Invisibility + Speed = Revenge Fleet sorted = Immunity for gankers

[Koltes]

We go from one extreme to another.
I have been there hunting every day on both sides. I have been in the shoes of a hunter and in the shoes of the defender and I sincerely declare that the defenders now are in a great disadvantage.

What we had before is people coming to enemy waters attack win/lose get out of the battle and being surrounded so they have to run. Defense tag allowed to escape battles and make running for hours.
So instead of fixing this issue we throw a bone to the hungry dog and make a quick fix - invisibility + speed buff. We have tested it and its bad. Yes it sorts out issue for those who walked into the enemy territory and got ganked. They didnt escape because they had faster ships. They didnt escape because they killed everyone in the battle. They escaped because they used defensive tag and this was the ONLY reason why they got away on a slower ships. And now we made this invisibility + speed buff to please them???

This is what is happening now.

Option 1.
Attackers comes to nations home town. They tag who they can see. Because they travel in a small fleet they choose who to fight and usually people travel alone or in small fleets so they get ganked. After battle enemy gets a free out of jail card and gets away. There is no way to catch them for whoever came outside. So they can make a circle and continue to harass nations capital.
So chasing intruders for 3 hours was not a good mechanic but giving an immunity to gankers IS a good mechanic?

Option 2.
Gankers come to national capital and split their force. They often bring a player from another nation with them. They then attack each other or AI fleet, demast it and sit in a battle setting up an ambush and having the invisibility and speed buff on exit.
The smaller bait ship or fleet shows up in capital and make defenders chasing them. Near the ambush they let defenders to tag them and get into the battle. Straight after attackers larger fleet exits their battle and having a speed buff join their bait fleet and jump the defenders.
Problem with this is that if defenders outnumber or out BR their entire group their bait keeps running and larger groups keep hiding in battle. If defenders in lower numbers they will get ganked.
And there is absolutely nothing they can do apart from not following the bait ships or try to setup their own ganking ambush.

Sorry this is just a fighting with exploits.

Faster ships, needs to get away. Slower ships needs to be caught. Its as simple as that. It is just a common sense. Soon as everything start being based on that we get a good balance.

The proposition:
To counter defense tagging, the Invisibility and speed can only be granded to those who where TAGGED, not to the tagger.
On top of that in order to get invisibility and speed buff player must earn it INSIDE the battle. If he is faster and is able to increase distance outside tagging range (1,250 meter) or he is stronger and kills all enemies inside, then he gets his invisibility and speed buff. Else if he tagged someone and sunk them why should they get invisibility and get out of jail card? Nope, they have to face home defenses and make a run for it. If they then get tagged and earn their invisibility so be it, but its not free. If he was faster in the battle that represents the fact that he would be faster in the OW too and slip away.

Also, to fix battle camping and ambushes, getting out off ANY battle should have No Join, No Attack 3 min timer, so all battle instance that started prior will be closed.

 

[Knallkorp]

I must say that superspeed is bad favors the gankers to much. It was possible to get away befor if you played smart as you said. Now when u cant get almost all ships to 15kn i would say remove superspeed maybe keep invis as it is so you are able to make a little bit of a distanse when u spawn in the clump of the revenge fleet.

When it comes to lurking in battle/baiting next to a port increase the timer that u cant join battle to 4 min. So battle lurking doesnt work. 

[Skully]

Both revenge fleet and ganking traps are bullshit.

Keep it simple: control the waters, then you are safe. No further exploitable mechanics.

The actual doctrine is called command of the sea.

[shaeberle84]

Just make away with the SPEED buff completely. Invisibility only for the defender/loser of a battle. No invisibiliy if the battle did not cause any damage. No invisibility for fighting AI fleets.

[Sven Silberbart]

@koltes: I love you! What you write is exact what we feel the past weeks. Riskless ganking in waters where are much enemies (mostly capitol area) is a HUGE problem at the moment and kills the population, espacially the newcomers. Unequal fight are part of OW gameplay and I want that. But I dont liketo make ganking riskless.

AND I like your proposal very much!

@admin please pay attention at this massive problem and think about that suggestion.

 

Edited August 8, 2017 by Sven Silberbart

[Liq]

1 hour ago, koltes said:

There is no way to catch them for whoever came outside.

Why would there be? You get what you see.

[Koltes]

26 minutes ago, Liquicity said:

Why would there be? You get what you see.

Yes it would work once, hit and run and it would make sense, but coming back and continuously harass capital waters is just not on. There is absolutely no way to counter that.
Forget about revenge fleet. What about players inside? After attacker got defensive tag he receives an invisibility and speed buff?
Why is he so special to get that buff???
Was he faster to get away from the players inside the battle? Nope.
Was he or his side stronger to kill everyone? Nope.
Just defensive tag and boom - is out.

I didn't propose removal of invisibility and speed buff. I proposed that players MUST earn it inside the battle. If they kill everyone or they actually ran away (representing the fact that they are fast enough to Slip Away anyway) then hell yeah. Give them gods speed and invisibility. But with the current state it just completely one sided. Everything is done in favor of the attacker and whichever side wants to run away.

[Koltes]

39 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

1. The idea is cool, but only without 3 minutes timer. Imagine I attack a player, it begins 1v1. Suddenly it turns into 1v10, but I was the aggressor. Thus, I will end up with no speed boost, nor invisibility. You propose the removal of 3 min timer... but... We get another problem.
You are the attacker, so yeah you have to play it safe. When I attack in dangerous waters I always do medium range tags, so I dont commit to the fight until 3 mins has passed. After you got out its fine if you are ganked. Its open waters mate. I have been ganked all the time. Is it the most obvious thing that FASTER ships will get away add SLOWER will be caught? So you will have to come in a faster ship or bring strong enough force. It should never be otherwise. And no fast ships are not going to be the only one used. Its a glass cannons. It can't tank and can be easily taken out so lots of people would want to sail something more tankier naturally. Its when you get ganked outside and you run away and they tag you and you earned your right in THAT (second) battle this is when you can get away.

Why are people so scared of having to face fleet outside the battle? Its been like that for a long time and it was fine. You can face them once when you out of the battle. If your ship is faster you can run in the battle and earn that buff. If your ship is slower, it means that it supposed to be tankier, so you will have to give a fight. Simple and fair.

And if we leave 3 mins out then it wont sort battle camping issue at all.

Make all battles perma open and we wont have that issue then. We would all sail and join the battle of those campers. But this will never be done right?
 

2. Without timers and battles closing instantly you force fleets to be the same speed /same location. During the times of battles closing instantly, we implemented a system of ship doctrines. For example, everyone going for hunting was supposed to have "x wood - speed" Surprise so we had fleets of 5-15 Surprises sailing together. You literally cannot have variety in a fleet of ships with different speeds and different sailing profiles, because they will be left behind, left for easy death, won't make it to battle dragging circle or so... 
Sorry man you lost me there. How is this related to the issue described in the OP?

 

We need a system that we use to call "you get what you see", so ALL ships in the sight view, rendering range of view or however you want to call it, can join the battle for 4-5 minutes. You won't be surprised with suddenly 10-20 ships joining your battle that you haven't seen in OW, there will be no ambushed "camping battle instance" at all or port camping etc.
Thats also a bad system. Imagine this I have a group of players who went out protecting home waters from gankers. Those gankers run away. Fast ships following them and tagged them. Slower ships got out of view sight but are RIGHT THERE dragging behind. What they are no longer can support those in the battle? Thats just another exploit for faster ships to get away and separate fleet that hunts together in close proximity. 3 minutes is actually OK. It could be 5 minutes for my liking, but definitely not 2 mins or insta close.

 

[Vernon Merrill]

1 hour ago, koltes said:

We go from one extreme to another.
I have been there hunting every day on both sides. I have been in the shoes of a hunter and in the shoes of the defender and I sincerely declare that the defenders now are in a great disadvantage.

What we had before is people coming to enemy waters attack win/lose get out of the battle and being surrounded so they have to run. Defense tag allowed to escape battles and make running for hours.
So instead of fixing this issue we throw a bone to the hungry dog and make a quick fix - invisibility + speed buff. We have tested it and its bad. Yes it sorts out issue for those who walked into the enemy territory and got ganked. They didnt escape because they had faster ships. They didnt escape because they killed everyone in the battle. They escaped because they used defensive tag and this was the ONLY reason why they got away on a slower ships. And now we made this invisibility + speed buff to please them???

This is what is happening now.

Option 1.
Attackers comes to nations home town. They tag who they can see. Because they travel in a small fleet they choose who to fight and usually people travel alone or in small fleets so they get ganked. After battle enemy gets a free out of jail card and gets away. There is no way to catch them for whoever came outside. So they can make a circle and continue to harass nations capital.
So chasing intruders for 3 hours was not a good mechanic but giving an immunity to gankers IS a good mechanic?

Option 2.
Gankers come to national capital and split their force. They often bring a player from another nation with them. They then attack each other or AI fleet, demast it and sit in a battle setting up an ambush and having the invisibility and speed buff on exit.
The smaller bait ship or fleet shows up in capital and make defenders chasing them. Near the ambush they let defenders to tag them and get into the battle. Straight after attackers larger fleet exits their battle and having a speed buff join their bait fleet and jump the defenders.
Problem with this is that if defenders outnumber or out BR their entire group their bait keeps running and larger groups keep hiding in battle. If defenders in lower numbers they will get ganked.
And there is absolutely nothing they can do apart from not following the bait ships or try to setup their own ganking ambush.

Sorry this is just a fighting with exploits.

Faster ships, needs to get away. Slower ships needs to be caught. Its as simple as that. It is just a common sense. Soon as everything start being based on that we get a good balance.

The proposition:
To counter defense tagging, the Invisibility and speed can only be granded to those who where TAGGED, not to the tagger.
On top of that in order to get invisibility and speed buff player must earn it INSIDE the battle. If he is faster and is able to increase distance outside tagging range (1,250 meter) or he is stronger and kills all enemies inside, then he gets his invisibility and speed buff. Else if he tagged someone and sunk them why should they get invisibility and get out of jail card? Nope, they have to face home defenses and make a run for it. If they then get tagged and earn their invisibility so be it, but its not free. If he was faster in the battle that represents the fact that he would be faster in the OW too and slip away.

Also, to fix battle camping and ambushes, getting out off ANY battle should have No Join, No Attack 3 min timer, so all battle instance that started prior will be closed.

 

That's fine.   As long as you compromise and give me the option to log off after a battle.  

Getting away and endlessly re-tagged is just as shite as speed boost.  

[Koltes]

3 minutes ago, Vernon Merrill said:

That's fine.   As long as you compromise and give me the option to log off after a battle.  

Getting away and endlessly re-tagged is just as shite as speed boost.  

If you are in a faster ship you will be able to earn your invisibility and speed buff. Simple.
Let them tag you once, If they fkd up thier tag you will get away even on a slower ship. If your have a faster ship you will still get away.
Earn it and you can get away.
Logging off is exploit of same free get out of jail card. Why should you be able to come to enemy home waters, kill someone and then Alt-F4 from the game, just so you could go make a brew, have a coffee break, walk your dog and comeback to the same spot repeat the process. How is that better?

Edited August 8, 2017 by koltes

[Tiedemann]

I totally agree with the OP, but I also feel for the players that want to hunt because getting good  PvP is to difficult/impossible in this huge world. And the only way you can get some sort of PvP is to sail over to an enemy capital. When this is a guaranteed suicide for players that are not experienced in running away and/or have a super fast ship, then the OW PvP dies.
The way we are whining to force the devs to keep going back and fourth between favoring the attackers (gankers) and favoring the defenders (Revenge fleets) is not efficient. We need to find some middle ground here.   

Suggestion: I like the idea of having some simple demands that needs to be for filled to enable the invisibility and super speed (I&SS) after leaving the battle.
If attackers BR is Equal or Lower than the defenders BR, they should get the I&SS for running away after the battle. Promotes fair fights.
If the attackers BR is higher than the defenders BR, then they should not get the I&SS when leaving that battle. Punish gankers.
For defenders my fist though was that they should always get the I&SS after successfully escaping a battle, but then I remember all the battles where we have attacked an enemy with greater BR, and when we get into battle they are still just trying to escape..! But I still think defenders should just get I&SS no mater what when successfully leaving a battle. It might be that a player is trying to log off and that is difficult enough already if you are being chased..  

The BR check for this should happen after 3 min/ the battle closes, and there should also be a check for players on both sides in battle. No point what so ever in giving us I&SS after leaving AI battles, that is only a doorway for exploiting.

[Vernon Merrill]

7 minutes ago, koltes said:

We need a system that we use to call "you get what you see", so ALL ships in the sight view, rendering range of view or however you want to call it, can join the battle for 4-5 minutes. You won't be surprised with suddenly 10-20 ships joining your battle that you haven't seen in OW, there will be no ambushed "camping battle instance" at all or port camping etc.
Thats also a bad system. Imagine this I have a group of players who went out protecting home waters from gankers. Those gankers run away. Fast ships following them and tagged them. Slower ships got out of view sight but are RIGHT THERE dragging behind. What they are no longer can support those in the battle? Thats just another exploit for faster ships to get away and separate fleet that hunts together in close proximity. 3 minutes is actually OK. It could be 5 minutes for my liking, but definitely not 2 mins or insta close.

And "right there" is NOT right there in the OW due to time compression. 

Thats why the good thing about the 2-circle insta-close battle ROE was my favorite.  The big circle was everything that could conceivably join a battle in real-life time and it joined where it was in space.  Join circles are silly. 

[Vernon Merrill]

2 minutes ago, koltes said:

If you are in a faster ship you will be able to earn your invisibility and speed buff. Simple.
Let them tag you once, If they fkd up thier tag you will get away even on a slower ship. If your have a faster ship you will still get away.
Earn it and you can get away.
Logging off is exploit of same free get out of jail card. Why should you be able to come to enemy home waters, kill someone and then Alt-F4 from the game, just so you could go make a brew, have a coffee break, walk your dog and comeback to the same spot repeat the process. How is that better?

Why should I be forced to play a game for 4 hours when I only want to play one.  That's why we have "instances"...  

If I got away, I win. 

If you sink me, you win. 

Its THAT simple. People need to get over the REVENGE thing and realize this is a game of "instances".

for the love of God, if you are a trader, and have ANYTHING if value, hire an escort!

[Koltes]

Just now, Vernon Merrill said:

And "right there" is NOT right there in the OW due to time compression. 

Thats why the good thing about the 2-circle insta-close battle ROE was my favorite.  The big circle was everything that could conceivably join a battle in real-life time and it joined where it was in space.  Join circles are silly. 

No you don't understand man. They sailed TOGETHER. Yes they got tagged outside the view range, but the actual distance is in the OW is still the same.
Let me use a Real Life hypothetical example.
Chase is going. Fast ships got away outside visibility and were able to engage in the fight. Fights of that era could easily last hours. There is a fleet following behind. They KNOW where the fight is. They can hear the cannonades. They can see the smoke. Boom.. there is an invisible wall that stops them from joining. Hmm 

[Vernon Merrill]

That's not an invisible wall.., the large circle on the 2-circle ROE was calculated at something like 3-hours sail at worst wind. 

The time of an average 18th century naval battle.  

 

[Hethwill]

All suggestions are welcome.

Fights of the era could easily last hours as easily as they could be over after a first broadside. Average traceable was more than an hour and less than two not counting running engagements, which drifted some 16 hours of chase.

Hence why we have 90 minutes (?). Maybe just a coincidence.

[Vernon Merrill]

And, on a side note, getting away with new mechanics is NOT anywhere near an easy guarantee. 

I SHOULD have been caught last night by a 7-ship mixed fleet over by Christiansted last night. The ONLY REASON I was not is because they made one really bad decision by turning for a broadside instead of being patient and grinding me to death. 

3rd re-tag. WITH speed and invisibility. 

[shaeberle84]

9 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

All suggestions are welcome.

Fights of the era could easily last hours as easily as they could be over after a first broadside. Average traceable was more than an hour and less than two.

Hence why we have 90 minutes (?). Maybe just a coincidence.

We have no problem with that.

It is just that some aspects of the game massively favour specific playstyles.

"Runners" use ships with super accurate stern chasers (4 on a suprise), that cannot be caught = tagged by a large number of ships without bow chasers, which are, in essence useless in OW PVP (Essex eg.).

So start with (inhistorically) giving all ships bow chasers and next make stern chasers only use carronades.

 

6 minutes ago, Vernon Merrill said:

And, on a side note, getting away with new mechanics is NOT anywhere near an easy guarantee. 

I SHOULD have been caught last night by a 7-ship mixed fleet over by Christiansted last night. The ONLY REASON I was not is because they made one really bad decision by turning for a broadside instead of being patient and grinding me to death. 

3rd re-tag. WITH speed and invisibility. 

You really should not be able to escape SEVEN (!) ships. The fact that you did is just an example of how broken the system is right now.

Re-Tags are not the problem. With a large revenge fleet you almost always get some kind of tag on the chased pirate. The problem is that if the tag is no "perfect", which means very close and possible with ships all around the chased pirate, you can almost always escape.

For reasons, see my post above.

[Hethwill]

Not my struggle nor making a point. Stating facts, which being that, aren't opinions nor foundation of lies.

Battles would last for hours as much as they could be over after one single shot.

Carry on.

 

[mikawa]

25 minutes ago, Vernon Merrill said:

That's fine.   As long as you compromise and give me the option to log off after a battle.  

Yes, that's the old discussion -- you often sail more than half an hour to get to any foreign capital or place of trading interest. After another hour of battle you should have the option to log off and continue the next day. We already had the exit to OW or nearby friendly port option why is this gone? Speed buff & invisibility is a poor replacement for that which causes only new troubles ....

Edited August 8, 2017 by mikawa
typo

[Koltes]

1 minute ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Why should I be forced to play a game for 4 hours when I only want to play one.  That's why we have "instances"...  
Just re-read what you have written. Sorry I dont take this as an excuse. How can you dedicate only an hour for a MMO game which have even battles potentially last 1.5 hours???
More so why your lack of time should affect MY or ANYBODY else gameplay???

This is not some kind of candy crush or WOT pub matches where you can spend just 15 minutes. Its an MMO and im sorry if you get in a fight and you dont have time to play, why should I or ANYBODY be penalized? NA Legends will have strict time that you will know you will have to dedicate to. Everything else in NA is just player vs player depended. I agree that revenge fleet as GRIEFING is bad. But to say that there should be NO revenge fleet at all is like playing basketball with one backboard hoop and the other side have none.

 

If I got away, I win.
Exactly. The question is WHAT do we understand as getting away. Defensive tag is NOT getting away. Its just an exploit that allows you to use limitations if tagging accuracy of Bow chasers to avoid being tagged. Thats NOT getting away. 
This is why I propose that you have to actually GET AWAY - increase distance to 1,250 meters, then you got away.

 

Its THAT simple. People need to get over the REVENGE thing and realize this is a game of "instances".
No, its an Open World PVP, so it should NEVER stop on instances. You are using instances as way to separate fleet or get away from danger. That's just not right. Instance battles are pub matches. The way pub match has started this is what you will get and there will be no surprises. Also no one is gonna wait you after you finish the match. This is totally different. Before we had lots of whining about how revenge fleet is bad, how battles are open for too long. We close all that. We got all these mechanics to please everybody... Oops. We got so huge drop of action with all these restrictions that all of a sudden we got population sinking.

 

for the love of God, if you are a trader, and have ANYTHING if value, hire an escort!
For the love of God if you came to enemy waters have some serious fleet with you. You cant just show up and be protected by battle instances just because.
If the battles would have stayed open you would have to bring full battle numbers just so you wont get ganked. Well... thats a normal thing to do isnt it when one side technically attacks another? Not just bringing sorry 5 ships

 

[Vernon Merrill]

9 minutes ago, shaeberle84 said:

We have no problem with that.

It is just that some aspects of the game massively favour specific playstyles.

"Runners" use ships with super accurate stern chasers (4 on a suprise), that cannot be caught = tagged by a large number of ships without bow chasers, which are, in essence useless in OW PVP (Essex eg.).

So start with (inhistorically) giving all ships bow chasers and next make stern chasers only use carronades.

 

You really should not be able to escape SEVEN (!) ships. The fact that you did is just an example of how broken the system is right now.

Re-Tags are not the problem. With a large revenge fleet you almost always get some kind of tag on the chased pirate. The problem is that if the tag is no "perfect", which means very close and possible with ships all around the chased pirate, you can almost always escape.

For reasons, see my post above.

http://www.captainsclerk.info/speaks/book04.html

Edited August 8, 2017 by Vernon Merrill

[shaeberle84]

33 minutes ago, Vernon Merrill said:

http://www.captainsclerk.info/speaks/book04.html

This is like ONE occasion where it was possible, but only due to a massive amount of sailor skills. Not because of shitty game mechanics, which allow such things to happen on a regular basis, in fact more often than not.

Last week we chased on Danish Surprise back from Gustaviawith six mixed frigates, tagging him five times, always bad tags, always got away.

Next thing that happens is we are in front of Christianstad and instead of chasing him further we attack traders and SOLs and get away similar to how the lonely surprise got away. With SPEED and INVIS. =)

[Macjimm]

Speed buffs, invisibility, teleportation ... It all seems so gamey and convoluted .

If I have a faster ship, have the wind and am paying attention I should be able to escape,  regardless of how badly my opponent wants PvP.  Unless my opponent has enough ships (players) to cover a vast area.  Slower ships should not be able to escape by magic even if the captain wants to take a break.

I'd like to test Kote's idea.

[Hethwill]

We have no complex wind/rig, no crew quality ( btw US was second only to Denmark during 1812 war ) and many other real life elements that the game does not aims to mimic. Throw F11 coordinates, real time player position tool and radio comms in all ships ( all short wave that can travel 'around the world'), also add bot sentries relaying through the player own infrastructure or through extra game third parties, which do peek into all telegraph messages being printed... and yeah...

... suddenly the simple becomes a lot more complicated.

Chases like the "Long Chase" that can be found in all 1670 - 1820 Naval Action time frame. It is not ONE unique situation. 

All suggestions welcome. Given the above it is a question of selecting not the best, but the less worse.

What is better or worse in all RoE/Battle Exit situations we tested ? What makes this one especially interesting ? Does it consider ALL potential playstyles ? All types of ships ?

How does it deal with "RL" communications players have ? How can it be broken ?

A lot of these quantifiable factor can be weighed into all suggestions, so better keep the discussion focused

 

I like the distinction between the Attacker and the attacked. The responsibility is on the Attacker and he will not be under the same circumstances.