Really, when it comes down to it, this issue just needs to be broken down into the base case.
Suppose a person, lets just say Catbug, was the proud owner of faction X
Catbug is the only person in faction X, and he is the only person who has ever been in faction X
Catbug also has claimed all of the land that he is physically able to claim. (30 Chunks or equivalently 7680 blocks)
Now Catbug is having to deal with these heightened taxes! Oh no! Lets see how much he pays.
30 Chunks, 1r/5chunks/day = 6r/24 hours
Now, Catbug believes this amount of taxation to be absurd! By god, he has to teleport to regalia for 25 seconds he can receive 100r/20 hours from John the Pious.
And for that matter, it would take him a solid 10 minutes outside (or in dark room if you'd prefer less immersive and more grinding) in order to make... 6 regals.
Or maybe he should go mining. A diamond block normally sells for about 7r as of today, and is bought by default at 6r at most any chest (just walked around in the market) but 7 is about average for buying. If Catbug decided to mine for a few minutes, then he could probably find 9 diamonds and sell them to any chest in the market with no hassle, paying his tax.
Now lets be honest, we all know that Catbug is the laziest creature in all of Aloria, so he definitely wants to do the minimum amount of work in order to keep his faction. That means that he will need to go to John the Pious once every about 16 days
in order to hold onto his faction.
Ok so, I've just presented the base case for any faction. So, with that in mind, a lazy faction owner, alone, who only does the minimum, will still be able to maintain a claim that is the size of 16 people, by simply grabbing welfare every morning (actually a 17% more than that since John gives money every 20 hours, but whatever the math gets harder if I do that)
Ok keep all of that in mind.
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Now, is there really anyone, anyone who could tell me, with no emotion, and no bias, that this is unreasonable?
In my mind, if you are a faction leader, and you own a faction that has 16x as many claims as you have players, that are willing to give up all of their welfare every day, then you are a failure and your faction deserves to either crash and burn or down size. Think about it. Suppose Tyberia had exactly the claims of 256 members at full power, this isn't current, but it will keep the numbers easy. That is 7680 Chunks or 1.97 million square blocks. It would only take 16 members to sustain that faction if all they did was get on 1 time every day for 30 seconds and donate their welfare to the faction. Every claim could be kept simply by doing the very very minimum amount of work once a day.
So, clearly by those numbers, this amount of taxation is definitely not unsustainable, it doesn't even sound painful unless your faction is grossly oversized, really it only gets painful for people who "care" if they have more than 16:1 claims to dedicated/caring players in which case then those players would need to do more than just give up their welfare every day.
So, I think by what I've said so far, I have objectively, indisputably proven that these taxes are not too much to endure for old factions that want to survive. It also does allow for new factions to take up the new open spaces that are left behind.
With that in mind. To all of you old high kings, emperors, and the like... I dare to say that if your faction members join your faction, then leave it, or don't like the experience you gave them enough to become a dedicated player and decide to never come back to MassiveCraft again, then... you as a leader, and your officers, those in charge of recruiting and teaching new members, have failed. That's right. If you can't treat your members of your factions like they are the lifeblood of your society, then you have failed, and you've caused the server to lose someone forever.
The fact is, if every member does their part, then every faction will be easily sustainable. If you have players that only get on once every 2 weeks, then they can sustain their part of the faction with 25 seconds of effort... not the healthiest, but good enough to survive. It's up to you as a leader to be constantly recruiting, giving jobs to your faction members, and interacting with them while you have the chance and they are getting a feel for Massivecraft so that they will come back the next day, or whenever it is convenient and keep playing for years. That way, by the time they decide to be done with Minecraft for good, they will have done the same thing with their own faction down the line, forever building up the community in size and continuing on this servers history of being the best damn server in existence.
Full Disclaimer: If you don't bother to read my entire post, then I have no respect for you if you decide its worth your time to bash it down. Read the whole thing, and supply something constructive, or keep to yourself.
Love, Catbug
