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Forthcoming patch final discussion.


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1 hour ago, Prater said:

You can't create a tutorial for a game that isn't finished, otherwise they spend half their time creating/updating tutorials every time they change something.  They've already stated a hundred times that tutorial will come after game is mostly finished.

But they could add a bit more love for detail when publishing a kind of short manual (text only maybe) to be adapted after patches ...

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29 minutes ago, Slamz said:

Empty port battles should largely go away, which to date is what most RvR has been [a boring waste of time].

The counter to having ports revert to neutral automatically is not show up. You can just observe, from your shielded capital, the enemy coming in conquering your port and you wait, because it'll flip back automatically.

Hmm, looks pretty much how we have it right now on Global.

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Did the devs intend to take a month to grind each skill level in each ship?

The lower and mid 5th rates which should be the heart of the game take 10000 xp per level after the 2nd. they can only count on 330 ish per mission, 3 per thousand, 30 per level, half and hour per battle.  15 hours per level and 45 hours of numb game play to get the 3,4,5 on my Essex. I go out to any enemy area to try to do aggression and open world AI intercepts to make it more fun and find zero worth while battles in 5 hours.

This is just silly.

And that is after I ground up to just about 5 on the frigate I didnt want before you changed that rule to make that worthless. 

 

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Random thought of the day:

All current "free ports" become permanent pirate ports. They cannot be captured. Pirates get free outposts in all of them and can teleport between them (captain only -- no ships, as usual).

Pirates cannot capture ports.


This turns Pirates into, well, pirates. Points of threat all over the map, free outposts, but OW PvP-only.

Any current pirates who want RvR would simply join a nation. (Conversely, anyone who does not care about RvR would probably join pirates.)

56 minutes ago, Skully said:

The counter to having ports revert to neutral automatically is not show up. You can just observe, from your shielded capital, the enemy coming in conquering your port and you wait, because it'll flip back automatically.

Hmm, looks pretty much how we have it right now on Global.

Yeah, that's exactly how I think it should work, though.

Most port captures in this game are literally meant to be "dick moves". They don't really want or care about the port. They aren't going to base out of it or do anything there. It hurts newbies and people who don't want to buy a second account but that's all it does.

The way it SHOULD work is we see, for example, Brits operating out of Belize and KPR and we say "Georgetown would be a great base to take over to raid those two places from. This is worth our time and money to take that port and live there."

We take the port because we care about it and want it for a specific purpose.

We do not go take every port in the entire Gulf coast. Those are useless to us. They stay neutral. If we get tired of raiding, then we'll let Georgetown expire too but the Brits might decide to hasten us out of there with a port battle.

 

I think we still need counties though.

If the Brits want to secure Belize, they will still want to own every port within at least a 15 minute sail of there and that's a lot of damn ports. They care about them because they want them to be British-owned and not enemy-occupied but they can't afford to maintain dozens of ports. Keeping counties will make it feasible to claim reasonable swathes of land.

Most territory will still be neutral but there will be concentrated pockets of "we care about this stuff".

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55 minutes ago, Intrepido said:

the painful grinding to unlock slots on some ships. A fight could be won because one guy had the time to unlock all 5 despite the other one have more skill.

In my opinion this is greatly exaggerated. Skill slots are very minor bonuses and feel more like flavor to me. About 95% of my PvP has been done in ships with 0-3 slots.

The problem I see are gamers who think they need top tier everything before they are ready to PvP. Even if it's just another 1% bonus to some niche ability, they feel like they can't fight at all if they don't have that. Maybe we have to bow to the flawed psychology of the average gamer but it really is fine the way it is. Being an expert at a ship gives you a few bonuses that are very unlikely to swing any given battle.

It's like people in other games spending 20 hours getting 1 last point of Vitality even though it's diminishing returns and that last point is hardly a perceptible improvement. But nope, they gotta have it. Not ready to PvP without that last point!

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There is no point in reducing the number of trips for ship crafting. The players who you are targeting disdain crafting anyway. If you want more ships to be produced eliminate permits, and reduce the cost of blueprints, better yet, just sell the blueprints for gold instead of combat marks. Players who primarily craft also trade, and players who trade generally have plenty of gold to buy whatever they need. Players who devote themselves to PVP usually have the gold but do not craft on a regular basis and rarely trade. 

Ship prices are fine, In game I am not wealthy but find that prices for ships in the shop are low enough that losing any of them would not be a hardship. As a ship crafter i would say that one of the biggest impediments is labor hours. It would be extremely useful if labor hours could be purchased with gold from the ship's store or Admiralty.

1st and 2nd rate ships of the line should be rare and expensive, 3rd rates, 4th rates, Frigates, Merchant ships, etc, far less so. 

Resources are rarely a problem, in game, both clan and individual warehouses are full of shipbuilding mats, 6-8 different frame and planking woods, etc. I currently have enough mats on hand to build 3-4 frigates. Again, my biggest problem is labor hours. One issue with trading however, is that most ports have nothing to offer as far as building mats or trade goods, so there is no reason to visit them.Others might find this to be different, but I have little need to travel more than 150k from my Capital.

If your looking for solutions you need to corectly identify the problem. Players are not leaving the game because there is no PVP, players are leaving the game because there is nothing but PVP. Outside of ganking and closed battles the game has very little content. When you insitituted the admiralty permit and blueprint system, you shut the traders, PVE and casual PVP players out of crafting, because they had to spend all their time doing missions or PVP to get combat marks to build the ships, or just not craft the better ships. An Indefatigable permit costs 50 combat marks, which translates to at least 10 combat missions, or 100,000 gold minimum, just to get permission to build it. The permit system alone makes the larger ships such an expenisve investment in time and effort that few are willing to risk them under anything but optimum conditions. 

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5 minutes ago, The Old Pretender said:

. When you insitituted the admiralty permit and blueprint system, you shut the traders, PVE and casual PVP players out of crafting, because they had to spend all their time doing missions or PVP to get combat marks to build the ships, or just not craft the better ships. An Indefatigable permit costs 50 combat marks, which translates to at least 10 combat missions, or 100,000 gold minimum, just to get permission to build it. The permit system alone makes the larger ships such an expenisve investment in time and effort that few are willing to risk them under anything but optimum conditions. 

Just have the person who you're building the ship for provide the permit and blueprints.  Presumably they have the marks if they have a use for such a ship.  Some of the permits come in packs of three so you can even ask for two permits to build one ship and have another for yourself.

 

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12 minutes ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

Just have the person who you're building the ship for provide the permit and blueprints.  Presumably they have the marks if they have a use for such a ship.  Some of the permits come in packs of three so you can even ask for two permits to build one ship and have another for yourself.

 

Yah when I make ships for folks most the time it's by order and they bring the me the CM's in trade for the ship with what ever the price is.  Normally a bit more than needed for the Permits.  I all ready have all the BP's so it's just the cost of the mats and the permit.   Hell I had folks give me 1 victory mark for a Heavy Rattler and I got to keep the two extra permits as payment.  

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24 minutes ago, Barbancourt (rownd) said:

Just have the person who you're building the ship for provide the permit and blueprints.  Presumably they have the marks if they have a use for such a ship.  Some of the permits come in packs of three so you can even ask for two permits to build one ship and have another for yourself.

 

How many players actually place contracts for ships with crafters? And what about crafters who want to build ships on speculation, or if they want to build a ship for themselves?

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24 minutes ago, The Old Pretender said:

How many players actually place contracts for ships with crafters? And what about crafters who want to build ships on speculation, or if they want to build a ship for themselves?

Most of them are all by order now. Players want to choose the wood type mix as well a the ship type. So most will put in a order for a ship to be built to be able to get exactly what they want. As mentioned above, most all of these players will provide the CMs to get exactly what they want.  From the economic side, if you are building ship types randomly or by speculation of what pvp players consider the best pvp configuration for that month then its a risk you chose to take.  The only ships I have found to be of any value to produce and sell without pre-arrangement are generally the obviously configurations players would use to grind pve ships.  You could simply copy the most recent ship a player order requested and see if that sells.  But there is risk in potential loss of not only labor hours but real life play hours going that route.

The bottom line is that the new system requires sea grinding time by someone to harvest the 50 marks for the permit. If its done by the buyer, the self builder or some masochistic merchant hell bent of creating a ship dealership lot its all the same.

Edited by Bach
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37 minutes ago, Bach said:

The bottom line is that the new system requires sea grinding time by someone to harvest the 50 marks for the permit. If its done by the buyer, the self builder or some masochistic merchant hell bent of creating a ship dealership lot its all the same.

Grinding combat marks to build an Indefatigable, frigate or indiaman is not a matter of indifference to a person who wants to primarily craft, or trade, and who also wants to build their own ships to do those things in. Going through ten 5th or 4th rate missions is a huge investment in time doing something you do not necessarily want to do, in order to do something you do want to do. 

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2 hours ago, The Old Pretender said:

Grinding combat marks to build an Indefatigable, frigate or indiaman is not a matter of indifference to a person who wants to primarily craft, or trade, and who also wants to build their own ships to do those things in. Going through ten 5th or 4th rate missions is a huge investment in time doing something you do not necessarily want to do, in order to do something you do want to do. 

You could always just buy the marks. Many players that for some reason like to do missions will often sell them.

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5 hours ago, Slamz said:

In my opinion this is greatly exaggerated. Skill slots are very minor bonuses and feel more like flavor to me. About 95% of my PvP has been done in ships with 0-3 slots.

The problem I see are gamers who think they need top tier everything before they are ready to PvP. Even if it's just another 1% bonus to some niche ability, they feel like they can't fight at all if they don't have that. Maybe we have to bow to the flawed psychology of the average gamer but it really is fine the way it is. Being an expert at a ship gives you a few bonuses that are very unlikely to swing any given battle.

It's like people in other games spending 20 hours getting 1 last point of Vitality even though it's diminishing returns and that last point is hardly a perceptible improvement. But nope, they gotta have it. Not ready to PvP without that last point!

Ya, you care about PVP, but to me the whole PVP mechanic is flakey in this game has always been and will always be until they have open world battles.  It is the domain of griefers and hackers. 

So how exaggerated you think an observation is about a feature of the game you do not care about certainly useless.

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9 hours ago, Slamz said:

The way it SHOULD work is we see, for example, Brits operating out of Belize and KPR and we say "Georgetown would be a great base to take over to raid those two places from. This is worth our time and money to take that port and live there."

We take the port because we care about it and want it for a specific purpose.

We have already played out these tactics. KPR standing orders will change to still be "never undock", only the low-tier doesn't want to believe this.

Now lets assume we are further in the game (and skip the everything is neutral and at peace start) and take a real example.

  • The Horde sets up at Brangman's Bluff (because we got bored of Truxillo).
  • The French come to Great Corn (Georgetown is too far), score 1 Victory and run into the Horde. Poof.

Then the tactic you describe above was used against you.

On 8/13/2017 at 8:38 AM, Skully said:
On 8/13/2017 at 7:47 AM, Slamz said:

Hardly seems worth worrying about. Do most people normally lose in two moves? Do most people normally find they can't afford a Surprise? Then it's not a very useful problem to bring up.

Have these points not be proven on Global?

  • Horde Fleet to Gulf & Dread Fleet to Georgia / Savannah, poof goes US
  • Horde Fleet + Mercantile Fleet to Central Antilles & Dread Fleet to Cornwall / Savanna la Mar, poof goes GB and FR
  • French come to Christiansted, which is a shielded Capital, so the standing orders change to "never undock", except for some "national" who did not get the message.

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And then the game is over. We now wait until we can do a proper game.

Would we have "revert to neutral", the winning strategy on both sides would be: do nothing and the map goes back to neutral as it started.

So lets look at the starting state, all neutral. We know the end state, "one-ported" resulting into do nothing.

Thus, "revert to neutral" ensures we have no conflict, Eternal Peace. And we are getting to realize what Eternal Peace looks like.

9 hours ago, Skully said:

I think we can add aimless PvP to the list of zero retention as well then. Ergo RvR (players) drive the game.

9 hours ago, Slamz said:

Most port captures in this game are literally meant to be "dick moves". They don't really want or care about the port. They aren't going to base out of it or do anything there. It hurts newbies and people who don't want to buy a second account but that's all it does.

The thing you would want to prevent would be used against you.

And thus it seems that everybody wants to forget that a coin has a tail and a head. The coin might not flip in the way you have foreseen (/ wished for).

 

Edited by Skully
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1 hour ago, Rebrall said:

@admin clan "friends list" is it limited to nations? For example GB clan only befriend another GB clan or is it open? 

Yah they came back and said doing cross nation would be to much a trouble with the code how Nations are set up. So it's only clans in your own nation that you can add.

 

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36 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Yah they came back and said doing cross nation would be to much a trouble with the code how Nations are set up. So it's only clans in your own nation that you can add.

The problem is in OW during dragging of potential allied ships. Say Clan A starts a fight with Clan B, both are allied with Clan C. To which side should Clan C ships go?

And if you make it a choice, you would see too interesting reactions from both Clan A and B.

(I have the original discussion somewhere with admin, if needs be I'll dig it up.)

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On 2017. 08. 21. at 11:58 PM, admin said:

You were brainwashed by haters mate. Alts infestations were invented by players to explain their inability to win port battles. There are alts for sure but the problem is drastically overrated.

2000 unique logins. 75 unique players in combat news channel. Even if there are 200 alts. what are the rest 1700 players doing? Definitely not pvp. 

This is a joke, what u say. u completly supressed PVP because of the long distances, the laughable rewards. I know some "i just do PVP player", they all broke, some left, because they dont want grind for capable ships and for ship XP. What do u think who will sail out for hours for nothing or to do  battle, where he can loose 200 K-2 million, or earn 0K- 200K. U completly supressed PVP and now u get a conclusion, that players want more PVE, than PVP. So many illogical steps in the develope, what ruins this game. Instead of clear and simple solutions u make chaotic systems, what has shitload bad aspect. U make this topic for what? u made ur decisons and u will do what u want, appart from that what players say/wants. i personall play this game only for PVP, but on the last week maybe i do like 1-2 hour that, and made PVE and trade because PVP is hello kittyed.

Edited by DrZoidberg
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The worst things into the conquest actually are:

- Hostility grinding (everything but fun)

- Disbalance between nation (number of capitain)

 

The entire patch are just going around this problem and solving problem that are not really existing. Make a pool. Ask captain if they prefer you to make your system great again or to add new fakes features we don't want or need. I'm not in a mood to control a port, taxes people or stuff when i still have to grind like a pig to make a pb i may not be present because in 24hours facing 3x the number of ship my teamates have.

This patch is not full of fake features, it's a fake patch. A patch not solving the real problem, maybe introducing new ones.
I'm looking on my cristal ball and see that into a nation all the clan will be clan friend. In the worst way, your system will work and some clan will be put out of PB just because the oithers clan don't love them leading people to leave the game (again) and beeing pist off (again).

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48 minutes ago, PIerrick de Badas said:

I'm not in a mood to control a port, taxes people or stuff when i still have to grind like a pig to make a pb i may not be present because in 24hours facing 3x the number of ship my teamates have.

A known issue. But in essence your work should be tied to your timeslot.

We have no working "funky formula" yet.

Edited by Skully
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I still feel that your game leaves the players to create their own content. This is were it fails! We need some centralized war machanism that all other games have. We allso need daily special missions, and have this mission intersect with other players missions(like chest mission just smaller scale 20-50 players). As for the RvR, i think making the PB ships so special and hard to get was not a good ideea. Even nations with big, organised clans are unwilling to loose big ships. So there lies the only problem with RvR.

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On ‎26‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 2:26 PM, AxIslander said:

I still feel that your game leaves the players to create their own content. This is were it fails! We need some centralized war machanism that all other games have. We allso need daily special missions, and have this mission intersect with other players missions(like chest mission just smaller scale 20-50 players). As for the RvR, i think making the PB ships so special and hard to get was not a good ideea. Even nations with big, organised clans are unwilling to loose big ships. So there lies the only problem with RvR.

I agree on your first point. The game needs more PVE content and goals to go along with RvR we have. 

I don't think your second point is what is really happening. Players are not afraid to lose expensive ships. They are simply unwilling to lose period.  That's not something the Devs can fix.  We can grab free 5th rates off the OS right now.  We can build Connies and Aggies with a lvl2 yard and reasonable materials. Skills are carried from boat to boat and don't require expensive mods. The standard speed mod, Gazelle, is available to everyone that can sink x4 NPCs.  One trade goods run can net a million gold. A level 1 character can build the biggest cannons day one. Getting PvP ships is as cheap or cheaper than ever. So why aren't players out there right now blasting cannon balls at each other?   They don't want to lose. Why do people gank? Because it's an assured win. The problem has never been economics. It's attitude and risk vs rewards. Currently players are adverse to the shame, disappointment or whatever it is they view negative about losing. Maybe we need PvP participation trophies. Equally as obvious is that the rewards of PvP simply are not enough, for whatever reason, to convince players to risk losing. 

 

Is there an expected release date for this patch?

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33 minutes ago, AxIslander said:

Maybe if devs will start to reward pvp participation, things will get better.

If you're talking damage rewards hopefully they will. I know Skully wants it bad. I'd personally rather see them get rid of the slot unlock system way before that. But if they wanted it gone they'd have done it already. 

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The upcoming patch with tax system might be a good time to make the smuggler tag mean more. Nations should be able to police their waters.

1. Port owning clans should be able to attack smugglers of even their own nation if they are in the owned port's waters.

2. Smugglers don't pay taxes or at least try to avoid them.

What would be really cool if a port owner could stop a smuggler and demand payment of taxes and a fine. If paid, the smuggler flag is removed and the former smuggler can then not be attacked by his countrymen. Or reverse the order of 1 and 2. Clan owners first must offer the chance to pay tax and fine, or forfeiture of goods, or the smuggler is sunk.

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