[PVP2] Server "Health"

[Arsilon]

Forum PvP aside and not to get confused with the political situation, I'm really curious as to the relative health of each nation, especially with all the re-rolling going on at this time and the back and forth we are seeing

- Pirates to France

- Pirates to Dutch

- Pirates to Britain

- Danish to Pirate

- Danish to Britain

- Britain to Danish

- US to Pirate

 

On the surface it seems:

Pirates: have imploded but have staged a recent comeback to re-establish a foothold back in the Bahamas.  How much of this is resulting from galvanizing those that have chosen to remain after the mass transfers?  How much of this is small groups of people from other nations re-rolling to help them out?  How many of those people switched only temporarily and will switch back once the dust settles again?  Rumors that other nations are rerolling (perhaps only temporarily) to reestablish the Bahamas as a buffer zone between Britain and the US on that front.  The Pirates were extremely fractured as a nation but seem to be re-establishing some level of unity in purpose.  Hard to gauge their actual numbers since no formal guild or guild coalition seems to be the anchor at this time.  Coming out of a period that I would say they were very unhealthy but definitely appear to be on the mend.  We will see if this is just a blip or if they can sustain current level of activity and are thus truly healthy as a nation again.

 

Swedes:  Very small nation with one 'anchor' guild [bORK] with perhaps 20-30 players at peak times at reasonably high ranks/ship levels.  Spread is very top loaded, eg 4th/5th rate and higher.  Very unified in purpose in maintaining presence around their capital.  Primary conflict with the Danish (see Danish note) and now Britain as their proxy.  Being supported by the French.  Overall I would say they are healthy but are still so small that that could tip either way very quickly depending on circumstances and whether the current conflict expands and the full British zerg focuses attention on them.

 

French:  Smaller nation but with recent Pirate transfers probably operating with 35-55 players at peak times but with much broader spread of rank/ship levels.   Probably most close to a Bell Curve with a few second rates at the top end and the vast majority still in the 5th rate levels.  After the pirate implosion, conflict seemingly resolved as their focus has shifted back to the Bahamas.   New hostilities related to the Swedish/Denmark conflict where Britain supporting the Danes (see next point) and the French supporting Sweden.  Minor skirmishes in Louisiana with the US isolated to very small number of individuals and only 1 clan from each nation really putting any notable effort.  Coming back from having only 1 port in their home area (not counting Louisiana) to push the pirates out, morale is very high and the nation is seemingly very unified.  Question remains as to where focus will turn now that pirate threat is eliminated.  Will the US try and wipe them out of Louisiana area to make them focus on their eastern holdings?  Will the British push east and expand that conflict to a full blown war?  With perceived Dutch/British coalition building (see Dutch note).  France as a nation was relatively healthy given their limited numbers in their complete focus on the pirate war.  With that focus now shifting can they sustain that level of coordination with now larger numbers (albeit not significantly larger)? What will that do to overall health of France as a nation?  They were able to hold off the pirate zerg, but can they hold off the even larger British one should they choose to expand the current conflict further?

 

Dutch:  Very quiet but small, yet growing nation with recent addition of pirate transfer guild.  Mostly fighting against Spain in South America but now recently making some moves to push into the British/US theaters, ie Yucatan and Hispaniola.  Lack of British response to ports within their borders suggest coordination to allow the Dutch to help them push North into US territory.  Dutch have been on very good terms with the French throughout the pirate conflict.  One of the major clans at center of pirate war transferred Dutch.  Will those ill feelings carry over and tarnish the Dutch/French relationship?   Will the Dutch use their new holdings in Hispaniola to push North or will they instead push east towards Sweden/France creating a two fronts for them?  Are they large enough, even with recent Pirate transfers to maintain conflict on two fronts?  While quiet and still one of the smaller nations, they seem to be relatively healthy as a nation.  Their numbers continue to grow with recent pirate transfers and they seem to be more active of late in leveraging their map position to become more of a potential player on the macro-conquest stage.

 

British:  Seemingly very fractured in overall goals but probably the most healthy nation in terms of activity level albeit seemingly very schizophrenic.  Western Brits continue to probe against the US (with new Dutch partners?)  Eastern Brits seemingly want to push into the Lesser Antilles with their now holding Puerto Rico and escalating conflict with the Swedes and French.  As a nation they are large enough to manage multiple fronts and this seems inevitable as there seems to be very limited unity across the large number of clans on goals/purpose.  Question remains whether Britain or US is the largest zerg on the server at this time -- recent events suggest it may very well be Britain even though conventional thinking continues to give the US with that title perhaps undeservedly.

 

Spanish:  Very small nation.  Very minimal activity level.  Hard to really get a feel for how many.  Lack of data points would suggest they are very unhealthy as a nation but that could be by design and they are just trying to stay under the radar.

 

Danish:  Very small with extremely split core population by timezone.  2 primary guilds [DNN] and [CN].  [DNN] recently transferred to British leaving CN which appears to be a Chinese guild operating in early morning US time.  [CN] does not seem to communicate a lot perhaps due to language barrier?  A lot of other movement going on currently several players seemingly moving back and forth between British and Danish.  Was this just to help facilitate the move by DNN to Britain or is there more going on here?  Overall seemingly a very unhealthy nation at the moment.

 

US:  The perceived juggernaut of the server in total population.  However all appearances suggest the US is even more fractured than Britain is with a very large contingent either content or just left with no other perceived choice but to PvE.  No where as active as their population would suggest they should be in the Conquest game.  Is this because they aren't truly as large as everyone thinks they are?  Do the actions of a small number of very active and very large guilds leave the impression they are more healthy as a nation than they really are?  Its really hard to tell what is truly going on in the US for me as I am way on the other side of the map and don't have as many data points to go from.  I would argue that the US is probably more unhealthy than they are healthy at this point.

 

These are just my thoughts and observations for whatever its worth.  But the main point is how do you really measure 'health'?  I figured this might be an interesting topic to throw around as keeping multiple nations healthy despite differences in overall population and map position will be critical to whether this game can succeed in the long run.

 

How can you measure health of the various nations and therefore health of the server as a whole?

 

Total Population?

Average 'Active' Population at Primetime (assuming there is a true primetime since people are from all over the world)

Ratio of PvE to PvP?

# of Port Battles per day?

# of PB fleets capable of fielding concurrently?

Average PB Fleet BR?

% Unity?

Average Player Rank?

 

If we had to score the relative health of each nation how would we do so?

 

Please discuss as this more than anything will dictate whether this game can succeed.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Arsilon

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

I think you are pretty much spot on on all you said. The only thing I'd add though is the whole British as a zerg nation image results from US lies, they lots A LOT of active players in recent weeks and the level of unity between the multiple now small to tiny clan is extremely low, with a lot of opposing views and none of them helping the others for the most part.

 

The US on the other hand can still in relatively short time pull numbers that are huge compared to any nation right now, even with their multiple high action fronts. I wouldn't be surprised if the US had at least twice as many active players as the Brits and they appear to have higher unity as well, even though they are not working as one, they do come together to defend their turf (that cannot be said of the Brits).

 

One thing is sure, the whole server pop went down by approx 40% in the last 2 weeks. If the trend maintains this server will be dead a couple weeks fro now.

[Arsilon]

One thing is sure, the whole server pop went down by approx 40% in the last 2 weeks. If the trend maintains this server will be dead a couple weeks fro now.

 

This is why I posted this.  I'm really curious as to what factors will give players a sense of activity.  Two things happen when it seems like things are dying.

 

1)  Transfer nations (especially where the price is low to do so as it currently is).  We are seeing a LOT of this.

2)  People quitting the game outright.  Division just came out, new patch has several people salty, the pirate implosion cause a lot of people to quit or leave the server, etc.

 

So are the nations healthy or unhealthy and therefore is the game healthy or unhealthy and how can you measure it since what you can't measure you can't really fix.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Arsilon

[Sir Robert Calder]

I would like to speak in the interest of Spain as a faction as I have been playing for a few weeks now solely loyal to Spain. I firmly believe we are the most underpopulated faction on US-PVP2 right now alongside possibly the Danes. Judging on Spain chat alone we can have at a peak possibly 10-12 players on at a time, but compared to the aggressors surrounding us we are completely outnumbered by this point. Earlier in the campaign it would suffice to say our numbers were much more comparable, possibly even being able to field 20-ish players in a given area, but due to Spain's immense spread and feasibly not enough players to defend it from huge pop factions in any given area, our nation was doomed for a steady decline. I think this was expected as Spain controls 80% of the map at the start, but as we began losing ports even right next to Habana many players became frustrated and left. I understand some ex-Spain players have their own personal reasons for leaving, but I feel as a whole being constantly outnumbered in every battle (and soon outgunned) discouraged a lot of the more disorganized or clanless players from playing Spain (or Naval Action altogether).

 

Even the new update that I had thought would make players more invested in sticking to a particular faction has had the opposite effect in my opinion. Factions that are already nearly invincible from player count alone are now provided with factories that they can build in areas they know they have a near impossible chance of losing, which will provide them big resource gains to complement their already large advantage against smaller or less-equipped factions. It gives almost zero incentive for players (outside of diehard loyalists or masochistic PvPers) to join low population factions, and as you see now, encourages most players to faction hop to healthy factions where they can grind their xp/crafting in relative peace while still having balanced PvP engagements on their respective fronts. As a Spanish player I find investing in my ports that can be captured to be an unwise investment, and even now we are struggling to find a reliable source of coal near our capital to utilize in an attempt to get what few crafters we have up to par with the rest of the server.

 

I also understand that there are many ex-Spain players who probably browse this forum and will be eager to tell me that Spain's demise was due to a conflict of interests in how best to defend its massive territory, but to be frank with the U.S./Brits cooperatively dismantling the Spanish across all fronts with their already massive player counts I feel those opinions pale in comparison to the fact Spain on this server is just an incredibly weak faction. Location is part of the problem as we are sandwiched, but the even bigger problem is simply numbers.

 

If there are players who are tired of not having a challenge and want to be the under dog, SPAIN is always looking for privateers to reverse our misfortunes and hopefully at least consolidate Cuba before we're shrunk down to nothing.

[Ci'Ki]

The Pirates as far a i know over the last few days have had an injection of about 8-10 players from USS, not quite a mass exodus, this happened to coincide with a few small clans  notably DC, Curse and Gun wanting to take some action, this bolstered their combined numbers to an amount that is sufficient to attempt port battles tho many battles have involved less that 25 players. What they have gained is a willingness to fight not a huge influx of players, the timing was more coincidental but obviously beneficial to each of the parties.

 

However with the recent success more players on the Pirate side are now taking an active role further increasing the Pirates ability to retake lost territory.

[Vllad]

It gives almost zero incentive for players (outside of diehard loyalists or masochistic PvPers) to join low population factions,

 

I disagree with this. I think you will have people hopping factions all the time. Their isn't enough to do as a zerg.

[Sir Robert Calder]

I disagree with this. I think you will have people hopping factions all the time. Their isn't enough to do as a zerg.

 

As of now there is no incentive to leave a massive zerg faction if you:

 

A. Enjoy crafting with little reason to fear losing your ports/crafting hubs/trade routes.

B. Enjoy winning battles on sheer numbers alone/enjoy being a part of a large community.

C. Enjoy safety/security of leveling near your capital without major ganks occurring.

 

Spain is right in the middle of the two largest zergs on the server and has none of the above, and I still see people who actively disregard the idea of joining (or rejoining) Spain's ranks because of these very reasons. I understand other factions such as the French have been able to reverse their situation nearly completely, but without the ability to even gather 20+ players up at any given time on Spain we are stuck in a quagmire as a faction.

 

Spain is truly hard mode.

[ajffighter86]

Overall PVP 2 is definitely dying, unfortunately.

 

About 3 weeks ago, we reached a peak of about 950 players.

 

Even on weekends now it is hard to break 500.

 

I suppose this is in large part due to the number of pirates active on the server prior to the French comeback. Pirates went from being in the top-3 largest factions on PVP 2, to being near the smallest. Although many of those pirates re-rolled into nations, it seems that the majority of those pirates seem to have quit playing, although it is interesting to note the recent 4-5 ports around Mortimer that were captured in the span of about 48 hours. Perhaps more pirates have re-logged into the game following the improvements made in the recent patch.

Edited March 13, 2016 by ajffighter86

[ajffighter86]

As of now there is no incentive to leave a massive zerg faction if you:

 

A. Enjoy crafting with little reason to fear losing your ports/crafting hubs/trade routes.

B. Enjoy winning battles on sheer numbers alone/enjoy being a part of a large community.

C. Enjoy safety/security of leveling near your capital without major ganks occurring.

 

Spain is right in the middle of the two largest zergs on the server and has none of the above, and I still see people who actively disregard the idea of joining (or rejoining) Spain's ranks because of these very reasons. I understand other factions such as the French have been able to reverse their situation nearly completely, but without the ability to even gather 20+ players up at any given time on Spain we are stuck in a quagmire as a faction.

 

Spain is truly hard mode.

 

I think crafting is actually harder to do in larger nations, even after the addition of production buildings. Competition for resources in the larger factions is pretty fierce.

 

Combat on the other hand, is incredibly difficult for smaller nations.

Edited March 13, 2016 by ajffighter86

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

Overall PVP 2 is definitely dying, unfortunately.

 

About 3 weeks ago, we reached a peak of about 950 players.

 

Even on weekends now it is hard to break 500.

 

I suppose this is in large part due to the number of pirates active on the server prior to the French comeback. Pirates went from being in the top-3 largest factions on PVP 2, to being near the smallest. Although many of those pirates re-rolled into nations, it seems that the majority of those pirates seem to have quit playing, although it is interesting to note the recent 4-5 ports around Mortimer that were captured in the span of about 48 hours. Perhaps more pirates have re-logged into the game following the improvements made in the recent patch.

 

From my experience, the gist of the players we lost was because of waning interest in the game as opposed to people leaving for other servers or factions, etc.

 

As an example. CF back at it's height as pirates had 58 total members, over half of that number online every single night. On the weekend we voted for the Dutch switch, we still had 58 members, but at the highest of the night we had 8 online. These are not players that left for other nations or servers, these are players that deserted the game itself. Our peak server activity went down about 40% in the last 2 weeks and the same numbers can be seen on PVP1. I can only conclude that approx 40% of the GAME's population got disinterested in the game.

 

While this is somewhat normal for any new game after this amount of time, I'm a bit concerned at the lack of new players to replace them. We do see new faces, but we're definitely losing more players than we gain over the course of a week, so the game IS dwindling down.

 

Ultimately it comes down to what I said in another post... Content is a bit slow to come (I applaud the big patch we just had, but more frequent/smaller patches would definitely do good for the game pop), the price tag for the game is too steep for many potential new buyers, the XP curve is one hell of a grind for the average player, etc... 

 

It's not the server which is dying, it's the game IMHO... slowly but surely.

[RURickJames]

 

Danish:  Very small with extremely split core population by timezone.  2 primary guilds [DNN] and [CN].  [DNN] recently transferred to British leaving CN which appears to be a Chinese guild operating in early morning US time.  [CN] does not seem to communicate a lot perhaps due to language barrier?  A lot of other movement going on currently several players seemingly moving back and forth between British and Danish.  Was this just to help facilitate the move by DNN to Britain or is there more going on here?  Overall seemingly a very unhealthy nation at the moment.

 

 

As a current member of DNN and with fairly regular communication with some CN members, this is partially correct.  Anecdotally, here is what I know (if any other PVP2 Dane knows more/better please chime in)

 

At EA release, VESTI was the biggest & healthiest Danish guild; with 30+ players, many high level.  I believe CN was formed not long after, a fairly small & tight group.

 

VESTI was the group that expanded the Dane-Norge nation into Puerto Rico in the first couple weeks of EA; however, VESTI pretty much broke up after that.  Many of the leaders/top players moving to other games, a few moving to Britain, and the remaining defaulting to solo.

 

DNN was formed about a month ago, based primarily around the few left solo from VESTI, with the desire to provide new Dane-Norge players a group to play with.

 

As it stands currently, DNN still exists and is made up of ~15 players (6-8 regulars), mostly low level just learning and trying to enjoy the game.  Bjergen & OneArm are the best POC's for more details.  There may have been some new DNN players that jumped to the Brits after seeing little chance to do resource trading (no ports)/personal missions (constantly ganked), but probably less than 6 total over the last couple weeks.

 

CN is still kicking strong, and their numbers seem pretty stable.  I'm not wholly sure, but seem to be somewhere around 20+ (~dozen regulars).  They do have a good number of high level players, and seem to focus a lot on enjoying the fleet PVP aspect of the game.  AnEra & Choie are probably the best POC's for CN.

 

Agreed: Dane-Norge nation not very healthy, as there is little potential new player growth due to only having 1-2 ports and sitting in the middle of a war-zone.  That said; there is a small core of players interested in remaining true to the nation

 

Cheers

Edited March 14, 2016 by RURickJames

[Slamz]

France is still remarkably healthy and I will go out on a limb and say it's because we have been one of the most focused "actual PvP" teams.

 

Not trying to be political here, just not sure of another way to put it, but what we've seen of the Pirates and the Brits is what's killing the game: grinding their way up to higher ranks and then simply showing up with so many numbers and so much weight that you can't fight them. The irony is that it kills the game for them more than for the people they "fight".

 

I have to imagine a lot of the pirates really did get bored out of the game. They grinded their way to high level ships (boring!) and then finally went on the attack only to discover that we left our port battles undefended because there was literally no point in trying -- they were too high level and too numerous.

 

And last night was another perfect example. The Brits attacked Fredericksted with over 10,000 BR -- average BR for them was about 450. French actually showed up with 21 defenders but only about 5000 BR -- sorry, but that's really the best we can do at our rank. So the Brits quickly killed the towers and won. It could have been a great fight, 25 v 21, but the Brits literally leveled their way out of PvP. I have to imagine that was a pretty boring night for them, capping off a pretty boring month. (I don't think anyone sunk on either side. It was over that fast. I was hitting a 3rd rate with no armor and the fight ended faster than his ship could fill with water.)

 

 

Meanwhile, we still spend a lot of time hunting on the OS (this, in fact, is why we are lower level) and can generally find people to pick off. So we're losing PvT port battles but getting a lot of open sea PvP. That keeps us entertained while our enemies are literally boring themselves out of the game.

 

There's a lot of fault we can place on the game design here that we could talk about, but the players share a lot of blame here as well.

 

Grind -> grind -> grind -> grind -> show up for port battles that nobody else can even fight you in -> quit.

Open world PvP -> awesome fun -> everyone still playing after 30 days but you can't defend ports.

 

Pick one.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Slamz

[Capt. Rice]

Yea lots of people have reached high ranks and do not have content to play but this and alpha so its ok.  but numbers are low.

[Bach]

As of now there is no incentive to leave a massive zerg faction if you:

A. Enjoy crafting with little reason to fear losing your ports/crafting hubs/trade routes.

B. Enjoy winning battles on sheer numbers alone/enjoy being a part of a large community.

C. Enjoy safety/security of leveling near your capital without major ganks occurring.

Spain is right in the middle of the two largest zergs on the server and has none of the above, and I still see people who actively disregard the idea of joining (or rejoining) Spain's ranks because of these very reasons. I understand other factions such as the French have been able to reverse their situation nearly completely, but without the ability to even gather 20+ players up at any given time on Spain we are stuck in a quagmire as a faction.

Spain is truly hard mode.

I have to agree.

Human nature is what it is and that may be what Vllad us not taking into account. I watched POTBS degrade from a real actively healthy pvp game out of beta into an extreme PVE game with the few hardcore pvp rs cross teaming out of shear effort to get pvp. Now as Vllad said, there will always be nation hopping. This will be by bored pvp rs looking for some action and panicked PVE/crafters following their nation getting crushed. That is how POTBS was running mid stream. In the end human nature found its way. The crafters responded by simply crafting in all four nations so the no longer cared what rvr shifts the map had. The PVE players all gravitated to the high population nations which allowed them to hide in the masses grinding out NPCs at cat island and SC like there was no tomorrow. The PVE players and gladiatorial pvp players did so much forum whining that so many restrictions were placed on pvp that the hard core rvr were forced to nation hop regularly to maintain enough players fir port battles.

I believe we should see the same human nature driven paths in Naval Action though at an accelerated rate in the Alpha due to increased player freedom. So yes, I don't believe Spain will be attractive to any but the most hard core pvp player. More so I can't see any reason to join Spain unless it is an entire clan defecting from another nation to do it. Certainly PVE or crafter minded players will fair much better in a high pop nation since markets in this game are mostly closed to own nations and resource driven.

As to NA alpha? Crafters in small pop nations are probably already running accounts in multiple nations. Pvp players bored in Zerg nations are already hopping nations. PVE players are already seeking out secluded or Zerg protected spots to grind endlessly fir 1st rates so they can grind in first rates some more. In one month, we seem to have followed the POTBS path of the first three years. But that makes sense as we're dealing with the same human nature issues. So the question is now, what would NA change to avoid this when the game goes live? I believe an official alliance or political system that allows allies to help without having to nation hop is one good one. Second the game needs a way to avoid stagnation. Ports should naturally revert back to the original owners if not being used by the conquering nation somehow.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Bach

[[MCC] Die Antwoord]

France is still remarkably healthy and I will go out on a limb and say it's because we have been one of the most focused "actual PvP" teams.

 

Not trying to be political here, just not sure of another way to put it, but what we've seen of the Pirates and the Brits is what's killing the game: grinding their way up to higher ranks and then simply showing up with so many numbers and so much weight that you can't fight them. The irony is that it kills the game for them more than for the people they "fight".

 

I have to imagine a lot of the pirates really did get bored out of the game. They grinded their way to high level ships (boring!) and then finally went on the attack only to discover that we left our port battles undefended because there was literally no point in trying -- they were too high level and too numerous.

 

And last night was another perfect example. The Brits attacked Fredericksted with over 10,000 BR -- average BR for them was about 450. French actually showed up with 21 defenders but only about 5000 BR -- sorry, but that's really the best we can do at our rank. So the Brits quickly killed the towers and won. It could have been a great fight, 25 v 21, but the Brits literally leveled their way out of PvP. I have to imagine that was a pretty boring night for them, capping off a pretty boring month.

 

 

Meanwhile, we still spend a lot of time hunting on the OS (this, in fact, is why we are lower level) and can generally find people to pick off. So we're losing PvT port battles but getting a lot of open sea PvP. That keeps us entertained while our enemies are literally boring themselves out of the game.

 

There's a lot of fault we can place on the game design here that we could talk about, but the players share a lot of blame here as well.

 

Grind -> grind -> grind -> grind -> show up for port battles that nobody else can even fight you in -> quit.

Open world PvP -> awesome fun -> everyone still playing after 30 days but you can't defend ports.

 

Pick one.

(No, seriously though, I wish everyone had just done #2. The world gets reset anyway. Ports aren't that important. But boring your guildmates out of the game is going to be hard to recover from.)

 

You keep hitting that nail Slamz and while I agree with it, you have to understand that it is totally biased towards your personal interests. PVP is one aspect of the game and I would say that a majority of players even on PVP servers do not have this activity as their main priority.

 

I'm a good example of this, I like to experiment all a game has to offer, so I do a bit of everything. I do PVP, I do missions, I do crafting, I do trading, I do social, I do politics, implicate myself in clan leadership, etc. While I enjoy PVP, I could do without for a week and not be bothered by it. I know many other people who live for PVP, if it ain't PVP it's sh**, and they log on and if there is no PVP action within 5 minutes, they log out and go play Rust, COD, CS or whatever other instant action game because that is what they crave.

 

Ultimately, the game needs to cater to all types of players and make each possibly activity interesting and captivating. Missions as they are clearly are placeholders, they will introduce better ones eventually... Same with everything else.

 

As for the grind, it's real whatever your interests are. I would argue that your PVP-centric interests make it much worse, you guys are behind the curve in terms of XP/rank because of it and I would argue that it should NOT be the case... Spending all your time trading, crafting, missioning, PVPing, etc. should all give more or less the same gross XP progression, maybe with perks... PVP a lot? Get a small boost to PVP XP and even maybe some special upgrades (PVP planking for instance that protects a bit more and doesn't reduce speed as much?), trade a lot? Get better prices at ports, more gold rewards from missions, cheaper repairs, etc... Mission a lot? Get a damage/XP bonus vs AI ships... etc...

 

This way everybody can do what they want and get stuff related to their main interests...

[Bach]

From my experience, the gist of the players we lost was because of waning interest in the game as opposed to people leaving for other servers or factions, etc.

As an example. CF back at it's height as pirates had 58 total members, over half of that number online every single night. On the weekend we voted for the Dutch switch, we still had 58 members, but at the highest of the night we had 8 online. These are not players that left for other nations or servers, these are players that deserted the game itself. Our peak server activity went down about 40% in the last 2 weeks and the same numbers can be seen on PVP1. I can only conclude that approx 40% of the GAME's population got disinterested in the game.

While this is somewhat normal for any new game after this amount of time, I'm a bit concerned at the lack of new players to replace them. We do see new faces, but we're definitely losing more players than we gain over the course of a week, so the game IS dwindling down.

Ultimately it comes down to what I said in another post... Content is a bit slow to come (I applaud the big patch we just had, but more frequent/smaller patches would definitely do good for the game pop), the price tag for the game is too steep for many potential new buyers, the XP curve is one hell of a grind for the average player, etc...

It's not the server which is dying, it's the game IMHO... slowly but surely.

This has me concerned as well. Not so much that we don't see new players at the moment as the game is not advertised as live. I would never have thought the alpha was this advanced had I not seen it first. However, there is going to be a big negative to new players. The grind in this game is either to easy or the end game ships should never have been reachable by grinding. We're barely a month old and players without third rates are already being told to stay out of port battles. When the game goes live we're either going to need to convert a lot more ports to shallow water or somehow restrict rate ships or new players will find themselves barely able to rvr. Edited March 14, 2016 by Bach

[Mrdoomed]

I have to agree with slamz. The sheer terror people seem to experience at just the thought of pvp and losing a pretty pixel ship is off the charts.

There are SO MANY guys who only pve and do missions and the near mention if doing some pvp gets you black listed. I cant understand why so many people scared of pvp are in a pvp server.

Missions shouldnt be available after 2 or 3rd level and only have the random world events.

[Capt. Rice]

As a officer in a large clan in  on the US side i do see the numbers dropping...and i have to constantly recruit to keep our numbers high. but that's what you get from a game that is still in alpha. not that im complaining at all.

[Vllad]

PVP is one aspect of the game and I would say that a majority of players even on PVP servers do not have this activity as their main priority.

 

 

I am glad you enjoy the other aspects of this game but if anyone is playing this game for anything other than the RvR pvp then they are playing the wrong game. Naval Action just doesn't provide enough of the other things to make it remotely entertaining beyond just the PVP.

 

This is an RvR pvp game and that is pretty much all their is so far in this stage of development. It is one of the best RvR games to come out in a long time. Naval Action should stick to its strengths or Bach's post above will come to pass twice.

 

When you take a PVP game and try to make it cater to other types of players you generally just end up making no one happy.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Vllad

[Mrdoomed]

When you take a PVP game and try to make it cater to other types of players you generally just end up making no one happy.

This is what im worried about. I know the devs are keeping pretty firm in their stance on what this game will be but ive seen to many games ruined by squeeky wheels and then they quit anyways.

[Capt. Rice]

This is what im worried about. I know the devs are keeping pretty firm in their stance on what this game will be but ive seen to many games ruined by squeeky wheels and then they quit anyways.

Hopefully the devs will stick it out and the nay Sayers will be shunned...

[Slamz]

Ultimately, the game needs to cater to all types of players and make each possibly activity interesting and captivating. Missions as they are clearly are placeholders, they will introduce better ones eventually... Same with everything else.

 

I gotta disagree here, because some of the players want contradictory things. I think we already see that:

"I want lots of levels and for leveling up to have meaning."

"I want RvR and PvP without a lot of grinding."

 

Those are two very contradictory goals and the game seems to be trying to satisfy both to the fulfillment of neither. Person #1 grinds his way to high levels and then finds out there's nowhere else to go and hardly anyone to fight at his rank. Person #2 finds out he can't participate in port battles because he didn't grind enough.

 

The game needs to decide who its audience is and cater to them. I guess the audience could be "people who love to grind and then love to PvP only after they are done grinding" but I'm not sure that's a real audience or even a feasible one (the fastest grinders will always end up being bored and then the lemming effect starts up).

[Sir Robert Calder]

Many players that I've seen have been discouraged from playing actively seemingly just because there "isn't anything that new about the game" in its current state, even with the latest "big content patch" and I'm inclined to be sympathetic.

 

Really all this patch added was a new ship that had already been present in the game before, as well as some text boxes that produce resources on a daily basis. I hope that the amount of resources that the dev team has been putting on the land integration in combat will be worth the wait. I enjoy this game as it stands right now, but I might also be fleeting if I'm sailing around in a Pavel eventually with no one to shoot at.

[Grinch]

In addition to everything that has been said thus far, I would say another reason for stagnation on this server (at least in terms of US) are port capture windows.  I'm going to go ahead and make an educated guess that the US has 0-1 non-USTZ clans.  If you look at a good majority of ports held by GB or other nations, most are set for 12-14 or 14-16.  This game is a hell of a lot more casual than EVE and very few people are going to pull alarm clock ops to retake ports that early in the morning.   Can you take a deep water port with a handful of people?  Sure, but you better hope it's not defended by more than a Cerberus.  So, there you have it PVP2.  If you didn't know the secret to winning the server: cap and set port windows for real early USTZ.  The server is too underpopulated to force real fights. 

 

While we're discussing the decay of PVP, I just want to throw in a quick "get rid of reinforcement zones asap" sentence in here.  I know it's coming, but not fast enough.  

[Slamz]

Really all this patch added was a new ship that had already been present in the game before, as well as some text boxes that produce resources on a daily basis.

 

Yes, as much as I enjoyed this patch, I frown on it being called a "big content patch".

 

It was a nice combat mechanics patch with a tentative resource revamp (tentative because until NPC resources are shut off, the new resource system can be largely ignored). It was not a "big content patch", which to me implies some substantial new things to do.

 

And while adding ships to the game is nice, it's really not going to change anything. I doubt that "lack of ships" is anyone's top reason for quitting.

 

 

What I'd really like to see, I think, is a massive rework of port battle mechanics. Somehow it has to not be a battle of "he who brings the biggest ships wins".