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Thoughts on Age of Sail Games...


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So, this’ll be a bit long. Apologies. :)

 

I’m an Age of Sail buff, an avid gamer, and I work as a writer for a tabletop wargame company. I can’t easily count how many times I’ve read the various novels by O’Brian and Forester and Williams (just to name a few). O’Brian is decidedly my favorite, so I’m a realism buff in a big way. Also, I’ll probably draw a lot of examples from the O’Brian books since odds are good you folks have read them too.

 

Now, as I say, realism is very key for me, but I’ve also been playing video games since I was a wee tiny thing in front of an Apple II+. So, I know a thing or two about making sacrifices for gameplay. If we’re not having fun, then what’s the point? So, my purpose in writing this is to contribute my perspective on what I would consider the ‘perfect’ Age of Sail game in the broadest strokes.

 

Core Gameplay

I absolutely love your focus on gameplay coming first. Ship vs Ship. Beautiful. I mean, it is called NAVAL ACTION, right? Good name and good advertising.

 

I love that wind and weather will make a difference in an encounter. Crew skills will make a difference. Outfitting will make a difference. Damage locations will make a difference (that one is particularly fantastic!). These are all wonderful ideas. Keep going with that! The idea of a running battle where I’m counting on a chaser knocking away something vital is exactly the kind of situation I’d love to see simulated here.

 

I also really like that you’re not doing avatar combat ala POTBS. I liked their AVCOM myself, but to me an Age of Sail game is about boats, not melee. As your Admin aptly pointed out, human models are expensive endeavors, and so many other games already do that. If I want to hit things with my sword, I’ll play GW2. They’ve got just about everyone beat in that arena, so why reinvent the wheel? Let’s go with what we love: ship vs ship. Kudos to you all for that decision.

 

Suggestions on Core Gameplay:

Crew – Crew is more important than equipment. When commanders changed into new commands, often they’d bring officers and followers with them. What was more important? A brass long-nine or the man that could aim it? A well-found ship was a wonderful thing, of course. The equipment mattered. But a sailor that could hand, reef, and steer could do it on any vessel afloat. The best guns won’t hit anything if they can’t be aimed, the heaviest cannons are useless if they’re not loaded, and the finest sails can just get in the way if they’re not properly set.

 

Thus, crew allocation and skill levels are very important gameplay elements. I’d argue that they’re the most important resource in combat. Forethought and planning are key. A good way to simulate this might be to use something similar to Star Trek Online’s power allocation system. Only instead of energy transferred to weapons, shields, or engines, you’re allocating hands to guns, sailing, or repairs. Some maneuvers really do require ‘all hands’, after all. If you’re going to tack successfully, you’ll probably only have marines reloading the guns. This gives the captain a resource to manage, and gives us a money sink for expanded gameplay as training and maintenance of a happy, able crew could get expensive. More on that later.

 

Mission Type – Not every fight is about sinking, burning, or taking the enemy. A lot were, to be sure, but there was harassing shore batteries, landing troops, cutting-out expeditions, blockading, escorts, and what I like to broadly term as ‘smuggling’ wherein the goal isn’t necessarily to engage the enemy, but evade them.

 

In that regard, the type of mission should determine the win/loss condition. If I’m in a sloop and my goal is to harass enemy shipping and a 38 gun frigate shows up in my encounter, my new mission is to escape. If I’m in a 74 and my mission is to blockade when a heavy convoy appears, my new mission is to take and burn those ships. Since it sounds like you’ll be using an ‘encounter’ system ala POTBS, some variability in mission objectives based on ship type would be wonderful.

 

I’m sure I’ll have other thoughts on the core gameplay as I think on things and as we see what you develop. I’m very excited to see where all this goes.

 

AI – This is more of a plea, really. Could the computer PLEASE be smarter than to sail directly into broadside after broadside? Part of the problem with POTBS and Sid Meier’s Pirates and other such games is that the enemy Ai is hopelessly outmatched by my human brain. All well and good, I suppose, but I don’t always need to be outgunned by my opponent for a fight to be challenging. I know I’m supposed to be a heroic captain and all, but when my single ship can engage TWELVE enemy vessels in a single encounter with little risk, that’s just silly.

 

Ultimately, the problem is that I learn nothing about PVP as I learn the game. It’s not just POTBS, but any game where the ‘endgame’ is primarily PVP with a long leveling curve. You fight monster mobs all the way up to get to the good stuff, then find you’re totally unprepared for the ‘real game’ and there’s a new leveling curve. How the PVPers fight isn’t too hard to analyze. Why doesn’t the AI get an update or two? I’m not a programmer, so maybe I’m way oversimplifying, but I think there’s more gameplay to be had in defeating a single ship in an encounter where I’m in real danger of losing.

 

Also if PVE types can lose ships, and if ships are your primary economic churn, then your economy will indeed churn.

 

World and Setting:

Here’s where I’m going to wax theoretical, since you folks haven’t put anything down on paper yet, and the whole section is in the form of suggestions. From what I’ve seen, there’s still debate about the setting. Historical? Fictional? Historical Mashup? I’ll put in my two cents on that later, but I’d strongly suggest that whatever you do, the primary focus is getting us into fights and back into the core gameplay.

 

I saw a post from the admin that said ‘do you want to spend your two hours a day fighting, or traveling across the map?’ That’s a very good point. I want to spend it fighting. And while my fight might take me two hours (for a REALLY long one), I want to spend my time watching shot fly or pursuing/fleeing the enemy. I don’t want to spend it all searching for a fight. This is where POTBS had such a problem from the beginning. I can sail the red zones for hours and find NOTHING. EVE has a similar issue. And worse, should I find a fight in EVE and lose, I now have to spend many, many hours getting myself back into fighting shape. Awful. And stupid. Waste of time.

 

Essentially, I want my fights to matter, not just to me, but to the world, and I don’t want to spend an hour looking for one. I want to log in, gear up, and be in a fight inside of five minutes (or some other reasonable amount of time). When you’re talking about PVE, this is easy. I can select a type of mission, review the objectives, hit a button, and I’m in. For PVP, it can be similar, except that I’m entering a queue, and the system will match me with an opposing player looking for an identical fight. And these battles need not always be an even match. For instance, If my opponent is in a line-of-battle ship and I’m in a sloop, my job is to run his blockade. The key is to get us to the core gameplay without delay, and in the fashion that we want, whether that be PVP or PVE.

 

Now, as to setting, I won’t get much into historical vs fictional settings. I make my living devising fictional settings, and these are one and the same to me. There’s much to be said for your own setting. You’re not tied to a time period and, therefore, not tied to realism. You don’t have to do any acrobatics over a faction ‘winning the map’ ala POTBS and their peace treaty thing. Also, the exploration aspect you noted becomes an actual possibility. After all, I live here on Earth. I’ve seen the map once or twice in my time. So, if the world map is grayed out for me, all I need to know is that I’m starting on the southern coast of France. Then I know roughly which way to sail to find everything else. There’s no real ‘exploration’ to be had.

 

But, on that note, even if we’re in a fictional setting, what kind of ‘exploration’ can I do from my boat? Sure, I can find strange new lands, but what is that really for? What’s the point? I’m there to find new people, places, and things. Which are all ASHORE. And here we are without avatars. Columbus discovered the West Indies and opened up a whole new continent for exploration and exploitation. The boats stopped at the shoreline, however, until it came time to ferry things back to the old world. Where, again, our boats stopped at the docks while he reported what he’d found to the queen. You see my point here, I’m sure.

 

Therefore, my suggestion is to think carefully about what one can usefully accomplish with a ship in the exploration line. The real explorers are the people going ashore. The boat can only get them there safely and bring them home. Maybe I can fill in the map, and make the journey safer for the next boat, but is that leading us back to the core gameplay? Am I shooting cannons at bad guys? Not really. Also, one can only scout a new coastline once. Who discovered the new world? Columbus. And who was second? Right. I don’t know either without Google. It’s irrelevant. This being an MMO, only one person can say FIRST! Beyond that, it’s irrelevant, unless I’m simply checking off items on my To-Do list, which, again, probably doesn’t have much to do with me shooting cannons at bad guys.

 

Now, let’s think about what ‘projection of naval power’ can mean. It’s true that ships alone do not win a war, but they are vital in the overall scheme of things. Soldiers take territory, but ships bring the troops, their guns, and their food. Napoleon was fortunate the British Royal Navy was spread so thin for most of the war. Ships can create a landing zone, put troops ashore, and, keep them supplied through subsequent convoys. Ships are a logistical weapon to the wars fought ashore, and logistics is what wins wars.

 

So, my suggestion, regardless of time period or map, is to let the war on land proceed according to the flow of goods, supplies, and troops to the ports surrounding the embattled region. That can be America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Med, East Indies, or wherever. In fact, you could even change the map when one side wins the campaign. ‘Well done, France, you invaded Britain by 1810. Now it’s American Colonies vs British in the late 1700’s. Everybody pick a side!’ I’ll grant that doesn’t give me much continuity in my character, but I’m just putting the notion out there that what happens on land should be primarily impacted by what we do at sea.

 

And, in that regard, I think it vastly simplifies how we might interact with the world map and find our fights.

 

Example:

Let’s say it’s a European map during the 1800’s. France vs Britain. France owns Toulon, but on the big map, Britain is pushing that way from Spain. Toulon has the following missions available: Blockade. Blockade Running/Smuggling. Cruising. (Just to name a few).

 

I am British Freetrader (to borrow POTBS’s class type). I am rated for Sloops, Barks, Snows, Indiamen, and Frigates. I select Toulon as my destination, and I only have about an hour to play, so I select Minorca as my origin. The route appears on the map, and I’m told it’ll give me two encounters and be worth X for successful navigation of one and Y for navigation of both. To have an impact on the overall campaign, I have to complete both, of course, but I need not necessarily win. It’s just that the encounter’s winner will have a much higher score.

 

I select my ship type. Toulon is almost certain to be a difficult port to get into, so an Indiaman, while being more profitable thanks to its huge capacity, isn’t going to have much chance of getting through.

 

A smuggling run might be best. I select a sloop for my ship and load it up with cargo that has been convoyed/escorted to Minorca from Britain by other players (or made locally through econ, or whatever). I want the maximum effect from this run, so I select PVP as the mission type.

 

The computer puts me in the queue. It’ll match me against French players on a Blockade mission or a Cruise. Note that my mission isn’t necessarily to fight the French ship. If I get away, good. If he damages me badly or sinks me or whatever, then he succeeds. And I could be matched against a frigate, against which I have no chance in a fight with my sloop (or very slim), in which case I absolutely MUST get away. That’s leading back to the Core Gameplay, where wind and weather make such a difference, and how we sail and maneuver is of paramount importance. Heck, in such an encounter, we could both be deposited on a very large map, and it’s my job (as the runner) to get across the map, while it’s his job (as the blocker) to stop me. There could even be a time limit on it. I have a long way to go, but if he gauges the weather right, figures out my route, or is otherwise just plain lucky, I’ve got a real fight on my hands.

 

Anyway, let’s say I’ve done my run to Toulon, did two PVP encounters, and because it was a PVP run, I contributed triple my score to a British takeover of that port and aided the land war. Note that a PVE run should always be worth less than PVP.

 

If I wanted a greater impact, I could’ve taken the Indiaman, but run the greater risk. Or I could have taken a longer route, but had more encounters to deal with. Or maybe I could have taken the snow for a better mix of fighting power vs hauling. Ultimately, I could have grouped with other players, so maybe I took the Indiaman, but my Navy buddy took his frigate, and we got matched against similar odds.

 

The key being, I had no idea what I might run into, and the matchmaking algorithm picked opponents in my range. In the end, I got my fights. Heck, the French I was up against may not even have been Cruising or Blockading for Toulon. It doesn’t matter so long as the port they were representing or stationed at got the benefit of their actions for good or ill.

 

Basically, I’m suggesting making the ‘Open Sea’ map more meta than what you find in POTBS. Over there, I could be in the red zone at Turtling Bay eager for a fight and another solo player is up by Matthew Town just waiting and we’ll never find each other. That’s crazy. And for what? ‘Realism’? What-the-hell-ever, you know? I’m sitting in front of my computer in my office, not actually on the deck of a 40 gun frigate. What’s going to give me that sense of ‘being there’ more? Finding him at Matthew Town, or actually shooting cannons at each other, regardless of HOW we got together? I think the answer is plain: going towards Core Gameplay at all times is key.

 

Character:

This might just blow your minds, but I think having levels is a big mistake. Levels are a way to show a character’s progress, I know, but they’re a lazy way to do it, especially in games with such broad scopes like this. In fact, I think the only reason we do it this way is because in the various navies, junior captains get sloops, and senior captains get lineships. But, by that logic, I shouldn’t start as a captain, should I? I should start as a midshipman and learn about navigation, leadership, and which rope pulls what. We don’t go into that level of realism, so why should the higher levels be the same?

 

I suggest taking a cue from Planetside. Not the new one, as I’ve only fiddled with that, but the original Planetside had brilliant character progression. Upon starting out, I could be a tank driver, or an engineer, or heavy infantry, or a pilot, or a sniper, or whatever. But, I could only do that ONE thing. My initial certifications let me do anything I wanted, but only ONE THING! That’s key. As I played and ‘leveled’, I earned more certifications. This gave me flexibility, and flexibility was everything.

 

So, sure, I’m running around in light armor and an enemy tank rolls up and plasters me. Naturally. It’s tank vs infantry. He papered my rock, no problem. BUT, he’s rank one, I’m rank twenty. I fiddle my loadout, show up in heavy armor with a couple of rocket launchers and boom. Dead tank. What’s his recourse? None. He can ONLY drive tanks until he’s got more certifications.

 

It’s difficult to translate this example directly into an Age of Sail game, but let me reiterate that the realism in this instance doesn’t matter. The mission is what’s important. Core gameplay. So, if someone wants to start out in lineships, let them. There are missions a lineship can accomplish. Battles, heavy escorts, and blockades to name a few. If someone wants to specialize in brigs, let them. America didn’t stop building brigs when they built the super-frigates. Brigs can still harass enemy shipping, defend against privateering types, and were death to smugglers.

 

Were it me, I’d like to have the broadest range of mission types available to me. So, regardless of my class, I can contribute to wherever we’re concentrating our efforts. Blockades need running? You got it. Enemy shipping an issue? Let me get my frigate. Privateering a problem? Cruises for everyone. That’s the idea.

 

Also, on character, I think leadership is more important than gear. I know it’s easy to load us up with fine brass canons and the best powder and let only the ‘top levels’ have access to it, but, really, the most experienced and successful captains had the best crews.

 

An able crew was a wonderful thing. In the later Aubrey books, he didn’t have to search long or wide for solid, dependable crews. If word got out that Captain Aubrey was outfitting for an extended mission, they’d come crawling out of the woodwork for the chance to sail with such a lucky commander. Consequently, it rarely took him long to work up the ship’s company into something lethal. You could simulate a similar thing here by allowing captains to allocate time/money to drills and such during ‘downtime’ between missions. It’s another way to churn money through player hands, without relying too much on ship deeds.

 

Hmm, well I’ve written a solid 3600 words on this now, and hopefully not sounding too much like a crazy person. I didn’t touch on econ as I’d intended, but POTBS has a fantastic econ system you could mimic. It has two big problems:

 

First, ships are the most expensive item, and PVE players almost never lose them. The AI is too stupid, no matter the odds. PVP players need a constant stream of deeds, but a determined player with multiple accounts doesn’t need to touch the auction house to get back into fighting trim. The speed with which they get back out there is laudable, but the fact that it doesn’t draw on the economy is a problem.

 

Second, ships are the only real money sink. They tried very hard to make Contention another way to drain money out of the economy, but it’s small scale. The ‘econ bomb’ became too easily countered. It was a way to simulate a war effort, but it just didn’t go far enough. Econ players tended not to be PVP types, and running a PVP blockade wasn’t appealing enough nor rewarding enough to make it worthwhile.

 

I have no particular notions on how to fix either of these issues, but I’ll highlight the things I liked most about the POTBS system. I really liked that I ‘owned’ business interests and could contribute to my nation through a few clicks a day. The stored labor system was excellent. I just wish there had been an EVE-like system for consignments and contracts to get my goods to the appropriate markets, although that system is horribly abused and very difficult for new players to utilize. I’d have been happy to manufacture all the cannons, powder, and small arms my countrymen needed, if only there had been viable markets for such things.

 

Alas, I’ve now devolved fully into POTBS-bashing, which is not my aim. Whatever you folks decide, and however you implement things, I urge you not to deviate too far from the core of ship fights and lots of them. That’s why I love these games, and it’s what I’m looking for when I play. Needless to say, I’ll be watching this game very closely, and contributing as much as I can.

 

Keep up the good work!

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S! Adair.

 

Good read.

I think crew rating is very important indeed. It should be such that it makes a difference, but still gives a skilled captain chances. In other words, even a skilled captain can make a victory with a lesser crew. If his tactics and decisions are superior he could do it. And a captain with the finest crew should get in trouble if he makes an awful mistake. Though a ship with high level crews should be able to deal better with these mistakes than a ship with a lesser crew.

 

In the stand alone battles of the game this could all be set in the game options by the game host. So you should have the option to have a 1 (4th rate A crew) vs 2 (3rd rate C crew) game. In the open world getting a better crew should be based on time and battle experience.

 

Another thing is morale.

In battle a ship that is surrounded by enemies or cut off from the main body of its fleet should take a morale effect. A highly experienced crew would better withstand setbacks than a lesser experienced crew. Maybe it is possible to build in the configuration of your crew. So x amount of gunners, x amount of officers, x amount of marines etc. Killing a captain could seriously infuence morale. If all senior officers are killed you can expect a ship to be out of command. A ship with a highly experienced captain the morale of the crew should automatically increase.

 

In the open world. Let's say a ship has been out of port for months, or even weeks. Or locked up for months in a blockaded port. Would this influence morale? Ofcourse. It would be an idea to build in a system where morale declines over time, and can be restored over time (in port, in a fleet, etc).

 

Leadership, morale and experience/skill are inextricable. And a must in the game.

 

Verhoeven

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Yes, morale is a big deal. I think it's a good place for a significant mechanic, particularly if you go with the crew allocation suggestion. A ship with high morale can shift crew from sails to guns and back relatively quickly. Low morale is going to be slower. Also, it's a good place to sink money. A well-found ship with plenty of stores is going to have a higher morale than a ship that scrimps every dime.

 

Sid Meier's Pirates had a very interesting mechanic for morale. I don't remember it perfectly, but the longer you kept your men in service, the lower the morale got until you were forced to share out the treasure and commission a new ship. That was very cleverly done, although I think it can be improved upon.

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Thanks, adambomb. :) It sounds like the developers are really paying attention to all of us. Just like you, I kind of want to play right now. :)

 

Another thing occurred to me: playing with friends. This is very, very important to me.

 

As it stands, most MMOs make bringing new friends to the game difficult. I either have to start a new character or run around the starting areas with my vastly overpowered characters. And forget about my friends coming to play in endgame content for at least a month. As I say, this is common to many MMOs from POTBS to Warcraft and so on. Guild Wars 2 does a fair job of alleviating the difficulty by downranking us when we journey to our friends’ newbie zone, but you’re still a bit of a powerhouse.

 

Once again, I’d look to Planetside’s lack of levels to get around this problem. If a friend of mine joins Planetside, he can pick his starting certification (heavy tanks, say) and he can join me in any fight immediately. I may be rank 20, and he’s rank 1, but we both die just the same to enemy fire. I’m more experienced, but not tougher. There are no game mechanics keeping me alive. It’s only my game knowledge and flexibility that makes me ‘tougher’. And both of those things have been earned through gameplay.

 

Something similar could be done here. If my friend wants to drive a lineship, I can load up with mine, and we’ll go blockade Minorca. Or if he wants to run cargo from England to the front lines, he gets his Indiaman, and I load up my sloop or frigate. He’s immediately useful to the ‘endgame’ of conquering Europe, or ports, or whatever. Even if he’s in a lineship and I’m in a sloop, I’m still a much more knowledgeable player. It makes me more dangerous. But, if it comes to it, his guns could obliterate me in a single volley. I’m not ‘tougher’ just because my stats say I am. Or at least not substantially tougher.

 

Does that make sense?

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Journey

Long gone are the days when your MMO experience was a journey. Games lost the meaning of the “world”. This is why we are inclined to actually make a new map: Instead of a known one.

I will try to present the experience that we would want from the open world part of the game.

 

A story

 

I have joined the game as a Brit 3 weeks ago. My first schooner was presented to me by a rich relative from Europe. I spent some time in the Faction Warfare and it was good experience and money. After some time I got a shiny little brig from the Navy and decided it is time to explore and went to open map. I was sailing in the newbie area chasing small NPC pirates and hauling stuff, when I met two nice guys who I grouped with. One of the guys in a group said he wanted to make a trip to “Curacao”. What is Curacao? And where is it. It was all new to me. He then explained that it was across the ocean and it was a free island with no nations and there was a guild called “Les Enfants du Roy” that was making the best cannons in the area. It sounded exciting and I was ready for an adventure. Curacao also sounded cool and foreign.

 

The trip across the ocean was something to remember. We started by crossing the ocean passing by a group of smaller archipelagos. We had no maps (no one had) were relying on one group member who knew that area. Without him we would be lost in the ocean. But be careful one guy said – we can be attacked and lose ships. Lose ships? I asked and thought “I wish I took a schooner”.

 

Sure enough we were attacked by two Spanish privateers in frigates, and tried to get away against the wind. In 20 minutes were able to disengage and were making our way through the group of islands. Once we moved into the open sea we saw big white sails in the distance… “74!” group member shouted in chat. What was a “74” I knew before and it was a very scary sight to us. We sailed as fast as we could and tried to find a harbor with shallow waters to hide away. We wanted to wait till the night hoping 74 did not notice us and moved on. In the morning we came out of the harbor and there it was - waiting. Thank God it was a beautiful British 74. We chatted a bit in local, and were told that he is returning back to base because he was cut off by a storm from his fleet engaging a Spanish convoy. He asked us if we want to join their squadron but we wanted the cannons so much and wanted to see Curacao.

 

Going further we saw some traders in big ships, paying no attention to us. We also saw some nice places for fishing villages, which we could not use yet because we did not have money yet to form the trading company.

 

At the end, we never got to Curacao on that trip. We went into a wrong neighborhood and were engaged by NPC Xebecs, who sank our party before the sunset. That was the reason why we joined the Navy. 

 

Adapted from Keen and Graev's #MYEQSTORY blog.

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Interesting original post. I don't agree with everything, but reading it again I feel the main point is about how fights are created. Basically there is no open map ("2D map"), but every ship move is represented by missions. The description gave me a better understanding of what devs would call "faction warfare". As I see the problem solved here (lack of immediately available balanced fights), I also feel the lack of sailing freedom as kind of immersion breaking. From my point of view, conquest rimes with real time strategical moves. You criticize an open sea map, but a desertic one. 5 groups of each nation fighting around a port (+ pirates) were ones of the best moments I spent in PotBS: everyone could fight against balanced opponents, and we could play battle after battle. PotBS open sea map failed because the game failed at bringing a sustained amount of PvPers into the red zones, which represented only 10% of the map on lucky days. What if with a system of contracts (free ships with a cool down timer) and an improved territorial conquest system, the game creates entire areas (war zones or trade routes) with many players ? Also an open map helps a lot with the surprise effect when hauling or hunting.

 

If there would be no sailing map, then simulating the travels with missions would be the best way to go (sailing map is more complex). But devs seem to be willing to have a sailing map. Maybe the game could include both types: missions in the homeland, actual travel in the open world. But then how to link the 2 worlds ? Would economy be part of both ? In an open world with homelands and colonies included, some important companies could invest money into the develoment of ports (defenses to have more walls and guns during the port attacks, arsenals to give strategical bases to Navies, proposing trading or privateering contracts to increase the port wealth). Diverse strategies could be viable depending on the diplomatic relations and the wealth of the faction: investing in trade with colonies or fortifying the homeland coasts, waging conquest wars in distant empires or organizing the harassment of coastal lines.

 

I like adding some sort of representation of the inland to the conquest design. The military supply lines could be interesting. Each port region would include the contiental defenses of the port itself and the inland (representing a production of goods and a potential market). Garrisons would require little supply as opposed to armies.

 

I'd prefer however a more persistant world than a succession of campaigns. Where long term plans would matter, and achievements would create specific server history.

 

There shouldn't be any PvE grind. Cash should be generated by prices differences and captures.

 

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there was a guild called “Les Enfants du Roy” that was making the best cannons in the area.

 

Where did you get that name from ?

 

Also I agree with OP, exploration could hardly be a main feature. I'd prefer a 18th century conquest game than a 16th century discovering experience. Shallow water ports and building new ports sounds cool though. Should we really have NPCs on the open sea ?

 

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Interesting original post. 

Also I agree with OP, exploration could hardly be a main feature. I'd prefer a 18th century conquest game than a 16th century discovering experience. Shallow water ports and building new ports sounds cool though. Should we really have NPCs on the open sea ?

 

Don't read too much into it. We use stories like that in our brainstorming process trying to understand how to capture the experience for the player. Actual design might be different. But this is the story i would love to experience. 

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There’s one big problem with hearkening back to the days of EQ to design your Open Map experience: EQ is a primitive game by today’s standards. What you’ve described is outmoded by gameplay features that I would expect from any modern MMO.

 

For instance, where is Curacao? If I don’t know, I’m tabbing out to the wiki. Unless we’re in the game’s very first week, I now know where it is.

 

Why are we relying on another player not to get lost? Did my compass break? And here’s hoping he’s not a griefer leading us out to his buddies in those Spanish frigates.

 

Did no one think to send a tell to the 74? And why did we wait an entire ‘game day’ hoping he’d go away? And just how long was that, anyway? We spent it hiding, not fighting. I agree that success or failure of any given encounter shouldn’t always be ‘sink the other guy’, but a win/loss condition needs to be known immediately.

 

The bit about places for fishing villages was interesting, but there’s the Monopoly problem: Only one person can build on Boardwalk. Again, unless we’re in the opening weeks of this game, everything is going to get filled in.

 

I do have an idea that could accomplish what you’re looking for:

 

Personal servers or Guild servers

 

Just like Minecraft, it’s my world to explore, conquer, and exploit. I can play solo, allow my friends to join, open it to the public, or whatever.

 

I mean, if it’s my guild alone on this map, then there’s room to do a lot of what you describe. I went off exploring and found the spot for those fishing villages. I set them up, and now they’re mine. As far as my guild is concerned, I own Park Avenue.

 

And, if we can tailor the map, anyone that wants to recreate Europe or the Caribbean or East Indies can do so. Just make the available resources they can place a function of the number of players. Create a central hub where all players across all shards can mingle and trade on the auction house. And that hub can serve as a place to engineer wars between the two worlds.

 

Mind you, this is turning into a Nine Princes In Amber kind of setting than pure Age of Sail, but that would do what you’re talking about.

 

Coming up with bizarre setting is how I make my living. The danger in doing what you’re talking about here is losing focus on the core gameplay. Just bear that in mind. That’s all I ask.

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On a personal note, if you do decide to create your own fictional setting, please, please, PLEASE hire a real writer. Don’t let someone on the team do it because they 'wrote a little in college', and don’t hire on some friend of a friend who goes to 'all the conventions' and writes fanfic. Your setting will be bland, lifeless, and average at best. There are sooo many indie games out there with interesting gameplay but garbage settings simply because they spent all their cash on artwork, programmers, and business guys without dropping a dime on a writer. If you’re going to all the time an expense, why shortchange yourselves, you know?

 

I know that finding the real deal can be a little challenging, so if you want, send me a PM and I’ll point you to a few resources that will help. There are plenty of freelancers available if you know where to find them. And this isn’t me talking about myself. I’m employed already.

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Adair

I am not sure, why these questions are popping up about the world we are creating and how we are going to treat it. We stated it clearly on the front page of our site that we envision the end product with:

  • Multiplayer and Co-Op
  • Authentic ships
  • Realistic ship combat
  • Trading, exploration and crafting
  • Global conquest

and we are now are focused on the PvP combat only

 

 

also: "win/loss condition must be known immediately?" i am not sure that would be an interesting game to play when you know the result in advance.

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Admin, forgive me, but it's almost as if you didn't read your own post. Scroll up to #7. That's what I was replying to. Is the admin account handled by more than one person? That would explain it.

 

By 'win/loss conditions must be known immediately', I mean that when we're in a scenario, we need to know what the goal is. It can't be a secret. How else does each side know what needs to be accomplished? In your account of 'story gameplay' in post 7, it sounded like more than one encounter was an open-ended thing. That's what I was replying to.

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No problem. Yes we saw that you are referring to #7. 

 

I will rephrase the answer.

 

 

 What you’ve described is outmoded by gameplay features that I would expect from any modern MMO.
 
For instance, where is Curacao? If I don’t know, I’m tabbing out to the wiki. Unless we’re in the game’s very first week, I now know where it is.
 
Why are we relying on another player not to get lost? Did my compass break? And here’s hoping he’s not a griefer leading us out to his buddies in those Spanish frigates.
 
Did no one think to send a tell to the 74? And why did we wait an entire ‘game day’ hoping he’d go away? And just how long was that, anyway? We spent it hiding, not fighting. I agree that success or failure of any given encounter shouldn’t always be ‘sink the other guy’, but a win/loss condition needs to be known immediately.
 
The bit about places for fishing villages was interesting, but there’s the Monopoly problem: Only one person can build on Boardwalk. Again, unless we’re in the opening weeks of this game, everything is going to get filled in.
 
 

 

 

Regarding modern MMOs.

Most feature intensive modern MMO developers are in ruins, trying to chase WOW. We are not trying to outmod or outmatch anyone. We will deliver a small set of features that I and our team want from the game, doing things step by step launching with only limited basic set of minimal viable features. 

 

Regarding missions.

Win/loss conditions won't exist in a sandbox environment. Player decides on goals not a game. Or I totally did not understand what you meant by a mission should have a win/loss condition because there were no mission described.

 

Regarding parallel worlds idea..

We mentioned Co-Op. One of the methods to do co-op is the one you described spot on. And It's not a bizarre setting at all (being done in GW2 for example)- because it's a game, and not a history book. But we are not working on this right now. We are finishing combat mechanics and server technology.

 

 

on the writers I agree. Lots of games save on writers and should not.

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there was a guild called “Les Enfants du Roy” that was making the best cannons in the area.

 

Ah, good memories !

 

 

 

Don't read too much into it. We use stories like that in our brainstorming process trying to understand how to capture the experience for the player. Actual design might be different. But this is the story i would love to experience. 

 

I get the point, and discovering the game would indeed make for a good playing time. Still whether the world will be real or not is an important feature.

 

You're a new player trying the open world. After the newbie zone, you decide to go to Bristol and choose a contract for privateering in the Channel with friends. After some days of privateering around french coasts with a 12 guns schooner, and trading between London and Amsterdam with a sloop, you have enough experience to choose more distant contracts. You find an AI trading contract to the East Indies, and are given the command of a 24 guns 700 tonnes Indiaman with a cargo of fabric. You sail with your friends as a convoy. Now take a sheet and a pen, and draw the East Indies from India to Japan and New Zealand :) (without model)

 

As AI shippers are cheap, they couldn't give you maps for the full travel. But one of your friends knows where is an archipelago with a dutch trading post selling cloves. Your shipper gave you a map to the british port of Madras. On your East Indies draw, put a point in the south of India.

 

Here you are, sailing without any map. You're heading to some dutch trading post in the middle of Indonesia, in Ambon, Moluccas archipelago... Doesn't that sound like the experience you described ? Still it is the real world.

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Ah, good memories !

 

I get the point, and discovering the game would indeed make for a good playing time. Still whether the world will be real or not is an important feature.

 

 

It is and that is why we are conflicted have not made a decision. But it is not a point of no return decisions. (unlike server architecture).

Current technology allows to generate land pretty much quickly and test it. So we can test both options actually on a smaller vertical slice of a game. 

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Regarding missions.

Win/loss conditions won't exist in a sandbox environment. Player decides on goals not a game. Or I totally did not understand what you meant by a mission should have a win/loss condition because there were no mission described.

 

 

For the sandbox it should exactly be like you said. Player hosts decides on the settings. So map, goals, time, shiptypes, crew rating, weather, time of day, number of players.  Maybe even ship allocation, though that will be a lot of hassle. Players or fleets should be able to choose their ship in the game lobby. Maybe only be able to choose certain type of ships according to the settings, country, era, maximum ship types per side, etc.

 

By the way. The Dutch Carribean. Easy to find. Just follow all the islands, its at the end of the string :-). Curacao...excellent!. I go there once/twice a year, and than hop over to lovely Bonaire which is next to it. Visiting my parents who live there. It is my second home.

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There is a misunderstanding about "open sea" (post #7). Admin's "open sea" is the open world, as Adair's "open sea" is inside a battle instance. Adair's Spanish frigates chase for 20min on the open world, and Adair's 74 waits around the harbor inside a battle instance. Which of course seems very strange. "open sea" as you may know is the PotBS name of what Naval Action calls "open world".

 

Also, "sandbox" is usually used in opposition to "theme park", describing a player-driven world, not battle instances with settings made by players.

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I've seen "sandbox" used a lot to describe exactly what Verhoven is describing. Its how I think of it. You are given a space to play in (open sea or a map with island(s)) and a set of toys (list of available ships/types) and you make up a scenario using your rules (as in what ships or crew types each team has, strengths, missions). That to me is sandbox.

 

We should probably try and agree on some terms. I use "2D map" and "campaign map" to mean the open world and "3D battlespace" or "3D instance" to mean a meeting of 2 opposing ships or sides on the open world that generates an encounter. The "sandbox" would be a completely separate entity and used for either team co-op play vs the AI or faction (or casual) battles.

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I've seen "sandbox" used a lot to describe exactly what Verhoven is describing. Its how I think of it. You are given a space to play in (open sea or a map with island(s)) and a set of toys (list of available ships/types) and you make up a scenario using your rules (as in what ships or crew types each team has, strengths, missions). That to me is sandbox.

 

We should probably try and agree on some terms. I use "2D map" and "campaign map" to mean the open world and "3D battlespace" or "3D instance" to mean a meeting of 2 opposing ships or sides on the open world that generates an encounter. The "sandbox" would be a completely separate entity and used for either team co-op play vs the AI or faction (or casual) battles.

 

"map" still refers to a representation of something else. That's why PotBS used "open sea", which is also wrong since it means a zone far from the coast.

 

There could be 3 representations of an open world:

the world map (whole conquest and economy map)

navigation view (with a zooming world minimap)

encounter view (with a zooming encounter minimap)

 

I think the term "sandbox environment" was used here (post #15) to speak about a sandbox game, not a sandbox mode. But you're right about the definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_game

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I saw 5 different game modes players would like:

 

1. No world. Encounters with all parameters chosen by a player (map, goal, number of players, initial positions, ships, weather conditions). This is the mode described by those only interested in fighting in a known environment. "Hey, what if Nelson had 2 less ships ?"

 

2. No world. Encounters with most parameters randomly chosen by the AI. This is the mode like WoWP. "Hey, let's choose a ship and fight anywhere against anything balanced"

 

3. A mix of 1. and 2., players choosing more parameters. "Hey, let's team up and fight a 15 vs 15 in a bay against Les Enfants du Roy"

 

4. A world with no navigation view. Encounters with some parameters chosen by players, some parameters randomly chosen by the AI, and some parameters chosen by the AI depending on what happens in the world. This is the mode Adair described in post #1. In this mode, if a player is in Bristol he can choose amongst pre-determined possible action types: privateer in the Channel, attack Cayo de Marquis in the Antilles or trade to Amsterdam. There is no actual travelling: to trade from Bristol to Amsterdam, a battle is created.

 

5. A world with a navigation view, and encounters with all parameters chosen by AI depending on what happens in the navigation view. This is a mode like PotBS. In this mode there is no pre-determined possible actions, the player can choose anything. There is actual travelling: to privateer in the Channel, the player sets sails in Bristol in navigation view.

 

I'd be inclined to play 3. and 5., but all modes could be interesting of course.

 

 

 

Also Admin mentioned the possibility of gaining money from "Faction Warfare" and using it in the "Open World" to buy a ship. Since features aren't well defined yet, I think the money shouldn't be transferable from one mode to another (otherwise, the economy might be screwed). I'd rather see a system where a player can gain experience, that would be shared in all modes. In the Open World, Navy ships would be free: each country would keep a few unconquerable ports with an arsenal (for example, Brest and Toulon for France). For that to be possible, the economy shouldn't be aimed at building only ships (otherwise all players would play Navy), but ultimately at building ports as strongholds and/or economical power houses. Owning economical power houses would give political and diplomatical power, and strongholds with an arsenal would benefit to the Navy (more strategical bases like Gibraltar or Havana).

 

 

 

 

Current technology allows to generate land pretty much quickly and test it. So we can test both options actually on a smaller vertical slice of a game.

I went off exploring and found the spot for those fishing villages. I set them up, and now they’re mine. As far as my guild is concerned, I own Park Avenue.

 

It could be great to be able to fortify our ports in order to shape the conquest encounters. We could build walls to protect the outport, forts on the heights to protect the harbor, or even on the sea:

 

post-301-0-28381200-1375714694_thumb.jpg

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That's very comprehensive, Barberogue. Nicely done.

 

I'm a fan of number 4 (obviously) and I think 5 would work quite nicely too.

 

And, that said, I'll play anything if the combat is what I'm hoping it'll be.

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