The New Frontier

Settlement Control Discussion & Analysis

 

There have been a few discussions and questions regarding our stance on the purchasing of a settlement once the game finally releases. We wanted to take a moment to present some information on the subject to you along with our personal opinions. Please note that no final decision has been made and we will ask for your input when we are closer to launch.

For those unaware, Settlements that are unoccupied can be purchased for 100k coins and all settlements start as unoccupied. Settlements have a weekly upkeep cost which is dependent on the tier of the upgrades in that settlement. Taxes are collected from all players for crafting, trading or buying houses in that particular settlement. The tax rates are usually balanced by the governing Company to cover the upkeep whilst also making sure that settlement is desirable for people to craft, trade or buy houses in. Governing Companies can also pay for Settlement upgrades and buffs which increases desirability but may require heavier taxes as compensation. Of course some Companies decide to set really high tax rates to try to make profit for themselves also.

 

Benefits:

Company members receive the following benefits if their Company control a settlement:

• 70% discount for fast travel to that settlement (unsure if also shrines in that territory)
• 30% discount for taxes in that settlement (if the tax rate is set at 10% it will be 7% for Company members for example)
• 20% discount for houses in that settlement

 

Faction members receive the following benefits if their Faction control a settlement:

• 40% discount for fast travel to that settlement (unsure if this stacks with the 70% Company benefit)
• +50 global luck in the territory
• +10% Gathering bonus in the territory
• Resource containers in settlement
• Remote storage in settlement (access other storage when controlled by your Faction)

In addition to the above default bonuses the governing Company would also receive the following POTENTIAL benefits:

• Cash profits to further upgrade and defend our settlement and/or distribute to Company members to support Crafting etc
• Prestige, reputation and fun
• In control of upgrades, town projects etc
• Leading the defence of the settlement and control of the Roster for defending wars against other factions.

 

The Finances:

Settlement income for the last 7 days is viewable to players in-game. The below are income figures from a full 7 day period on Kvenland at the end of the beta. Please note that these figures are only the income and do not take into account purchase fee, upkeep, upgrades or buff costs.

• Everfall: 117k gold (13k refining fee, 5k crafting fee, 98k trading tax)
• Windsward: 102k gold (18k refining fee, 5k crafting fee, 79k trading tax)
• First light: 48k gold  (13k refining fee, 5.6k crafting fee, 29k trading tax)

• Monarch: 35k gold  (8k refining fee, 2.5k crafting fee, 25k trading tax)

• Brightwood 21k gold  (8k refining fee, 1k crafting fee, 12k trading tax)

• Cutlass Keys: 5k gold (breakdown not available)

• Other settlements unknown but will be similar if not lower than Cutlass Keys

Unfortunately we don’t have the upkeep and upgrade costs available for each settlement during the beta but they are dependent on the tier of the upgrades, the tier of the settlement and the optional buffs that are chosen. We also do not know/recall what tax rates were set to receive these levels of income. We’ve been told that settlements cost approximately 5-10k in the first week but then 25-50k to continue to upgrade after the first week. A fully upgraded settlement costs 15k per week. Buffs cost 2500 and last for 3 days (buffs include things like increased gathering in the territory for all players etc).

Taking the costs into account, it is clear that not all settlements will be self-sufficient within the first two weeks of launch. This means that for some Settlements the income will not cover the basic costs and the Company members will be required to put in more and more money just to maintain the Settlement even before any upgrades are considered. Without upgrades a town does not really grow in popularity and it may require more and more cash input just to keep up with other settlements. The larger the Company, the easier this issue is to overcome.

 

So, why would a Company buy a financial liability? 

• Purchasing a settlement is ‘easier’ than taking a settlement from an enemy Faction in the early game. In the early game the defenders of a Settlement have the advantage during the 50v50 wars due to their strengthened tactical positioning, availability of cannons and turrets and also the requirement for attackers to be highly organised. 
• Prestige, reputation and fun. It’s quite nice to see your name in bright lights, right? People know your name and know you’re one of the larger forces on the server. Potential recruitment and diplomatic benefits.
• Immediate access to organised PvP content. Purchasing a settlement means you’ll likely get access to 50v50 PvP content within 2 days (as soon as somebody declares war on you). This is great for communities that want to experience all of the content immediately, perhaps say a variety streamer and their followers who might only play the game for a few weeks. Players that belong to a Company that does not own a settlement will have to wait until they are chosen for a war by another Company OR wait until their Company is chosen as the war-declaring Company (which is somewhat chance-based).
• The long gain. If a Company is confident in their ability to financially support the settlement AND defend it against other Factions then it will eventually start to turn a profit once more players reach the levels required to quest and play in that territory. For example Ebonscale Reach might be a highly-populated settlement at end-game but will take a number of weeks to turn a profit.

 

Our position in all of this

If people continue to join The New Frontier at the current rate we anticipate that we will be at or close to 100 members when the game finally launches. It may seem like this puts us in an incredibly strong position for purchasing a settlement, however there are a number of considerations that we have to make, depending on what kind of settlement we try to purchase. Details below:

The following settlement tiers are subjective and based on the first few weeks only.

A Tier Settlements - Everfall and Windsward

It is anticipated that Everfall and Windsward will initially be the most popular settlements and will be purchased within the first few hours by the fastest (usually largest) Companies to acquire 100k. On Kvenland on the beta, Everfall was purchased before many of us even chose our Factions. This is due to Pirate Gaming having between 200-300 contributors who all chipped in to fund the required 100k. Windsward was purchased by the Covenant (either Fearless or Frogue One) not long after. Unfortunately we have to be honest and say that we are not able to compete with these Companies (for purchasing a settlement at least) and trying to compete  would require us to basically force our entire Company to grind gold for the first hour or two in whatever the most efficient way possible is. This may ruin the starting experience for some and we still probably wouldn’t get there first.

 

B Tier Settlements - First Light and Monarch’s Bluffs

On Kvenland, Monarch’s Bluffs and First Light were purchased shortly after the A Tier settlements. It MIGHT be feasible for us to purchase one of these settlements if we have a strong concentrated effort from 50+ members on release night. It’s possible that we might not hold one of these settlements long enough to repay the 100k donations, however further Company funding would not be required. Contributors would possibly lose their 2k in the name of fun and ambition.

 

C Tier Settlements - Brightwood, Cutlass Keys, Mouringdale, Reekwater and Ebonscale Reach

It’s likely that we will be able to purchase one of these settlements with a concentrated effort from 25-50 members on release night. It’s incredibly unlikely that we will be able to hold the settlement long enough to repay the 100k donations. That said, we are likely to avoid going to war until enemy players are high enough levels to do PvP factions in these areas (weeks 2-4). Contributors would almost definitely lose their 2-4k in the name of fun and ambition and may have to continue to fund the settlement without any financial payback or reward. It’s somewhat irresponsible to govern a settlement and then not upgrade it for the benefit of others. The perceived Pros of owning a financial liability were detailed previously ^.

 

The alternative option:

The alternative option is of course to not attempt to buy a Tier A or B settlement and not buy a financial liability in a Tier C settlement. Instead, we would look to take a settlement through a PvP War and avoid the 100k purchase cost and pick and choose when and where we wish to govern. For example we could decide to attack an end-game settlement 1 month after launch when the settlement is producing profit. Players can enjoy the early game at their own pace and treat the 50v50 PvP and settlement control as a mid or end-game activity.

 

Stop sitting on the fence I hear you say...! 

Right now we are unable to commit to an answer or option. As we grow as a Company and approach full release we will be conducting further polls and surveys with settlement control being one of the major focuses. 

Before writing this bulletin I was quite firmly behind ‘the alternative option’ however I'm now of the opinion that if there’s 25+ of you who want the experience of governing our own settlement from the get-go and accept the financial liability then let’s do it, you’ll have my gold also! Even better if there’s 50+ people that want to do it, let’s aim high and go for Monarch’s Bluffs or First Light. Hopefully this bulletin has provided you with all the information to make an informed vote when we do come round to conducting a poll and also hopefully this satisfies some of your concerns or questions for now at least. These splinters do hurt though!

As always, your questions, thoughts and feedback are most welcome!

Zenteno

The New Frontier

 

Beta feedback and pre-launch planning

 

Introduction

Firstly, we’d like to thank everybody that joined us for the New World Closed Beta and a big welcome to all of those that have joined our Discord server in the recent weeks. Our preparations for the full release are well underway and we’d like to take a moment to reflect on the results of the survey that many of you completed towards the end of the Closed Beta. 30 people completed the survey in total, with 24 having played with us during the beta and 6 new joiners. Your feedback, ideas and suggestions are vitally important to us and have already begun to shape the direction The New Frontier is heading in so thank you for taking the time to complete it. 

The following pages will analyse the results of the survey and detail what this means for The New Frontier going forward.

 

Content Interest: The content interest questions were designed to better understand the interests and priorities of our members to ensure that we’re providing the right opportunities to you all. Without delving into a Maths lesson, the boxes show the range between the 25th and 75th percentile, with the whiskers extending between the extremes and the outliers shown as single points.

Summary:

• Group PvE received the highest score with over 50% of people choosing 100. This indicates that you have enjoyed grouping with Company members which is really nice to hear.
• Crafting comes in 2nd with over 25% of people choosing 100. The high popularity of Crafting will serve us well in the future, particularly towards the end-game where Crafting becomes vitally important.
• Overall, both forms of PvP are popular however it is the most polarizing activity with a small minority not interested. A healthy PvP community will enable the Company to pursue our Territory Control ambitions. Having an interest in PvP is completely optional and will continue to be.
• Solo PvE is not as favourable as Group PvE.

Overall, we feel these results reinforce our claims to be a ‘PvX’ Company and we will continue to strive to offer opportunities and a supporting community for every single type of player no matter which content does or does not interest you.

 

Crafting and Gathering:

As was displayed on the Content Preference Chart, Crafting is really popular within our Company which is fantastic. The below chart shows the number of respondents (out of 30) that said they were interested in each particular Crafting and Gathering skill.

As you can see we have a really wide spread, with even the most unpopular Crafting skill (Weaponsmithing) having 8 interested crafters. We also had many respondents that were interested in ALL or nearly all of the crafting skills. 

We are incredibly grateful for the fact that many of you wish to level your crafting skills to assist the Company and so it is important that we keep track of who is focussing on which skills. The crafting section of the Roster spreadsheet has now been wiped and we encourage you to re-fill in the crafting speciality you think you will focus on at launch. If you do not think crafting will be a focus of yours or you are unsure please leave it blank.

I’ve wiped it because getting you to re-do it is easier than asking people to update it :P

You will also find that there is a 2nd sheet to the Company Roster spreadsheet named ‘Crafting Matrix’. On release we encourage all crafters to update this matrix with their crafting and gathering skills as frequently as realistically possible (perhaps at major milestones). This matrix can then be used by all members of the Company to quickly identify who in the Company may be able to assist them with their crafting needs. 

This matrix may also offer a little bit of competition for the try-hard crafters among you. The person with the highest overall Crafting and Gathering skill might get a special Discord title and colour!

We would also like to encourage a culture of helping each other and sharing resources where possible. For example, where appropriate it would be nice if members traded resources with fellow crafters as opposed to listing them for trade. That said, we have decided that we do not wish to appoint dedicated crafters that are the Company’s official craftsman for each skill. Instead, we wish to allow our players to pursue their own personal crafting ambitions and we feel that appointing official craftsmen may deter others from pursuing the same skill. This also means that we will not be encouraging the funneling of resources into particular crafters on launch and will leave it to you to facilitate the trading of resources within the Company. This will be reviewed as we approach end-game as it may become apparent that end-game crafting requires the assistance of the wider Company.

We would also like to encourage the sharing of weapons and armour as much as possible and many of you have been very generous with the gifting of bind-on-equip items during the beta. There will be a Discord channel for screenshotting items that you find that you would like to offer to others. Keyword descriptions of the item will allow the channel to be searched. We will release more information regarding this closer to launch.

 

Settlement Governance and PvP

The New Frontier has ambitions of governing our own settlement. There are two ways for us to achieve this:

• Option 1: Rush to buy an unclaimed settlement for 100,000 gold.
• Option 2: Become the Vanguard and win a War against a settlement's current Faction.

We anticipate that the largest Companies on each server will rush to accumulate 100,000 gold to buy a settlement through asking their 100-200 members to contribute 500-1000 gold each as soon as they acquire it. These Companies will prioritize purchasing Everfall and the three starting territories. There's a chance that we would be able to accumulate 100,000 in time to purchase one of the end-game settlements however we will not have a tax income in these settlements for at least a week to pay the upkeep let alone repay our members. We will likely be attacked and potentially lose the settlement before any debt is repaid.

Option 2 is our preferred choice as it feels a lot more organic and rewarding without putting demands on our players beyond their natural gameplay interests. For those unaware, to become the Vanguard in an upcoming war the Company and its members must contribute at least 10% towards the territory influence. Once the territory influence reaches 100% all companies that contributed 10% or more are offered the chance to declare war. If there is more than 1 declaring Company then the Vanguard is chosen by chance, with a higher contribution meaning a higher chance. Territory Influence is increased by successfully completing Open World PvP Missions within the targeted territory. 

During the beta we worked hard to ensure that The New Frontier played an active role on the server and within the overall Syndicate Community with access to Council Chat and War Planning. For the full release, whether it be on Kvenland with the current Syndicate Companies or elsewhere, The New Frontier plan to play a leading role in diplomacy and War Planning within the Faction. Cooperation with the rest of the Faction will ensure that our Territory Influence efforts are coordinated and successful, increasing our chances of becoming the Vanguard and eventually governing a settlement.

Consequently, we will be looking to increase our involvement in Open World PvP during the full release and we would like PvP missions to become a frequent group activity for our Company. If the survey results are accurate, we will have enough interest in PvP to initiate our own conquest for territory control and not need to rely on the rest of the Syndicate.

In order to maximize our success in this area we will be looking to recruit an Officer/Consul who has a particular interest and passion for PvP. This person will be asked to represent the Company at War Planning meetings, proactively organise PvP Mission groups and lead or assist in the leading of 50v50 war teams.

I'd just like to emphasize that participation in both Open World and Organised/Instanced PvP is encouraged but completely optional for all members of The New Frontier.

 

Recruitment

The New Frontier has now reached 50 members on our Roster. We are really really happy with the kind of players that we have attracted with our perhaps unconventional recruitment messages and so we will continue to recruit in the same manner up until release. Our close-knit community feel is our strongest asset and we are really hoping that this will remain as the Company scales in size. So far, so good but it is something we will continue to monitor and remains our #1 priority. A growing Company will provide us with further opportunities to excel in PvE, PvP and Crafting whilst also assisting us with our ambitions to govern a territory AND maintain an active player base.

 

Server Choice

We asked our members to select their preference for the server population (taking into account the pros and cons that come with each). The results are as follows:

• 76.67% of respondents chose 'Medium Population'.
• 13.3% chose 'Low Population'.
• 10% chose 'High Population'.

Predicting the popularity of a server prior to full launch will be difficult and it is expected that more players will join the game that did not play the Closed Beta thus increasing the overall population. We will endeavour to choose a 'Medium Population' server and we will be following the below principles:

• Avoiding known streamer servers
• Avoiding official or unofficial non-English servers (such as Inferni).
• Avoiding unofficial PvP or RP servers (such as Asgard, Hades and Fae).

We are in frequent communication with other Syndicate Companies on Kvenland regarding server selection and in particular the issue of Pirate Gaming. At one stage it did appear that Pirate Gaming / the Marauders would dominate the map on Kvenland however it didn't quite materialise in the end. Meanwhile, I have seen screenshots from other EU servers that have been 100% dominated by a single faction. If Pirate Gaming decide to stay on Kvenland we will likely find ourselves in a 'stick or twist' situation, with no guarantee that we will avoid a similar or worse situation on another server. During the beta Pirate Gaming had a numerical and level advantage due to their hardcore nature but I am confident that they CAN be beaten in the long run, especially at end-game when there are no level advantages. I am also hopeful that communities like ours will outlast that of a streamer, due to their need to provide fresh content to their viewers. We will ask for your final thoughts on server choice once we have more information about Pirate Gaming's intentions.

Thankyou for this feedback in particular: "Fuck pirate gaming - 7/29/2021 - 9:25 PM"

 

PvE and Other Community Content

For those unaware, members of the Company have been participating in group PvE content on a daily basis, including full Company group Expeditions and Corrupted Portal farming. At the game’s current stage we do not feel the need to organise pre-set days for group activity due to the frequency and high appetite for it already. This will of course be reviewed if/when larger or more challenging PvE instances (raids) or time-locked content (weekly Nightfall/Mythic-type dungeons) is released.

Whilst we love the content that New World has shown us thus far we have been brainstorming ideas for community content that we can organise to enhance our New World experience. One of you guys suggested holding a Gladiator tournament (dueling) and we like this idea a lot. Hypothetically, we would hold a best-of-three knockout-style Gladiator tournament 2-4 times a month. The winner would receive a Discord title that would remain until a new champion is crowned.

Further to this idea, we would like to bring in a series of Discord titles that would sit alongside your names in the Discord server just for fun and a little bit of prestige. For example these may include titles for achieving the following:

• Highest overall crafting score
• Highest player-housing score
• Current Gladiator Champion
• First to 60 (likely a temporary title)
• Confirmed kills on bounty targets in PvP
• High-profile in-game titles.

 

Ideas for community events and additional title names and requirements are most welcome!

 

Final Word

Once again, thank you all for your feedback and hopefully we have addressed many of the issues or questions you have raised. Following the closing of the Survey we have started a #Company-discussion channel for all questions and feedback regarding anything related to company matters. Alternatively, you can provide anonymous feedback at the following link if preferred: https://freesuggestionbox.com/pub/cbbmfvp  . This link will also be found under #resources on Discord. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments regarding anything contained in this bulletin!

Whilst we all wait impatiently for 31st August we will likely all be playing different games however the #other-games section of our Discord is for you all to use! If there are a few of you that want to organise some Total War matches or join up on another multiplayer game please let Illaria know and he will add the channels for you. If not, please pop into #the-tavern from time to time! We look forward to seeing you all back with us at the end of the month!