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Okay... Hold on. So we're talking about Naval Action, a game that's selling point is exploration new lands etc, with no avatars?...

 

Don't get me wrong I would rather sail my ship and take in the beautiful sights and sounds of broadsides than clang swords on a ship. But common, exploration, mmo, ports/towns this seems to me like a no brainer, avatars is a must.

 

I understand the work load required for this "secondary priority" venture and all the dev effort put forth on current combat mechanics, but player avatars are a key piece in bringing the game; to life, together, immersing a player in a world and downright fun. Being able to do one thing GREAT is fun, but I would rather play a game that does 10 things GOOD.

 

-Cannonball

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Not even under development. Switching focus before delivering one finished block of content is bad for business. 

  • avatar combat wasted a lot of resources for Potbs
  • Avcom will waste even more resources for Star citizen

We are 10x smaller than Star citizen dev team and delivered more stable product with more content per developer than their 300 people with millions of dollars. Its because we focus. 

 

No Avcom is planned for Naval Action in the foreseeable future. 

 

ps. We discussed that we might be able to run around ports some day in the future or sit in your captains cabin. 

 

Avcom was added to Potbs at very late stage, by popular terror demand. And it sucked like hell. I suggest adding avcom, just after NA will reach such success that Blizzard will become nervous , and Game-Labs will have enough cash to buy HMS Victory to dock it as a mascot in front of their HQ.

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100% agreeing with you, we need avatars,avatar combat,and clothing.For the sake of boarding.

We need it but not now , you guys at the dev team are doing a fine work  with concentration, but this shouldnt denie the thing that avatars will matter as time goes.

 

We absolutely don't need PotBS style avatar combat.  It was awful, unrealistic, and made zero sense.  I'm fine with boarding in the abstract.

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I just want boarding animations like empire total war, and crew customization. -_-

 

Certainly, you can have that without having a first person slasher for boarding.  I also want to be able to walk around town/land as an avatar. I don't want to run onto the other ship and attempt to pistol the other Captain as fast and as many times as possible to win the Boarding.

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It would be great to at least be able to invite our First Lieutenants and Midshipmen for Breakfast or Dinner at 8 Bells, or to be able to sit opposite our own version of Stephen Maturin and play and listen to ourselves attempting a bit of music or joking over a meal about the Lesser of Two "Weevils" ;)

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Sigh*

 

Avatars, are a must, period.

 

The beautiful ship combat can only carry this aspiring great game so far. To put Naval Action a notch above other games there will need to be supportive aspects to the already great naval simulator, such as additional game mechanics and visually interfaces. Players will want to walk around a port from shop to shop or hack through jungle searching for Aztec ruins after many hours at sea.

 

A limbo screen with options to click saying you're buying or selling goods or hiring new crew is a low standard for 2015 gamers. As I said before I would rather play a game that does 10 things good then 1 thing great.

 

Long term, short term, when ever, put simply Avatar's are a must for putting Naval Action above par other MMO's or games in general.

 

-Cannonball

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Sigh*

 

Avatars, are a must, period.

 

The beautiful ship combat can only carry this aspiring great game so far. To put Naval Action a notch above other games there will need to be supportive aspects to the already great naval simulator, such as additional game mechanics and visually interfaces. Players will want to walk around a port from shop to shop or hack through jungle searching for Aztec ruins after many hours at sea.

 

A limbo screen with options to click saying you're buying or selling goods or hiring new crew is a low standard for 2015 gamers. As I said before I would rather play a game that does 10 things good then 1 thing great.

 

Long term, short term, when ever, put simply Avatar's are a must for putting Naval Action above par other MMO's or games in general.

 

-Cannonball

I second that.

 

Noone wants some avatar based FPP slasher boarding, but being able to get your boots on the ground and have a walk around the city would be a great addition to the game. Far more interesting and immersive than just a plain screen with sell/trade/recruit option.

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I just don't think avatar style combat (FPS slashing as the captain) is something that can be done well when it is the crew that wins the battle not the captain.

The focus should be on the crew boarding not the captain boarding. The captain is important but how the boarding is carried out even more so.
An avatar style combat system where you play the captain in FPS boarding could easily turn this game into a hero centric ego centric slasher that has no hope of being realistic in how that combat is carried out (I took a  few lessons in sword combat at one stage). The rest of the game would be realistic and then the combat decided by dumb simplistic slasher luck because the sword or musket mechanics would be so basic.

I would be happy there fore with a boarding mechanic similar to the below where you get to control the marines and sailors on each deck and what they are doing.

We sort of have that in basic form now with the abstracted boarding mechanics and I think that is what the devs will eventually go for.

 

The captain ordering snipers to the rigging, marines on point for the boarding parties, for french repel with pikes. Proportion of the crew to stay back and support etc

 

2356_499f3351136ff.jpg

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Honestly, before there is a focus on any human avatar, the ship is much more important. I'd rather have a well customizeable ship, with paint and flags, equipment etc, than someone I can walk around with, if I'm mostly using the ship perpective anyways. It's really something that can be added later when the game is already running well, and there are enough people playing and funding expanded developement. I don't see the game being sold well enough just yet before a steam release, otherwise they could probably hire a few more people to focus on that, until then I'm happy even without a human avatar.

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We absolutely don't need PotBS style avatar combat.  It was awful, unrealistic, and made zero sense.  I'm fine with boarding in the abstract.

I never said I want POTBS style avcom... lol.... o.O

I would like to see a Mount And Blade like hack &  slash type of a boarding with lots of npcs and players figthing on the ships!

Go look it up on youtube, in MB you can figth with 1000 of people in waves ( in one wave you can deploy only 100 people for example)

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Mount and Blade is great for close combat style, for me especially because its the only game mounted fight is possible in a believable way.

For Naval Action i would perhaps prefer a melee fight without a special instance like in PotBS, also for a M&B style an instance would be surely the needed solution. But if i remember right devs also are stating such a special new gameplay possibilty would need to much resources and will not be in planning.

So an animated style like we as players order troops to boarding, see them fighting and giving them further orders during the entire still visible sea-battle would fit perhaps better. The existing animated crew then with more animations.

Anyway perhaps in future there is also land fight ^^, then the game will be called 'Naval & Land Action' with a M&B style combat. Sure, i would like it. And for our time-line we must fight (if military and enough 'soldiers') in line tactics. :)

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Have you tried M&B in multi-player?  That ping is real....

 

Just keep this in mind.  Every hour spent on avatars is an hour not spent on developing the open world, ships and combat mechanics.  Unlike Flying Labs, I don't see these gentlemen putting out half-assed content just to appease people who demand it. 

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@Balck thats why i would prefer like i wrote something different to M&B style, to much needed resources for a realisation, also i like very much M&B (most time i played the crpg mod).

Anyway only statistics are finally to few.  But devs shall work step by step, to see crew fighting is something for the future.

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everytime i think avatar and POTBS i think of that HUUUUUUGE town they had in the beginning, it took 15 min to walk to the end to get a quest.... It was in the first year so i dunno if that stayed in... It had no gameplay value, wasted player time and devellopper time...

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everytime i think avatar and POTBS i think of that HUUUUUUGE town they had in the beginning, it took 15 min to walk to the end to get a quest.... It was in the first year so i dunno if that stayed in... It had no gameplay value, wasted player time and devellopper time...

You must have been a Pirate, because that was the only starting port that was that large. A map of that size is a bit of a double-edged sword. Two of the Capitals in PotBS were so large that they needed warp systems to get around efficiently: it was very easy to get lost.

 

However, for all of the large avatar maps, the environment as a whole: from the buildings and the decorations were all well done, and many times I have found myself simply walking around and looking at all the details that were hidden for someone just running through. There were a number of little hiding places, beautifully detailed areas, and even an easter egg or two I came across while just exploring the capitals and Pirate starting city.

 

So yes the large ports were a bit of a hassle to traverse, but they were also unique models that were not used for any other port. So as you started as a pirate, you got to run around in a port that felt genuinely Piratey, and the Capitals felt just the same for all the other nations. 

 

This said, a nice balance could be found to merit a descent sized avatar port map, without it feeling daunting. But, alas, I would prefer them to model avatars to be able to walk about the decks first off before worrying about them running around ports.

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No i wasnt pirate, i was french navy. I do remember the pirate capital being big but this one was even bigger, might have been a french capital. And only played the first year, this town was a reowrk and i remember people of forum complaining a lot about it.

I do agree that some of the environnement were well made, but eventually the avatar part of the game was what drove me off Potbs. It felt like a warcraft clone (altough i never played warcraft).

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It would be great to at least be able to invite our First Lieutenants and Midshipmen for Breakfast or Dinner at 8 Bells, or to be able to sit opposite our own version of Stephen Maturin and play and listen to ourselves attempting a bit of music or joking over a meal about the Lesser of Two "Weevils" ;)

Lol if it weren't for this awful limited likes per day thing, I would like your post so hard xD it wasn't even that funny, but for some reason I died at that part of the movie. I guess going from the mostly serious attitude and dinners shown in the Hornblower series, to seeing a drunken captain making bad puns was unexpected :P

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Have you tried M&B in multi-player?  That ping is real....

 

Just keep this in mind.  Every hour spent on avatars is an hour not spent on developing the open world, ships and combat mechanics.  Unlike Flying Labs, I don't see these gentlemen putting out half-assed content just to appease people who demand it. 

Because it has no well optimized servers.By the way since only 2 of you are figthing a battle the players would be only the captains.The crew would be NPC, but as in MB, it would be restrained to several groups like sharpshooters,infantry,cannoneers,sailors(melee).It could have a better made order system and also have restrictions.And to Mr.Henry, I think that would be feasibly imposibble to do a ''drive by'' with your ships just to shoot down the enemy captain.Muskeets should be made as they were, inacurrate even in 40meters.And for the sake of optimization this type of combat should be only appearing when you hooked the enemy ship and boarded it I mean, you cant just shoot  with your captain to the other ship if its not near your ship and hooked. I want a realistic but an exciting game also!

For example: 80% of your crew would appear only in the boarding

So it wont affect general gameplay.

2nd idea is that if the upper one is not possible,Maybe have an instance(with the same ship you have) where you can fight the battle beetween you and your enemy i mean the other guy who was boarded or boarded you.But, the ships wich are hooked to eachother in the open-world would still remain there open to damage, and if your ships get damaged you would get the notification.

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No i wasnt pirate, i was french navy. I do remember the pirate capital being big but this one was even bigger, might have been a french capital. And only played the first year, this town was a reowrk and i remember people of forum complaining a lot about it.

I do agree that some of the environnement were well made, but eventually the avatar part of the game was what drove me off Potbs. It felt like a warcraft clone (altough i never played warcraft).

It was a shitty made wow clone...

Just like Star Wars The Old Republic is...

We dont need spells for avatar combat!

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It would be great to at least be able to invite our First Lieutenants and Midshipmen for Breakfast or Dinner at 8 Bells, or to be able to sit opposite our own version of Stephen Maturin and play and listen to ourselves attempting a bit of music or joking over a meal about the Lesser of Two "Weevils" ;)

 

I'd toss him overboard, seems like hes ready to commit mutiny given the opportunity. :lol:

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I don't know if anybody suggested that already, but for today, when we all know that walking avatars wont be the priority of the game progress:

Maybe we could get the avatar icons like in forum/baldursgate/arcanum/oldRPGgames etc?

You know, like those small pictures in the corner of the screen, so people would recognise us more, and personalise our ship a little?
man.png
Portraits1.4.jpg
GNM3.png

What portraits? There are two options:
- devs gather all portraits and chose a poll from which the players could chose from.

- every player can add their portrait, as long as it fits in actual history time, is not offensive, and have enough resolution and size to put it in the corner.

So even during battles when You zoom on enemy ship, look thru the glass You will se the portrait of the enemy captain next to his ship armor.


What do You think guys?
(if this was suggested earlier, sorry)

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