Development priorities

[MassimoC]

Open world and off line career like old Age of sail games

[Grunf]

I would say open world first. Note, for the first instance, it does not have to be a big open world (2-3 small islands, 2 small towns, 1 village)

 

I like the fact that you can already choose your ship and go into combat. That means basic game mechanics are in place.

Adding open world would close a game loop, and you would have a playable game, not instanced battles.

 

I would like to compare this development to Elite: Dangerous which launched today:

 

1. First they had Alphas - which was same as here. Ships, flight, graphics, and a little bit of combat (scenario based). Few ships just to test core mechanics. - To me it looks Naval Action is about to pass that stage
2. Premium Betas - A Very limited Open world (not sure how many, but I think around 5 star systems, with 1-2 space stations) (out of a galaxy with millions of star systems). This gave them the chance to close the game loop, and see how would a person travel from A to B. Also how a player would interact with stations, and how a player would be getting in and out of combat. In my mind regarding Naval Action some stretch of sea, 2-3 smaller islands (i.e. 2 inhabited town, village whatever, and 1 sandbank style) should do it, and then expand from there
3. Betas - up to 10 ships and 20 star systems in Elite (adding Trading, Exploring and Mining - 1 per beta1, beta2 etc). In terms of Naval Action (adding 1-2 more islands, perhaps 1 with bigger town protected by a fort), few more ships, and adding a exploration aspect, or trading
4. Gammas - "Almost Done". With most of the mechanics in place, they were mostly balance, bug fixing, and adding content (more star systems, more ships), some game mechanics (Missions). In terms of Naval Action, hereby I would add a layer on top of all (ships going from town A to town B - why, what is their purpose - traders, raiders, etc)

 

Not to bore everyone too much, the core idea is VERY simple.

Whenever introducing NEW game mechanic with few examples (2-3 not more). I.e. 2 secret island locations to explore (or 2 ships for combat). This gives a chance to debug the mechanic, not the actual example. Then scale up from there

 

I am taking Elite Dangerous as an example, as their every release introduced something new, while refining and fine tuning other aspects. However I believe they are around 170 ppl strong which means for Naval Action this has to be taken into account.

 

My favorite game was Sea Dogs by Akella. No game after managed to get that same ship to ship combat feeling. AC4 did help popularize it though, however I agree they weighed more towards assasin gameplay than pirate lifestyle. Still it was a great game :-)

 

I have just pre-ordered Naval Action today, after seeing Sidestrafe play it. Can't wait for friday :-)

[Prok]

open world and trading system for me

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

I would say open world first. Note, for the first instance, it does not have to be a big open world (2-3 small islands, 2 small towns, 1 village)

 

I like the fact that you can already choose your ship and go into combat. That means basic game mechanics are in place.

Adding open world would close a game loop, and you would have a playable game, not instanced battles.

 

I would like to compare this development to Elite: Dangerous which launched today:

 

1. First they had Alphas - which was same as here. Ships, flight, graphics, and a little bit of combat (scenario based). Few ships just to test core mechanics. - To me it looks Naval Action is about to pass that stage
2. Premium Betas - A Very limited Open world (not sure how many, but I think around 5 star systems, with 1-2 space stations) (out of a galaxy with millions of star systems). This gave them the chance to close the game loop, and see how would a person travel from A to B. Also how a player would interact with stations, and how a player would be getting in and out of combat. In my mind regarding Naval Action some stretch of sea, 2-3 smaller islands (i.e. 2 inhabited town, village whatever, and 1 sandbank style) should do it, and then expand from there
3. Betas - up to 10 ships and 20 star systems in Elite (adding Trading, Exploring and Mining - 1 per beta1, beta2 etc). In terms of Naval Action (adding 1-2 more islands, perhaps 1 with bigger town protected by a fort), few more ships, and adding a exploration aspect, or trading
4. Gammas - "Almost Done". With most of the mechanics in place, they were mostly balance, bug fixing, and adding content (more star systems, more ships), some game mechanics (Missions). In terms of Naval Action, hereby I would add a layer on top of all (ships going from town A to town B - why, what is their purpose - traders, raiders, etc)

 

Not to bore everyone too much, the core idea is VERY simple.

Whenever introducing NEW game mechanic with few examples (2-3 not more). I.e. 2 secret island locations to explore (or 2 ships for combat). This gives a chance to debug the mechanic, not the actual example. Then scale up from there

 

I am taking Elite Dangerous as an example, as their every release introduced something new, while refining and fine tuning other aspects. However I believe they are around 170 ppl strong which means for Naval Action this has to be taken into account.

 

My favorite game was Sea Dogs by Akella. No game after managed to get that same ship to ship combat feeling. AC4 did help popularize it though, however I agree they weighed more towards assasin gameplay than pirate lifestyle. Still it was a great game :-)

 

I have just pre-ordered Naval Action today, after seeing Sidestrafe play it. Can't wait for friday :-)

 

This sounds very similar to how Naval Action is approaching things.  Welcome!

[William the Drake]

I am very split with this. 

My first vote goes to Improving sailing and Damage models further. I think true emphasis should be placed on refining and fine-tuning the combat system and all that goes with it: U.I. , damage models, boarding, etc. In my opinion, you should focus most of development time on what is available to us now, the combat. Get it to the point that you want it to be at for release prior to devoting all resources to another (new) aspect of the game. This is the foundation that the rest of the game should be built upon. Do not condemn what has the potential to be an astounding game with a weak foundation.

 

However, my second vote would go to the open world, as an MMO that offers freedom to its players to play, travel., and explore the way and to where they wish is much more attractive than a game that has you travel down a track which you cannot deviate.

 

My third vote goes to customization. The more a player can individualize themselves, the better. This absolutely means avatars: to be able to put a face to a name and to be able to customize said face! Furthermore, things such as flags, ship names, and ship paint jobs should also be customization. Have a few default stencils and designs for flags to custom-make flags in-game (A cross here, a shield there, maybe a crest or two. Eagles, Lions, and Crowns (Oh my!) are always fancied by the navies. And of course, skulls and crossbones). And then perhaps the ability to create our won flags in more detail with user-created content uploaded via the website/steam. Same thing with paint jobs (Stripes are always dashing on the broadside of a ship, Nelson would approve I'm sure!)

[hoarmurath]

i chose four :

 

open world prototype

full line of ships

crew management

officer management

[Månis]

Cant wait until we get to see the open world prototype

[Wicked Mouse]

I voted:

 

Improved damage & sailing

I'd like to see more and more attention to detail, not only graphically but also in terms of game mechanics. So if cannonballs hit a certain area, they not only just leave dust cloud, splinters and a mark in the wood, but pieces of the ship may come off, parts of yards can break, chain shot may snap rigging which makes harder to control the sails and rigging, or sails may start flying in the wind and not contribute to pulling the ship anymore. rigging and cables hanging over the sides and masts dragging in the water (you may have to order crew to cut the ropes?). When sails get ripped parts of it may be start flying like a flag. Not sure if possible in Unity Engine, but sails and yards may push against rigging and not clip it anymore?

Stuff like that, such attention to (minor) detail, that make the game 'feel' like a simulator and yet play like a fun casual game.

 

Open World

This is obvious. Even if this acts like the Lobby is now: you can sail around, visit various cities that are maybe given some rudementary functionalities and respond to/join skirmishes.

 

Progression & ranks

Give progression a little more meaning than do x amount of damage with this or that ship. Call it reknown or whatever and maybe give actions some purpose rather than a "grind". Win medals, earn pennants, make players feel they earned certain responsibilities. Earning a new ship from the navy should mean more daring missions, not just a shiny new "ride".

 

Crew & Officers

This ties in with the progression and ranks. I'd expect to see a couple high ranking officers (you may start with only 1 or 2 and as you grow in stature/rank you may employ more from the navy) that are under "direct" command, that can earn decorations by what happens or what you do in situations. You discovered an island? Navigation officer may earned an extra promotion, new jacket/hat/title or so on, along with the captain of the ship. Had a long fight? Officers and crew responsible for aiming/reloading guns automatically increased efficiency, repair crews or those on pumps may have as well, depending on what happened. Crew that had to climb into the rigging to rescue a sail that got damaged and loose during an engagement which enabled you to escape earned them recognition, etc. etc. Scout up in the crow's nest may get experienced in spotting sails or land on the horizon.... Opposed to just earning "experience points" and distributing those points to areas you feel is most important and thus "building" your crew that way.

[nebsif]

i am a bit dissappointed that so many people seem focussed on the open world. This would seem to indicate that they just want to adventure with simplistic combat.

 

how complicated can ship combat get beyond more detailed boarding, which u wont do that much till trading is in, and damage model 4.0? lobbing cannon balls on a "flat" map w/o a purpose (no risk, only gain) gets boring quite fast. Im not saying this as a complaint of any form towards the devs, just IMO the direction game is heading now should be "EVE with ships" instead of "WT with ships".

 

edit: If any1 didnt play lineage2, it was an MMORPG with worst balance, worst PvE, shit for combat system (couldnt attack while running) but it did have clans -> politics, clan wars (castle sieges), sense of belonging to something and "personal" enemies u'd hate.. ohh and u could drop half ur equiped gear if u died after PKing some1 who didnt attack back. That was all I needed and kept playing it for years, and no its wasnt an underground MMO at all. Hope you understand what im trying to say here..

[RaiVeN]

how is the open world development going?

[Captain Black]

I just want to see the open world, I'd be disappointed if i can't sail to and from places and have to fast travel instead. I don't like those features in open world games, I played silent hunter 4 and five and never touched the fast travel aspect until i had to cross massive distances of ocean. 

 

I like seeing where I'm going, possibly getting into some trouble on the way, it's all a part of the fun.

[Charles Caldwell]

For me lets get the basics sorted first, essentially this is all about ship combat.... so firstly lets improve the damage model!

[Captain_Chis]

Ofcourse open world priority, we can do the americas cup

 

or carribean cup

Edited January 17, 2015 by Captain_Chis

[Kanay]

I voted for open world as i really want to see this and I'm really impatient to test it.

 

But for now my main concern is the keybinds and the ability to set each of them to our needs, like few others here i got an azerty layout keyboard and some controls need to be set each time you launch the game or they will be mixed up ( rudder with auto centering mixed with rudder having no auto centering ).

 

On the top of this some are hard coded and can't be changed, for example you double tap D to go full right, then instead of pressing Q that is on my azerty layout the left rudder, i need to press A to unlock the double tapped full rudder, A that is on my settings the manual controls for the sails ( the Q for qwerty keyboard), same thing when using manual sails and pressing A key to adjust front sail, if i don't keep my eyes on the UI to verify it can easily lock the rudder full left if i try to adjust the sails and the interval during my keystrokes is too fast.

 

Also saw some things like left an right bracket supposed to shoot the full salvos without elevation for close range, this doesn't work on my keyboard, so i can't use this as i can't remap the keys, nor i can switch the single shot and full salvo commands as i'd like to get left click for single shot and space for full salvo instead of default settings and few more settings that are hard coded.

 

For now this is the thing i would really like to see done in priority so i can fully enjoy the game and profit of all possibilities without having to mess with controls each time i launch the game ( and regret it deeply when i enter in a battle and notice i forgot to do it after a quick client restart )  or keep my eyes constantly in the UI when using some of the keys to see if i didn't pushed the keys too fast and locked the rudder when trying to move my sails controls with the hard coded keys.

 

I know Dev's have probably other priorities and i won't blame them for this being as it is or not fixed for a few more months but for me this is what personally i'd like to see fixed first, fully customizable controls in game and each game function / command able to be assigned to a key i want / need.

[Jack Feathersword]

This really depends on how the internal teams are structured. Or i am going to guess and use some logic.

 

The planning/design team

Thee design team should be working on as many open world and economy design points as possible. I think that is going to be the real deciding factor on how things play out with the arcade vs sim vs mmo battle. I would be getting trade and economy experts in to help work out the supply/demand and transporting issues.

 

I would also get in help to work on the crafting and progression design points too. This is going to be the longest and hardest design points to get right so start now.

 

The sailing and combat design seems to be pretty well blue printed. so that can be handled with dev time.

 

The Modelling team:

The modeling team includes the artist and animators. These guys have lots of work to get extra ships in the game and to flesh out the current game world.

 

World designers/artist

These guys should be working on the world map blue print and internal maps for battles.

 

Dev team.

The devs should be working on fleshing out the sailing and combat system mechanics. Once these systems have the next build the dev team/s should work on the officer/boarding/crew areas of the game.

 

Adding news ships and additional content is something that should be happening over time. The gameplay elements and design points take the most time to get right and should be worked on as much as possible asap.

[wojtek678]

Add a small line on the compass when using the spyglass, so we know which direction we're looking at.

[felelo]

The thing with open world, is that people like it, it would be a nice milestone for the Steam pre-release

[Kanay]

The thing with open world, is that people like it, it would be a nice milestone for the Steam pre-release

yes ... but it also needs fully mappable and working controls able to be adapted to the different keyboards layouts, not just working fully on qwerty ones like now, you can't release a game in EA on Steam with such basic feature not working ...

 

After reading a bit on how unity engine manages this and all the complaints i found on them forums about this being a recurrent problem since many years and the additional work dev's need to put in the game development to make wrappers to handle custom inputs and handle such simple and basic feature for all games I'm a bit depressed knowing i won't be able to profit of the game fully before a while ... if they do this additional charge of work to get this working  ... but releasing an EA game on Steam as it is now with such problem on controls will be a big mistake imo, unless they limit the release to Qwerty keyboard layouts regions ...

[SerrialKiller]

Hmmmm tough

I say first shipcombat whit teams and combat like random like it is now. I would say more ships reall ones diffrent types of maps.

Tje open world later this year maybe just improve the shipcom and so people can make teams or something.

[5KnuckleChuckle]

Only mildly on topic but development priorities as I see them are:

• keep the game as realistic as possible
• keep the game as historically accurate as possible
• don't sacrifice either of the above to appease whiny players who complain that something is hard, takes too long, etc

[Rutger Van Hoorn]

I voted officers. Hoping for a Xenonauts (or UFO: Enemy unknown) styled management system, or better!

[Taki1980]

thx for asking! Made my Vote. Good idea.

[Axralis]

I chose four. Sorry.

 

*Improve Sailing....Only because of all the features, this one is closest to completion. We need tweaks for the tacking system and a way to disable the fore-and-aft sails. I also strongly feel that we should have an advanced optional feature for control over individual sails, even if in prototype form with a proof-of-concept UI. I would also love to see some visual features like luffing and clewing up, but that can wait until the future.

 

*improve damage model....This feature is about half-done, with very nice hull damage, and some progress on rigging damage. Sinking is still the only outcome of battle, and that is a dangerous state to release the game in. Rigging damage needs to be better than POTBS, which it barely is, right now. And crew damage needs to matter. The devs' vision of different paths to victory does not yet exist.

 

*Prototype of open world.....This prototype can be as janky and crude as you like, just get it out there. It seems to me that only 5% of the English-speaking forum has much interest in a WoT-style game without persistent open world play. The prototype will be your promise of things to come, and draw people into the testing more by offering more unpredictability.

 

*Add full line of ships......Well, maybe not a full line-up. Just give back the testing ships we had earlier. Your poor new testers haven't seen anything but Victory the pregnant elephant.

 

I would just add to this that they should implement a rigging system ...for example a 3 way to rig your boat  1. rig for speed ( you will go faster on straight line but you will turn more wide ... 2. rig for turn > you speed will not be so great at straight line but you will turn and tack much better.

3 . semi rig > a balanced rig for spped and turn...

or something similar to this, i think this feature is will add a diveristy and it is very realistic. some Captains like their boat to go more faster and better upwind and they will rig their boat accordingly but they will lose full potencial of downwind sailing or the other way around some Capt.. like to sail better and faster downwind or some of them like to have 50-50 balanced rigging on the ship.

[admin]

I would just add to this that they should implement a rigging system ...for example a 3 way to rig your boat  1. rig for speed ( you will go faster on straight line but you will turn more wide ... 2. rig for turn > you speed will not be so great at straight line but you will turn and tack much better.

 

 

how would it look in real life? What would a captain do to rig a ship for turning, instead of speed?

[maturin]

I can't think of anything that would accomplish that in a traditional square rigger, which is a Swiss Army knife that can be optimized for almost anything on a minute-to-minute basis. Everything except shifting masts and re-sizing spars.

So Axralis, please share a detailed, technically thorough proposal if you have one.