One Server for PVP

[Vernon Merrill]

I've always thought that a decent way to make things EQUAL, even if not completely without drawbacks, would be to have a ROTATING availability of conquest times on a port.  Say that port is captured in US primetime.  The port is then only available to be captured in another TZ's primetime.  And it keeps rotating with EVERY capture, NOT PB.

 

Example:  Tiburon falls in US primetime  (0100 GMT)

                 That port is then open to conquest in a range of -6 GMT, +/-3 hours  (1600-2200 GMT)

                 Then next time its open at another -6GMT, +/-3 hours (1000-1600 GMT)

                  And so on....  

 

Again, just an idea to spread the pain equally.  Not without drawbacks, but at least something.

 

Probably works better with flags than conquest points, though...

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Sir Joseph Blaine

[Ratline]

1 hour ago, Aegir said:

Isn't that virtually the same as the upcoming changes to the hostility system?

It's closer, but without the npc grind.

1 hour ago, Aegir said:

I guess the main difference that you're suggesting would be what the devs have tinkered with in the past - making hostility generation a multi-day ordeal to bring all timezones into it. Which they now discard so that it doesn't become "PvE grind at X hour countered by PvE grind at Y hour" that you also seem to despise, in favour of having to defend your region immediately to get actual PvP. Which brings us back to direct competition, removing something without offering a replacement, and not resolving timezone issues.

What you claim to be an 'ordeal' I would see as multiple opportunities to generate OW pvp and emergent, player generated content. It does not need to be so long it becomes painful, but should be long enough to allow forces from each side to react and build rather than logging on and thinking 'Shit, Flash.. we've only go 14 minutes to save the region!', 'oh let's not bother and just fight the PB.'

While the new system removes "PvE grind at X hour countered by PvE grind at Y hour" it does not remove PvE grind, which is my whole point. PvE is fine, but pretending it's a good part of PvP I don't buy. The new system also does not resolve timezone issues, at least not entirely so don't believe that. If a group of Russian players decide to grind hostility against a nation largely populated by W. European players while the latter are at work it's pretty much same same.. But nvm, you don't need to bother contesting hostility anyway, just show up for the arena match.

[Powderhorn]

Please stay vaguely on topic.

[Kloothommel]

10 minutes ago, Powderhorn said:

Please stay vaguely on topic.

Define vaguely XD

(this comment made my day)

[Powderhorn]

I'm pretty good up until we get back to trolling one another... the lizards were just... weird.

[Christendom]

23 minutes ago, Powderhorn said:

I'm pretty good up until we get back to trolling one another... the lizards were just... weird.

we'll just stick to flat earth theories from here on out.

[Guest]

16 hours ago, Ratline said:

It's closer, but without the npc grind.

What you claim to be an 'ordeal' I would see as multiple opportunities to generate OW pvp and emergent, player generated content. It does not need to be so long it becomes painful, but should be long enough to allow forces from each side to react and build rather than logging on and thinking 'Shit, Flash.. we've only go 14 minutes to save the region!', 'oh let's not bother and just fight the PB.'

I said 'multi-day ordeal'. By the sound of your follow-up statement, that definitely counts as 'so long it becomes painful', so I don't see where the disagreement is.

16 hours ago, Ratline said:

While the new system removes "PvE grind at X hour countered by PvE grind at Y hour" it does not remove PvE grind, which is my whole point. PvE is fine, but pretending it's a good part of PvP I don't buy. The new system also does not resolve timezone issues, at least not entirely so don't believe that. If a group of Russian players decide to grind hostility against a nation largely populated by W. European players while the latter are at work it's pretty much same same.. But nvm, you don't need to bother contesting hostility anyway, just show up for the arena match.

That's the thing though, by the looks of it it's not nearly as much of a PvE grind as the old system since you can't sit in a corner and run missions, instead you're forced into the OW to scout for enemy fleets, narrowing down your location to the shipping lanes and providing ample opportunity for PvP responses.

The PvE is just there to trigger the PvP. Sure, you could make it a blockade where if no one breaks your blockade in X hours you get the port/trigger a PB, but the only difference then is that instead of shooting AI for a while you have to sit there doing absolutely nothing, which if anything seems even worse just for the sake of calling it a pure PvP mechanic (outside of all the waiting time).

As for whether people contest the hostility or not, that provides options for nations of wildly different sizes and creeds - for example, the Brits might be able to field more people to defend/attack on a hostility level, whereas the Danes won't be able to but instead at least have the choice to focus on PB contention. If you remove PBs, the only difference is that it becomes a walk-over for the guy with the larger population in most cases, which is probably the reason why people enjoy the even playing field that PBs provide. Production, hostility and screening already favours the big boys, but at least being good at PBs lets you contend the result.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Guest

[Grundgemunkey]

from what i unsderstand the only way to build up hostility will be to either pvp or attack the ai fleets ..  when hostility was first introduced .. you could take a mission in enemy  region and go raise  hostility that way ..

defenders found it hard to find the attacking fleet as once the swords  dissapeared they were invisible ...

now if hostility is increasing in a region all a defender has to do is follow the ai fleets leaving port ...as the attacker is looking for these fleets  attacker and defender will meet

sounds great its bringing pvp to the open world I hope so

or is it ...

does this make the raising of hostility an area of the game that means the actual risk involved out weighs the benefits

the defender has all the advantage ... he knows where you are ...as an attacker you have to destroy the ai and the defender in battle

the defender can wait in ow  and camp your battle ..knowing the make up of your fleet  and take you out when you leave ,,,

all these points in themselves are not neccasary bad things ...but tie them in with 1 dura ships that are time consuming to build and hard to get because of need for admiralty marks etc etc  and the reward is a port battle  based on recent win ratios you are likely to lose ..

is the risk/reward ..too high to make raising hostility a viable enterprise

if it becomes that a port baltle is a rare event due to this ,,,does this mean that the server split is pointless because no one wil be fighting pbs anyway

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Grundgemunkey

[Kaos]

18 hours ago, Ratline said:

It's closer, but without the npc grind.

What you claim to be an 'ordeal' I would see as multiple opportunities to generate OW pvp and emergent, player generated content. It does not need to be so long it becomes painful, but should be long enough to allow forces from each side to react and build rather than logging on and thinking 'Shit, Flash.. we've only go 14 minutes to save the region!', 'oh let's not bother and just fight the PB.'

While the new system removes "PvE grind at X hour countered by PvE grind at Y hour" it does not remove PvE grind, which is my whole point. PvE is fine, but pretending it's a good part of PvP I don't buy. The new system also does not resolve timezone issues, at least not entirely so don't believe that. If a group of Russian players decide to grind hostility against a nation largely populated by W. European players while the latter are at work it's pretty much same same.. But nvm, you don't need to bother contesting hostility anyway, just show up for the arena match.

Maybe I misunderstand something but when people were reluctant to engage each other on OW without safe odds during 5 durability system then what do people expect once they are betting the farm each time so to speak with 1 durability or they will not even bother going anywhere before building up a reserve of at least 5 ships? Where would that emergent ow pvp gameplay come from if the whole point of OW is to overwhelm your enemy with numbers (because you can) and catch them off-guard because they will most likely flee if they can? If one side is blockading something and perceives an enemy coming with more numbers then they will most likely flee in different directions instead of engaging in some epic fight and risk losing their whole fleet so the whole OW rvr is attritional and self-cannibalizing regarding player-numbers in nature instead of emergent.

Your average player probably won't bother building a reserve of 10 ships and organize 25 people before going out with what he can actually afford to lose and merely goes around reacting to everything instead of anticipating and preparing. The next time you see him after encircling his fleet is most likely in another game instead of trying to dig himself out of the hole and recover his losses and reorganize.

I always found it highly entertaining when rvr people in this game talk about deep strategies and meaningfulness of their actions when they actually had to do blunt pve grind to unlock pb's, culminating in 25 vs 25 arena pew pew and at the same time they tell anyone who finds this absurd and questions this to go play arena : )

I suppose the devs know their main audience, hence such mechanics.

[Ratline]

2 hours ago, Kaos said:

Where would that emergent ow pvp gameplay come from if the whole point of OW is to overwhelm your enemy with numbers (because you can) and catch them off-guard because they will most likely flee if they can? If one side is blockading something and perceives an enemy coming with more numbers then they will most likely flee in different directions instead of engaging in some epic fight and risk losing their whole fleet

This is surely just as true of the current system and will quite possibly apply to all aspects of OW pvp now we've moved to one dura, especially given that they seem to have made crafting more time consuming and transportation of materials more risky.

4 hours ago, Aegir said:

I said 'multi-day ordeal'. By the sound of your follow-up statement, that definitely counts as 'so long it becomes painful', so I don't see where the disagreement is.

That's the thing though, by the looks of it it's not nearly as much of a PvE grind as the old system since you can't sit in a corner and run missions, instead you're forced into the OW to scout for enemy fleets, narrowing down your location to the shipping lanes and providing ample opportunity for PvP responses.

The PvE is just there to trigger the PvP. Sure, you could make it a blockade where if no one breaks your blockade in X hours you get the port/trigger a PB, but the only difference then is that instead of shooting AI for a while you have to sit there doing absolutely nothing, which if anything seems even worse just for the sake of calling it a pure PvP mechanic (outside of all the waiting time).

I still feel that having ports flipped in a few hours worth of activity is too quick, more so now that the impact on players of losing a port where they have buildings and assets will be really severe. I agree that the new system is an improvement on what we had before though. You make a fair point regarding activity and pve as the trigger. Personally, if I was designing from teh ground up I'd like to see a system which took all sorts of player activity into account but we're well past the point where that is feasible.

Your last point, regarding nation numbers is also good, although I also always thought there were simply too many nations in this game and that splitting of the player base has been one of the constant issues we've faced. Which kinda brings us back to the op, in that further segmenting the players just doesn't seem wise. Amalgamating nations might actually be a way to lessen the impact of night flipping but people like their little national flags too much.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Grundgemunkey said:

from what i unsderstand the only way to build up hostility will be to either pvp or attack the ai fleets ..  when hostility was first introduced .. you could take a mission in enemy  region and go raise  hostility that way ..

defenders found it hard to find the attacking fleet as once the swords  dissapeared they were invisible ...

now if hostility is increasing in a region all a defender has to do is follow the ai fleets leaving port ...as the attacker is looking for these fleets  attacker and defender will meet

sounds great its bringing pvp to the open world I hope so

or is it ...

does this make the raising of hostility an area of the game that means the actual risk involved out weighs the benefits

the defender has all the advantage ... he knows where you are ...as an attacker you have to destroy the ai and the defender in battle

the defender can wait in ow  and camp your battle ..knowing the make up of your fleet  and take you out when you leave ,,,

all these points in themselves are not neccasary bad things ...but tie them in with 1 dura ships that are time consuming to build and hard to get because of need for admiralty marks etc etc  and the reward is a port battle  based on recent win ratios you are likely to lose ..

is the risk/reward ..too high to make raising hostility a viable enterprise

if it becomes that a port baltle is a rare event due to this ,,,does this mean that the server split is pointless because no one wil be fighting pbs anyway

I guess the 1 minute invisibility post-fight provides some relief for your camping scenario, but yeah, people go for the past of least resistance, and with PvP it's always going to be a struggle since it wont be stupid AI attacking against impossible odds. That's what we're there for, to test and tweak it.

But, if anything, your grim scenario would just exacerbate pre-patch issues. If timezone issues were a problem before, guess how bad it will be if you can't even stage a PB unless you can operate unopposed (due to timezones being the path of least resistance). And when the effort and risk is considerably higher than before, losses will have that much more bite and flipping will be that much more attractive.

8 hours ago, Ratline said:

This is surely just as true of the current system and will quite possibly apply to all aspects of OW pvp now we've moved to one dura, especially given that they seem to have made crafting more time consuming and transportation of materials more risky.

I still feel that having ports flipped in a few hours worth of activity is too quick, more so now that the impact on players of losing a port where they have buildings and assets will be really severe. I agree that the new system is an improvement on what we had before though. You make a fair point regarding activity and pve as the trigger. Personally, if I was designing from teh ground up I'd like to see a system which took all sorts of player activity into account but we're well past the point where that is feasible.

Your last point, regarding nation numbers is also good, although I also always thought there were simply too many nations in this game and that splitting of the player base has been one of the constant issues we've faced. Which kinda brings us back to the op, in that further segmenting the players just doesn't seem wise. Amalgamating nations might actually be a way to lessen the impact of night flipping but people like their little national flags too much.

Accounting for all sorts of player activity also sounds like what the devs were going for, with war supplies (traders), PvE as well as PvP, but as a result people just go for whichever is easiest, starting with war supplies (until patched), then PvE grinding, and finally rare PvP. The new system sounds quite promising in that regard, in a strong move to get people out into the OW and PvP (instead of gathering supplies for a quick run or sitting in battle instances for ages).

Amalgamating is effectively what we had with the two-block mega-alliances, and it proved that the problem lies in distribution, not playercount, and that off-hour fighting is so detrimental that even with a ~4:1 population advantage (if not more) people still got absolutely sick of it.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Guest

[Knuddel]

I am not sure which server i choose, cause a lot of guys take The Global and a lot of guys take the EU servers. Please make just One server to not split up the Players any more. 

 

When i buy this Game, i thought that it will be a massive multiplayer Online Game. Why splitting it up? You have Less guys on the servers now. Hopefully they will come back after the Whipe, but if they have to chose a server you splitt them up even the playernumbers are even on the servers you dont have enough guys to Play this game. If you have 500 People on one server the server is interessting but with less guys on maintime it isnt interessting any more. 

Edited May 17, 2017 by Knuddel

[Werewolf]

On 5/7/2017 at 6:38 PM, z4ys said:

That's not true. It is only a small percentages of all buyers who actually participated in one Pb.

Speaking of not true, please direct me to the statistics that you derived this from.

[Vernon Merrill]

Thats actually a direct quote from Admin.  I cant remember the thread, but yes, it got lots of attention.

[Fenris]

No point having 1 server where RvR is only about screwing enemy when he is not able to play.

Untill there is no 1 solution for different timezones, it makes no more sense to play on 1 server which has different timezones.

Many games have different servers..EU/US/SA...

Good luck on GLOBAL /EU ,where ever you people might be.

[Liq]

1 hour ago, Knuddel said:

When i buy this Game, i thought that it will be a massive multiplayer Online Game. Why splitting it up? You have Less guys on the servers now. Hopefully they will come back after the Whipe, but if they have to chose a server you splitt them up even the playernumbers are even on the servers you dont have enough guys to Play this game. If you have 500 People on one server the server is interessting but with less guys on maintime it isnt interessting any more. 

Having all timezones on one server was one of the main reasons why the player numbers dropped. People started taking each others ports without the enemy being able to defend them. How is that any fun?
I do agree the game is way more enjoyable with a healthy amount of players online, but since another solution to the whole day/night/whatever flipping could not be found, it's just the most logical thing to do. Let's give it a try at the very least.
It just sucked to loose all your ports / buildings over night without being able to do anything against it (If you actually wanted to get some sleep).

Edited May 17, 2017 by Liquicity

[GreasyMnky]

My vote is for a single server, we tried both options and in my opinion, it was better before the population was split between both servers.

[Macjimm]

2 hours ago, GreasyMnky said:

My vote is for a single server, we tried both options and in my opinion, it was better before the population was split between both servers.

You're mistaken if you think that eliminating a server will significantly increase the population on the remaining server.

That logic suggests that because the population was highest when we had three PvP servers we should have 3 servers.

We do not have low population because we have more than one server.

 

Edited May 17, 2017 by Macjimm

[OneEyedSnake]

Solely contributing loss of population to one thing is quite ignorant. There are many things that has contributed to loss of population. 

[OneEyedSnake]

Id also just like to note, especially to you Europeans complaining about night flipping, that US players couldnt flip your guys ports to be in our actual prime since that was when the devs had their no flip times. 

Really though while we didnt like that, we still dealt with it and very few quit due to the night flips, most people that i know are taking a break are due to devs (just being honest) and long sailing times compared to their reward. Thats from pvp1 anyways.  

As einstein said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. And for those of you that want to keep the servers separate with some supposed time rule on them, I dont think you are going to get the result you thought you were going to get. Its the same thing, separating a game with a playerbase possibly sub 1000, and expecting it to be tested well and not lose players when this game relies on high population to be enjoyable.

Splitting these servers is literally the only thing that has remained the same since the population started tanking btw. 

[qw569😳]

The merge of PVP servers will affect only from 21 hours (server time).

Players from EU will not feel the difference.

 

 

[Challenge]

Could someone post the server UTC adjustment please.

[Hethwill]

3 hours ago, Challenge said:

Could someone post the server UTC adjustment please.

UTC never changes.

Countries local time might change. Some countries adjust +1 during summer. Others don't.

Example: Germany is on UTC+2 in summer time. England is on UTC+1 during summer.

This DST observance makes a lot of difference when dealing with northern hemisphere and south hemisphere where north is back on UTC, south is on summertime, widening the gap usually by 2 hours relative to the normal gap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country

[Challenge]

NO shit Captain Obvious. Let me rephrase the question in a way you would under stand: How many fingers do you need to count to tell me the time at UTC for a given hour at the server? And do you travel east or west (that's right or left when you put the map down with the lettering so you can read it)? Jackass.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Challenge

[Hethwill]

2 minutes ago, Challenge said:

NO shit Captain Obvious. Let me rephrase the quest in a way you would under stand: How many fingers do you need to count to tell me the time at UTC for a given hour at the server? And do you travel east or west (that's right or left when you put the map down with the lettering so you can read it)? Jackass.

UTC never changes.

That is obvious.

Actually even better, for all the military folk out  there, use Zulu time. Never fails.

Hence you must know where you are on the Planet to know how many fingers you have to count.

In my case, during summer I need only one. Any...one...finger. Got it ?