Realism vs Game

[mikawa]

I want to write something about my current experience of the game.

Every good game has a balance between realism and game. Naval Action does an exiticingly good job at combat. Sailing is quite realistic but we have no changing winds, broadsides are simplified and easy to fire, but you need the correct timing (waves!) we have a good balance between strategies (demasting/dearmoring/raking) and the ships are slighty different to handle. That's nearly perfect.

But PVP is quite unbalanced at the moment.

There is the follwing carousel of madness, started by the changes of the mega patch

Ships are expansive & hard to ready - you need mats (or buy it) & cannons & crew - all things not easy to afford and not easy to replace and you get only rewards for sinking a ship, not for damage

-> this leads to even more ganks than before, I have not seen an equal fight in over two weeks;
-> no one assists because everyone fears to loose his ship and to get *no* rewards;
-> you tend to surrender early because you get no rewards anyway - this is neither fun for the ganker nor for the ganked;

This could be solved by adding a reputation bonus:
A small ship against a bigger one should have bonus and a bigger one against a smaller (or even a fleet against a single ship) a malus. In an even battle, rewards are even. And it is a *must* to get rewards even when you loose (you defend honestly your nation, isn't it?) - this makes PVP battles worth fighting them, even if you loose (remember you do not only loose your ship, but your cargo, too! so the victorious has a big advantage anyway).

I think rewards should be calculated by damage as before. Even if you have to quit battle because you are heavily damaged, you should get rewards (you have done damage to the enemy, maybe you've damaged him so badly that he has to give up his ganking tour and return home, who knows? Even small ships can play a very important role in a battle doing lot of sails damage, even if they are not capable of sinking a bigger enemy ship.

[Hodo]

7 minutes ago, mikawa said:

I want to write something about my current experience of the game.

Every good game has a balance between realism and game. Naval Action does an exiticingly good job at combat. Sailing is quite realistic but we have no changing winds, broadsides are simplified and easy to fire, but you need the correct timing (waves!) we have a good balance between strategies (demasting/dearmoring/raking) and the ships are slighty different to handle. That's nearly perfect.

But PVP is quite unbalanced at the moment.

There is the follwing carousel of madness, started by the changes of the mega patch

Ships are expansive & hard to ready - you need mats (or buy it) & cannons & crew - all things not easy to afford and not easy to replace and you get only rewards for sinking a ship, not for damage

-> this leads to even more ganks than before, I have not seen an equal fight in over two weeks;
-> no one assists because everyone fears to loose his ship and to get *no* rewards;
-> you tend to surrender early because you get no rewards anyway - this is neither fun for the ganker nor for the ganked;

This could be solved by adding a reputation bonus:
A small ship against a bigger one should have bonus and a bigger one against a smaller (or even a fleet against a single ship) a malus. In an even battle, rewards are even. And it is a *must* to get rewards even when you loose (you defend honestly your nation, isn't it?) - this makes PVP battles worth fighting them, even if you loose (remember you do not only loose your ship, but your cargo, too! so the victorious has a big advantage anyway).

I think rewards should be calculated by damage as before. Even if you have to quit battle because you are heavily damaged, you should get rewards (you have done damage to the enemy, maybe you've damaged him so badly that he has to give up his ganking tour and return home, who knows? Even small ships can play a very important role in a battle doing lot of sails damage, even if they are not capable of sinking a bigger enemy ship.

I agree with some of your thinking and suggestions.  But there is a role for smaller ships now, but most people dont want to do it.

A few days ago I was out tailing a Pirate Surprise until he attacked a traders brig, I knew I had backup about 90sec away just out of site of the surprise.  I went into the battle to aide the brig and the Renomee came in about 15sec after me.  The Surprise broke off his pursuit of the Trade ship and turned to flee.  But due to the speed of my Lynx and its long guns I was able to keep him in the fight and disable his sails for the Renomee to catch him.  All I did was keep the Surprise in the fight.  The Renomee did the actual killing I just kept the Surprise from running.

[Slamz]

Rewards for the loser:
This was taken out of the game due to people abusing it. They arrange matches, shoot each other up and exit and do it again and again and again. (This is why we can't have nice things.) You can never reward people more than the amount of repairs you cost them and that's pretty close to zero, so we can't award "damage". Only sinks. You CAN get an assist by doing sail damage though, so that works.

 

I really reject this entire "reward" argument that has been coming up, though.

Would you people seriously not PvP at all if there were no rewards for it? I still would. I do like the rewards and wouldn't mind seeing it increased but I'm sinking you because I enjoy it. I enjoyed the simple fact of the open sea hunt, too, so even if you surrender right away that's great. Back to the hunt! I know some people see PvP as "honorable duelists engaged in manly fisticuffs" but that's not what any open world PvP game anywhere is about.

Open world PvP is always about Killers.

Being fair is not in our blood.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Slamz

[surfimp]

30 minutes ago, Hodo said:

 The Renomee did the actual killing I just kept the Surprise from running.

And you probably got nothing from the fight (in terms of gold, XP and marks) while the Reno got everything.

IT does get a bit frustrating, to be honest, to get absolutely zero rewards for the PVP contributions I do make... like when I'm dancing around in my 7th rate, baiting the bigger ships to chase me and set them up for an engagement. Or when I tag them to buy time for my square rigged friends to extend away. Or when I rake stern armor off, then kill 112 crew but do not get an assist because I didn't do enough hull damage.

It's not going to stop me from participating - because the PVP activity is fun in and of itself - but it's nice to get something in the post battle screen beyond "Participated in Battle. No Rewards." I'd be better off just hunting player traders and leaving my colleagues to their fate.

[mikawa]

2 minutes ago, Slamz said:

They arrange matches, shoot each other up and exit and do it again and again and again. (This is why we can't have nice things.)

Oh abuse is always possible, lets have an alt account, then you get rewards for fighting yourself, despite no rewards for losers because you are always the winner. Awful, isn't it? No one can stop abuse completely but it is a PVP game and so we should focus on "working" PVP mechanics, I guess.

[Hodo]

8 minutes ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

And you probably got nothing from the fight (in terms of gold, XP and marks) while the Reno got everything.

IT does get a bit frustrating, to be honest, to get absolutely zero rewards for the PVP contributions I do make... like when I'm dancing around in my 7th rate, baiting the bigger ships to chase me and set them up for an engagement. Or when I tag them to buy time for my square rigged friends to extend away. Or when I rake stern armor off, then kill 112 crew but do not get an assist because I didn't do enough hull damage.

It's not going to stop me from participating - because the PVP activity is fun in and of itself - but it's nice to get something in the post battle screen beyond "Participated in Battle. No Rewards." I'd be better off just hunting player traders and leaving my colleagues to their fate.

I actually got 1 PVP mark, and about 5k and some xp.  

But when the Reno boarded the Surprise, I sat behind the Surprise grapeing the crew.

[surfimp]

47 minutes ago, mikawa said:

Oh abuse is always possible, lets have an alt account, then you get rewards for fighting yourself, despite no rewards for losers because you are always the winner. Awful, isn't it? No one can stop abuse completely but it is a PVP game and so we should focus on "working" PVP mechanics, I guess.

And, you know, there's nothing stopping people from doing this anyways, even with the current mechanics. Have an alt craft cheap ships, use your main account to sink them. So long as the rewards are higher than the cost of making the ship, you're farming.

On the flipside... what is PVE, if not farming of precisely this nature? It certainly takes less effort to farm automatically-spawning NPCs than it does to go through the trouble of creating an alt account, crafting/buying ships for it, and then sinking them with your main. Why is PVE farming considered more worthwhile / not an exploit, while PVP farming via an alt is? It sort of doesn't make sense.

Full disclaimer: I do not have an alt and do not advocate them. I'm just not convinced that the alleged abuse of alts for farming of PVP rewards is a real problem, in the sense of something game breaking for other players. There's nothing stopping people from doing it now, other than the fact that PVE farming is far more efficient. Which, unfortunately, has the noted corollary effect of making PVP rewards low.

[Guruthos]

15 hours ago, Sansón Carrasco said:

And, you know, there's nothing stopping people from doing this anyways, even with the current mechanics. Have an alt craft cheap ships, use your main account to sink them. So long as the rewards are higher than the cost of making the ship, you're farming.

On the flipside... what is PVE, if not farming of precisely this nature? It certainly takes less effort to farm automatically-spawning NPCs than it does to go through the trouble of creating an alt account, crafting/buying ships for it, and then sinking them with your main. Why is PVE farming considered more worthwhile / not an exploit, while PVP farming via an alt is? It sort of doesn't make sense.

Full disclaimer: I do not have an alt and do not advocate them. I'm just not convinced that the alleged abuse of alts for farming of PVP rewards is a real problem, in the sense of something game breaking for other players. There's nothing stopping people from doing it now, other than the fact that PVE farming is far more efficient. Which, unfortunately, has the noted corollary effect of making PVP rewards low.

PVE ships fights back ... an alt just fights back if you let them fight back ... since combat marks actually it really isn't efficient anymore but before if you calculate right youcould have made more money than you needed to invest ... especially compared to real pvp ... no repairs and time needed and there is no risk for your ship 

[Celtiberofrog]

The current testing is revealing that current features are far too TIME CONSUMING

Many issues are concerned by this and we clearly experiment DEMOTIVATION of occasional players.

Spanish Faction is loosing many players for the last few weeks...

Only NA elitist and fanatics will remain, not ideal for further testing (again!)

[Guruthos]

True it conusmes alot of time. just 1 mission a day will not bring you any further. if you don't want to play for at least 2 hours ... better don't log in and play sth different. thats somehow bad ... if things would get easier you would have a higher playerbase for a short time ... till they got everything ... and then? we are in the same situation you describe what will happen because it's too time consuming.

Trading in my point of view is boring. not because of the time it needs ... more because you just buy trade goods by contract and deliver them. if noone delivers them nothing will happen. it has no influance to the game, they could have left it away in the way it is right now but they needed something there is something to privateer.

PvE missions are all the same and just get nice because of the amazing combat system and the people you play with.

what to say about pvp ... it's nice if you have an equal fight even though you lose. but this tag an run is exhausting.

But still i love this game and it's worth way more then i paid for it if i consider my playtime here to other games and how much i enjoy it when i have time