Yar Matey

So I should just roll over and just give up when a fleet of player ships attack me in my LGV or Indiamen? I never do. I have escaped fleets of player ships chasing me with all kinds of variation in ship compositions and with enormous odds stacked against me several times, and I always manged to get away with my cargo. Its all about conserving your sail HP and using your repair strategically timed and knocking down the enemy sails. Much like the old pirate refit pre patch, these new bonuses are equally as bad. Some of them are so bad in fact, I cannot see how anyone can defend them.

Yes yes, the you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that argument! (rolls his eyes) Great way to keep casual and solo players active in this game, give them a strict disadvantage in any combat situation with their non-refitted trade and war ships. I have been doing trade runs and building ships, outfitting entire clans running solo trade runs for hundreds and hundreds of hours. What these refits do is make it so I stand no chance of ever escaping from a squad of players with these refitted bonuses. I am at a strict disadvantage. Your argument holds no weight when put into practice. A new player logs in does some missions in a cutter, finds out he needs to do some trading to get money and resources, gets an LGV, tries to do some trade runs, loses his ship and cargo to a small fleet of surprises, rinse and repeats this a few times, then quits the game after not making any progress in the game. Joke was on him the whole time, he never stood a chance, hes using a ship with no refits! HA!

@Hodo Its the combination of running a fleet of ships with these refits. For example, 1 player is in a surprise with a pirate refit, and 1 player is in a surprise with a elite Spanish refit. There is no way a player in a LGV or an Indiamen stands a chance of escaping. Take it from the guy who has been doing trade runs for a long time in this game, and who has outrun fleets of chasing player ships vs my solo indamen or LGV. I have never lost my cargo to a gank squad. But have lost plenty of warships to them.

Briefly looking at these, I can already tell that I am not a fan of some of these refits. 1) A 7% main sail force bonus is HUGE! and will give surprises and rattlesnakes designed for chasing an enormous advantage over players in ships that do not have an elite Spanish rig ship. I haven't run any tests myself, I am sure there are people that are going to test this soon and it will become the new pirate refit go to standard. I am going to throw out a number and estimate that its going to add ~1 knot to the top speed of a surprise or rattlesnake. 2) Same goes for the pirate refit. Upwind speeds will be way out of whack in a pirate refit ship. 3) Cartahena and/or floating battery will be the new go to standard for port battles giving players without these refits a strict disadvantage to players that do not. Elite ganking squads will now consist of 1 surprise outfitted with Elite pirate refit for fast upwind speeds and another surprise with Elite Spanish refit for downwind speed, and no trade ships sailing the open seas or solo player with a basic ship will ever stand a chance of escaping, let alone fighting their way out. What I would like to see changed: 1) No changes to sail force bonuses 2) No crazy changes in the base hull or mast thickness or hit points of any ships with a refit. Small Changes to reload bonuses, or boarding bonuses are fine. Small changes to heal and turning speed are fine, and VERY small changes to hit points are fine (maybe 2-3% for structure or mast) and a big fat NO under absolutely any circumstances should their be any changes to thickness in hull or mast. Thicknesses should be used strictly for balancing purposes. Remember, there is a fine line between progression and giving players who have progressed too much of an advantage in combat. If I buy an NPC ship, and I run into a player with one of these constructed ships, the player with the constructed ship should have only marginal advantages of my NPC ship. Do you think going broad side for broadside that my store bought ship of equal rate will stand a change against a ship with 7% increased hull thickness, or 20% more raw hit points? NO absolutely not!

Really great post with great solutions to solve our problems. however, I think cannon prices need a large adjustment. Cannon prices should remain very high on the 1,2 and 3rd tiers. Smaller caliber guns should be much cheaper. Large caliber guns should be expensive as they are the ones that go on 1st 2nd and 3rd rate ships.

A simple solution to the expensive guns problem, is every ship you buy from port that is NPC sold with stock guns. If a ship can host class 3-5 cannons on a specific deck, then that deck starts with class 5 mediums as an example, so that the ship is usable as soon as you buy the ship. Just my 2¢.

A 1 durability system does not have to be painful and grindy. All that needs to happen is material and labor hour costs need to be divided by the number of durabilities ships currently have now. All notes should cost 50 LH to craft (low, mid, high) and cost 10 copper, silver, and gold coins each, then remove the need to be at a specific region to craft a ship with a regional bonus and make all modules craft-able, and you now have a functioning 1 durability system that works for everyone with 4th and 5th rates plentiful in the game because it would only cost ~500 LH to replace my lost Trincomalee. We gain so much from a 1 durability system, captures NPC ships will have more use making PvE a more enjoyable experience. PvP will be much more meaningful as captured ships will have way more value. The thrill and excitement of battle will be more exhilarating because losing your ship is now felt as a real loss. The game will be way more immersive.

NONSENCE! The game is dry of PvP because there is so few people playing the game now. Its not appealing to the masses, or even myself anymore, because the game requires way too much sailing to build ships, way too much sailing to find PvP with no guarantee you will find any decent PvP, and way too much sailing to get to port battles with no guarantee you will get into one because of how rare they are now. The durability has nothing to do with these other problems.

Sigh...... Funny! Take your likes and move on! Now..... If only we could get a thread lock........

I think the overall consensus from the community was a 1 durability ship system was a better system. There were only 1 or 2 vocal community members I can remember that spoke out against a 1 durability system. Unfortunately, the devs seem to think a 1 durability system is a bad idea, and I do not think this is a battle the community can win. The devs are going to do what they want to do and we are destined to have 3 durability first rates. I already wrote a long explanation 2-3 times on why a 1 durability system is a much better system. But the main reason for wanting one is immersion and the thrill factor where winning or losing a battle will actually matter. What is the point of having this vast open world to PvP in if there is very little risk of losing your ships and your victories are shallow because you see your enemy sail back out in the ship you just captured or sunk? I really hope the devs consider implementing it, but dont hold your breath waiting for it to ever come. The devs already said no, and they dont seem to ever be convinced to change their minds no matter how vocal the community is. We still have PvP fleets FFS! How vocal was the community on this issue alone about how bad PvP fleets are? Yet we still have them!

I agree with you for the most part, but you dont need to ask us to like your post if we agree because we will like it anyway if we agree. You are right that forts have little to do with the player decline and forum threads such as this are a symptom of a much larger issue. A few things; the players that are active on this forums are the ones that helped steer development decisions, but not entirely to blame for the developers decisions such as the hostility, for example, that many on this forum were vocal about how bad it was along with the terrible player added NPC fleets to accompany them on their ventures. Today, we still have the terrible hostility grind and the fleets and we are still vocal on these issues on the forums about how terrible they are, but the devs seem to refuse to budge, at least on the fleets. They did at least promise changes to the hostility system.

AKA, CONTENT! The game needs content and in a very bad way. I agree 100%. It seems we have several posts now on this very subject of lacking content.

Just because the game falls into the sandbox category is not an acceptable excuse to not have content in the game. The tools need to exist in a game like this for PvP to take place. Before hostility, it was the flag system. Also, when it comes to adding PvP content nothing has to be forced and soft restrictions can exist in the sense that if you bring the wrong ships to the battle, you are destined to lose. For example, if the mission in a battle is to destroy the heavily armed square tower, but the tower is in a shallow water area where no non-shallow water ship can enter, the attacking team would be forced to bring at least one mortar brig, or they would lose the battle because shallow water ships will not stand a chance against a square tower and boarding one in a shallow water ship would be nearly impossible due to the difference in crew that the tower would have compared to the shallow water ship. This is a non-forced restriction where you can bring any shallow water ship to the battle, but if everyone is in a heavy rattlesnake, you will most likely lose the battle. The hard restriction of only shallow water ships makes sense because anything bigger will run aground.

The average player who buys any video game needs to be guided or pushed in one direction or another. Some need very little guidance and then they are on their way and others just want to not think at all and follow a story line or grind easy PvE content (or hard). Players like you Who find ways to entertain yourself out in OW are the exception not the rule. This is why content is so important. It gives players, especially new players, guidance. The average player who logs into this game in its current state has no clue what to do. Conquest through port battles is the PvP content that is provided for us to create our own story. We need MORE of this type of content very badly. Not everyone likes to sail around in OW looking for pvp. Yes it's great that it exists so people like you can enjoy whatever fight comes your way, but it's not enough, not nearly enough to keep people playing this game. Everyone benefits from more content. We need big battles, small battles, first rate battles, mortar brig battles and on and on... All kinds of port battle like content big and small. If the devs can do this, find ways to add more conquest type content people will come and play. Just like if story lines are added and pve adventures are added, more people will come and play. People need a reason to log in and start playing.

@Hethwill Your argument that "we the playerbase" do not want evenly matched fights because small battles would be full all the time is a false assumption because the current state of the interface for small battles is inadequate. We need a functioning and well laid out lobby for this to ever work successfully. Its current state is completely inadequate and you must know this. Second, I am not trying to take away from what OW has to offer. The hunt or even being the hunted can be quite entertaining at times. The problem is, I do not think that is what most people who come to the game are looking for. The name of the game is "Naval Action", thus, people buying this game think they are going to be engaging in lots of fierce combat against other players or NPC's. This idea is even reinforced by the trailer which shows line formations and massive first rates going broadside for broadside against other first rates. From the onlookers perspective, this implies that the game will be filled with action. Unfortunately, when people log into this game, they are greeted with a massive open world with very little action going on, thus most end up just sailing around for a little bit, possibly get ganked by professional raider and privateer captain Hethwill and then leave the game and say "wow, that was stupid" and never come back. Please do not take this as a personal attack on you and the way you like to enjoy the game, I am just pointing out how the newcomer to this game feels or perceives. Of course there are other little things like the lack of a UI n' such. When I first picked up this game, it had a lot to offer even though my first thought was "wow, no UI?". BUT! there were always port battles going on and the message that some nation was attacking another nation at xxx port was quite enticing and constantly popped up on my screen, and I said to myself "wow! I need to get into a constitution so I can participate in these large battles", so I did just that, grinded to high enough rank to fully crew a connie, and participated in loads of port battles and with the old flag system, it was engaging and very entertaining as the race to sink the ship with the flag or to plant the flag begun. It was loads of fun, if the flag managed to get planted, it was even better as a huge 25vs25 battle commenced. I participated in loads of shallow water port battles as well, and it was a blast! Unfortunately, developers decision making, for better or for worse, took that really enjoyable system away. Yes, we had lots of drama in Nat News about pulling fake flags and other shenanigans, but I and I think many others were having loads of fun, and who doesn't enjoy a little drama with some popcorn? The point is, the developers have taken away the only content that made this game worth playing, the port battles, I mean, they still exist, but they have become something that only the hardcore most dedicated players get to participate in. I remember a time when people would join in 3rd rates into a first rate port battle, and no one cared because we desperately needed the people. Now if you join a first rate battle even in a first rate and you do not have a slot filled in their list of who can join and who cant, you get scorned, even reported on the forums as a griefer if you join in anything other than a first rate. We also have a crafting system that only the players with countless amounts of hours to play the game can participate in with the new regional bonuses, but this is a different subject altogether. But the point is!, This game became a game for the hardcore, but not just the hardcore, but the hardcore of the hardcore, and that is reflected in the numbers logging in to play this game every day. I am sorry to say, but the game is in fact desperately lacking content and in a very bad way, both PvE and PvP. Players need to log in and immediately see things on the map to do and battles to participate in. The best content this game had to offer was with the old flag system. You know it, I know it, everybody who was playing during that time knows it! and there were tuns of players sailing around in trade ships to get mats to build new ships to keep the war effort going for you to attack to steal their precious cargo. Today, sadly, there is nothing more than an empty OW, and it makes me sad, because I really do love the potential this game has to offer.