Vinnie

^^^ What he said... Has to be the update.

One disappointment in Loki is the inability to battle chat with the new Loki-ed no-longer-AI opponent. It would be great to know who you are dealing with and chat like in a normal battle. I think allowing the Loki-er to say "Ha Ha, take this you big bully" or the Loki-ed to say "If I'd known Koltes was going to take command I might have reconsidered attacking an Indefatigable with a Mercury"... I'm a little disappointed in the game's shrinking social aspects. We lost open-world communications with opponents, which I found usually fun. One reason people play MMOGs is because there are other people involved. Without communications, not much difference. Regarding the whole Loki concept, its genius. One of my favorite parts of the old "Napoleon Total War" was the ability to open up your battles to random opposing players. This should be similar fun.

If the user of the Loki rune wins the battle does he get combat medals? Should get them x3...

I strongly approve of the limit on # of high rate ships in a PB, but oh, the whining.... Say, in clan X's PB they assign roles and friendly clans show up with higher-than-expected rates. Not let them in? Will take a boatload of coordination, not usually seen. Hard to find a way to assign captains to ship-types. Can't limit by rank since everyone is eventually an Admiral. Can't let clan-leaders assign ship-types, people will break off and form small or solo clans. I can't see how it would work, people being people. And the whining would be even louder over shiptypes limited by nationality. Everyone would claim that the other guy's specialty ship is OP and destroys the game. Nerf it! Buff mine!! Killing the game!!! I quit!!!!. DLC ship complaints x10.

100% agree, I've had lots of fun conversations with opposing players in the game. I miss open-world conversations, those have been fun too, very few abusive. For a MMOG the population is unusually civil overall. One day I was in a Requim (which I can't sail for shit) when engaged by an expert in the same (Latron I believe). He spent 15 minutes giving me lessons before sinking me. A gentleman and a sailor. Not often you hear someone say "now shoot at this part of my mast"...

Did some thinking about possible reasons for the decline of the game. I think that the game fails in one key area; -- The game needs to be fun for people of all skill levels. -- That doesn't mean that skill level shouldn't determine who wins an engagement, of course it should. But all skill levels and ranks must have a role to play or things get boring and frustrating fast. Expecting many people to suffer through a hundred hours of getting sunk by better players in better ships within ten minutes of leaving the capital zone is just silly. Most people won't stick around long enough to "get gud". And even the people who don't "get gud" enough should be able to have fun. Think of the difference between these two scenarios; 1) Player sails out of Shroud Cay into the patrol zone. Enters a 3 v 3 battle, fires some guns, takes a few hits, expends some adrenaline, participates in some team conversations, gets sunk and winds up in Shroud with both experience points and experience. 2) Player sails out of Shroud Cay toward the patrol zone. Gets jumped behind the island by six players who taunt him while sinking him in five minutes. He winds up back in Shroud pissed off as hell, having gained nothing except a desire to leave a bad review and deinstall the game. The players in scenario 2 don't seem to realize that they are eating their seed corn. They will wail about a lack of content, watch the game decline and blame everything but their short-sighted egotism. It is the same as if WoW allowed level 20 characters to PvP in the lower level areas. Pretty soon there wouldn't be any new level 20 characters, everyone getting tired of getting their head pounded into the ground while being told to "get gud". Human nature being what it is you won't end scenario 2 without game mechanics. Some have been proposed; Ranked level zones, no exp for gank-level kills, etc... Till some way of allowing the average players to participate in the game, the game will decline. As anyone who has fought against me will testify, I'm an average player. My skills won't wow anyone. Until recently I still enjoyed the game but find myself logging in less and less. Opportunities for anything but getting ganked four-to-one are few. Its become frustrating and boring. Forum is still fun though. Hope it continues after the servers are shut down next year. Vinnie

I wonder if instead of alliances (or until alliances) small countries should all jump to a single no-longer small nation. One which still has a decent ship-building capability. Then if the zergs roll over that you can stick a fork in the game, its done.

The one-l lama, He's a priest. The two-l llama, He's a beast. And I will bet A silk pajama There isn't any Three-l lllama. -- Ogden Nash And of course, Nash was incorrect. A three-l lllama is a really big fire... (Pardon begged from non-Americans)

Hard to justify watching the game get destroyed by crappy game mechanics when Borderlands 2 just dropped a new free DLC.

This would go a ways towards reducing the main danger to the game - the fact that there is no negative feedback loop on clan size, which can only end up with one clan ruling all (because statistics). I doubt it is strong enough, AI being what it is. But it is the very first time I've heard the Devs even recognize that this is a threat to the game. I'm heartened.

Well, they wouldn't operate as a clan. Don't even have to talk to each other, antisocial bastards that they are. Sail by, give each other the finger, just kick in $50,000 a week into the port-owners coffers to maintain access to ass-kicking ships.

Wonder if dedicated solo players might form a clan which only acts as a friend to a port-owning clan? A traditional clan might open their shipyard to a group of lone wolves if they offered to screen for the occasional port battle. Call themselves SOLO or something ("Sons of Liberty Online"). Or charge a fee.

Brill idea

This "Collapse of Nations" thread illustrates the need for regular map-resets and perhaps wipes. Hear me out before the expected "You can have my 1st rate when you take it out of my cold, dead hands". In WWII online there are set victory conditions which when met, one side is declared the winner and the map resets. We could do the same, with rewards for the winning side. The rewards could be additional ship bonuses to the winning clans or be as simple as getting a permanent national crown next to your name. It would be impressive to be "Insert-Cool-Name-Here" with a black crown (won with Pirates), grey crown (won with Russians) and blue crown (won with French). Map resets wouldn't be traumatic if they were an expected part of the game. In any system (genetics and AI) drift will form a majority and overcome, which is why there is a genetic Eve and a genetic Adam. Randomness ensures >someone< will win. Game has to take this into account.

Would be a great training tool for helping new members of the clan get up to speed with pvp.