Dharus

I'm glad that NA is finally being officially released. In a lot of ways the population has suffered a bit of EA fatigue which is why threads like this have posts all over the map. That's expected. I will probably be trying it out after release for a little bit as I am a fan of the type of warfare that NA has and its by far the best Age of Sail wargame out there. However, I've got a bit of a tempered expectation and I'm not expecting to get wrapped back into it for longer than a month or two. The reasons is that after 3+yrs not much has really changed and some of that stems from a bit of a chaotic path in EA. Yes, ship stats, some econ stuff, new ship models, and the tutorial is all fine and good, however, why I stopped playing was problems a little bit deeper and ongoing over that 3yr+ timeframe. RvR: Lets face it, its still PotBS and it really limits new players, player styles, and ship diversity just as it did in PotBS. I messed around with Elite Dangerous and its faction vs faction play and thought "wow, this would have been awesome for Naval Action and really not that hard to implement". Each location is flipped by setting up in three periods with each period being a week of preparation, conflict, and control. Its not a 2 hr slot, winner take all battle but a longer struggle allowing for multiple playstyles to get involved. Dynamic open Sea engagements, smuggling/econ warfare, mission running and even keeping port battles could all be taken into consideration. This is the core issue with NA. It lacks tiered gameplay experiences. Don't take this as a complete fail of a game and I still stand by my old favorable review of the game. The combat is great, the addition of forts was great, and there has been meaningful changes for good. However, reason it struggles is that it fails to engage multiple types of gamers into the "something greater" aspect of the open sea. A newbie in a pickle has no measurable use in world much less in RvR. A casual player with a job, wife, kids can't always spend hours at a time doing a port battle. The need to grind away at earning money to achieve the material means to reach a meta ship, skill book, fighting style and find a large enough group to achieve meaningful change is a pretty narrow gameplay experience to have (and its a bit boring) and it doesn't include actual captain skill which is a huge component to the game. Endgame is full fleets of X meta ship in port battles and that in of itself favors the higher population faction and/or most dedicated group of ~24 and leaves out everyone else. Are there exceptions to this experience? Sure, but its not enough to keep people of different playstyles engaged for long. So, I expect that after a little bit of time after release I'll get bored as I've already done the ~24 people dot flip and found it got stale after a while and then find there really isn't a lot else to do. Still, I'm happy to say that I've gotten my money's worth and that I've had some very good experiences. I'm happy to try again.

What if smugglers could actually put buy orders in enemy ports again? With the changes to clan ownership and taxes this might add an additional economic level of play. Right now, it's alts which is dumb. It's also dumb to have specialty items locked by safe zones. I think strategic resources is a good idea and it probably should be more than just copper. However, there needs to be a backdoor mechanic to allow low tier nations a opportunity. There should be better balance with mods first though otherwise ports, like mods, will be flavor of the month.

I don't understand why they just didn't make the flag system the raid system. No change in port ownership but just straight up battle rewards plus. An event zone battle might be a content between RvR clans in the nation with whichever clan scored the most points gets ownership. That might cause strife though which can be good or bad.

The difference is that maintenance of port based on clans might prevent "zerging". In most games higher population wins so in this system a counter to a zerg would be a better skilled players fighting against the zerg thus scoring more points and other nations. Example: if Russians have an event vs Sweden for X port other nations could swarm into the zone against them while they are trying to score points. Thus you've created a passive hot zone on the map and diplomatic opportunities.

A map wipe wouldn't solve the problem. A change to the RvR system would. Something like dropping port battles in favor of a 3 day event style hotzone for control over the sea. A lot of people are dancing around the problems with threads about the symptoms of a flawed RvR system. As players, we need to suggest a better system. Folks we're still using PotBS RvR mechanics for the most part. The game needs this change... badly. My old suggestion:

I'll be honest here while I like the idea of unique flags, nations, ect I do no think it works for RvR gameplay for this size of a game. Most RvR games go with a holy trinity of 3 nations and I think that's for a reason creating more dynamic RvR warfare. Yes, I know there were many different nations in the Caribbean during the rough timeframe but for more decent RvR (which seems to be pretty elusive) we might need to think about taking down some of these nations and changing pirates to be similar to the new nations (aka start with no ports, no safe ports). Having these nations is great for more PvP options but for general RvR I think it dilutes the player pool. Perhaps going back to a GB, FR, and ESP with pirates and US starting like the invasion nations would be more dynamic? Note: There are other things that could help RvR as well. This is just one suggestion for piecing together a better RvR.

Hey Bart, Teutonic was referring to PURGE. Right now most of PURGE are pvping in another game. Myself and maybe one or two others are part time playing. We'll likely be solo privateers while we monitor the game. Feel free to message me (same name) in game.

When you sail from point A toward B, you never go in a straight line to B. The wind pushes you downwind so to sail to be B you need to point further upwind. This effect can cause you to get pushed into unfavorable positions such as a shoreline...

Leeway... what no age of sail game has done before. I can't wait.

It's kind of hard not too... you guys post way more crap in every thread. It was a counter suggestion for the OP. I know you guys do not kill each other "all the time" because of combatnews. Anyways, as FR, I've killed plenty of pirates including Black ones. I don't mind being outnumbered 2v1. Just ask the OP. He just got my third ship I've lost since wipe. So this get "batter" stuff doesn't apply. You guys just make it logistically harder by running to corners of the map.

The curious thing about the pirates... you can fight each other too. You guys are running together with Black to beat on the US. Here is an idea. Fight each other!

It was just a suggestion. Freeports offer new players many flexible options. Just no missions which honestly it's a problem.

Having witnessed the situation first hand on the East coast, it is painfully clear the pirates are pretty much seal clubbing right outside Charleston on a nightly basis with 2 to 1 odds if not more. I mean i understand why. France is living in freeport so camping FR is pointless. Britain isn't as juicy as most of them aren't at the capital so hunting through the mosquito coast requires work. Danes are friends. Dutch, swedes, Spain are super low pop. That means Charleston is the only place for low hanging fruit that's low risk. My suggestion to US clans and players is move into the Gulf or Freeports or both. Otherwise organize a defensive fleet. The pirates plan has been very simple. Cap a region near capital, camp it. Pirates got mad when France retaliated by doing the same thing. They didn't fight back but instead ran off, blamed France, and still talk that we're the seal clubbers... As for the OP... You'll never be free if you allow pirates to freely sink outside your capital without retaliation. The US needs fighters not grandiose forum posts.

If you were preaching to a unified PB group with 25 players on all the time who have no life... sure. But I'm not getting up at 2am EST or 5am EST for those two in France. PBs can be fun sure but for RvR there are too many fundamental problems to base the map on them. I suggested making raids like port battles (maybe with flags) and reward those fights. Then make RvR some 3 day process of fighting on the open water. This dock hump, off hour flip, screening either griefing or legit, alt use, hide in battle invis warp driving, etc business is just painful stupid. There is no reason to play the RvR game. We flip ports to produce OW pvp. We did it with Brits just like we did with pirates.

Clan stuff is decent. We needed some more tools there. Name change for servers again isn't a problem. New player experience. The capital area protection systems with NPC help, larger radius of protection probably would help. I'd add perhaps creating "basic" cannons for 6lb and 9lb guns costing 0 with obviously significantly lower dps. Keep Freetowns. They serve more than just newbie hunter ports. If you look at global, you'll notice pirates have taken regions next to capitals. This allows them easy access to attack newer players who don't realize the risks. And please retool the invisible and speed boosting after battles. They'll help stop newb traps. Personally i think revenge ganks wasn't worth the headache that this mechanic created.