Taxes?



  • Does this game have player controlled taxes?

    Taxes have put me off other games to be honest, games like Albion and New World. Can't get by without accessing stations and services that requires payment, and everything costs way too much, meaning most of your time spent goes towards farming to pay for said access, turning the game into chores. Not fun at all.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    yes, there is player controlled taxes. and the worst is, that the game force you to use it, you are forced to big cities, and can't go high tier items without using cities taxes.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    @grofire said in Taxes?:

    yes, there is player controlled taxes. and the worst is, that the game force you to use it, you are forced to big cities, and can't go high tier items without using cities taxes.

    False !
    It is up to the rulers of the city to have a tax at all. The game does not force you to do it. You have the option and can set different levels of tax for the service based on the level of the characters membership who is using the service.
    So the rulers could have no tax on anyone and open access to all crafting stations within the city.
    or
    specific taxation on each level of player - transient, resident, citizen, leader.
    or
    use of crafting stations totally locked for anyone not a citizen or leader.
    or
    any other combinations.

    Expect the taxation to vary depending on the town/guilds goals and value system.
    Expect more active players that pay into the health of the town/guild to get access to citizen / leader status and get better deals.

    Remember that resident means that you bought a plot of land next to the town, giving you -free- access to all the tech of the town once you build your own crafting station on your plot of land (currently possible to build one of each in your plot). The town gets your weekly/monthly rent (set by Devs). You are safe from pvp on your plot and the towns permission is not needed for you to buy that plot. (They need residents to meet a threshold for increasing the towns level and so are very unlikely to object in any but a few extreme cases, like you using the spot to attack the citizens/transients from)
    -BUT- you can only own one plot per account !
    while you can be given access to others plots and stations.
    So a team of 5 players could easily build one house adjacent to cities that have specialized in one of the 5 techs, share access to your own plots with each other, and get access to the techs without paying taxes (just the static rent set by the devs which has so far been the equivalent of an hour or two of coin farming every week... which you would probably be doing anyways)
    And these Residents could also help anyone else bypass the taxes, just pay them for access and not the town. The only issue being having to be in the same place and time to do the trade.

    Every test so far has had at least 1, and usually more, cities that either gave citizen access to everyone who asked or had virtually no taxes (5gp for single use as an example)



  • Hmmm, human greed being what it is, I am skeptical at how this will turn out. Having said that, the cooperative non-PvP worlds might attract kinder nicer folks... we shall see?


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @OlivePit said in Taxes?:

    So the rulers could have no tax on anyone and open access to all crafting stations within the city.
    or
    specific taxation on each level of player - transient, resident, citizen, leader.
    or
    use of crafting stations totally locked for anyone not a citizen or leader.
    or
    any other combinations.

    does it not player control taxes ? dude go to a DR, it seems you have some issues...


  • Moderator

    Some taxes are player controlled, some are not.

    The ones on the plot are fixed, the ones on the crafts can be set.

    In general though you put them at competitive prices, since you want players to estabilish in your area, bringing gold both by plots and by crafts.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    @grofire
    I was specifically responding to your claim that the game forces you to use taxes and that you are forced "to big cities".
    Both claims are false for the reasons and examples I gave.
    I even pointed out the way to bypass city taxes, if they were implemented by a city whos tech you wanted to use.


  • TF#12 - PEOPLE'S HERALD

    @OlivePit you gave 0 example that counter the claim "you are forced to big cities in order to get the high tier items".
    you did gave example how you can pay less in the cities... its not the same. and please do not let your Fanboying the game, to tell lies to people that consider to buy the game.
    i wished i didn't back this game, but i did, and i will see the end outcome, though they changed basically all the core ideas that drove me to back this game.


  • Moderator

    There is no hard coded mechanic to stop you from hugely taxing your city, there is simply enough reasons not to.

    Cities constantly compete against each other, and their ability to attract residents and the income they bring, is the most basic from of competition. You attract them by having a good location for your city, little presence of PK in your region, technologies they may be interested in, and by offering low taxes.
    Pricing yourself out of competition isn't a smart move.

    The reason why Albion, New World and similar games have issues with taxes, is because cities are guild's assets. In Fractured, there is no link between a guild and a city.
    As past tests have shown, cities can be run perfectly by a random gathering of players, or by collaborations of small guilds.
    Sure, a guild can de facto control a city, by having the governor and by making citiziens only the guildmates, then applying huge taxes to non-citiziens so that they don't have pesky residents around. This makes sense only if they want to have as few players as possible in the region, because you want to monopolize the natural resources. If they think that they can profit more from the monopoly than from the tax money, they can try to do it.
    To do something like this, a guild has to be huge. They must be able to offset the absence of residents by having a LOT of citiziens, and they also need quite a few red players to hunt those that come taking the resources from the near regions.

    All other forms of cities will instead want to attract players, because they are an important income.

    In short, you will maybe have 1 or 2 of those big bad cities per continent and all the other ones with competitive taxes. Considering that Myr alone has 34 cities, I say that we don't carry the risk of being taxed into oblivion.


  • TF#1 - WHISPERER

    This post is deleted!


  • Wonder how the cities/crafting stations levels would work. In New World people I know were having issues with not having enough people on their servers after the initial hype, with no one buying and leveling crafting stations in some cities meaning as players they were unable to craft. Would be a nightmare if similar scarity happens here, with all the crafting stations and vendors and such you need gated inside cities with high taxes.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    @BCAnimus
    unless there are fewer than 20 people on a continent there will be at least one city. Here is the tech tree from last alpha for three of the basic goods.
    tech tree.png

    As you can see the first rank would get you access to metal smelting and forging, or one of the other starting technologies. This can be done by one person hunting animals for meat and easier if more join them.
    The time it takes to get to the next rank of a starting city is not much of a burden up to rank 5 when you hit the village level and things get more expensive, but specialization also gives access to new options, like plate armor or enchanters clothing.
    By the time you get to rank 5 the city has unlocked all of the basic options available to them or has banked some of the tech points for the next stages which can quickly eat points.

    Remember that each town -=needs=- more people to join it in order to rank up. In past tests this got to the point of high bribes and even pvp black mail by some groups.
    But in general this means that getting access to a developing city's tech is easy as they are needing and wanting the people more than what gold they might get from taxes.

    And again, 1-2 hours of coin farming would net you enough to buy a property for a week and get access to all the tech without paying any taxes.

    A well off city who has made it to rank 10 could easily unlock all of the quality of life options available to them at the 1 or 2 level. This usually takes a week or two as getting food becomes more of a burden and high yield crops are time locked. But can be expected.

    The taxes only really becomes a factor when towns start getting into the 10+ ranks (the town collumn), which are very expensive to reach and maintain and give fewer tech points. At the rank 3 or 4 enchanting levels of each item class expect there to only be one or two cities in the whole island to have that level unlocked and expect them to keep it for their members -as a perk of joining them- or charging a high tax.

    Again remember that enchantment levels 1-4 are all nice power boosts (about double effect at rank 4), but not -=necessary=- to play the game or achieve all of the content, and are very expensive (like 10,000 gold coins) even without taxes. The idea that someone would be walking around with all top tier rank 4 enchanted equipment is just Ludacris! That stuff wears out, cannot be repaired, and may not work with their new skill build ! not to mention that they are just as likely to loose it in in pvp or ganking situations unless they are with a group.

    Last alpha was low population and low activity. Even so there were multiple rank 13+ cities and getting access to assassins' armor or plate was not a chore. It will likely not be a chore in any of the future tests either. (well maybe on Tartarus , but that's a whole different can of worms)



  • @OlivePit wait a minute, by "that stuff wears out, cannot be reparied" were you referring to enchants, or gear in general? Eeek.


  • Moderator

    Gear in general.

    You can't repair items in Fractured.
    I know that at first it may sound a bit weird, but once you play with it, you discover that it creates a system where you don't have to make it impossibly grindy to get good equip, since it isn't permanent, and that it makes wonders for the game economy.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    As spoletta says; cant repair items and getting good items is not grindy.
    Specifically, lets say you are part of a rank 10 town and you need new plate armor, sword, bow, and shield. The real time it would take to go from nothing to done would be 4 trips of 30 min for harvesting and transporting ore, 4 hours smelting the ore afk (starting a new one after each trip), 15 min to cut and transport the wood, and 16 hours waiting on leather to tan. At that point you have the ingots and tanned leather and can make all the equipment instantly. You are now ready to take on most of the game content ! (cant solo the medium or hard world bosses).
    If you buy or just have ingots and tanned leather on hand then the time is even shorter.
    If you have extra thousands of gold coins on hand (not likely) you can enchant your equipment for 25% buff per level.
    This equipment should last you a week or two of pve game play, plenty of time to passively recoup the coins and many of the materials needed for your next set. (in pvp armor wears out faster due to more damage)
    This means there is a steady demand for all the materials in the game which gives reason to be hunting mobs, and trading between towns.
    With this demand comes supply from players who would rather mine ore than compete in the pve fields. The only coin of the land in markets is the gold coin, which can only be gotten from fighting mobs. As such the harvesting/crafting players need to produce and sell to the pve players for them to get the coins needed to pay rent, taxes (if any), and buy materials not available locally.
    Paired with the availability of resources this means that prices are reasonable for the pve only players to be able to afford crafted ingots for their equipment needs.
    As we have seen in the last few alphas this trading happens and obtaining good gear that will last a week or two takes no longer than a few hours of harvesting and a good nights rest.
    No need to grind quests to get that one item drop you want, or to personally discover crafting recipes.


  • TF#9 - FIRST AMBASSADOR

    My only issue with the crafting system is that I think they should reduce the time to smelt one ore. Since you need a multitude of smelters just to make one full set of plate at a time, whereas you really only need two tanning tubs to make multiple light and medium armor sets.


  • Moderator

    I'm of the idea that it is tanning which is too easy.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    @spoletta @LordGorgeous
    Getting well off topic there... but..
    Tanning is balanced by the fact that you have to hunt, fight, and kill the mobs to get the skin, while ore is just gotten via 'whack a node'.

    True, regular animal skin is really common and really easy. Some adjustment there is probably warranted.
    Perhaps you would have to tan the hides with some other component not used much, like planks or bile or some plant, to function like coal as another fuel for the process.

    There is also the multiplier of advanced smelters, while tanning tubs are a tech point by themselves, there is no basic tanning and you have to wait until rank 6/7? to even start making them while smelting can be done at rank 1 ! Yes you have to wait till rank 10/11 for alloys and the advanced smelters, but again there is no tailor/leather equivalent so that is just another thing that tips the scales in metals favor again.

    Personally I like being able to stock some tanning tubs and forget about it for the night and have them ready in the morning, I find the 4 hour clock for smelting too short and would rather 12 hours with 15 ore in and 3 ingots out return.



  • Meh, not a fan of temporary gear. Personally perfer gear that is... meaningful, not easily grinded and thrown away the day after. Having said that, at least you won't have to store your gear in storage and run around naked because you are afraid of losing your stuff, and it sounds like there isn't some BS upgrade gambling system.


  • TF#8 - GENERAL AMBASSADOR

    @BCAnimus
    There was a BS upgrade gambling system ! It got thrown out due to some people showing how it was BS thankfully.


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