DUST Search - Announcement:Dev Blog: Corporation Tax in Uprising 1.4

CCP Nullarbor wrote:

So we had a massive thread about corp tax a while ago (https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=67713). We reviewed all the feedback in that and discussed it with the CPM. For such a small feature it was quite heavily consulted on.

The real catch with having an NPC tax rate in DUST is you can easily work around it by starting a 1 man corporation to earn more ISK. We don't want to incentivise players leaving NPC corps, we want to incentivise them playing and socializing with other players by joining player corps. It is a subtle but very important distinction to make and a good example of where just copying EVE should not be the default decision.

What we will continue to work on is the concept of group earning so your tax money gets put to good use and hopefully earns you a greater return than if you just played solo in an NPC corp. The whole being greater than the sum of the parts type deal. We also have plans to help corporations recruit more effectively and share their wealth with their members, but more on this later.

Thanks for all the comments so far.


Author	Thread Statistics \| Show CCP posts - 16 post(s)
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 121	Posted - 2013.08.21 18:24:00 - [1] - Quote CCP FoxFour wrote: Absolute Idiom II wrote: So if the tax rates are supposed to be the same for Eve and Dust players - then why do Dust NPC corps only charge 0% tax to Dust players but 11% to EVE players? Not saying you should definitely bring the Dust NPC rate all the way to 11%, but if you don't make it non-zero you'll have the same issues with incentives to be in no corp as there used to be for Eve. Please can you use the existing knowledge and experience we have from Eve in this situation and re-assess? What we mean is that if a corporation has the tax rate set it will be applied the same to DUST players and EVE players in the corporation. DUST NPC corporations are different corporations than EVE NPC corporations... they are nicer. I believe he was asking why you have the NPC tax rate set to 0%, as this DIS-incentivizes someone to leave an NPC corp for a player corp with a lower tax rate. The NPC tax shelters will just spur many players to stay in their NPC corp than join a corp where they'll be asked to pay taxes, since more likely than not, the tax rate will be GREATER THAN ZERO.
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 121	Posted - 2013.08.21 18:41:00 - [2] - Quote CCP Nullarbor wrote: Regarding not charging NPC corporations we did this for 2 reasons: - It would be a massive nerf across the board to income, the ISK just goes missing because it goes to NPCs - It is just not a good incentive to form social groups, we would rather people form corporations to play together, not just to avoid taxation. This doesn't make any sense. If it's a nerf to income because it vanishes (goes to NPCs), then why does that argument fail in Eve? Surely you realize that the economy is balanced around the NPC tax rate (or lack thereof in player corps). Just bump the isk rewards if you want a zero-sum total, and THEN you'd have your zero-sum balance AND provide a reason to join a corp, which, btw, makes Dust SO much more bearable to play. And I'm somewhat appalled by your second point. Surely you realize that people are motivated by economic reasons. What's going to happen if this NPC tax shelter goes through is people will squad up, corporation-independent, and run "safely" from their NPC tax shelters but still enjoy the benefits of increased WPs due to squadding up, etc. People aren't going to join a corp "to feel nice" when they can just join the corp (or other group) chat channel and squad up without tax burdens from being in the player corp. Very poor decision making here, CCP, and sketchy reasoning to boot. -1
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 122	Posted - 2013.08.21 19:42:00 - [3] - Quote Halador Osiris wrote: Vespasian Andendare wrote: What's going to happen if this NPC tax shelter goes through is people will squad up, corporation-independent, and run "safely" from their NPC tax shelters but still enjoy the benefits of increased WPs due to squadding up, etc. People aren't going to join a corp "to feel nice" when they can just join the corp (or other group) chat channel and squad up without tax burdens from being in the player corp. Ah, but on the other hand people will become exclusive, not allowing people from other corporations to join their squad because they won't be generating tax revenue for the corp. Presuming that you can get people to join your exclusive club in the first place. NPC tax rate could have been lowered at a later date once the other player corp incentives were introduced (armories, etc.). But as it is now, what is to stop me from making "Vespa's Tax Free Squad Chat," having everyone join that, squad up, etc., and everyone just plays tax free in safety in our NPC tax shelters while still reaping the benefits of the increased WPs from squadding? I know my corp doesn't do any PC at the moment, and I know I personally am a member of several "chat cooperatives" where people from many corps join, more often than not, to make complete squads for, again, WPs and other benefits like Orbital Strikes.
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 123	Posted - 2013.08.21 20:24:00 - [4] - Quote Stefan Stahl wrote: I like how the community is told that its feedback isn't valuable to the dev team because CCP is doing rocket science here, and then the community goes on to find to find two issues with a devblog within a few minutes of the devblog being posted. Addendum: Let me be clear that I don't think showing the gross instead of net profit in the payout window and the economic effects of the zero tax rate is a sign of bad work at all. These are just things you can better judge when you're the person being affected. I think if the payout meter started at 0 and went up to the maximum, 200k in the screenshot, then subtracted the corporate tax, where the final total would be the net, that system would be fine. It would work EXACTLY as the sp total window does, except instead of adding the "sp booster amount," it would subtract the corporate tax, so in the end, the totals reflect the actual payouts and sp gains.
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 124	Posted - 2013.08.21 20:51:00 - [5] - Quote Arkena Wyrnspire wrote: For those who think that NPC corp tax at 0% is stupid in dust because it's at 11% in EVE NPC corps and it incentivises staying in an NPC corp, think about the new player experience a bit. They already have enough to contend with, taking a chunk out of their earnings for no easily fixable reason isn't particularly conducive to a newbie friendly environment. Mind you, it IS worth noting that joining corps should be encouraged, not discouraged like this. But you're assuming that the game can't be balanced around the 10% NPC corp tax rate OR the fact that any new player is going to complain about a corporate tax rate if that's all they've ever known. The only reason we're having a talk about this now is because the tax rates weren't something that was shipped with release. How many new player threads do you see on the Eve-O forums complaining that the npc tax rates are too high? None!* because that's what they've always known, because that's how it's always been. *certainly there'll be some outliers, but by and large, there are no "rah rah lower NPC tax rate!" threads.
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 128	Posted - 2013.08.22 02:39:00 - [6] - Quote CCP Nullarbor wrote: So we had a massive thread about corp tax a while ago (https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=67713). We reviewed all the feedback in that and discussed it with the CPM. For such a small feature it was quite heavily consulted on. The real catch with having an NPC tax rate in DUST is you can easily work around it by starting a 1 man corporation to earn more ISK. We don't want to incentivise players leaving NPC corps, we want to incentivise them playing and socializing with other players by joining player corps. It is a subtle but very important distinction to make and a good example of where just copying EVE should not be the default decision. What we will continue to work on is the concept of group earning so your tax money gets put to good use and hopefully earns you a greater return than if you just played solo in an NPC corp. The whole being greater than the sum of the parts type deal. We also have plans to help corporations recruit more effectively and share their wealth with their members, but more on this later. Thanks for all the comments so far. Well, you forgot to mention that if Player A forms a 1 man corp to evade NPC taxes, that then creates a situation where someone can maybe join that 1 man corp to make a 2 man corp....then a third, etc. Besides, if people are going to play solo, they'll play solo regardless if they have to form a 1 man corp or just stay in the NPC corp indefinitely. All you're doing with this change is hurting an actual competitive advantage corps can have to lure away newbros. I'd also add that the corporate tax structures of player and NPC corps aren't "a small feature." This is one of those times where the devil is in the details, no matter how small. This particular detail is a tool that corporations can use to recruit other players. And if a group of friends want to make a corp together to avoid the NPC tax....well guess what! They're all now in the same corp, and this spurs social interactions within the game. NPC corps that really have no downside provide absolutely no incentive to leave. It'd be different if the game "forced" you into social situations (automatic squads, location-aware voice chat, etc.), but it doesn't. You can (happily) play solo in pub matches until your heart's content or you burn out on being rolled over and over and over. edit: ** I wasn't around to comment on the earlier April thread; I appreciate that you posted one, but if you look over the responses, many players feel that a corporate NPC tax is overall beneficial to Dust.
Vespasian Andendare Subsonic Synthesis Alpha Wolf Pack 128	Posted - 2013.08.22 14:17:00 - [7] - Quote JOHNNY Foodstamp wrote: I don't even see the need for discussion or feedback if the "metrics" are all CCP is concerned about. Probably the same metrics that told them 400 WP was a good idea for the Academy... CCP Greyscale was fairly clear on what metrics they used to determine the 400 WP total: namely, that they wanted players to be in the Academy for 3-5 matches, and the average newbro makes ~50-100 WP per match. I think the 400 WP didn't make any sense, though, because the metrics don't likely account for players hanging out and messing around shooting their teammates deep in the redline, not leaving the MCC, etc. Changing it to 1500 and then to 2000 today are steps in the right direction. Changing it to Skirmish, well, we'll have to see. After I was very critical of the choice to make it Domination, in actuality, I think it gives some very needed direction for newbros in that there's a single objective (capture the only checkpoint) and the fact that there's a single objective means that there's going to be many targets around that checkpoint to shoot, giving newbros lots of opportunities to learn the shooting mechanics of this fledgling FPS. With the corporate tax shelters, though, CCP is hurting competitive advantages player corps could offer, and its already been well explained that solo players wishing to do so will stay in NPC corps with 0% OR create their own corp with 0% tax either way. It's not combatting this solo behavior so much as hurting social player corps.