Necessary changes to New World's Settlement system

New World has a system of Settlement (town) ownership and management that is in the control of players.

• A Company (guild) of players can either buy control of an unowned Settlement, or war with the current owner to seize control.
• New World also has a Faction system, and same-Faction members whether they are part of the owning Company or not will receive benefits while they are territory owned by their Faction.
• Then they can set tax rates, but also have to defend against Wars (other Companies) and Invasions (instanced monster attack) that can downgrade Settlement services.
• As Settlements are upgraded, the cost to maintain those upgrades starts to jump and more and more taxes are needed -- which means a combination of tax rate and actual player traffic using the Settlement services are needed to bring in enough tax.

However, this model is vulnerable to a lot of exploits. Even if outright code-flaw exploits were not being employed to cheat the system, it has a lot of flaws that encourage servers to settle into a one-Faction state.

• Cheating to avoid Wars
• Various exploits have surfaced which allow Companies to avoid Wars from happening, and thereby never lose control of their Settlement. For example, renaming the Company periodically resets the territory influence. Without a territory destabilized, War cannot be declared.
• Win trading to avoid and exploit Wars
• Another way Companies can keep their Settlement unfairly is to fake a War. Have their accomplices or their own alternate accounts destabilize the territory and declare War. But since they are your accomplices, they deliberately lose. Everyone just collects the payout from participating in the War.
• Selling Taxes in RMT (Real Money Transactions)
• Some companies are in fact held by players who sell in-game coin for real money -- i.e., illicit Real Money Transactions (RMT) because tax money can be withdrawn and not necessarily spent on Settlement upkeep.
• Players get tired of constant War and Invasion
• Early on, when servers were full during launch, there were so many Wars for settlements that Settlement owners were basically fatigued by the constant need to defend not only against Wars but Invasions.
• Subsequently AGS changed the maximum frequency of War to once every two days. But even so, players do get fatigued and also have real life concerns (e.g., Christmas holidays).
• Players who don't own Settlements really don't see this side of Settlement ownership, where your time is basically dictated by someone else because they've declared a War, so you now have to show up at a certain time on a certain day to defend your Settlement. And you also have to rustle up 49 other players to fill the 50-person roster..
• On top of this, there are monster Invasions which also have to be defended by a 50-person roster or you will lose Settlement upgrades.
• For most players, Wars and Invasions are not accessible.
• The Governors of the two Companies involved in a War or Invasion can kick anyone they like from the 50-person roster, even if they queued to participate.
• Many players complain that this is not fair, but there are counterarguments that the Settlement is at stake, so the Governor naturally wants only competent and loyal players to defend.
• Incompetence or deliberate sabotage is real as some players may simply want to be on the roster to collect participation prizes instead of having any intention of winning.
• If Settlements were completely separated from any player influence,
• Wars could be another type of group finder instanced activity, like the existing Outpost Rush activity.
• It could be made cross-server to fill better and completely ignore server faction populations which might not be enough to fill both sides.
• There would be no kicking from the roster because no one would be in charge, and no Settlement is really at stake.
• The existing system of destabilizing a territory can remain as the trigger for a War instance to be made available for queuing. Players who participated in stabilizing or destabilizing that territory can be given priority over those who did less.
• The benefits of a one-Faction map are too compelling
• Ultimately a map that is predominantly owned by one Faction means that Faction enjoys substantial benefits everywhere they go. This is of course a desirable state for that Faction.
• Hence it is also the best outcome of Wars -- but it also means once that state is achieved, there is no more compelling reason to go to War and PvP is deprecated.
• This situation is made even more compelling by the "Into the Void" game update which gave PvP-enabled players a substantial Luck bonus. When the map is one Faction, you might as well flag because everyone else will be the same faction and cannot attack you anyway. Or if they are around, they are severely outnumbered. So you enjoy the PvP "risk" incentive without actually exposing yourself to any risk.
• New players then might as well just join the dominant map colour faction to enjoy all the benefits. This of course reduces Faction choice to basically the common sense choice of conformity.
• There are existing PvP benefits to being the minority faction, such as the ability to destabilize a territory faster and therefore more easily trigger War. But this is at the same time not the common sense thing to do compared to enjoying all the benefits.
• Some players feel non-PvP benefits to being the minority faction would re-introduce conflict, but this is also unlikely to work. If the benefits are substantial enough to choose to be in the minority faction, then players may just want to keep those benefits and stay in the minority faction. If the benefits are not compelling enough to choose the minority faction, then the common sense thing to do is still to choose being the map colour Faction.
• In the long term, between War fatigue and common sense, servers will settle into one colour. Because just like in real life, War is counterproductive.

What Needs to be Done

• Completely remove any player influence over Settlements.
• On a weekly basis, change Settlement upgrades and faction ownership so that all three factions are roughly equal in both upgrades and map control.
• Only one Settlement per faction per day can have PvP action, and preferably they are adjacent to each other. This focusses the open world PvP population, increasing the chances of a PvP encounter.
• Make Wars and Invasions a cross-server activity that players queue for, but which have no effect whatsoever on Settlements. i.e., It's just another instanced activity.
• Remove the Luck bonus that can compel players to exploit by encouraging everyone on their server to be the same Faction.

By keeping all factions roughly equal in map control, membership in all three Factions is viable.

By changing Settlement ownership, everyone eventually experiences benefits in whatever territory they are currently focusing on.

If players see there is no dominant faction, they are more likely to organically choose Factions and distribute themselves across the three factions. This in turn means there will likely be enough of each faction to make Faction PvP missions actually incur PvP risk.

Distributing Settlement ownership across the Factions also means PvP Faction missions will move players around the map regularly.