Yesterday CCP published its last preview blog post for EVE Online's Viridian expansion. While new features like Corporation Projects, AIR Opportunities and Homefront Operations are interesting, players cannot take actions for them now. What players can plan for now, however, are the changes to taxes and fees coming to the game.
Perhaps the biggest change is the corporate tax rate will now apply to loyalty points. The move was explained thus:
This will be another source of revenue for corporations, as the LP can be exchanged for items in LP stores and then traded for ISK. As a result, corps will have more resources and better infrastructure, leading to more opportunities for members to do more activities. Corporations of all sizes can also now take advantage of LP income and incentivize members to carry out activities in New Eden that reward LP and directly benefit the organization.
I imagine the loyalty point change is an effort to increase the ability of corporations to reward members for participating in corp activities created as Corporation Projects. But the loyalty point tax may also serve as an incentive for players to leave NPC corps and the 11% NPC corporate tax for player run organizations. Hopefully CCP will provide statistics about how many characters remain in NPC corps after finishing the tutorials.
The other important change comes to the ownership of facilities in Upwell structures. Apparently CCP wishes to make owning citadels a more important source of income. From the sounds of the description, individual players probably will wind up paying more ISK out of their wallets.
These changes will give more ISK to facility owners and give them more agency to leverage their citadel as an income source as a means to stay competitive. Previously, the SCC would take half of the cut taken from the broker's fee - which really ate into the ability of facility owners to earn any profit - especially if they wanted to stay competitive with a low tax rate. Now, facility owners can earn the full amount, with the SCC taking a fixed 0.5% instead.
Similar changes are being made to industry job installation fees, giving facility owners the ability to earn more income from their structures - especially those located in low-indexed systems - and also increasing the value proposition for a corporation of owning an Upwell structure.
I'm not sure if a part of the article was cut off during the publication process. But the one change to the industry job installation fee calculation is the removal of system bonuses.
Firstly, system bonuses are being removed. System bonuses have existed since the creation of the industry index system, but they have remained relatively obscure. Those with this knowledge, or lucky enough to live in an area to experience these benefits, would previously have had a significant competitive advantage.
No "secondly" or "next" exists, meaning any other changes are either on the Singularity test shard or a surprise waiting for players on launch day. I would say for industrialists who understand and are taking advantage of system bonuses to load all your construction slots before the expansion hits Tranquility.
I don't know how the changes in taxes and fees will play out. I do expect a measure of inflation to hit as the trend seems to favor increases in taxes and fees. I also expect to see the NPC corps shrink as players look for tax havens. I remember that happening when the NPC corp taxes were raised from 5% to 11%, and the removal of 11% of a player's loyalty points will probably see a similar migration to tax havens. Perhaps players will form even more personal corporations. We will find out in a few weeks just how the new rules affect New Eden.
No comments:
Post a Comment