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Development priorities 2


  

1,567 members have voted

  1. 1. Please vote on the priorities for the next 3-4 content patches

    • Hired crew and officers (incl supplying them with provisions, food production and fishing)
      188
    • Overhaul of War & Peace mechanics and national relations, pirate role and national alliances
      832
    • Open world PVE: epic events, more variety of fleets, more missions (incl delivery missions)
      365
    • Arranged PVP: Leaderboards, tournaments, pvp events, duels and ow duel flags, balancer improvements
      74
    • Overhaul of resource distribution, labor hours rework, crafting improvements, exploration for resources
      108


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Hello Captains

 

As we are coming closer and closer to land in battles content patch.

It is our long and valued tradition to give players the opportunity to help us choose the right priorities for the development. 

 

Previous 2 priorities were delivered to mixed results. Not everyone was happy with the production buildings. Crew management was an exciting addition. 

 

Please vote on the next priorities for the development and share your concerns if something is missing.

Proposed priorities are in the poll. 

 

 

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Many, many of us pushed for officers and crew. I myself have a long-running suggestion as to how to implement them in my signature.

Hopefully we learned our lesson from last time. We have to do national politics and pirate mechanics first. PvE will have to be a band-aid for now with a few new mission types.

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I think that the Risk game part needs some looooove and will affect indirecly all the other factors, which all work towards the same goal, Nations war & peace.

 

Overhaul of War & Peace mechanics and national relations, pirate role and national aliances  it is.

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Diplomacy, alliances, piracy/privateering is long overdue for being addressed.

If piracy wasn't in such a contentious and (in my opinion) faulty state of affairs, I would have easily picked the further development of crew/officers or the further fleshing out of the economy/resource distribution. When it comes to these things, I am normally of the school of thought of 'finish one project before starting another" (such as the economy in this case) .

 

However i believe the longer we leave pirates the way they are (playing more as another nation than as uniquely pirate) the harder it will be to change further down the line.

Edited by William the Drake
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Last time, we voted selfishly for what we wanted, not what the game needs. I'd approach it in that manner. My vote MAY change depending on people's arguments for other options, as I'm hurtling down the highway in an ambulance, but from the last time we did this, we made a huge mistake. It needs to be pirate mechanics.

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Some thoughts,

 

I imagine the work behind the war and peace changes is somewhat minimal compared to the other changes and is a badly needed change.

 

 

 

Hired crew and officers (incl supplying them with provisions, food production and fishing) 

The undercrewing of ships update was a nice addition but being so recent this feature could be pushed back so other areas of the game are improved first.

 

 

 

Open world PVE: epic events, more variety of fleets, more missions (incl delivery missions)

This is likely the largest of the updates mentioned and would be ideal for everyone overall but there are other smaller updates which could be done first.

 

 

 

Arranged PVP: Leaderboards, tournaments, pvp events, duels and ow duel flags, balancer improvements

Not needed in the games current state in my opinion.

 

 

 

Overhaul of resource distribution, labor hours rework, crafting improvements, exploration for resources

The changes to production building I think are great and don't require this to be addressed as soon as you might think.

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Hired crew and officers (incl supplying them with provisions, food production and fishing

 

Would have been the thing in combination with more side content like delivery missions for me. Simply because side content makes a game great. 

But we have seen it multiple times, this game needs some war and peace mechanics, and that is where my vote goes.

 

Good luck!

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too hard to choose just one.... 

 

But, really are we needing a ladder board ?? I don't think !!! Adding some duel option and/or friendly battle ok, but a ladder board for roxors no thank's we need more cohésion and coopérative play no stupid compétition between same nation captains.

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I personally like the Crew/Officer and Arranged PvP options but I had to vote for Overhaul of War and Peace etc as i'm sick of the current 'diplomacy'

 

Just give me red names and green names so I know where I can port and who I can kill without debating it with them

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What happened to exploration :(

 

Obviously diplomacy mechanics are a priority but it feels a bit weird that land in battles got developed first than exploration,even when exploration placed 3rd in the previous poll and land in battles 4th.

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/7978-development-plans-prioritization-proposals-and-feedback/

 

Could it be that those two will somehow be linked in the future?

Edited by Sella22
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My thoughts on what I would like to see:

 

Crafting.

 

I'm just going to come right out and say it: labour hours stink. I can understand the idea behind the mechanic; to prevent powergamers from grinding 24/7 and dominating the ship-building aspect of the game. The problem is, the game as it stands actively forces you away from it when you're a crafter; it makes you close the game and leave it for days at a time while the hours refresh. There is also little gameplay involved in the process; gameplay is all about making choices, and there aren't many engaging choices involved in crafting.

 

Who has heard of the old adage; "Cheap, fast, good; pick two"? What if this choice were incorporated into the game?

 

Want to build a ship fast and cheaply? Well, it'll be a weak, crappy ship.

Want a good ship, fast? Well, it'll cost you!

Got time to wait? In that case, you can have a good ship for cheap...eventually.

 

My proposal for crafting is this; scrap labour hours, and replace it instead with something that any player of other economy/resource games will recognise; timers, building-based production, hiring and firing of staff, tools and equipment, and choices, choices, choices!

 

You build a shipyard.

You buy tools and machinery for the shipyard; you can buy high-quality, improving the quality or speed of the production, depending on what choices you make later. Or, you can buy cheap and dirty stuff and get what you pay for.

You hire shipwrights. Do you choose the cheap, inexperienced men, who'll perform poorly, but will gain experience later? Or pay top-dollar for the grizzled old veteran with skilled fingers and a sharp, honed mind?

You pay those shipwrights, and you choose how much to pay them. Maybe you even supply them with rum. The happier they are, the better they work.

You feed supplies and money to the shipyard and set them building a ship. You get to set your priority, within the bounds of the quality of tools/machinery/staff: quick, cheap, good.

The shipyard then starts a timer, and the ship is completed when the timer runs down. You can do things to change the length of this timer, but you'll still have a minimum length of time to wait, preserving the intention of labour hours, but now involving lots of gameplay choices and tactical decisions.

 

Now, extend that idea further down the supply chain. Build woodworking workshops, blacksmiths, foundries, for making the ship-building materials, all with the same mechanics; buy machinery, buy tools, hire staff, pay them, all affecting the quality, speed, and cost of the materials you produce.

 

Take it further; your mines and forests work the same way, affecting speed and quantity of production.

 

Why would you have different qualities of materials? Well...

 

Abolish crafting notes.

 

Honestly, they're a bit of a clunky mechanism.

 

Instead, why not have the quality of the ship be determined by the quality of the parts that it's made of, and by the result of the cheap/quick/good decisions made in its production?

 

Why not even take it further; divide the ship into different sections and allow each section to differ in quality? Build a ship with super-high-quality canvas and rigging, but shoddy planking and frame parts? Then you'll have a leaky, poorly-armoured tub with brilliantly-fast sail-handling. Build a high-quality ship, but skimp on the carriages? Then you might have a gold-quality ship in all areas, but with a fatal flaw; the cannons tend to break their carriages too often.

 

Potential areas:

 

masts

sails

rigging

armour

frame

pump

carriages

rudder

 

Trade ships.

 

Abolish AI traders. At least, as they stand anyway. Replace them with player-driven AI traders.

 

Got one port with a foundry smelting iron, and another port with an iron-ore mine? Want to get the ore from one port to the other? Buy/capture/build a trader ship, hire a crew, give the ship orders to sail back and forth between the two ports to transport the ore, setting certain criteria for when they sail; fill the hold, or sail when they have a specified amount of ore. Choices, choices!

 

Your traders might be captured by the enemy. They might be sunk. You'll have to be careful where you let them sail. Perhaps you can also have AI warships escorting them. The importance of safe areas of the map will be increased. And, if the goods are captured, they remain in the economy, and we don't have the artificial inflation of AI trader goods coming out of thin air when one is captured.

 

But what if they do get captured or sunk? Well...

 

Insurance.

 

Durability seems so artificial. In the real world, sunken ships aren't magically recovered from Davy Jones' Locker to be reused over and over.

 

In the real world, ships and their cargo are insured...if you want them to be.

 

Allow captains to purchase insurance policies on their ships. Offer a range of policies; more expensive ones pay out a greater percentage of the ship's value. Some will even offer an immediate like-for-like replacement. Some might cover the upgrades too. Some will cover the cargo, some not. Choices, choices, choices!

 

Pirates.

 

Should not be a faction. Pirates forging a large empire of ports is just plain silly. They should be an "exile" faction for lone-wolves. No ports, no port battles, no buildings. Consider them "factionless neutrals".

 

But...

 

Pirates can fly a false flag to pretend to be a friendly player, before springing a surprise attack, or to use one of that faction's ports. Pirates can attack ports to raid them, gaining loot and damaging the buildings in the port. Pirates can bury treasure; hide stashes of cargo on otherwise empty stretches of beach (x marks the spot). They have access to upgrades and ships that the regular factions don't have, helping them to specialise in hit-and-run attacks and boarding. Pirates can support larger AI support fleets. In essence, they could offer a very different gameplay style.

 

Teleports.

 

Remove the "teleport to capital" function in the open world. It's so easy to abuse; take your trader to distant ports, load it up with goods, teleport to the capital and sell it all for a huge markup, wait for the timer to reset, outpost-teleport back out to the distant ports, rinse and repeat. That doesn't seem like intended gameplay to me.

 

Keep the outpost-teleport (teleporting without your ship), but make it available at any friendly port, not just the ones where you have an outpost, and remove the timer for it; make it cost money instead, as if you're booking passage as a passenger onboard someone else's ship. The greater the distance, the greater the fee.

 

A possible option for this approach is to not have all routes available at any given time, reflecting the fact that the ships in port might not be going exactly where you want to go. You might need to wait a while for one that's going exactly where you need it, or you might need to make a few stops along the way.

 

Port battles.

 

Remove the flag mechanic. It's just silly. No national ruler ever said "call back the huge assault fleet, because one ship got sunk!" Instead, when a "flag" (or decree?) is purchased, it then sets a 24 hour timer, and creates an open battle outside that port. For the next 24 hours, anyone of the appropriate factions can jump in and out of that battle, and the damage done to either side is tallied. AI ships can be included, so that nobody is left sailing around in circles with nothing to do. As can forts/towers (which won't die so easily). Once the 24 hours is up, the faction that has done the most damage wins the port. No port timer complaints, and everyone from every timezone has a chance to participate.

 

Port defences.

 

Have players craft and construct towers, forts, and AI defence ships, rather than providing them automatically. They would be a collective project in the port, that anyone visiting can donate money/resources/ships to. Factions will then be able to prioritise which ports they want to invest in defending.

 

Importantly, these defences will require regular funding to keep them functioning. If neglected, they will gradually decay in effectiveness. And, of course, the higher level defence buildings and ships will cost more money.

Edited by Musuko42
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Obviously diplomacy mechanics are a priority but it feels a bit weird that land in battles got developed first than exploration,even when exploration placed 3rd in the previous poll and land in battles 4th.

 

 

maybe i`m wrong but i think quite a while back it wasnt even know if land in battle was possible, i think most tought we would get a few generic instance that depicted land. I assume somewhere along the way someone discovered a way to grab land for OW to instance without being too much of a burden on the server and voila....

rudder

 

Trade ships.

 

Abolish AI traders. At least, as they stand anyway. Replace them with player-driven AI traders.

 

Got one port with a foundry smelting iron, and another port with an iron-ore mine? Want to get the ore from one port to the other? Buy/capture/build a trader ship, hire a crew, give the ship orders to sail back and forth between the two ports to transport the ore, setting certain criteria for when they sail; fill the hold, or sail when they have a specified amount of ore. Choices, choices!

 

Your traders might be captured by the enemy. They might be sunk. You'll have to be careful where you let them sail. Perhaps you can also have AI warships escorting them. The importance of safe areas of the map will be increased. And, if the goods are captured, they remain in the economy, and we don't have the artificial inflation of AI trader goods coming out of thin air when one is captured.

 

But what if they do get captured or sunk? Well...

 

Well i definetly think we need reowrk in that field i don`t see it as urgent, crafting was put in so we have something else to do and fight for. I think the process is tedious but i can tell you i will be extremely proud once i get out my first 3rd rate because it was a real team effort...

 

about trade ship it was mentionned way way back that iplayer controlled wasn`t really possible because of server capacity, i guess the tons of AI pawns don`t require much, but if all get 3-4 ship that could cause problems.. only explanation we got on the subject several months ago

Edited by ulysse77
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What happened to exploration :(

 

Obviously diplomacy mechanics are a priority but it feels a bit weird that land in battles got developed first than exploration,even when exploration placed 3rd in the previous poll and land in battles 4th.

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/7978-development-plans-prioritization-proposals-and-feedback/

 

Well said, Sella

If developers dont respect the majority, why keeping making polls? The lack of things to do in OW is killing the game and there is a lot of complains about the matter. I think they dont want single players in the game. Everything is focused in clans, factions. Little by little lone players been pushed to the far horizon until they pissed off and stop to play.

Diplomacy? national aliances? You dont even have an stable enviromment to implement it...another "pew pew bang bang game", that is what the game is turning in...

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Definitely these 2

 

-Overhaul of War & Peace mechanics and national relations, pirate role and national alliances

 

-Open world PVE: epic events, more variety of fleets, more missions (incl delivery missions) 

 

Here is why:

 

Open World PVE - Over time game becomes extremely boring for PVE people. Constant fleet grinding and lack of variety and fun. Because of this, Players leave or take break until more content will be available. This in my opinion must be N1 priority. Otherwise player numbers will be decreasing with every day if there is nothing to do.

 

-Add more content, missions, treasure hunts, epic missions and loot and you should be good in that field for quite a bit. 

 

Overhaul of War & Peace - This would be my second important choice that needs fixing. Creating clear and fun conquest system will introduce more players to fighting and defending ports. In general it will result in better cooperation and pvp. Don't forget about reward system. Make sure players get something in the end.

 

-Add War Map with contention zones. Show players where is the action. Introduce points system with rewards and monthly leader boards with stats. Just by adding these simple tools you will boost player base and hours spent in game. 

 

Good luck.

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Definitely these 2
 
-Overhaul of War & Peace mechanics and national relations, pirate role and national alliances
 
-Open world PVE: epic events, more variety of fleets, more missions (incl delivery missions) 
 
Here is why:
 
Open World PVE - Over time game becomes extremely boring for PVE people. Constant fleet grinding and lack of variety and fun. Players leave or take break until more content will be available. This in my opinion must be N1 priority. Otherwise player numbers will be decreasing with every day if there is nothing to do.
 
-Add more content, missions, treasure hunts, epic missions and loot and you should be good in that field for quite a bit. 
 
Overhaul of War & Peace - This would be my second important choice that needs fixing. Creating clear and fun conquest system will introduce more players to fighting and defending ports. In general it will result in better cooperation and pvp. 
 
-Add War Map with contention zones. Shop players where is the action. Introduce points system with rewards and monthly leader boards with stats. 

 

 

I agree on both counts, but we need to figure a way to make those two mesh.. PVE action should have effect on RVR and vice versa. after all you either a Navy captain at war with someone, or a trader/crafter supporting the war effort, PVP and PVE in the meta context, are not exclusive

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about trade ship it was mentionned way way back that iplayer controlled wasn`t really possible because of server capacity, i guess the tons of AI pawns don`t require much, but if all get 3-4 ship that could cause problems.. only explanation we got on the subject several months ago

 

By "player-controlled", I don't mean players actually sailing them personally. I mean that AI traders are created and commanded by players. They'd still be AI pawns, but directed by players and not by the AI. Right now, the AI says "this trader lynx will sail from here to there, back and forth". All that would be changing is that wouldn't happen until a player orders it to happen.

Edited by Musuko42
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By "player-controlled", I don't mean players actually sailing them personally. I mean that AI traders are created and commanded by players. They'd still be AI pawns, but directed by players and not by the AI.

yeha i know and that what was propose, but i think even that was too much for the server (not my words, but dev)

 

and i bang that drum long and hard last summer/fall... will have to wait i guess

Edited by ulysse77
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