[Enginseer-42]

So this is going to be something of a big effort post where I try to explain my thoughts behind WHY something should change in addition to what the changes I think should be made.

Economy Stuff
- Set ALL items to have an NPC sell value of zero. (IE no infinite gold from selling lumber anymore.)
- Set all NPC shop clothing to have a cost of zero. (IE you can dress yourself for free.)
- Luxury Goods/Agriculture merchants should dump their profits into the guild coffer of whatever guild controls the settlement they're in.
- Enable Guild rents on settlements. (IE, the system where a given guild can set prices for lots and receives the money for the rent.)
- Dump initial sums of money into each starting guild, and give players some starting cash. But other than that allow cash to circulate rather than be endlessly generated. With the only real influxes being the starting sums for each new character.

Map Stuff
- Separate the map into two regions, much like the start of this time-skip prior to the mapping changes. Each with 1 Major City, 2 minor towns, and about 3-4 sites of interest for guilds to fight over.
- Remove personal houses in favor of guild complexes with various themes (Church, Tavern, Farm, Etc.). Have Taverns have rooms you can rent for cheap for the day so people can have their secret meetings but require obscene upkeep so nobody rents them indefinitely.
- Make the only means of passage between the regions boats with a cooldown of 24 hours, so no more popping on over to the other side of the country for five seconds to spy only to immediately run 10000 miles to report back.
- While not necessarily a hard limit, make one of the two 'small towns' on each side the 'newbie' town for that region. Where lowbies and newbies can duke it out and grow without needing to worry about picking a fight with Joe-McBleeds Uniques the 230+ ancient sorcerer.
-Create a vaguely separate 'wilderness' spawn that connects to both sides for demons and such to spawn into for a total of 3 spawns.

Guild Stuff
- Something Chance already mentioned at some point, but restrict people to one guild rather than allowing several. Perhaps have a hidden called double agent that allows membership in multiple?
- Cap Guilds on Members to 10. That's 1/10 of 100 users, which is the regular high point.
-Prevent guilds from controlling more than one world location. If your guild controls the major city, they're going to have to rely on another guild to take control of the nearby towns for them and maintain good relations.

War Stuff
- Make it a sort of gambling system. In order to make an attack, you have to put up X amount of coins per fighter you intend to send. A Defender can either put up X/2 Coins per fighter, or offer up 1 point of Strategic Advantage. Whoever wins, collects the pot assembled by both sides wagers. Strategic Advantage can be used to FORCE a defender to place something up for wager in the next battle, with a cost depending on the thing, If it's an attempt to arrest someone, or rescue someone, you need 1 SA per 100 RPL of the target. To conquer/seize control of a location on the map, it's 1 for a site of interest, 2 for a minor town, 3 for a major city.
- Require outside parties to anty up double attacker price, regardless of side they're intervening on, All Awards go to the primary victor, who can then dole it out as desired.

So, I said I'd explain why. Part of the issue with Esshar I've noticed that early spires lacked, was there is no in game motivation to do things. In Spires it was a constant battle for turf and territory. Not just in big battles but in a thousand small raids and skirmishes. I can't tell you how many times we had Gehennans in the Grey Reach back in early Valmasia, not to mention the infamous Tax Fort.

Esshar lacks that scuffle for resources almost entirely. Hell, until recently I was literally the only person who even bothered to guard the Therian Mine. There's nothing to strive for that isn't either guarded by one of three/four Mega Factions or sits in the ethereal realm of Admin approval. Which, while I'm sure you guys are reasonable, is just an inefficient and daunting system for something that's meant to drive daily movement. People need things to strive for that isn't in the realm of apps or in the realm of convincing a full 4th or more of the playerbase to follow you.

This is also why I think we should remove the infinite generation of coins, because it gives merchants and coins a certain amount of meaning that's just lacked otherwise, and we already have the system for setting rent controls to pump money into player guilds. This gives ruling guilds a steady supply of money they can use for wars/diplomacy with other guilds and gives them a level of agency that's currently lacked, because anyone can just go outside and cut 1000 trees down. Or mine ore for a couple of days. Money is a lever, and right now it's utterly useless, this gives it back some meaning.

I think I pretty well explained my reasoning for the two regions with a time lock on transit between them, but I as for the rest, this leads into the need for things to drive conflict and goal-setting. Things like a neat base and neat bonuses gets people off their butt and out of the town square, and that is in and of itself a good thing. This also encourages fighting over unique real estate and the stories it brings. The Holy knights driving the Necromancers out of their tower and consecrating the crypts within. Demons visiting a reign of terror over a small farming village. Etc Etc.

I... think that's most of my reasons. Though if something is still confusing I can explain more later.