Wang

Hey long time absent player :/ Just a idea, but i believe in the end its not about every little mechanic or the reward ratio for pvp. Open world Sandbox pvp is only really fun if their is player investment. I know some people want to steer this game away from eve but i think it is a great example of a MMO that has kept its player base interested to pvp on large scale due to this player investment. Nullsec keeps eve going. Faction warfare doesnt. Bascially NA is faction warfare. As seen a longggg time ago in NA when the Brits pushed the Spanish back to 3-4 ports they were able to still fight back in a significant way due to the way resources are distributed in the game. Now of course this is fine in the faction warfare that exists currently.... Although again a long time ago i do remember a dev had a interview on twitch and talked about formable nations were one of his idea's. To allow clans to basically form their own nations and those nations could be destroyed. To give those players a reason to expand their formable nation and hold on to it will give people to pvp..Now resource distribution and how nation formed all the blance and complexities of course need to be ironed out. Also major projects for guilds to strive too is another way (eg. Titans, Citadels). Anyway again as a long time absent player, and someone who belives he contributed to the community a lot on release. Im sure many old players remember my name.... Having that player agency, and something to be able to have goals towards, and create a true feeling of belonging to a sub set communtiy with purpose (guilds that can form nations) would bring me back to this game and im sure i would sink another 1000 hour plus into. Just my 2 cents. Howdie to all the old crew still playing and reading this forum

Why is something that was voted on back in march by the community being neglected till august? http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/12471-development-priorities-2/ We have been waiting since march for this and now you expect people to wait untill August? Good Luck with the testing of your game. See you at release.

Ok here is my recollection of events. Lets go way back. Spain had the Yuctan, the U.S. was at war with Spain and took it off Spain. They came into contact with Britain around tumbado and started taking British ports (Xpu Ha etc). The British kicked the U.S. out of the Yuctan, then War Broke out between Britain and Spain (lots of threads relating to that ) the Yuctan was taken by the Spanish then the British counter attacked and took the whole area. The British were in talks at the time of what to do with the Yuctan with the U.S. now the last thing Britain wanted while still at war with Spain was to hand back the newly attained ports back to the U.S. in case they handed them back to Spain. So during this time new talks started with the U.S. trying to hand back the ports to the U.S. to hopefully gain the U.S. as a ally in the West. The talks were to give the U.S. the Yuctan and split the ports between conttoy and mugeres to be controlled one port each between Britain and the U.S. With the note that they not be handed back to Spain. During these talks STARS started to take the ports in the gulf and Yuctan area, and we didnt mind at all due to wanting to hand them back to the U.S. No one defended against the STARS aggression because we saw them fulfilling the talks we were having with the U.S. at the time. This was a very complicated time diplomatically with everyone and it was very complicated events. All i can say in summary is that every nation is LOOKING OUT FOR THEMSELVES and no one else. You dont know me? How sad Im a friendly aussie who use to be the british diplomat, one of the founders of the british council and had long talks with all the U.S. leadership months ago Go ask your clan leaders about our talks.

Just stating this over and over doesnt help. We all know the devs are working on the game.... It's their baby, its their product, its their food on the table...its in their interest, of course they are working hard. Sitting back and being patient while the game loses its player base and also not testing aka breaking the game is not helpful either.

I gave a very simple and from my understanding easy to implement system earlier in this thread (wipe the map, give the pirates a handful of ports 5-10 that cant be lost so they can craft ships still, give them the ability to raid ports but not capture them, give them large amounts of gold based off the port size on successful raids, and maybe even disable all national player production in said port for a week) I think in that system it would please majority of people... Although i remember around steam release the developers had the idea of creating player made pirate havens, that national players would have to hunt down etc. I think thats a fantastic idea as well but much harder to implement, and the system above is something that would fix the broken mechanics and keep the player base happy for a good year or so, for further pirate mechanics like pirate havens have time to be introduced.

I dont doubt at all that the developers are hugely undermanned and completely swarmed by the endless amount of features, bugs, and balancing that is needed in this game. I dont envy them at all. The difference is i do believe the game is broken in many aspects, and the pirate mechanic is a major one in my opinion. I give the developers huge amount of credit for what they have created so far! It is a beautiful game. Personally though i believe that the way it is being developed at the moment is wrong. The great achievement of this game is the battle's themselves. The simply fact that a cannon ball can boucne off two ships and hit a third is amazing, and blew me away when i first played NA. I would of personally forgone any change to the battle's since release (eg. crew changes, land in battles, armor reworking) for more expansion of the open world mechanics (pirate rework, diplomacy, exploration etc etc.) for the simply fact that the open world itself is the area that is massively lacking in this game. Instead of fine tuning the one thing in the game that blew us all away and kept bringing us back, the part of it that is lacking and is a MASSIVE part of the game itself is a much smarter way to approach development in my opinion. I do suspect and i could be very wrong, the developers themselves are skilled much more towards developing the battles themselves than the open world. Which is quiet understandable as everyone has their own set of unique skills and knowledge, but this is where hiring new people to help in area's that your dont have great knowledge on is the answer. Again this is all assumptions....

You explain the kid hey this is how you skate, then you send him to skate. Do you lecture your child on how to skate for 4 months? Showing diagrams, explaining each and every technique, after a month let them touch a skate, second month let them 'virtually skate'' then maybe the third month you allow them to skate in a arena that is covered in soft floors and walls...i can go on and on. I think we have discussed more than enough on alternative pirate mechanics....its time to push the kids out to skate.

There are a multitude of threads already on the forums, discussing reworking pirate mechanics. Now this game is a open world sandbox, so due to that we are allowed to work how we like in this sandbox. Now the devs have asked us to test the game, testing means trying to brake it. If we are testers it is our duty to do so. This is a test. If we ignore the broken mechanics and don't try to brake the game, these issues will never get fixed. This is about breaking the game to bring the standards up, not just discussing on the forums on how to raise the standards. Actions speak louder than words. I am surprised at the push back about this idea, as if im trying to kill the game. Last thing im trying to achieve, I view it more like a bush fire. Burn it all down so that new life can grow.

So i must ask, what are the new pirate mechanics? Is there a ETA on it?

How will they get screwed over? The map will get wiped. (including assets) We will all get screwed. Then the people who want to play as a 'pirate' will have mechanics that feel much more piratey. The pirate players who want to conquer ports will jsut roll their character to a nation. Ohh also any 'pirate' who wants the pirates to function as they do now, are just the original egomaniacs who are want to be napoleons who just like the color black. Plenty of try hard napoleons in every nation, they would fit in great Everyone is happy. Waiting for over 4 months with every person who is not a pirate telling the devs...hey just a thought 'the way the pirate mechanics work at the moment, it will be the biggest nation with the most players, its inevitable' and it has been ignored for the this long while the issue grows and grows. It is at a tipping point.

I dont believe so at all. Why do you think the game is getting negative steam reviews now? Why do you think the player base is dwindling? This is a very broken mechanic that people have been telling the dev's for a over 4 months now, and it has yet to been addressed. While the issue gets worse and worse. People get tired of bashing their heads against the pirate wall. They leave the game, they go play something else. The population diminishes. Suddenly we are back to pre steam release pop over under 100 players. Ohh but look your cannon balls bounce more often! Im not being a child, i want to hugely demonstrate a very broken mechanic in the game that is in ALPHA so that the mechanic is addressed and fixed.

Hey Cid! Honestly best of luck to all you guys, and im glad that you guys are getting content on your timezone for once Hey where are all the first rates we made you guys? Nelson has some snuck away somewhere. You know how much we love you guys and i just hope that the forthcoming battles will be a blast for us all. In the end though Cid we miss you guys and want you to join us. Let's paint it black!

Hey Killick, long time no talk I dont believe fixing the pirates is a massive rework. A simply but inelegant solution is wipe the map, give the pirates a handful of ports around the bahamas that they can never lose. Enable pirates to be able to 'raid' ports using the same pb mechanics but they dont capture the port at the end. They simply get a stack of gold, and maybe (idea) stop player production at said port got a aprox. amount of time eg. 1 week Bang fixed.

I stand corrected :/ What has been stated about reworking the pirate role? War and peace patch was meant to be launched this month. It is no where in sight, and from my understanding the pirate mechanics were left out of of the initial idea's suggested for the patch. Im looking for the thread discussing the diplomacy rework, but can't find it. If someone could link it here it would be great

Yeah but it goes to show, at different stages of the game we need different things. When the player production was introduced no one even cared about it, and it was a flop. We were all yelling for diplomacy! This was due to so many issues all the nations were having and still are..but that hasnt even been implemented as of yet. So when is the pirate issue going to be addressed? In 3 months? The way things are going i wouldnt be surprised if in 3 months the map is nearly all black anyway. You will all be on here screaming for a fix. So why cause a slow death? Let's brake it swiftly, and get it over and done with so it can be addressed and fixed. So in the long term less players leave the game. 'Total war is the most humane in the long run' Clausewitz.