IndianaGeoff

But populations were higher and there were people to hunt. Yes, it hurt a lot if you decided to gank in a busy, defended area, but that is as it should be. In those days there were no safe zones or even towers for that matter. But ganking someone with friends right outside a capital port was a death sentence. I stopped doing defense when it became a waste of time.

Oh, all missions, shooting and trade, need to be tweaked to be fun.

Your quote does not encompass the point he is making. It is possible to find things to agree and disagree with. But the point is, the game ceased being fun for a huge number of players and they left. The game cannot make it until that problem is figured out and fixed. You talk all you want about the sandbox... when said box is full of cat poop and devoid of players it is just a litter box.

This game (if it's not too late) had better prioritize his play style. Those are the huge numbers of players who left. If they can't be steered back or new ones of that type given a track to play... put a fork in her.

Honestly, the game has been so screwed up and so many have left, testing new or old mechanics is a waste. Your comments are right on. I had fun when ships were fairly easy to make, did not demand weeks of grinding to open slots and put the upgrades in them. There were mechanics to defend your coasts, nightly fights (flag era) and you could fight AI off your coast with reasonable safety. This was surrounded by enough players for multiple nations to fight it out. The Hardmode era drove off our Admirals. When they saw months of casual grinding to get back into a first rate that they could not afford to fight... they left. The ability to swap nations with all your stuff concentrated good players into fewer and fewer nations of elite players. The various mechanics to force PvP end up with those players ganging up anyone with marks for dying. Defense of coasts became useless then lack of players moved it to impossible. Zero content other than killing newbies aborted many a new player. Oh and the difficulty of crawling out of a cutter just made sure nobody new stuck with the game. The various antics of the Devs and admins killed these forums. Aborting what good will there could be. So here we are. But it's all good. This is an early release game and if you can't handle the suck STFU newb.

Because most of the players that would have used this months ago have left, given up on the game and moved on. They don't log in. They don't read the forums. Heck, look how dead the forums are now. I am sorry, small incremental fixes to a couple areas won't fix this game. You will not get a critical mass of old players to fill and balance out the game play on the server at this point. You need to build a game that can attract and keep new players and start from scratch. If that works, you might get some old players back. Right now this game is down to the 1% who can't live without it. I consider myself the 5% who would love the game if it was playable. But it is not. So I join the 99% and play something else that has balance and >shock< FUN.

The loss of Tow to Capital was part of this. At least once a day, you could quickly rally a crew that would be home to defend. As it is now, if you are on a far flung patrol or trade mission it's 20 minutes or longer before you can be back home to defend.

I have been on countless defense patrols. From the Hardmode Era on, they are a complete waste of time, so I quit even trying. If you want people to defend the coasts, you have to give them tools to do so. But at this point, expecting rafts of former players to come back in is a fantasy. The game will have to be built on new players from scratch and right now, nobody new plays for more than a month. Again, as someone who enjoyed helping newbies... that became a waste of time too.

Correct. I see nothing that inspires me to log in and play. I'll check back in the forums a couple times a week to see if there will be a positive change and advocate for things that might be positive, but I won't be playing the game. See you here middle of next week.

Does anyone expect any change, no matter how good, to turn this ship around at this point? Maybe on full Beta and Release the game will get back to a usable number of players, but I doubt it will make it to that point. At this point, there is no flock to flock. Just a few strays here and there.

Well, you do have to PvE to unlock upgrades and get books. So unless you want to sail very disadvantaged, you need to do a lot of PvE.

Heck, at one point they didn't bother waiting in the mouth. The gank fleet would be in the harbor killing people. Knowing full well they could kill the perp before the forts were in range or did anything. Then sail out before a defense fleet could do anything about it. Assuming you could get a half dozen guys willing make a defense fleet and have to wait an hour to try to get into a running battle that would result in nothing sunk.

Probably because you quoted my post at the top of the post.

I have. Many times. In fact, in another thread, I just put up a long post with many suggestions, many of them things the game has done in the past. And as far as "childish insults"... what the heck do you think "if you ain't number 1, you're the first loser." is? Esp when it comes from someone who is not #1.

So by your own standard, you are not #1 thus a loser? Or is "try hard" good enough for ya now? I have achieved all my goals in the game. I got full value from my investment. The gameplay now is not enjoyable enough to log in consistently at this point. The game is failing to attract and keep new players and population levels are dropping consistently. The game's development is showing more backwards development rather than forward. In my experience, if you fail to recognize failure and keep investing in a loser... you are wasting your time. I hope the game gets it together, improves it's game mechanics and content so I can enjoy the game for a decade to come. But at this point, I have very little expectation that will happen. My criticisms are in a hope that Devs will focus on something other than forced PvP. But that is the one trick pony they are obsessed with and more of it will get the game more failure.