your buildings which I thought they were supposed to implement. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
17 minutes ago, Sadie Blackhawk said:

There is also no upkeep on your buildings which I thought they were supposed to implement. 

No structure upkeep? That makes me even more curious about PvE. So much right now is not what the Devs have been telling us. :classic_blink:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

No structure upkeep? That makes me even more curious about PvE. So much right now is not what the Devs have been telling us. :classic_blink:

You and me both. But I've tested in 2 lawless spots on PVPvE. Both just had the 4 day decay. No more no less. I checked daily to see if it needed repairs. Nada. So you have a choice it looks like. Spend your days farming gold to pay upkeep, rent from someone and probably get slammed with 30-50% tax or live on lawless.

At 6x. Treasure maps were easy. I made over 5k gold in a few hours.

Ok so I wasn't a good little pvp girl and didn't build defensive structures which is what made me lose my island. But running around on my search for the new CamelGazelle thinger and the Ankylosarus like thing (never found them) didn't check all golden age ruins though. Still lots of spots for people to claim if you look. Gold Upkeep is kinda a pain but I kinda like it. Big islands are expensive so people will be able to settle before someone is able to keep the upkeep on that going. Now what they tax after is anyones guess. I couldn't get the wheel for destroying some foundations people left behind to work since those were placed before my claim flag. 

So if you build before someone claims it looks like you might be safe.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

So the resources that are taxed are not contributed towards the claim upkeep. So this is what confuses me. I thought, the more people settling on the land, and therefore being taxed, the cheaper the upkeep would be, i.e. because they are getting more from the tax. But this means that companies building on your land don't at all contribute to the upkeep?

@Dollie why do you not make mechanics like this 100% clear as to how it works? The constant guessing game is horrible.

I think by saying that, they meant that the actual upkeep cost goes down the more settlers you have.   I think the settlers number might be borked anyway, or counted oddly.  I had 2 people building on my claimed island and the count kept moving between 1 and 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think you might be right cause I had 23 on my island even though it was just me. Maybe 23 people fell asleep on my island. Gold upkeep always stayed at 61/12 hours no matter what.

2 minutes ago, Winter Thorne said:

I think by saying that, they meant that the actual upkeep cost goes down the more settlers you have.   I think the settlers number might be borked anyway, or counted oddly.  I had 2 people building on my claimed island and the count kept moving between 1 and 2.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah I guess maybe the upkeep is meant to drop the more players you have building on your settlement as opposed to receiving more resources from the tax bank. They didn't quite make that clear originally.

Originally it sounded like the tax bank was to be used to tax resources which would go towards the upkeep of the claim, which is why I thought the more people on the land the more received via tax.

If only @Dollie would help clarify stuff like this, or set up an FAQ or something. The amount of confusion that is generated because the Devs don't state things clearly, and then spread stuff over 3 or 4 different platforms doesn't help.

Edited by [GP] Guybrush Threepwood
  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The system isn't bad. But it isn't great either. People are gonna be bitching left and right cause they don't have a claim flag. I think the griefing is going to increase on claimed islands for PVE. 

Time will tell. But whatever they do they need to make a decision and stick with it. 

They say they are doing what players want but there is more dissention now then before with the claim flag issues. I was honestly ok with the building Upkeep. I thought it was a great idea to dissuade pillar/foundation bombing. 

Making players police the islands. Well most people are lazy and don't want to have a job in a video game that should be relaxing.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So for the tax bank to be effective, you'd probably maybe need people to come to your island for treasure hunts? Then a % of the gold take goes to the bank? Which in turn pays the upkeep?

Which means keeping alot of space open for treasure to be accessed.

And it'd require people to goto the other islands to get maps for yours.

What about the sea wreckage and SotD? Those also drop gold don't they? Although it probably isn't taxable. And since it seems player shops, not only being pvp only, are freeport only?  Again, if they could be setup in settlements, which makes sense afterall, we could build markets for them with shipping access.  Then a % of the sales would be taxed by the settlement owning the market.

This is probably how it is expected to work, clearly just getting the ptr's to work is too much work for the devs, so getting to the rest of it, will probably take months of content and patching.  Once we see the wiped networks online and working, we'll likely see the same exploits going on until they're fixed.  Then maybe we'll see viable taxable content added.

Until then, claiming an island is probably an expectation of grinding yourself or asking people to donate gold towards upkeep.

Taxed items could be withdrawn from the bank and given to settlement players or put into unlocked lockers for example to even the inital loss of the tax.  Tax bank can also be edited to block certain items being taxed, which would free up alot of resources for people to produce ships and cannons from etc.

The main issue seems to be the ease with which claims can be stolen and therefore hours, days, weeks of effort lost.

And the ease with which islands can easily be griefed.  Simply allowing the 12 hour rule, which doesn't seem to work anyway, is obviously very short sighted.  The sheer weight of items that can be spammed out, would make it all but impossible to clear up using the pinwheel even if it was working.  Given time limits etc.

Whilst this works for the solo players and non griefer players, it also works for the griefers and allows them to do whatever they want.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1707252117

For example.

Edited by Martyn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We settled in lawless again. If we can't find an island that has all the same resources this lawless one does (and I can guarantee you there isn't), there is no point in claiming it. I prefer lawless.

I'm not paying someone else's tax rate. I can socialize just fine without living under someone's rule, and can help/work with others to create a settlement/colony even in lawless if the right people are there. 

Besides, in PvE, since we don't get player shops in freeports like PvP does, I'm organizing a way to build/maintain trade centers around the Atlas so people will have a place to set up shop. In lawless. This way, any trade done won't be subject to any taxing at all. 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
8 minutes ago, Sansa Phoenix said:

We settled in lawless again. If we can't find an island that has all the same resources this lawless one does (and I can guarantee you there isn't), there is no point in claiming it. I prefer lawless.

I'm not paying someone else's tax rate. I can socialize just fine without living under someone's rule, and can help/work with others to create a settlement/colony even in lawless if the right people are there. 

Besides, in PvE, since we don't get player shops in freeports like PvP does, I'm organizing a way to build/maintain trade centers around the Atlas so people will have a place to set up shop. In lawless. This way, any trade done won't be subject to any taxing at all. 

 

The "tax" bank enables an easier settlement setup, there's no rule saying you can't manually build a settlement on lawless islands. 

There's no doubt that the tax rate as is, can be set to exploit the people living there.  But if they aren't paying for the upkeep.. why shouldn't they be taxed? Is it fair to expect others to police the island to make the game fair for you? Not really.  The "i'm not paying someones elses tax rate" just means you will pay a timerate instead.  A rate for wasting your own time, which you are free to do.

Setting up player run shops is very easy to do with an unlocked box as the goto between container and some trust between the traders.  So wether they allow actual shops, which btw cost 70 gold and 60 gems just to make.. it'd be alot cheaper just making trading houses anyway.

Edited by Martyn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Think about it, you have the entire island farming for you not just the random person that wonders in your claim. Tax should have lowered significantly, 50% is a joke. 15% max is more than reasonable. 

AND, for the love of god, gold should not be taxible. People jack up the taxes and let map farmers pay for their upkeep. Completely defeats the point of have to work harder to have more claims. 

This is not that hard folks! 

  • Sad 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Martyn said:

The "tax" bank enables an easier settlement setup, there's no rule saying you can't manually build a settlement on lawless islands. 

There's no doubt that the tax rate as is, can be set to exploit the people living there.  But if they aren't paying for the upkeep.. why shouldn't they be taxed? Is it fair to expect others to police the island to make the game fair for you? Not really.  The "i'm not paying someones elses tax rate" just means you will pay a timerate instead.  A rate for wasting your own time, which you are free to do.

Setting up player run shops is very easy to do with an unlocked box as the goto between container and some trust between the traders.  So wether they allow actual shops, which btw cost 70 gold and 60 gems just to make.. it'd be alot cheaper just making trading houses anyway.

Only things to worry about in lawless are trolls and the 4-day decay rate. I'm good with it. 

Some of us don't want to be someone else's subjects/tenants. 

Far as the trade centers go, Taxes are the very reason I'm going to encourage them built in lawless. This way, anyone coming to trade/sell won't have to worry that their transactions as far as gold/resources are taxed. Wouldn't that be messed up? You're trying to buy, for example, 100 rubies for 1k gold (just an example.) and when you two exchange goods/gold, the landlord's tax rate eats a chunk of the gold and maybe the rubies too. 

Nope. NOT cool. I'll set mine up in Lawless. 🙂  

EDIT-- Just want to add that making a trade center on a lawless won't cost the merchant/trader anything but some resources to make their stand and signs with goods/prices/contact info, and maybe the storage box or two they might need. No gold or gems to set it up 🙂 But again, this is for PvE, not PvP, and in Pve, we aren't getting any player shops at all. So this is my idea for PvE to have them. 

Edited by Sansa Phoenix
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What's the deal with player shops in pve?  I saw them in the Captain's log, then I didn't see them, and *think* I saw them in the patch notes, which keep getting changed.  I don't suppose the devs have actually said anything about it?

Really terrible communications....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...